www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy I like the changes to the Divine Liturgy, anybody else agree?

"t-t-t-th-e-e-e-e"????? Huh? Where do you see that? Please elucidate what page, etc.

I like this one

Monomakh askes me directly:

Father David,

Are Saturday evening liturgies the Byzantine Tradition?

Is not having Vespers and/or Matins in 90%+ of BCA parishes the Byzantine Tradition?

Please let me try to answer in a non-polemic, direct way.
To the first question: Saturday evening Liturgies are in the Byzantine tradition at least on Holy Saturday.

To the second question: Yes, more of the office should be celebrated in Byzantine Catholic parishes, and I regret that they are not. Here in the seminary, we have Vespers and Matins every weekend, and celebrate the office frequently, though not daily, during the week. It is hoped that this will give the seminarians a model for their own ministry. I certainly teach explicitly that the Divine Praises should be restored, and that Vespers and Matins are not strictly monastic services but are meant for parish celebration also.

Other questions might be:
Should there be evening Liturgies in the Byzantine Church?
The Byzantine Church did celebrate evening Liturgies on the eves of Christmas, Theophany and Pascha. The Byzantine Church did celebrate an evening Liturgy on Holy and Great Thursday, since the institution of the Holy Eucharist was being celebrated, and the Last Supper was in the evening. The Byzantine Church did celebrate evening Liturgies in the Great Fast, when the Annunciation occurred on a weekday, and likewise the Presanctified Divine Liturgy, which is considered a "Divine Liturgy" in the Church's Liturgicon.

What about the modern social situation?
Some - both Catholic and Orthodox - see a need for a wider celebration of evening Liturgies in the situation today of daytime work schedules that have no respect for the Church cycle.
Some do not, and hold that the traditional daily cycle of Vespers - Matins - Divine Liturgy is traditional and fine. If one cannot attend a daytime Divine Liturgy, then they should be satisfied with attendance at Vespers. Others may attend the whole daily cycle and this will be beneficial to them, since the office contains more of the texts particular to the feast being celebrated.
Both answers are, in my opinion, within the tradition. And evening Liturgies (that is, Presanctified Liturgies only, except for the Annunciation) are the norm in the Great Fast.

Here I come to my final point.
The fact is, that when the Byzantine Church celebrated evening Liturgies, they celebrated them with Vespers. This is consistent and universal. Therefore, I respect both priests who celebrate the cycle of services and those who celebrate a vigil Liturgy with Vespers, if they feel that this is better for their parish. Whether this second solution is the better solution is debatable, but it is within the parameters of the tradition, and I commend these pastors for making Vespers available to their people. The fact is that "Vespergies" were a part of the tradition, and we shouldn't dismiss them out of hand or ridicule them.

I feel there are parts that are awkward, due to the number of syllables to notes ratio.

examples:

Holy God version C on page 34:

The RDL music puts 5 notes on two syllables (on us).

The Slavonic music put 5 notes on three syllables(mi-luj nas).

Cherubic Hymn 4 on page 42:

RDL music puts 7 notes to 7 syllables (re-pre-sent the che-ru-bim).

The Slavonic music has 6 notes on six syllables (Che-ru-vi-mi taj-no).

then:

RDL music puts 8 notes to six syllables(re-ceive the King of All).

Slavonic puts six notes to six syllables (car-ja vsich pod-i-mem).

I think the the new English versions should take a few notes out in order to not sound awkward.

Ungcsertezs

Uhm, this is all kind of interesting, but I think that we need to distinguish between the "Greater Slavonia" and the "Byzantine (Great) Church".

The Greek speaking Church of Constantinople incorporated two different traditions - the secular parish tradition and the monastic tradition. The Typikon leaned towards the monastic usage (it was the monks who did the writing!!), but there was an understanding of what could/should be done in parishes.

Lay folks don't get up at 4:00 a.m. to do services; they have fields to tend and balky sheep and goats. But on big Holy Days, the sheep and goats can wait. It's a yin/yang (no Greek term available) to accommodate the monastic ideal and the pastoral (literally the 'animal farm') reality.

Modern Cathodoxy is forced to suffer this dichotomy because of our history.

Changes to the 'established' time protocol fly in the face of our historical practices that were brought to the modern world, especially the US and Canada. Many (most?) Orthodox in the early 20th century North America abandoned the Sundown-Sundown day and went with the common US Midnight-Midnight protocol for counting days. Fasting for Holy Saturday communion went from Midnight instead of sundown.

An analogous process applied to the language and the musical rendering of the 'received tradition' (i.e., what our grandparents did based upon their old country practices.)

There is no question linguistically that the grammatical structures of the 'old language' and the music that embellished it, would have problems with American English and the accepted musical patterns that accompanied English language music. It's just a fact. To attempt to slavishly superimpose Old Country language and its accent patterns along with its musical embellishment, on English language texts and musical patterns will lead to either 'strange' offspring (wrong acc-ENTS on wrong syll-ABLES) or contorted language, neither of which will serve the worshipping community. And the same is true of the music when the very un-American melismata (many notes on one singable vowel) is proferred as the standard for a musical paradigm. (E.g., Americans DON'T like to sing multiple notes on one syllable if at all possible. It screws up the language. With the exception of the "Gloooooor- ooohh oh oooh - riaaaa" in the "Angels we have heard on high" carol.)

Worrying extensively about the rendering of OCS language texts and their musical "real"-ization in musical form, seems to be a bit beyond the mandates of the American/Canadian Constantinopolitan/Kievan Church.

Native speakers of a Slavonic language (in its many manifestations) represent only a small minority of the adherents of the Church community outside the Greater Slavonia, and the vast majority are either native English or French speaking individuals with a greater or lesser knowledge of the Slavonic language of their ancestors. To 'jot and tittle' the language and its musical rendering to supposedly assuage their sensibilities seems to be just an academic exercise without purpose.

There is no question that trying to preserve both the linguistic and musical heritage of the progenitors of the Church is a laudable one, it is clearly the spiritual and theological perspective that can serve as the instigator and pathway to grace and salvation. The prayers, the fasting, the readings, the community-sense are all elements that bring people to us and that help them find the path to salvation. The Medieval-High-Bulgarian (Old Church Slavonic) is merely window dressing to the salvific effects of the pathway of the Byzantine historical theology.

Let us please get beyond the 'externals' and focus on the ESSENTIAL elements of our Church: prayer, fasting, liturgy and 'koinotis' (=community) that lead us to salvation.

Blessings to ALL!

Dr John

There are those who must be fed by proper externals in order to arrive at a proper focus.

I agree, yet another reason why the full and official Ruthenian Rescension should be practiced and all this nonsense of the RDL should never have happened. Instead prayer, fasting, and I would add evangelization and renewal of our Orthodox roots should be focused on. + Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict both have called us to this, why don't we listen?

Monomakh

Thank you for your reply Father David.


If that's the case, then there's 51 other Saturdays that are unfortunately without the proper celebration of Vespers.


You should be commended for teaching that Vespers and Matins are not simply monastic services but are meant for parish celebration as well. The troubling aspect of all of this is that there seems to be a very direct and deliberate instruction for example coming from the BCA hierarchs on the RDL being the one and only liturgy and precluding the full Rescension from being celebrated, yet on the Vespers and Matins issue there is a lax attitude towards enforcing the celebration of these services. The vast vast majority of the OCA doesn't seem to have trouble getting these services right, yet the BCA and the UGCC for that matter does. I respectfully disagree with your assessment that issues can't be seen in a black and white way. When one allows too much latitude then one gets what occurs now in the BCA where 90%+ of parishes do not celebrate vespers and/or matins. Either they are the proper services or not, if they are then all reasonable means should be used to do so, if they are not then they shouldn't be. Anyone with any theological knowledge knows that they should be celebrated as you correctly pointed out that you instruct in the seminary. Shame on those who have the means and time to celebrate these services and don't.

Matthew 25:31-45 (which by the ways is a great passage to tick off Protestant Fundamentalists with when they say that deeds don't get us into heaven, all that Christ talks about in this passage is deeds period) shows that Christ sees things in a pretty black and white way. I agree that the passage has nothing to do with liturgies at all, I'm simply pointing out that this is an example of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ viewing a situation (salvation in this case) in a black and white way.


I respectfully disagree with this assessment. In fact you even acknowledge in your post "the traditional daily cycle of Vespers - Matins - Divine Liturgy" (my emphasis) that the daily cycle of Vespers, Matins, and Divine LIturgy is Traditional. A fine scholar like yourself knows that the Saturday evening Liturgies that will be taking place this coming Saturday are not in our Tradition, unless argues that the Church disappeared after Acts Chapter 28 and reappeared in the last century. That is clearly what did NOT happen, and that inconvenient truth is what make all the innovations of late, just that' innovations and not Traditional.


I respectfully disagree with most of this statement. I think that you miss out on what will occur and be reinforced with Vesperal Liturgies becoming more commonplace. That is that the laity are becoming 100% accustomed to receiveing something (in most cases the Eucharist) in order for the service to be valid or worth their time. And that is simply not true. Vespers is a valid and proper service in spite of the fact that communion does not take place. Matins is the same. Vesperal Liturgies are going to end up reinforcing this incorrect notion.

Furthermore as I wrote in my last post, another generation of ignoramuses is going to be raised not knowing what the proper liturgical cycle of services are. 99% of the laity haven't heard your explanation that vespers and matins are not just for monasteries and need to be educated and even more importantly, become accustomed to these proper services being celebrated as part of our practice and not just looked at as something that monks and the Orthodox do.


Monomakh

Isn't it amazing how Father David is willing to accept almost everything as "within the parameters of the tradition" except the official Tradition itself?

What really floors me more, is that we have been instructed (by Rome) not only to restore our traditions, but to distance ourselves as little as possible from our Orthodox counterparts in liturgical practice and spirituality. Why didn't we listen when we reformed/revised our Liturgy?

It should also be reminded that the "vesperal Divine Liturgies" were relegated to very special feasts, usually involved the Liturgy of St. Basil and were NOT used as a replacement for a regular Sunday or festal Divine Liturgy. These were usually "baptismal" Divine Liturgies, with a Divine Liturgy on the feast day itself following Matins, at which attendance was also expected of the newly-enlightened neophytes. Holy Thursday also had unique aspects associated with its liturgical content.

The circumstances surrounding the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy and its relation to fasting times is very different to the issue here, and should not be conflated with the use of a "vesperal Divine Liturgy" to replace another Sunday Divine Liturgy.

I am no longer sure I believe this "vesperal Divine Liturgy" has any more positive aspects than just a Saturday evening Divine Liturgy. A mish-mash of Vespers and Divine Liturgy occurs outside of the context it had in the received tradition. Bits and pieces here and there that are not normally used that way become normal. So once again another anomaly becomes standardplace, rather than just serving Great Vespers. It is the "byzantinization" of a "latinization" that I feel still does not get any closer to an authentic restoration.

I don't really have a "horse to ride" in this debate but as one who served daily Vespers for years (before a change in external situations made that impossible) and now serves a "Vesperal Liturgy" out of necessity to provide Liturgical services for eastern catholic students at a local university, I can testify on a personal level to the spiritual impact of these services. And in my own very limited, and very personal, experience I have gained a great deal from all of the services I have served and/or attended -- including the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning, Great Vespers on Saturday evening, Vesperal Liturgies on Saturday evenings, etc.

To argue that one is "better" or more "authentic" than another is (in my limited personal experience) a misguided argument -- the goal of all prayer services is not to meet some standard of authenticity or to fulfill some time requirement or to do the most we can to prove our true "Orthodoxy" - the goal of all prayer is communion with God.

If our services provide this to people (and in my experience they do!), then we should rejoice -- and not fall into the trap of arguing that one way is better or more appropriate than another.

Thank you Fr. Deacon! That sums it up so well! I've been looking for a way to put it into words and you did it!

A heartfelt response, thank you Father, and I sympathize with much of what you say. I also don't have a "dog in the fight" either, as we celebrate Great Vespers on Saturday evenings and our Cathedral only has Great Vespers on Saturday evenings (which should be the liturgical example, so to speak, for the entire Eparchy).

I suppose I also can't forget the mandate of our own Bishops (included in our particular law, speaking here of the UGCC) and of our sister Church of Rome, with whom we are in filial communion and whose primacy in the successor of Peter we recognize. She has made it very clear that an authentic restoration is to be very high on our list of priorities as Greek Catholic Churches in order to foster unity. As a Catholic I don't think that can or should be ignored.

Thanks for your post Father Mack.

I really fail to see how someone demanding the proper and authentic liturgical cycle is a misguided argument. The only plausible explanation that I can draw is that 90%+ of Greek Catholic parishes not celebrating them is too much to overlook logically and some kind of excuse has to be offered.

It is really simple, the authentic liturgical cycle is Vespers, Matins, and Divine Liturgy, period. And I didn't make this up by the way, I just have really good writers from the past. Since the church did not end in Acts 28 and reappear in the last 100 years, I don't understand why anyone would dismiss what our ancestors practiced and claim that innovations are proper substitutes because they feel good, that is a misguided argument.



I would respectfully add (and I don't want to put words in anyones mouth) that Father David agrees that Vespers - Matins - and Divine Liturgy should be the cycle practiced when possible at parishes in the BCA, I agree with his statement and don't see it as a misguided argument.

Do you agree like me or disagree with Father David on this?



Monomakh