www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy How much Slavonic was used during Resurrection Services?

Dr. John. You are such a nice man. Thanks for your responses. God Bless you. The problem lies with me as I just can't seem to find the right words to express what I am trying to say. I teach these days and I can tell you that those of us who are serious about teaching are very concerned when we can't get across what we want. It's not the other person's fault--it's ours for not finding the right words or analogies. Of course, there's always the possibility that I'm actually wrong or simply not looking at it correctly and you are. I do admit that possibility.

I just can't seem to find the right way of explaining why not letting go of the language during liturgy and even the simple greetings are so important. And maybe they aren't, except to me and a few others of my generation. Maybe it is just a personal thing. I don't know. I'll have to think about it and maybe try again in a shorter post, possibly private mail. I don't know.

I thank you for your patience and your responses. They do make me feel better. I'm just frustrated that I can't find the correct words. At least yet. So for the meantime, I'm sure you won't mind agreeing to disagree on the matter. It isn't really up to us anyway since it will be the Eparchs and priests who decide how much of which language is used in Liturgy or anywhere else. Of course, as parishioners, we do have the power of speech and I intend to speak up to my priest. He's a good man and I could tell on Resurrection Saturday night he was not the happiest that we tried "Christos Voskrese" and it failed miserably. He mentioned during the homily about the greetings we use and even had them printed in the bulletin in English, Slavonic and Greek and pointed them out to everyone and asked them to use them. So I think he would like to see the past preserved. It's just an uphill battle if the parishioners don't care and don't want to learn. I guess that will be my job to try to light a fire under them, especially the ones of my generation who remember but don't have it down exactly yet.

But please accept my thanks once again.

Tim

ps--I love the last post about the music. My wife will appreciate it. She plays the organ and loves to make it soar and swell. It just doesn't happen that often in the Lutheran services at the church she play. They are leaning towards the "modern" worship service and settings. It's a bit frustrating for her.

X. B.
C. I. X.

Why are we asking only about Slavonic? How much Greek was used during Resurrection? Remember when we use to chant John I in 12 different languages? I do because that was when we servers use to hold the Gospelbook as human lecterns.

You are absolutely correct, Myhhayl. It is not just about Slavonic. I started the thread and since I am Carpatho-Rus, I went with Slavonic. But if you read the threads we do correct ourselves and mention other languages as well. The arguments for and against using the older languages are the same, regardless of which language we are talking about. So we did mention others. But thanks for bringing it up.

Tim

Tim, I understand your ideas very well. There is something 'comforting' in using religious texts, prayers, art and music that accompany our faith practices. And when these elements were co-acquired, they become even more special.

I must confess that I will sing (in the privacy of my own car) some old hymns - in whatever language, including English - just spontaneously. And I have no clue why I'm singing an old Irish hymn to St. Joseph, or the "Agni parthene despina" (Part of the "Hail Bride Unwedded") in Greek. They just pop into my head and I start humming or singing. I'm sure the psycoanalysts would have a field day with me!

My suspicion is that there is some stimulus in either my own heart or in the environment that subconsciously dredges these musical memories up. But it is clear that they each have emotional values that perhaps I am needing at that particular moment.

I guess the real question is how can we not lose the 'good stuff' from the past, but at the same time make sure that we are doing outreach? Forcing the issue doesn't seem to work - I get really pissed when I see someone wearing a "Recovering Catholic" T-shirt. Sometimes I'll ask, and I usually get the response: "well, I went to Catholic school or CCD up until the 9th grade, but it was stupid and then I quit." My usual response is: "Catholicism is an adult faith and a system for living a rewarding life. You wouldn't expect to survive in today's world with a 9th grade education; how can you expect to have a real spiritual life for your total self if you quit learning at the age of 15? Perhaps you were too immature for your age to get it." It usually shuts them up.

As an educator, I suspect that the the 'drop-outs' were too focused on the externals, and the need for personal self-examination and reflection passed them by. (Perhaps it was the instruction. Unfortunately we have way too many kind-hearted souls who volunteer to do Christian education but who have no skills or training. And the damage that is done is immense. It's Hallmark Catholicism, replete with feathered angels sitting on fluffy clouds and a blond, blue-eyed Jesus.) And sometimes it's the historical or ethnic traditions or beliefs that, despite explanation, are counterproductive.

While those of us who both understand and appreciate the customs should not let them go, we should be really sure that they are explained - and explained well! - and that we should not be afraid to introduce newer American-ethnic traditions and beliefs that may have a better chance of speaking to the upcoming generations. Our parish - near the nation's capital - does a bang-up Sunday near the 4th of July. (We have lots of government employees and DoD folks.) And at our annual "Festival" (I still call it the parish picnic), we have a flag raising ceremony, a moment of silence for those serving our country and for those who have died, and we raise the flag and sing "God Bless America". Both "Eastern Catholic" and "American" at the same time. The same for Thanksgiving Day and Memorial Day.

And on Memorial Day, despite its inception as a memorial for our departed military, major cemeteries will have many Orthodox priests moving about blessing the graves of the departed, military or not. [One year, we were late - couldn't find the appropriate flowers for planting - and the only priest left was an Albanian. For Greeks to have an Albanian priest - yikes! But it had to be done, so we did it, slipped him an envelope and resolved to get there earlier next year so we could have Fr. Costa.]

I think that you too, TJM, will start to establish these customs - Slavic or otherwise - and they will become part of your family's routine. And if you should skip them, there will be hell to pay!! And that's OK.

And I must mention to Mykhyl, it was always the custom among the Slavs to have the Gospel of John read in as many languages as the clergy could muster. Our Ruthenian parish this year did Slavonic, English and Latin. When we had other visiting priests (usually Latin rite folks) we added "school Greek" - the kind that made my mother irate and has no correlation to real Greeks. I believe that one year we had Hungarian - that was GREAT!

With all kinds of Blessings,

Dr John

X. B.
C. I. X.

Tim,

Forgive me if I was vague, I was not speaking of only using living languages amongst the people but including some just for show, and the off chance of a visiting pilgrim might understand. Of course we are speaking of the 50 and 60�s before people got the idea Vatican II was that the people had to understand the language for everything that was said even if they didn�t understand what was being said.

The pragmatic pastor I had back then really only did three Paschal Gospel readings, first in Shevchenko Ukrainian, second in thee and though English popular then and a third in a mix of languages and only in a verse or two. Much like the �hear our prayer� petitions at the Papal Mass. If I remember his formula Greek, Hebrew and Latin from the cross, Slavonic for the bishop and French, Spanish and German for our Hi school students. The three left was probably Polish, Hungarian, and Croatian or Slovak thrown in so the people could say our parish was cosmopolitan and used a dozen languages to be inclusive. One year he did Russian and several people commented about that, but in the negative. Of course Christos Anesti was sung but only when the choir was there to pull it off.

Those were the days of showmanship probably aided to our idea of mystery which we lost. Do you remember the 12 Gospel reading with extinguishing 12 candles, one after each reading in 12 different colored vestments? We used two sets of servers, or should I say stagehands. When the Gospel of the crucifixion was read we turned off all the church lights, slapped cookie sheets together to imitate thunder and flashed the lights in the sanctuary like lightening. Like I believe Dr. John was saying there is more then what we understand that helps us understand. Now the closest we get to showboating is lowering the body cutout icon with a white sheet down from the cross before Our Lord�s layout.

To answer your question from last Easter, we usually do Slavonic on all the thrice repeat prayers, it seams to be easier for the people to learn and remember those.

Mykhayl

Because Church Slavonic is a sacred language and it speaks to your heart.

Thanks, Mykhal. I absolutely love the description of the service. I wish we had done that much. We did the reading of the Gospels, but I cannot recall doing twelve languages. My parents commented every year about how impressive that was and how much they wish we were still doing it. Our parish priest was a good man, but had some problems and even had to have help with Communion. As I understood it, he would get nervous with large crowds and there was the chance of dropping the Eucharist. So for large Liturgies (even the second Sunday service) we always had a second priest helping out.

The idea of extinguishing the candles one by one is wonderful! I can just see it in my mind's eye now. And Dr. John's description of what they do at his parish during major holidays thrills me. We are a small mission now but maybe one day (in my lifetime, I hope) we can be big enough to really get a "show" going for Liturgy. There is the theatrical element to a liturgy that should not be ignored. It should never overpass the real reason, but between the vestments, incense, good singing, lighting and other things, it is a show that just makes me want to come back for more and more each week. I don't mind spending 90 minutes or two hours or more in church when I really get something out of it. Time flies for me when I'm singing in Slavonic and really getting into it.

Thanks for the understanding.

Tim

Recluse--you hit the nail on the head. It does speak to my heart. I'm not even going to try to understand why. I just accept it and know that my heart is not complete without it. I feel closer to God singing "Christos Voskrese..." than I do singing "Christ is Risen..." A personal thing? Probably. But that's ok. Isn't religion about a personal relationship with our saviour?

Thanks so much.

Tim

TJM, it seems like you are going through an 'epiphany' in which a lot of spiritual things are making themselves manifest in your soul. And like a kid in a candy-store, there are just so many things that appeal to you. The Gospel touchstone is: use whatever will bring you closer to Christ and to His Gospel.

Thare are many things that satisfy us, and they are good; but there are others that are MORE useful tools/mediators in helping us be vibrant Christians. And we must take hold of these to energize our outreach to the unchurched.

There are many things that help us personally in our quest for salvation. They must be nutured and enhanced, as with your feelings when singing "Christos Voskrese" as opposed to "Christ is Risen". Not a problem. This is personal prayer, and this is what monastics strive for in their countess hours of personal prayer. And liturgical prayer must augment and supplement this. But as the prayer of St. Francis implores: "Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace...." Prayer is not only to unite us individually and "personally" to Christ, but it must instigate us to be an instrument of bringing others to Christ and to do outreach to others. And we must select the modality of prayer that helps us accomplish this. And this applies both to personal prayer, and also to public prayer.

Mykhayl highlights an imporant element of this: the readings of the Gospel in as many languaages as possible is a visible sign that we are going out to everyone and preaching the Resurrection of Christ to all nations. It is, as Mykhayl notes, an element of 'showmanship'; not of the linguistic prowess of the clergy, but rather a highlight of the universality of the message that needs to be preached/spoken to all nations. I.e., "from the North and the South; and the East and the West...."

Helping our people to 'baptize' American customs and realities and make them part of our Eastern Christian patrimony can only help us to spread the Gospel and the universality of the Constantinopolitan approach to salvation. We hold a wonderful sense of the transcendence between our world and the "other" world as expressed in icons; we hold strongly to the absolute value of family and parish/church as co-components of the 'koinotis/community' that constitutes the individual building-block of the universal Church; we see as perfectly natural the understanding of 'living saints on earth' united with the 'saints who have gone before' and the universal participation of all the baptized in the fulfilment of salvation; and we see the action of the Holy Spirit which holds the whole of consecrated creation into a unified body.

The individual sanctified and praying Christian must find salvation within the context of the 'church' as community; and the individual churches must find their salvation through their bishops, in the unity of the Church of the baptized faithful. This is the critical element. But it MUST include an element of evangelization that reaches out to those who are not of the 'household of the faith' and let them know that there is a place for them already set aside - as there is a place set aside for them in the heavenly mansion.

Blessings!!

Dr John

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C, I, X!
�There are many things that satisfy us, and they are good; but there are others that are MORE useful tools/mediators in helping us be vibrant Christians. And we must take hold of these to energize our outreach to the unchurched.� quote Dr. John

If it�s not broke why fix it? Why is it now vogue to take popular customs of inclusiveness and make them exclusive? Our Paschal food blessing was an organic counterreformation development from the bottom up. In some parishes it was better attended then their services, because after �Baba� (granny) died her Protestant granddaughter or RC grandson who helped her pack and carry her basket to a Saturday afternoon blessing was still doing it. Although it was after noon Holy (Great) Saturday we were told we could not sing �Khrystos voskrese� any more because we will confuse the peasants, then the felons disappeared. Now they want to eliminate the strangers altogether by only having one blessing, after the Easter Resurrection Matins with Divine Liturgy marathon. Its not Tradition, we should promote this custom and place invitations to the general public to join us by advertising in the local paper with times and location.

Turning our parish churches into monasteries to make us appear more orthodox is one thing, but killing these �kitchen� churches is another. Relevance to the unchurched is as much our responsibility and even more important than impressing the priest�s family. Is not John 17:11 prayed in the plurality not conforming unification? How did that other Western guy St. Augustine say it "In essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity�.

X. B!
C, I, X!

Brother Mykhayl notes:

�There are many things that satisfy us, and they are good; but there are others that are MORE useful tools/mediators in helping us be vibrant Christians. And we must take hold of these to energize our outreach to the unchurched.� quote Dr. John

If it�s not broke why fix it? Why is it now vogue to take popular customs of inclusiveness and make them exclusive? Our Paschal food blessing was an organic counterreformation development from the bottom up. In some parishes it was better attended then their services, because after �Baba� (granny) died her Protestant granddaughter or RC grandson who helped her pack and carry her basket to a Saturday afternoon blessing was still doing it. Although it was after noon Holy (Great) Saturday we were told we could not sing �Khrystos voskrese� any more because we will confuse the peasants, then the felons disappeared. Now they want to eliminate the strangers altogether by only having one blessing, after the Easter Resurrection Matins with Divine Liturgy marathon. Its not Tradition, we should promote this custom and place invitations to the general public to join us by advertising in the local paper with times and location."

I'm not quite sure who's doing what in this post. What I DO understand is that the Slavs have a unique custom about the blessing of the baskets of foods that we forsook during the Great Lent. And it's also clear the the Byzantine Church did an anticipation of Pascha on Saturday, - kind of a 'sneak peek', like we just can't WAIT for Pascha Sunday, so that the blessings of the baskets, etc. would take place on Holy Saturday. Greeks don't do baskets; we get the Paschal eggs at Anastasi on Saturday night Matins and Liturgy, and this is our symbolic 'end of the fast' and a welcome to the Resurrection. Then we go home and have our Paschal meal.

"Turning our parish churches into monasteries to make us appear more orthodox is one thing, but killing these �kitchen� churches is another. Relevance to the unchurched is as much our responsibility and even more important than impressing the priest�s family."

Amen to that! Let's face it, as "all politics is local", so too is the church: local; meaning that the church is really the families that constitute the parish community. What the families in the parish do is really what the church is. And since the priest is supposed to be "from the people", he should understand what the people's customs are and acquiesce to them.

The Slavs constitute their various communities with their own practices; so do the Greeks, Arabs, Ethiopians, Copts, etc. And, in my opinion, there is no need for uniformity. The Slavs, in the North, use pussy willows for Palm Sunday because they don't grow palm trees. In the palm areas, we continue to use palms. It's just a question of what the people "need to do". This is truly the "kitchen churches".

The blessing of the baskets is certainly an element of what Constantinopolitan Christians do as an essential public tradition to support our spiritual journey. I think having an "invitation to the general public" is absolutely INSPIRED! Maybe some Western Christians will begin to understand what we do, and question and deepen their understanding of their own practices as a result of seeing what the ancient Byzantine traditions are. (I do NOT intend in any way to denigrate the Western customs and even their later practices that eliminated the real fast, but I think that every Christian should be exposed to and helped to understand that what they do is not the whole thing for the whole church. That they learn that we abstain from meat and dairy products for 54 days may make them think: "what is this? And why did we lose it?". And this is a good thing.)

And it should be accompanied by coffee, pastries, literature, music and a welcoming fellowship. ("if you feed them, they will come")

For those families who do basket blessing on Saturday (and as I understand it, the priest journeyed from home to home to bless the baskets), this should continue. But we might also consider the general basket-blessing after Paschal Matins and liturgy, and make real use of Mykhayl's suggestion to advertise this to the general community. It's GREAT evangelization and a real and serious invitation to our fellow Christians to learn about the Church's history from the ancient times. And many Protestants are quite open to learning. Even if they remain in their own communities, they have the blessing of knowing that there are other Christians, including us "strange" Easterns, who are part of the family.

Blessings to All!

Dr John

[quote] The blessing of the baskets is certainly an element of what Constantinopolitan Christians do as an essential public tradition to support our spiritual journey. I think having an "invitation to the general public" is absolutely INSPIRED! Maybe some Western Christians will begin to understand what we do, and question and deepen their understanding of their own practices as a result of seeing what the ancient Byzantine traditions are. /quote]

Well, I don't agree with much of what you say "Dr. John," but I do agree with this idea. Our church does basket blessings, then we sit and sample from each others' baskets. We traveled together during Lent, we should eat our Paschal foods together too. It's a great community builder.

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C, I, X!

�I�m not quite sure who�s doing what in this post. What I DO understand is that the Slavs�� Welcome to our world Dr. John.

An old wife�s tale state the Romans embrace the Church out of duty to the law, the Greeks due to their respect of philosophy, and the Slave because the love it. In plain English if the Slav�s don�t like it nothing you can say or do will get them to change their minds. You think I�m kidding? It took 800 years but Kyiv is a capital again isn�t it?

Although a brainstorming exchange I think is more stimulating then platitudes backing a predetermined idea, here is a question whose facade will keep the thread�s integrity pure. For those parishes retain a conveyance of also blessing Paschal foods on Saturday, are you permitted to sing �Khrystos voskrece !� (that�s Slavonic for Christ is risen)? Likewise was/is the Lord�s grave up for veneration or had/has it been dismantled in accordance to Greek custom?

Back on track, hope your anointing was blessed. Hope your Pascha follows with a meaningful celebration.

This applies to 2008 - in other words, the day before yesterday.

Hmmm. We sang "Vhrist is Risen from the dead" in a variety of languages, including Church-Slavonic (Old-Rite text, of course), Greek, Ukrianian, and Romanian. We sang the Hymn of Light in Church-Slavonic. That was probably the extent of Church-Slavonic in our community. No one asked for any more.

Christ is Risen!

Fr. Serge

We did nothing more than utilize Church Slavonic for "mixing up Christ is Risen" (Did throw in one Hungarian as well ) and took part of one of the Odes at Resurrection Matins in Church-Slavonic as well...

Job