www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Father Robert Taft, S.J. Rejects Revising the Divine Liturgy

I think people deserve a response to questions about the repetitiveness of the Divine Liturgy-at least those who ask with an openness to being educated. While I do not know the motives of those who composed the liturgies of the Church with respect to their use of repetitiveness, I see value in it in that it helps shape the way we understand God and the way we approach God in prayer and worship. For me, the numerous times we pray for God's mercy reminds me of the great need I have for his mercy. The repetition of other requests reminds me of how much I depend we depend on God and how we have nothing apart from it. Of course God has no need for us to repeat our requests, but I believe that we repeat them for our own spiritual good. Again, I do not know the thoughts and motives of the Fathers of the Church for composing our liturgies as they did, but I suspect this is part of the reason for their choosing to use so much repetition.

Ryan

Christ is in our midst!!

I was taught that this very factor in the Byzantine Divine Liturgy was meant to give the sense of timelessness, of a meeting of Heaven and earth wherein we were able to stop the frenetic pace of our lives and focus on what is really important. We human beings, especially in the West, have a sense that we have to "get things done" or "get it over with." It's our "what is the minimum" attitude.

The Byz DL, in my humble opinion, asks us to focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ in such a way that we realize that He is the most important Person in our lives and that we will spend eternity with Him. As one Orthodox priest of my acquaintance put it, "If you can't stand being at the DL for an hour and a half or two hours, how will you stand the Heavenly Liturgy which never ends?"

In Christ,

BOB

Having heard only one cleric recite the anaphora rather than chant it (and he was a visiting bishop, at that)...

The Ruthenian is about as condensed as the very most condensed of OCA uses. The catechmen's ektenie is in rubrics for when catechumens are dismissed to study. In this, the Ruthenian mirrors the Roman.

If you heard some of our Parma priests recite the anaphora out loud you'd understand why some should pray it silently. They rush through it. You can't understand them. It's embarrassing. So why bother? It's all political. The Roman Catholics do it so we must imitate them.

"If you heard some of our Parma priests recite the anaphora out loud you'd understand why some should pray it silently. They rush through it. You can't understand them. It's embarrassing. So why bother? It's all political. The Roman Catholics do it so we must imitate them."

I have no idea why they recite it. If it is to be taken aloud, the Anaphora, like the rest of the Divine Liturgy, is supposed to be chanted. Also, in the spirit of going from one extreme to the other, the present rubrics have the priest saying aloud prayers that are his own private prayers, meant to be recited silently, in addition to his public prayers, which (if you are so inclined) can be chanted aloud.

Christ is in our midst!!

I can't speak to how the Parma priests recite the anaphora. But I will comment on something that I have been doing for the past 36 years in various parishes of which I've been a member--training people in the speech art of proclamation, something that was part of my undergraduate work.

We, Latins, have been putting people in front of a book and asking them to be "lectors" or "readers" or some such thing and that's what we get. It's akin to the time whe we were in the first three grades of primary school and were called on to "read aloud." It's run together; it's poorly articulated; it's read too fast; it's too low to be heard beyond the third pew; sometimes w get someone whose native language is not English and they literally stumble through it and it's like finernails scratching the blackboard; it's a disaster. And yet we continue to do it, murdering the Word of God and doing violence to its power to move souls.

And what can be said for laymen can be said for the clergy. The only difference is that when exposed to some sort of training period the average layman not only comes away a far better proclaimer but also conscious of the vast difference between "mouthing the words" and making the text come alive. The clergy, by and large, may begin to imitate once the laymen suddenly begin to show marked improvement, but won't listen to any layman offering to help him improve his speech skills. After all, they've had seminary training and are above anything that can be brought to them from mere laymen.

The basic approach of being a proclaimer is to bring to life the text, remembering that if one is using a microphone one needs to consciously slow ones delivery by about one third--since a microphone can only reproduce the human voice at about 66%. Then there's enunciation and pronunciation and studying the text to bring the meaning to life.

The anaphora is probably the most intimate prayer I can imagine and done poorly is akin to violent, physical crime IMHO. Here is the priest, in the person of Christ Himself, addressing the Father. As the whole of liturgy itself, IMHO, there is nothing on earth more important to do or utter than the anaphora. And I mean that whether it is taken aloud or silently. This is no mere ritual. It's a beautiful offering of a profund prayer to the Father Creator. Racing through it--wow. You know, I always ask those I train what answer they will give to God on Judgment Day when He asks, "What were you trying to do? What was the hurry? I was trying to use your voice to speak to the people in the back row with poor hearing. They needed to hear what I had to say loud and clear."

The Byzantine Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom sweeps me away. "With these blessed Powers, O Master Who lovest all men, we also cry aloud and say . . ." To me, when I read this prayer as a private devotion, it makes me feel like being on the top of a mountain. I realize how small, mean, and insignificant I really am. I'm not the center of it all. It evokes the scene in Revelation where St. John speaks of the crowd so vast that no one can number it. And yet, this awesome God has somehow found me and decided He wants me to be part of all this.

So rushing through prayers taken aloud in speech, whether they should be or not, is a terrible injustice on too many levels for me. Ditto rushing through the readings from Scripture, whether they are chanted or not. Forgive me if I compare it to sloppy lovemaking and cringe at the thought.

My two cents.

BOB

"So rushing through prayers taken aloud in speech, whether they should be or not, is a terrible injustice on too many levels for me. Ditto rushing through the readings from Scripture, whether they are chanted or not."

That's the whole point of chanting. It's rhythmic, so it is rather difficult to rush. That is why, once upon a time, all liturgy was chanted, in both the East and the West. Even for the Latin rite today, chanting is still normative.

Stuart:

I get your message. But have you ever been in a place where they chanted so fast that nothing got through but a whirr of words? I have. And then I wondered what the point was.

BOB

Justice was served!

Actually, it helps if you understand Church-Slavonic. It helps even more if you bring along the appropriate text(s).

Fr. Serge

Father Serge:

Father bless!!

While I don't understand Church Slavonic, I have been to beautiful Slavonic DLs where the cadence has been other-worldly and the reverence was something that could be felt even when the language was completely lost on me. I also have a Church Slavonic recording of the funeral service and it's absoltuely wonderful.

On the other hand, I've been to DLs where there seemed to be such a hurry to "get it done" that the whole feeling was like being in a compactor.

BOB

There certainly can be rushed liturgies. On the other hand, I am not an adherent of the theory that holiness is proportional to how slowly one sings. In fact, different parts of the liturgy are meant to be sung at different tempi. To sing everything adagio or lento is just as bad as singing everything allegro or presto.

Thank you! Do learn Church-Slavonic; it's well worth the effort.

I once arranged for someone whom I knew only slightly to meet me at the Russicum after the Vigil and we would go to dinner. I knew the timing of the service, and gave the gentleman an accurate estimate of when he should get there. He turned up a full hour early, and I was not about to leave the service.

But I did have the courtesy to apologize when the service ended and we were walking to the restaurant. The gentleman asked me not to apologize. He had had a difficult week and he found the prayerful, solemn, yet restful experience of the Vigil just what he needed. This from someone who knew not a word of Church Slavonic and had little or no idea of the content of what we were doing!

Fr. Serge