www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West No quiet time in Byzantine DL

My wife made a comment the other day after her 2nd DL, that there is no quiet time for personal reflection/prayer like there is in the RC Mass. It took me a second to realize what she was saying and I found that observation very interesting.
I explained to her that the "quiet" time is during the week during daily prayers and reading the bible.
Upon further reflection, the Byzantine is a much more corporate worship with everyone participating most of the time...

Liturgy is not "private time for me 'n' Jesus", it is the offering of the Bloodless Sacrifice to God and the seal of our incorporation into the Kingdom of God through the reception of Christ's Body and Blood; it is the revelation of the Church's true nature as a manifestation of the Kingdom made present in this world. It is not, therefore, an appropriate time to engage in private devotions or meditations.

That said, the long periods of silence found in traditional Western worship are in large part due to the circumstances of when it was composed and how it developed thereafter.

The original language of the Church of Rome was Greek. Some time in the reign of Pope Damasus I, near the end of the 4th century, he ordered the Liturgy to be celebrated in Latin, the lingua vulgaris, or language of the people (i.e., the vernacular). The problem here was the divergence between written and spoken Latin, already becoming highly noticeable even at this early date. Those who were educated and literate employed a highly archaic form of Latin barely intelligible to the mass of the people. By the time the shape of the Roman rite stabilized, around the end of the 6th century (the time of Pope Gregory the Great), Latin was already slouching into the proto-Romance languages, while the Church continued to use Latin (an increasingly low and debased Latin for correspondance, but still neo-Ciceronian in the Mass itself.

Therefore, the responses of the people were kept terse and epigrammatic, easy to learn and easy to remember. Moreover, since the people were unable to comprehend complex prayers, these were eschewed in favor of fairly short collects (propers), interspersed with periods of silent prayer.

By the 12th century, the private and low Mass were becoming common, in which the priest celebrated by himself, without the presence of a congregation. In this, he subsumed the responses of the people, becoming in effect, a one-man band. By the following century, this practice had extended to public celebrations of the Mass, with the people reduced to the role of spectators. As Catholic shorthand put it, the priest "said" Mass, the people "heard" Mass.

With nothing to do except sit back and listen, people began to fill in the empty spaces with their own private devotions such as the Rosary and Novena, or just silent contemplatory prayer. It was this practice that the Latin Church attempted to correct through the Decree Sacrosanctum concilium and the promulgation of the new Mass.

Fascinating! Thank you!

RE: Quiet time

The new "translation" changes in the RC Mass will be enacted this Advent and I was watching some of the explanations in the YouTube videos provided by the RC Bishops. The changes are more than translation, and include liturgical art, music, and general solemnity during the celebration of the "Last Supper."

Regarding "quite reflections time" there is a conscience effort to preserve it. So this is not just an historical development but is deliberately incorporated in their worship. I say this as an observer, not with any expertise.

The DL as celebrated in the Ruthenian tradition is a constant dialogue between celebrants and laity. There isn't time for "conscious meditation;" rather there is a more "transcendent contemplation" during its celebration. One's mouth may be singing, or ears hearing, but the heart (soul) is uplifted in a supernatural way.

I hope this makes sense to you; furthermore, I hope that this truly is the DL experience of most of our laity, as it is supposed to be.

Christ is amongst us!
Fr Deacon Paul

It is not for nothing that in Slavonic the verb "to sing" was once a synonym for "to pray". And, of course, there is that old patristic aphorism, "He who sings prays twice".

The normative form of the Ordo Paulus VI, by the way, is also a sung dialogue between the people and the celebrant. It is seldom done that way, though. Instead, hymns are inserted at various points in the Mass, even though there is no real provision for this. One does wish that the Latin Church would simply adopt the corpus of Gregorian chant in English transcribed by various Anglo-Catholic groups over the past century, and use that, instead.

In contrast, the periods of silent prayer do go all the way back to the beginning of the Roman rite in Latin, and were first incorporated for the reasons I enumerated.

In fact, the liturgical movement in the Latin Church, before it went off the rails around Vatican II, looked to restore what now sometimes gets called a "dialogue Mass" whereby the people give the responses typically given by the server. Certainly it is desirable and a plain outgrowth of this practice, that the people should know and be able to chant the parts of the Mass proper to them. This is the ideal, as are sung Masses.

On the other hand, I know some DL's where the priest and the cantor alone trade parts. This is not the ideal.

So the ideals East and West are not far apart, but alas neither are the common practices.

This is a bit of a different question from built-in, supposed-to-be-there silence.

Interesting. I too have always valued the private prayer time in the Roman Rite. But after committing myself to the Byzantine spirituality in the Ukrainian Church, I did struggle a bit in the beginning because I was trying to find that personal prayer time after Communion. But thanks to resources such as this, I appreciated more how more unifying it is to just stand and sing as one the Communion hymn with the rest of the group, just praising and thanking God. I do take my private prayer time at the end of Liturgy.

It's interesting to read the different responses to the OP. I used to often think that there must be something wrong with me because I have a very difficult time with the silences in the Roman Mass; I get mentally twitchy and my mind begins to wander......from the very first Divine Liturgy I have not had that issue and perhaps my heart has always been in the East even before my head knew it existed. It's a wonderful thing to me to be caught up in the chants.

@StuartK

What you say doesn't explain the silence, because more or less the same can be said about Greek used in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Greek wasn't the language of the multitude of peoples living in the Byzantine Empire (the Isaurians, Phrygians, Armenians, Parthians, Slavs, etc.), and the Divine Liturgy wasn't celebrated in vernacular Greek.

The silent Masses were silent in terms of priests' words only. If the congregation was large enough to sing, particularly on Sundays, they were singing songs (in vernacular) during the liturgical action. It is logical that they made a break to emphasize the great mystery which was happening on the altar during the Canon. It was a form of interaction.

For me personally, i enjoy both Latin and Byzantine "holy masses" and experience "drawn in God" in different way. In Latin mass, i experience it through the silent time. In Byzantine, i experience it through the long repepetive prayers.

First time i came to Byzantine Liturgy, I felt so confused, hard to concentrate since it is so "active" and filled with long repetitive prayers. But it came to a time when, i became so "drawn" to the prayers said, and i experience something like "silence experience in the midst of chanting & prayers". And the experience is the same as what has been experienced in Latin Mass.

That's why for me, whatever the "Mass/Liturgy", it will give "silent time" for me.. or may be, it will be better if said as "meet God face to face experience" etc.

Isn't it "He who sings well prays twice"?

As a priest I met once used to say "God made both the canaries and the crows and taught them both to sing." My only hope is that God has a tin ear.

By a strange coincidence Ancient Faith Radio recently posted a talk by Fr. Hopko on this topic:
The Divine Liturgy and Personal Prayer [ancientfaith.com]

Yes I found that later in the day and have it downloaded it to mp3 player... I'll listen to it later in the week.