www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West why easy/why west?

For those in both Rites who have explored the other - why did you join, or what makes you stay, in your particular rite? What is your advantage of one over the other? Is it teaching (and if so what teaching), beauty, convenience, family, etc? And do you (and if so how do you) incorporate elements of the "other" spirituality/rite into your life and worship?

THANKS! (posted this on CAF as well, so some of you may have seen this post)

For me it was a lot of factors. I was raised RC, and my parents were into Medjugorje and Vassula Ryden (both controversial, I know, but they were passed on to me in a distilled fashion nonetheless).

The three things from Vassula, my takeaways were exposure to the Greek Orthodox Church, to the idea that spirituality, prayer, and relationship with God can and ought to be integrated into daily life, and to the problems of ecumenism and ecumenical dialogue.

From Medjugorje, the takeaways were constant prayer and fasting, in particular Wednesdays and Fridays.

It was during this period that we started attending our Byzantine Catholic parish. Shortly after that, I read the book "The Mystical City of God" by Mary of Agreda. The description of the Assumption as Dormition sealed it for me.

The main ideas of integrating spiritual and physical life, the rhythms of prayer and fasting, and approaches to Marian devotion took me seven years and many sources to cull. They were new and and novel to me as a Latin, but these things were not new and novel, just lost to my western Christian experience. The Eastern Churches, I realized, preserved them. Thus being Eastern was the natural "evolution", what tied my experience together into a unified whole.

As to what keeps me in, the same unification. The spirituality is both/and, and not either/or. The Liturgy can hold much in tension, and you are not forced to pick one things over another. Allow me two examples: Some people can choose an Ignatian spirituality, or a Franciscan, or a Benedictine. However, it seems these are competing ways. In the Byzantine spirituality, one can be a hesychast, one can be marvelous chanter or liturgically oriented, one can be a monk, another a married person, another a small child. But all this is not clearly delineated, and the elements of each life can be present in one person. You can be married, and living out our live as a monastic (married life and monasticism are not viewed as opposites, but two ways of living that are more similar than different). You can be a hesychast chanter even!

Liturgically, I like that it is both/and everywhere. You have active participation and contemplation, sometimes even at the same time. I like we feast saints practically everyday (except for Great Week and Bright Week), even Sundays. You can have both the Resurrection and Saint so-and-so. I like that you can have the Annunciation, even on Great and Holy Friday or Pascha, and you don't have to move it because it's too complicated to understand. The Theotokos is integrated into prayer. Prayer and Liturgy is not segmented where "Now we have x. We have to stop that, before we can go on to y." Noble simplicity has little to do with real life. Being able to delve deeply, or not, to actively participate, or contemplate, is very freeing.

Megadittos.

I spent three decades in the clergy of the West until I was caught into the net of the "fishermen made wise".

In the West I was, like Saul the Pharisee, advanced beyond my peers in the matter of liturgics and especially calendar rubrics. One can easily become neurotic about such trivialities as "no Christmas carols during Advent"; but that neurosis is fueled by the West's abrupt change of "seasons" akin to a four-on-the-floor manual transmission.

The East is hydrostatic...a gentle gliding from one Feast to another. Starting the Canon of the Nativity on the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos, for example. And, as cited above, never "transferring" or suppressing a Feast, at least, not in its entirety.

I'm new here, but I'm formally Latin with some Greek/Antiochian Orthodox background and currently moving towards the Melkites.

I love the Latin EF Mass, especially with Renaissance polyphony. But I'm finding that what really lifts my eyes towards heaven is Melkite liturgy and Eastern spirituality.

I've known about Eastern Catholics for a long time, but I never really explored Eastern Catholicism until the Institute of Catholic Culture invited us to Divine Liturgy at a Melkite church, and that reawoke my love for Eastern liturgy. After that, I started visiting a few times a year, but more recently I've felt the pull to make the Melkite church my home.

I don't think there's really an objective reason for it. I'm not angry at the West, but in Latin Catholicism I personally tend to go for doing as little as I can get away with in order to avoid mortal sin. In Eastern Catholicism, I'm more inclined to desire stronger union with God.

Again, I don't think that's an objective thing. It's more about who I am and how I respond.

CCS,

You can have eastern liturgy and renaissance polyphony: Nikolai Diletsky. Check him out.

In Christ,
Adam