www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology vespers in Byz Cath churches

www.masstimes.org [masstimes.org] has a link that lists parishes which offer Vespers. No a single Eastern Catholic Church in NJ offers vespers. The OCA does a beautiful job which we should model. "Beauty shall convert the world." Aleksander Solzehnitzen.

masstimes.org is notorious for being very much out of date and inaccurate in their information.

Even the eparchial websites themselves are not always up to date if a parish has recently added Vespers. The best source is to call the parish itself or see if there is a parish website.

Porter,

Byzantine Ruthenian parishes are slowly reestablishing the regular celebration of Divine Services. I publish various liturgical books that are used in most Byzantine Ruthenian parishes. In the past two years I have had requests for Great Vespers books from at least fifteen parishes. That may not sound like a lot but if only ten parishes restored Great Vespers each year than in 20-25 years almost all parishes would be celebrating Great Vespers. I do not know the exact number of parishes that have a regular celebration of Great Vespers, but there is interest and the number is growing.

Matins is also making its way back. This past Great Fast, a small number of parishes began a regular celebration of weekday Matins. But, it is difficult when priests pastor two or more parishes and when we have a generation of faithful who were taught that the only services worth going to are those involving Eucharist. [The rise of �Vespers and Divine Liturgy� on Saturday evenings and the eves of holy days contributes to this misunderstanding and is, IMHO, detrimental to the liturgical life in our parishes.]

Admin

In what way they used to combine Vespers and Liturgy on Sunday eves? Did they use the pattern of Vespers and Liturgy on the eves of Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter for it, or there used to be another pattern?

By the way, the Eucharist is the �Last Supper�, as everybody knows. It is an ancient Christian practice to perform the Lord Supper in evenings, so the cervices of Christmas, Epiphany, and Great Saturday (the eve of Easter) just have saved this practice after the performing of Liturgy was transferred from evenings to mornings. Therefore, the restoration of the combined Sunday Vespers and Liturgy in the parish life of today seems to have nothing wrong. Any comments?

Valerius

The Eucharist is certainly the peak and summit of liturgical cycle. But in Greek Catholic churches historically, the liturgical life has been reduced to only the Eucharist, even on days and at times when historically it was never celebrated in the Byzantine Tradition, and de-solemnified by various abbreviations, recited liturgies, etc.

We liturgically have a beautiful cycle of Vespers, Matins, and the Hours and Divine Liturgy which are so rich in the theology of our Church. In the Byzantine tradition, as in St. Cyril of Jerusalem's time, the litury iteself is the main vehicle of catechetical teaching.

Vespers itself contains a beautiful microcosm of salvation history, creation, fall, redemption, and parousia, with every celebration if one follows the texts of the service.

If Vespers and Matins are not celebrated, the main corpus of theological texts of our faith are never experienced by the faithful.

In the Slavic tradition the practice is to combine Vespers and Matins into the "vsenoshcnoe bdenie" or the great Vigil before Sundays and feast days.

There are truly Vesperal Liturgies, these being the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts, and on certain other feastdays such as the Annunciation. Pascha, Holy Thursday, the Incarnation, and the Theophany also have Vespers with Liturgy of St. Basil associated with their vigil.

While it is true that the Mystical Supper occurred in the evening, it is also true that the glorious Resurrection happened in the morning, the descent of the Holy Spirit happened at the third hour, and our Lord was crucified at the sixth and died at the ninth hour. The Divine Liturgy and Eucharist recall all of the Paschal Mystery and all of our salvation history, and are not just confined to memorials of the Mystical Supper.

The Slav parish tradition tries to save as much as possible from the monastic Typikon, but sometimes it leads to strange things, to put it no more strongly. The all night vigil is so abbreviated that the morning prayers are said at 8 p.m.! There is a good practice to perform Vespers and Matins at their proper time, but Matins is too long for ordinary secular people to attend it together with Liturgy. Hence numerous abbreviations of Matins, sometimes unforgivable ones, in the current Greek practice. There is a necessity to do something with it, because the modern Latin tradition that retains an only Mass in the ceremonial circle also will not do. I would prescribed today�s Byzantine Typikon to monasteries only and instituted another set of ceremonial rubrics for parishes. For instance, the psalms, to which sticheras are added, historically were the base or �skeleton� both for Vespers and Matins. The same is true for the Biblical cants of Canon whose troparions were written much later. Therefore, the Biblical components must be saved while the hymnographical material may be abridged. After all, the latter just replaced short refrains that were sung together with the psalms. It would be perhaps not bad idea to restore those refrains since they are still in usage by the Old Believers. On the other hand, I am afraid that these possible reforms can be eventually resulted in total crash of the Church Eucharistic life as it has occurred in Latin rite after the traditional Mass was cancelled.

Valerius

Valerius, very good points. In the tradition of the Great Church of Constantinople there was a distiction between the parish or "cathedral" order of services and those following a monastic Typikon such as that of St. Sabbas which has to a great extent dominated the later Byzantine liturgical usage. Just look at the existing Russian typikons.

Both Archimandrite Robert Taft and Father Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory advocated a return to the cathedral usage of services to make the services more suited to parish settings rather than the existing monastically inclined Typikons etc.

I think rather the extensive use of the Psalter (the kathismata, etc.) is actually more reflective of the monastic influence than the hymnography. The monasteries of the Desert Fathers often relied on constant singing of the Psalter.

The usage of the full Kathismata at Matins is the single most significant aspect which "adds" to the length of the service. When you have all of Kathismata 2,3 and 17 that is a lot of material for the Reader to chant in addition to all of the other hymnography.

Using the Polyeleos on all Sundays instead of Psalm 118 is another "cathedral" type approach that can be taken for Matins.

St. John Maximovich had an excellent approach to rotating the Psalms of the Sunday Matins kathismata so that a parish would do one psalm of each Kathisma and rotate those so that in the process of the eight-week Oktoechos the parish would get through the entire Kathismata 1 and 2. This is the sort of approach that is practical and still preserves the beautiful theology of the stikhera, canons, etc. which are the unique treasure of Byzantine liturgical hymnography.

Valerius,

Thanks for your post.

Yes, the format for the Great Vespers and Divine Liturgy celebrated on Saturday night is the same as celebrated for Christmas, Theophany, Holy Thursday and Great Saturday.

There are several problems I see with the regular celebration of Vespers / Divine Liturgies.

1. Almost all parishes that use this format have an additional Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning. This divides the parish community, which should have only a single celebration of the Sunday Divine Liturgy.

2. When we re-establish Divine Services like Vespers and Matins and always join them together with the Divine Liturgy we perpetuate the false idea that worship is only worth doing when it offers the opportunity to receive the Eucharist.

I do understand that in a parish situation it will sometimes be necessary to abbreviate services such as Matins. But I also think there is a genius to the Russian style Vigil. At the Feast of the Ascension I was traveling and had the privilege of visiting a Russian Orthodox parish for the Vigil (Vespers + Matins + First Hour). It lasted for about 2.5 hours but was so incredibly prayerful it was well worth the time. The celebration just would not have been as powerfully cleansing and enriching if it had been Great Vespers only up until the Old Testament Readings and then into the Trisagion of the Divine Liturgy.

I am not sure that I would remove the hymnography from Matins and keep only the Scriptural texts. There is a wonderful balance between the two, as if the Scriptural texts give us teaching and the hymnography explains the teaching.

Admin

PS: If you are interested in obtaining copies of the booklets for Vespers and Matins that are used in many Byzantine (Ruthenian) Catholic parishes please contact me privately and I will be happy to send them to you.

I like the idea of restoring or at least making available real rubrics and guidelines for "cathedral" usages of Orthros & Vespers.

Vespers is not really rocket science with the Typicon in hand and a modicum of familiarity with the service - even as it sits, and it isn't overly long unless you happen to run into dueling major saints/feasts.

Orthros/Matins is another kettle of fish though. In a parish setting, perhaps especially "in the diaspora" (i.e. not Pittsburgh or Cleveland) where it is normative for an awful lot of folks to have to travel distances to come to church, and there are young children to take into acount, some abbreviation of full monastic Orthros is necessary, because you really CAN'T spend all day in church, and most places like to start Divine Liturgy at a fixed time. Problem is, right now, there are no guidelines of which I am aware for abbreviating the service, and in those places (or at those events) where Orthros is celebrated, what is actually done varies all over the map - and some of the truncations are much more elegantly done than others. (Case in point, the current Parma "Pilgrimage to the Parishes" features a "Matins Extremely Lite" version. Our Appointment With Destiny is in a couple weeks, and I am going through the service to see what I need to work on, etc. I can live with most of the abbreviations and exclusions although I cannot find any particular rhyme or reason to the schema, but what kills me is that they've taken the Hymn of the Resurrection and simply eliminated the second half of it, leaving the theological statement incomplete, and the musical phrase unfinished. I simply don't understand.) we need real guidelines. Perhaps I am a philistine, but I would not object to a couple of options - even a "Cathedral Orthros Rich" and a "Cathedral Orthros Lite" version, both with Guidance For The Perplexed. Orthros is not a simple service.

My $.02


Sharon

Actually, as one who has to travel a moderate, but not ridiculous, distance to church (slightly over one hour each way), I find that the exact opposite is true. Including fellowship time afterwards, I have to commit 3.5 to 4 hours of the day for a one hour Divine Liturgy, a ratio of 3:1 (non-liturgy:liturgy) time. If we added an abbreviated Matins (not really possible since scheduling requires us to have an afternoon liturgy), we would have 5 to 5.5 hours of the day spoken for, but have 2.5 hours of liturgical celebrations, getting the ratio down almost to 1:1. And, as long as there is a hall or nice outdoor location for the children, they can spend some time in church, be released by their parents at a time they feel is appropriate, and return for Divine Liturgy.

Also just my $0.02.

-- Ed

At St. Thomas Byzantine Catholic Church in Gilbert, AZ, we've been having Saturday Evening Vespers since last fall. There is a small but devoted following for it. We have found it best to rotate through the 8 tones, rather than to try to include all the special stichera, because we don't print out parts for everyone. When we try using the Festal Menaion, etc. the laity is left in the dark, with nothing to follow. So, we use the Vernoski books with the 8 tones. I have set the initial Apostichka verses to music as well, but they are only sung by the cantor(s).

As people become more familiar and are at ease with the service, we expect to expand the use of the Festal Menaion, Pentecostarion, etc. time and resources permitting.

Jim Sprinkle, cantor
St. Thomas Church, Gilbert AZ

Perhaps it is a result of Latinization, but there is a belief among some that worship must include the Divine Liturgy, or it isn't worship. I say "Latinization" because the Latins have such a "Mass" mentality about worship. I think it has gotten worse since Vatican II, with previously free-standing sacraments, such as baptism, now included in the Mass. It seems that all the sacraments are losing their identities and are melding into the Mass. I wouldn't be surprised if they also lose some of their significance over time, since they don't seem quite as unique when they become just parts of the Mass. I attended Vespers last Monday - with no Divine Liturgy attached - and found it to be a very satisfying worship experience.

As for Orthros, I find how the Greeks celebrate it to be fairly satisfying (with some admendments)for small parish use. I have seen it thus: Begin with Royal Hour (I am not sure how to call this, the core is Psalms 19 and 20), then after Blesse is our God...and the Sis Psalms, the Lord is God with troparia, then the sessionals, with Litanies (psalms omitted, Polyeleos when appointed (i think-most of the Orthros services i have been to have been during the week), Gradual Hymns and Gospel (when appointed), Hymn of Resurrection (when appointed, read) Ps 50 with stichera, Canon (they usually dont't actually sing the canon, but rather the Katavasie, with litanies and sessionals, Kontakion and Ikos, and Magnificat and Ode 9-shich i have seen taken from main canon of the day), Exapostilarion, Ainoi (though the psalm verses are typically omitted, this i dont like), and Great Doxology (when appointed). After the Trisagion after the Great Doxology Divine Liturgy begins. All this takes about an hour, and covers most of the hymnody, without omitting the fixed psalmody (if one doesn't omit the verses of the Ainoi). Now if one dedicates two hours, then the psalms of the Kathismata can be read, one of the canons sung, and go to the end (right before the dismissal). However, this can be a lot of work for the cantors (and there really needs to be many). There will always be omissions and abbreviations in Orthros, for if it were to be done everything as is prescribed, we looking at 7-8 hours, minimum. This is good for a true All-night Vigil, ending with Divine Liturgy, beginning with Vespers, but really not practical unless the parish is exceptional.

Jim, on normal Sundays you rotate through the eight tones anyway. The first seven stikhera at Psalm 140 are of the Sunday tone, with the remaining three being of the saint[s]. Of course during festal times, pre/post feasts, etc. this order changes.

So if you are rotating through the Oktoechos according to the liturgical calendar you are actually doing the right thing. If you can't get your hands on the entire Menaion, there are "common" stikhera for saints such as monks, martyrs, etc. in the Uniontown and other books for the three Stikhera for the saint[s] at Saturday night Vespers.

Regarding Matins, Fr. Roman Galadza put together the best "cathedral" version of Matins in English along with propers I have yet seen, without exception. He also has a wonderful and pastorally very brilliant version of Vespers with Vigil including the Polyeleos and Velichannya (Magnification that can be used on great feast days that I can refer you to.

Archpriest Roman has celebrated Vespers and Matins his entire priestly life and has tirelessly supported his own parish and teaching others the beauty of these services. After 30 years of regularly celebrating these services, he knows his business. Check out www.saintelias.com [saintelias.com]

There is a real unique beauty and genius to the Vsenoshchnoe bdenie, and it is unique to the Slavic liturgical tradition. Vespers, Matins, and First Hour all flowing together in one continuous song of praise....

We started with Saturday evening Vespers a couple of years ago with a dedicated core of four or five people. If you can get that dedicated core, it will work. Now we get people calling the parish and myself specifically asking when Vespers is.

But we have found generally Vespers followed by Small Compline to also be a good way to do things, as people want to go to confession Saturday evening as we read Small Compline. And, those Canons to the Theotokos from the Oktoechos at Small Compline are sooo beautiful...

That is a real quandry in the Byzantine tradition. We have so many beautiful hymnographic gems, and not enough time to do them all...even those Canons to the Holy Trinity at the Sunday Midnight Office are just incredibly rich in their theologic content regarding the nature of the Most Holy Trinity.

When we invite an RCIA group, Roman seminarians, diaconal candidates, etc. we try to get them to come to Vespers first so they can get a taste of the full Byzantine cycle, and not just Divine Liturgy.

Regarding the rotating order of St. John Maximovitch for abbreviating the Kathismata for Sunday Matins, refer to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=john+maximovitch+matins He only includes two Kathismata as it is assumed that the Polyeleos will be taken, and not the 17th Kathisma. I heartily recommend it, and I have used this order often, especially when rushed to get through Matins before DL.

Adam, I think 7 or 8 hours is perhaps an exaggerration of the length of Matins alone? Even with all of the Kathismata, including the 17th, sung in their entirety, I think it rather takes about half of that. I have been to Studite and Orthodox monasteries where all was taken in about 4. This is, of course, assuming that another reader is present to take over at each stasis of the kathisma.

Now, if one is going to sing ALL of the sessional hymns, katavasiae, irmosy, etc. according to either the proper Znamenny, podobni, or Byzantine melodies, then that would certainly add on another hour or more. Especially if you are singing those looooong Greek plagals...

Certainly the vsenoshchnoe could take that length of time. I was part of a complete all-night Vigil, full vsenoshchnoe, which took about seven hours for Vespers with the entire First Kathisma, Matins with all three kathismata, all the sessional hymns and three Canons [Resurrection, Cross and Resurrection, and the Theotokos], and First Hour, with nearly all sung to the proper melodies.

Yes, the initial part of Matins with Psalms 19 and 20 and the ektenia to the ruler is referred to as the Royal Office. It is only used when Matins is separated from Vespers [Vespers having been served the night before]. This was begun on Mt. Athos in thanksgiving for certain monarchs giving gifts of land and money for monasteries. It also spread to Greek and Russian parochial use.

Regarding the Cathedral order, there is also a very nice way of doing the First Kathisma at Vespers as is done at Chevtogne, Russian style. Psalms 1-3 are sung, with the usual "Blessed is the Man" and verses sung by the choir with Alleluia, and a single reader reading the rest of the psalm verses in between. It goes like this:

Canonarch: Blessed is the man, alleluia.
Choir: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked. Alleluia 3X

Reader recto tono: Nor taken the path of the sinful nor sat amongst pernicious men......therefore the wicked shall not stand in judgement, nor sinners in the council of the just,

Choir: For the Lord knows the way of the just but the way of the wicked leads to doom. Alleluia.

There are also several variations possible on Psalm 103. The Valaam order for Psalm 103 at the Vigil is also very beautiful. That is another thing I love about the Byzantine tradition, there is real freedom and flexibility with certain aspects of the services.

This is something I love to discuss and hear discussed, and if I don't stop myself this will go on all night. I am like a kid in a candy shop [the candy is "Divnity" lol] with the Oktoechos in my hands.

That reminds me, I highly recommend the complete Oktoechos of Isaac Lambertsen that he translated from Church Slavonic in four volumes available from St. John of Kronstadt Press. It even has Vespers stikhera for the three extra stikhera at Psalm 140 if you have none from the Menaion. OK OK, enough already.

Dear Diak:

Keep talking like that and someday I'm just going to have to do a road trip your way and raid that library of yours.

Yours,

hal