www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization Restoring tradition to our parishes

To all:

Mr. Administrator wrote:

//I thank Joe for his post. I disagree with most of what he states.//

I should remind our readers that the beauty of the Anaphora being read aloud became more manifest in our parish when we began to use the Administrator's 'pew' books. We have Mr. Administrator to thank for helping in opening up the riches of what liturgy is all about. Until then, no other liturgical book printed the entire Anaphora, including the Epiclesis (another part of the prayer that our Church has refrained from due to fears of being considered Orthodox).

//He uses personal preferences (which he has a right to have) as the foundation for liturgical revision.//

Not so. Though the Administrator likes to base all contrary opinions that don't agree with him as "personal preferences", he should also include much study on the liturgy as well as Fr. David Petras�s articles over the years. Instead of mentioning "Revisionists", I would like to know their names. I think knowing their names would permit the readers to determine for themselves whether they are, indeed, Revisionists.

//The Liturgy is not a contract. It is God�s work. We don�t need to �read the document� in order to respond �Amen� to give our assent.//

Of course, the liturgy is not a contract. I used the example to get the point across. The Liturgy is also the �Work of the People.� It demands participation by its very essence, otherwise it would not be �leitourgia.� When did the notion that the Liturgy does not involve the work of the people come into play? This is foreign in all aspects of the preferred term.

I thought this explanation can help:

�The Divine Liturgy is the sacred rite by which the Orthodox Church celebrates the mystery of the Eucharist. This title for the Eucharist is derived from two Greek words theia and leitourgia. The word theia means pertaining to God, hence divine. The word leitourgia comes from two words leitos, which means people, and ergon, which means work, hence the work of the people or a public service, act or function.� (Fr. Alkiviades Calivas, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology)

Private and Secret Liturgies go against the essence of the true meaning of the word. It is ascewed towards the clergy as being only their divine right, not a divine rite.

//Further, if Joe is arguing that logic demands that the people hear every prayer of the priest before they can assent to these prayers then this same logic also demands that the people must see every action. Following this logic we should continue our imitation of the Latins and remove the icon screen and have the priest face the people.//

Not so. Not if the very essence of the liturgy involves the work of the people. Anyway, the altar was always divided by some barrier � even archaeology has demonstrated how �house churches� even included some sort of physical division between altar and nave. Our early iconostases were open, but that is another topic. I think your argument/logic for removing the icon screen and having the priest face the people is going overboard. Though St. John Chrysostom DID innovate by changing the location of the homilist from behind the throne (ex cathedra) to the middle of the nave. That too is another topic.

//Joe�s example of a graduation ceremony is a perfect example of this. If Joe is upset because he cannot hear since the microphone is turned off then he must also be upset because he cannot see if the curtain is closed and if the people on stage have their backs to him.//

You are making conclusions based on your own logic. If the essence of classroom lectures is for the students to take notes and later be tested on it, then yes, I would be upset if the professor refused to allow his/her students from hearing him/her. Using your logic of not needing to actually hear the words, why not just read the text book and be done with it? Why even show up? I am not upset because our tradition maintains the age-old posture of clergy facing in the same direction as the people. This only emphasizes how the celebrant stands with the people at Liturgy. It is not us and the clergy, but us and God. When the gifts are offered up to God, why-o-why should only the laity�s responses be audible?

//If one states that the people need to hear before they can assent then one must also state that they must see what they are assenting to.//

Prayer is something different from ritual. BTW, I cannot, no matter how hard I try, "see" the Holy Spirit descend upon the gifts. If I was able to see it happen then I can finally solve the age-old dilemma when "transubstantiation" or "metamorphisis(sp?)" happens. I would go down in history as being able to determine this exact Kodak moment. But THAT will always be a mystery.

//Joe is arguing for nothing less than more latinization of the Byzantine Liturgy.//

This is your definition of Latinization. There is nothing Latinized about prayer-dialogue that involves the people. Antiphons and prokeimena imply opposite sounds. Would it not be strange if the Psalmist sang the Psalm verses inaudibly and the people responded with the refrain? Some would argue that our current Trisagion is just that: a refrain missing its innards. But that too is another topic for liturgy buffs. For too long we celebrated Liturgies where the Psalms were dropped. The Thrice-Alleluia was sung once with no Psalm. The Prokeimenon was sung only once with no Psalm verse. Like the return to the audible Anaphora, we re-discovered the riches of including parts, especially taking them out loud. We realized that the abbreviations were not for the purpose of giving worship to God, but to satisfy certain preferences of man.

//Regarding the violence to the �flow of the liturgy� I submit to him that our liturgy is a product of two millennia of evolution. Any change, no matter how small, does violence to the liturgy.//

The Council Fathers also stated how �inorganic� changes introduced be removed.

//� there are those who rush to revise without recovering and allowing our Church to be catechized by the traditional forms of liturgical prayer.//

You got me stumped here. How can that happen if those "traditional forms of liturgical prayer" are taken SILENTLY?

//I believe that the Liturgy is perfect as it is and ought not to be revised. If someday there are to be changes they can only be done with the assent of the entire Byzantine Church (Catholic and Orthodox).//

And when will that be? Its only been ~1,000 years.

//I respect my brother Joe but I submit that he is simply arguing for his personal preferences and that these personal preferences are a product of the American culture that demands openness and hates anything resembling a mystery. Again, personal preferences are not a foundation for liturgical revision.//

What I stated is not just my own �personal preference.� Personal preference can also reject anything of the past, especially original forms that may conflict. I think equating a silent Anaphora with mystery is a false equation. Private Masses and Private Baptisms also do no justice to the true meaning of �mystery.� We can�t equate with what we do (rite) with mystery. Mystery is what we call those �sacraments� or the like where Heaven meets Earth. God works in a special way, but that work involves His people�s liturgia (work).

Joe Thur

Last year, Fr Seraphim von Abele wrote this little blurb about the Anaphora of St. Basil. He makes a good point:

�To see what liturgical prayer should be, I think we should all pause and read the prayer of prayers for the Byzantine Churches (and for the Coptic Church as well), the Anaphora of St Basil the Great. This is really the definition of liturgical prayer. Much of this discussion has been occasioned by what is really an unfortunate obscurantism, however pious, which ultimately has its roots in the fact that this prayer -- and the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom -- has become "secret," and the people now answer "Amen" (or a choir answers for them!) without their ever having heard it (or prayed it) at all, even when the Liturgy in is English -- unless they are in a good "modernist" parish where the priest prays aloud. Of course, the purpose of the Liturgy is not pedagogy -- trust me, I know, since I had to endure the battle of moving Church School to a time OTHER THAN DURING THE LITURGY, and was told by parents, "They'll learn more in a class." To which I had to reply, "Yes, but the Liturgy isn't basically about educating the head!" Nevertheless, if you read this magnificent, holy prayer again (prayerfully!) you'll surely see how profoundly it educates us about EVERYTHING.�

And isn't this the real problem? Not neo-Latinization, but "obscurantism" disguised as mystery, which is the more true violence to the leitourgia.

Joe Thur

Riddle: What is the difference between the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great if the Anaphora is taken silently?

I remember how Basil's liturgy was not taken by certain clergy. This was because the priest didn't see the reason for praying a longer Anaphora if the people weren't going to hear it anyway. Silence permitted them to do their own thing "up there."

This is false rule to live by, especially if you believe in a Ruthenian recension. How did a Ruthenian recension develop if not by being altered, improvement or not? You can't have an unalterable liturgy if that liturgy didn't become what it is without a history of alterations.

What you are saying is that your are personally satisfied with a particular form of Liturgy from a particular time according to a particular text.

And what is so wrong with improving the liturgy? Was the inclusion of the Filioque an unalterable improvement? Was the practice of excommunicating our infants immediately after Baptism and Chrismation an unalterable improvement? We probably should admit that 'inorganic' things DO intrude into our practices, including symbolic interpretation, that someday have to be dealt with in order to make liturgy more liturgical.

Joe Thur

Izrajdni ... Dostojno jest
Izrajdnuju ... O tebi radujetsja.

Highly elaborated music for the anaphora responses to match the time taken for the silent anaphora prayers.

And don't forget the organically grown and elaborate "To You, O Lord" during the Prayer at the Bowing of the Heads, which the people can't hear either.

- - - - - - -

Priest: Peace + be with all.

People: And with your spirit.

Priest: Bow your heads to the Lord.

People: T-o-o-o-o-o Yo-o-o-o-o-o-u, O-o-o-o-o-o Lo-o-o-o-o-rd. [and again, which is not in the text!, but for the sake of previous revision-isms] To Yo-o-o-o-u, O Lo-o-o-o-rd.

[Phew! The elongated response covers the time that it takes for the priest to quickly (and silently) pray the prayer]

Priest: We give You thanks, O King invisible, who by your immeasurable power have fashioned all things, and in the greatness of your mercy have brought all things out of non-existence into being. Look down from heaven, O Lord, upon those who bow their heads unto You, for they do not bow to flesh and blood, but to You, the awesome God. Therefore, O Master, make straight for our good, the present way, according to the need of each : sail with those who sail, travel with those who travel, cure those who are sick, O Healer of souls and bodies.

[what we DO hear is only the doxology that follows]

Priest: Through the grace, the mercies and the loving-kindness of your only-begotten Son, with whom You are blessed, together with your all-holy, gracious, and life-creating Spirit, now and aver, and forever.

People: Amen.

- - - - - - -

Now, wouldn't it be nice to hear the context of all those doxologies? What do yo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-u [and again] yo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-u think?

Joe

Fr. Taft wrote:

//Since I am an historian, and historians tell stories, let me begin with one. The periodical Petrayki Ekklesia, official organ of the Greek Orthodox Eparchy of Piraeus, edited by the Protosyncellus of the diocese under Metropolitan Kallinikos, whose name is on the masthead, published in March, 1977 a photo of a Greek Orthodox priest celebrating the Orthodox eucharist versus populum at an altar placed on the floor of the nave in front of the traditional iconostasis of the enclosed Byzantine sanctuary. The accompanying blurb states: 'The liturgy was celebrated in the center of the church in the ancient way (sto kentro tou Naou kata ton archaiprepi tropo)"//

- - - - - - -

A fun antidote. There may be some truth to it though I might be getting sidetracked here. The Constantinopalitan-style altar WAS inside the church nave, not behind a wall, chancel, or iconostasis in some niche. Yes, there was a barrier around it (all three sides). The monks of New Skete have a chapel with such a traditional setup. I believe our parish in Albequrque has a three-sided altar too not tucked away in some niche. The apse or niche in the Great Church was for the synthronon and bishop's chair.

My pastor celebrates the Liturgy of St. James once a year and conducts the entire liturgy of the Word in the center of the nave, including all those litanies. I'm sure if James' liturgy called for celebrating the eucharist there too he would do that.

Now, here is the fun part of liturgical development. The place where the people offered their gifts eventually moved from the outside (skeuophylakion) to the inside (a separate 'chapel'). Later, the preparation table was moved into the actual altar area along the north wall. Since the actual offering of the people before the liturgy became suppressed, we became used to the priest offering the gifts, transferring the gifts (if no deacon present), and then offering them to God. The fact that he transfers the gifts from inside the altar, makes a short procession to the royal doors (the cuckoo-clock waltz), and then enters toward the altar, makes me wonder why he doesn't make it easier on himself by walking a few steps from the preparation table to the altar and be done with it? If this is liturgical development, then what does it mean? There really isn't any offering by the people, the priest does everything, and the people don't experience what a real 'entrance' is. Everything gets done "up there" away from the people, even those rites executed in the nave. One can get a sense that the clergy believe the people to have cooties.

Joe Thur

I thank Joe for his post.

I�m not clear about the point Joe is making with this comment. How does providing the texts of the Divine Liturgy relate to the discussion regarding whether the liturgy should be revised to mandate the taking aloud of prayers that were traditionally taken quietly? The fact that I may have prepared liturgy books that contain these texts has nothing to with the mandated revision of the liturgy. In any event, I am a layman and must confirm my work to the requests of the priest who has asked for the book. I ask Joe to please explain the point he is making with this comment.

Even though I have not had the advantage of seminary training I have spent much time studying the liturgy. My comments are not made from ignorance of our tradition. I have also read Father Petras� articles (they are the official explanations I referenced in an earlier post). I highly respect Father Petras. I know of his great love for our Church and thank him for his work. His articles, however, are a statement of his personal preferences regarding the revision of our liturgical heritage. They are very interesting. I enjoy reading them and learn from them. They are, however, only one man�s opinion and do not constitute a solid foundation for the revision of the liturgy.

Again, I am not clear as to the point that Joe is making. The people most certainly participate in the liturgy. It seems to me that those who favor of allowing the deacon and people to pray these litanies are the ones who are retaining the �Work of the People�. How can the removal of any portion of the liturgy be considered as adding to the work of the people?

I disagree. If one is arguing the logic that the people must hear every word then one must also argue that the people must see everything. It is nothing more than personal preference to prefer altering one and not the other.

Actually, I am making conclusions based upon the logic you put forward in your example of the graduation ceremony.

No. Using your logic one need not show up. The problem is that the examples of a graduation and a classroom do not support the logic you advocate. This is not test. It is the Holy Liturgy.

The fact that you may not hear all of the words of certain prayers or see all the actions behind the icon screen does not mean that you cannot give assent to the great and holy Sacramental Mystery of the Liturgy. The whole notion that we must hear and see before believing is not Eastern.

Well, if we are to jettison litanies because they came to the liturgy from other liturgical services we can just as easily jettison other things. The Great Synapte (Litany of Peace) can be moved from the beginning of the liturgy to its original place. The Office of the Three Antiphons can be eliminated because we no longer process to pick up the emperor and patriarch before heading into the church. The Little Entrance can be eliminated because we are not entering the church fresh from the procession to collect the emperor and patriarch. The Trisagion can be eliminated because it is a refrain missing its psalm verses. The prokimenon can be expanded to add back in the entire psalm (as it is with the Responsorial Psalm of the Latin Liturgy). The Cherubic Hymn can be replaced with the older singing of Psalm 24 (�Lift up your gates�). The Great Entrance can be eliminated because the gifts of bread and wine are no longer stored next door but are handy right in the sanctuary. We can once again start locking the doors during the Symbol of Faith. I could go on and go through each of our services but I think I have made my point. Anyone who argues for a particular revision of the liturgy to mimic a specific time should not pick and choose their favorite customs from that earlier time period if they desire to be logical.

We do not need to mandate the praying aloud of the Anaphora and other priestly prayers in the liturgy in order to catechize the faithful. Earlier generations could not read or write but knew our theology because they learned it by praying it at Vespers, Matins and the Divine Liturgy. This arrangement is based upon the wisdom of our Byzantine Orthodox fathers and should not be discarded so casually.

What�s the hurry? Do you believe that the received liturgy (as practiced across Byzantine Orthodoxy) to be such a disaster that we cannot wait for the Holy Spirit to lead all of Byzantine Orthodoxy through an organic process of liturgical development?

God�s work is not dependent upon our hearing and understanding it. Joe is incorrect to suggest that the people are not already intimately involved in the work of the liturgy (when celebrated according to the received tradition).

�

Ah, yes! A few people in a tiny branch of the Byzantine Church who do not have a lifetime of praying the traditional forms of Vespers, Matins and the Divine Liturgy know more than the wisdom of two thousand years of Byzantine liturgical development. They alone � not the entire Byzantine Church � are to be entrusted with the task of improving the liturgy from the horrible and unacceptable state the Holy Spirit has left it in.

Don't blame it on the Holy Spirit if gnosticism is the rage these days.

Joe

Forgive me for the sake of Christ - I really am a bit short on time, and cannot respond to many points which I should like to respond to and shall, God willing, eventually comment upon. But one leapt off the screen at me. Joe Thur inquires "What is it about the Anaphora that is so hated and despised?"
The only people I have ever met who despise either of the Anaphoras in common use in the Byzantine Liturgy are blatant Romanizers who want to do things like moving the Epiclesis to occur before the Institution Narrative, or yank out various words and phrase they find offensive (unfortunately I'm not making this up - check the Slovak Liturgicon published by Bishop Jan Hirka with the oral approval of Cardinal Lourduswamy).
I suspect that the real import of Joe's question has nothing to do with the content of the Anaphora, but rather with the question of whether most of it should be done in silence or aloud. Might I offer a few thoughts on that one?
A) Festina lente!
B) in keeping with the manner in which things are usually done in the Byzantine liturgical context, if the entire Anaphora is to be done aloud, it should be chanted, not read.
C) in my experience (and others may well have different experiences), offering the Anaphora aloud is actually more effective if it is done exceptionally, not on every occasion.
D) Offering the Anaphora aloud only makes sense if this takes place in a vernacular language. For any number of reasons, the Divine Liturgy is not ALWAYS done in a vernacular language.

If all this sounds as though I am bitterly opposed - a l'outrance - to having the Anaphora aloud, permit me to report that I experienced the Anaphora aloud as recently as this past Monday morning (Theophany) and neither I nor anyone else complained. It's not necessarily an either-or question.
Incognitus

This thread is about restoring tradition to Byzantine Catholic parishes. It was started, I noticed, with the assumptions that 1) Byzantine Catholic parishes have lost some part of their traditions and 2) these traditions should be restored. The question I thought this thread would debate is the rate at which those traditions would be restored, not whether another tradition should be added, changed or abandoned.

The genesis of this thread was a discussion on another thread concerning the loss of population numbers in the reports from the Byzantine Catholic Church in America. It was thought that the ensuing discussion, a question of the pace of restoration of tradition, was a separate issue and off topic.

Please bear with me.

In my understanding, two primary goals of the Byzantine Catholic Church are:

1. The spreading of the Gospel.

2. Reunion with the other Constantinopolitan churches while retaining communion with Rome.

Will taking the anaphora aloud assist in achieving the first goal? Some will say yes, but will this cause additional schism within the church, sending others either to Roman Catholic churches or to Orthodoxy? If the changes to our liturgy are to restore tradition, wouldn't it make sense to fully restore, then to understand, and only then to determine what changes should be made in the liturgy? I would think that following this process would alienate fewer people and cause less of a scandal. Don't scandals and arguments like this make meeting this first goal difficult? If it is barely acceptable to keep the anaphora silent for now, I would suggest that, until tradition has been restored, additions and/or alterations be avoided because of the increased difficulty of spreading the Gospel.

Will taking the anaphora aloud help us achieve communion between the churches? Regardless of what other Orthodox churches do, Orthodoxy looks at the Eastern Catholic churches to see if Rome respects the traditions of the East. Will changing the norm cause the Orthodox churches to increase their desire for communion? Will it settle their fears that their traditions will be violated by Rome (whether or not the changes made were made from Rome or within the Eastern churches)?

Mirjana Lausevic said, "Seeing tangled and extremely nuanced conflict as a series of easy-to-grasp, black-and-white slides does not help understand it. The task of scholarship is to deal with complexities of world conflicts, to de-essentialize and destabilize stereotypes and to avoid empty assumptions."*

I'm not sure that we can or should discuss these issues (such as taking the anaphora aloud and the loss of parishioners) as if they occur in a vacuum. They are connected in a complicated web. This is why the Eastern churches have always been cautious before "reforming" any part of the tradition and especially Liturgical worship.

*From an essay entitled "Some Aspects of Music and Politics in Bosnia" and published in "Neighbors at War."

And, isn't this what the Liturgical Instruction asked us to do?:

18. Liturgical reform and renewal

The first requirement of every Eastern liturgical renewal, as is also the case for liturgical reform in the West, is that of rediscovering full fidelity to their own liturgical traditions, benefiting from their riches and eliminating that which has altered their authenticity. Such heedfulness is not subordinate to but precedes so-called updating. Although a delicate task that must be executed with care so as not to disturb souls, it must be coherently and constantly pursued if the Eastern Catholic Churches want to remain faithful to the mandate received.

We've a long way to go in restoring our traditions. For example, where is the commitment in our Church to restore Vespers and Matins services? Granted, that would be a major undertaking--but is there even a commitment to start doing so in principle? I realize there are various dynamics that could make this difficult. Some parishes do not have resident pastors, for example. But, couldn't parishes that have resident pastors at least have the goal of starting one of those services?

Orthodox parishes here on the West Coast always have at least Vespers. If they don't have Matins they have Hours before Liturgy. And if there's no priest for Vespers they do Reader's Vespers.

If we're doing so great in restoring tradition to our parishes why is it that many of us feel we need to visit Orthodox parishes for the full range of tradition?

A couple of linguistic points: Joe Thur writes that "This is false rule to live by, especially if you believe in a Ruthenian recension". But we do not BELIEVE in such a thing - a specific recension of the Liturgy, or of the Bible (for that matter) is not an object of Faith. Such phenomena are subject to criticism and even rejection by people whose Faith is not in question (to take a simple example, a good Latinist is perfectly free to write and publish a devastating criticsm of the Neo-Vulgate text of the Bible, and should the good Latinist do that, it would not prove that he was rejecting the Bible itself). There are several recensions of the Byzantine Liturgy; it is possible to maintain that one is better than another (for instance, the present official text of the Ruthenian Recension is vastly better than the 1905 version), or that one recension has some specific flaws, without thereby rejecting the Byzantine Liturgy.
Joe (sorry; didn't mean to concentrate on criticizing Joe) also writes that the Liturgy is not a contract - but it is a contract; the New Covenant or the New Testament, and with our Amen we express our acceptance of that contract.
Incognitus

Cizinec's post above gets right to the heart of the matter and was excellently made.

We are dealing with a mystery, the Mystery of Mysteries. Just restore, and worry about understanding later. The abbreviating and minimalizing approach to liturgy and services has been the bane of Greek Catholics. And have we learned nothing from the ritual chaos of the last 35 years in the Roman Rite?

And I am becoming weary of our eminent "liturgists" saying we need to cut this or that "liturgical baggage". Bring the Liturgy back to its fullness, baggage and all, and then leave it alone. Our people had no problems liturgically with that "baggage" well into the last century. The Orthodox still do fine with that "baggage".

It is difficult to love something without experiencing the thing. This is especially true with the services. If our parishes only have Vespers once a year on Great and Holy Friday, and a couple of times a year as a Vesperal liturgy (St. Basil or Presanctified), and Matins once a year on Pascha or possibly Jerusalem Matins, it is difficult indeed to let those services be part of their lives, and allow the rich texts of the Divine Praises be the catechetical media of which they are most excellent.

I would say Vespers has to be restored posthaste. This should not be optional. Saturday evening DLs have to go. This is an unabashed borrowing from the Latins. Matins is more complicated, but should not be forgotten and restored after the parish is accustomed to Vespers. As far as the Liturgy goes, bring back all three Antiphons or Typical Psalms and Beatitudes. The omitted Small litanies, and others abbreviated, what's wrong with a little more prayer and service to God singing "Lord have mercy" a few more times?

According to the current statistics, the status quo doesn't appear to be working if the net losses continue. Hello?

We have also a good thing called the Ordo which is a ready-made roadmap to doing this restoration, already completely promulgated by the Church, not only ours but the Roman as well.

The current Pontiff has called more loudly for our restoring Eastern tradition than many in our own hierarchy. Would that we heed these calls and start getting the job done.

Diak,

Your post is on the mark, is the Liturgy for man or to worship the Father/Trinity ?

Yes, the Roman Rite changes were wrong in my opinion, the change should have been limited to language in the vernacular only.


james