"In the past, there was a tradition whereby on the eve of the wedding, the bride and groom, together with their family and friends, would spend vigil in the church hall praying and praising, and thereby making them ready for receiving the Holy Communion the following morning. In the morning, after the morning raising of incense, the deacons proceed the couple into the church singing the appropriate hymns, depending on the church season, in order for the Sacrament of Matrimony to take place.
Such a hall, where the family and friends of the bride and groom meet and spend the night in vigil, exists in St. George’s Cathedral in Old Cairo.
This tradition which was kept by the older generations, is derived from the Book of Tobit, (in the Deutrocanonical Books). It tells how the couple spend the first three days of their marriage in prayers and spiritual readings, thus transcending the bodily lusts to spiritual love, in order to be united with God. Hence, they start their marital life with a holy beginning, as a strong foundation like the person who built his house on rock and, “The rain descended, the floods came and the winds tribulations and troubles) blew, and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock” (Matthew 7: 24,25).
Reblogged from http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/09/28/a-secular-orthodoxy/
A Secular Orthodoxy
By Fr Stephen Freeman
Within Orthodox Christianity, the faith is generally “encultured.” It does not exist apart from the culture, but within – transforming, shaping and making the faith of Christ incarnate in the world. Christianity first expressed this model in the context of first-century Judaism. The disciples in Jerusalem met together on Solomon’s Porch. Small asides in St. Paul’s writings and in the book of Acts, show that despite dropping the requirement for circumcision, early Christians continued to observe many Jewish practices (St. Paul, for example took a Nazarite vow for a time Acts 18:18). The same can be said for the Church’s encounter with the broad culture of Hellenism. The Hellenistic language of Platonism provided the vocabulary (though the meanings were altered) for most of the theological expressions of the great doctrines. The vestments of the Church, and some sense of its ceremonies, clearly reflect both the Church’s roots in Judaism as well as the life of the Roman royal court.
This is not only how things should be, it is utterly inevitable. Our faith is not lived on a planet or world apart from the one on which we live. The language of the culture, the deeper, unspoken ethos of the world in which we live, will find its way into the life of the Church. Normatively, the inner life of the Church finds its way into the greater culture as well. This is probably the true meaning of symphonia, the theory often used to describe the relationship between Emperor and Church (not all cultures have emperors).
The modern world presents new challenges to this model. The secular construct of the world, the hallmark of the modern age, offers perhaps the most cogent and pervasive alternative to traditional Christianity since the Hellenistic period. More complicated still, is the fact that this construct is itself a product of certain expressions of Christianity, and thus has something of an acquired immunity to classical Christianity. In the modern world, Orthodox Christianity encounters the secularized God, the secularized Church and the secularized sacraments. The tragic results can occasionally be a secularized Orthodoxy. What does this mean?
The secular worldview (in its meaning in this article) is one that does not deny the existence of God, but distances Him from the everyday world. Human beings are seen strictly in individualized terms, communities only existing through the sharing of ideas and practices. Religious groups can exist in abundance in such a setting, but largely as expressions of individual choices. The world (and culture) are understood to be religiously “neutral” territory – places in which the presence of religious concerns is inherently unnatural. God is a preference, a choice, but never truly integral to daily life.
In secular cultures, Orthodoxy becomes a choice: “I am Orthodox because I like it.” This sounds perfectly normal (why else would someone be Orthodox?), but it is a subtle shift within the mind and heart of a believer. The kind of cereal we eat in the morning, the kind of beer we drink in the evening, are equally choices – products of our preferences. In the modern secular world, particularly in its current dominant form of consumer secularism, the believer consumes his religious preference. His God, his community, his set of practices, are subtly diminished to the set of consumer decisions. The result is often a lifestyle that is largely indistinguishable from that of other consumers. The pressures of Church on the culture of believers is rebuffed: the culture wins. In America it often means an Orthodoxy that is similar to surrounding secularized groups. Church attendance becomes sporadic, limited to Sunday mornings, prayers in the home diminished (if present at all), and the liturgical rhythm of the year reduced to Sundays, Christmas, Lent and Pascha.
These observations are not made in order to criticize or judge. They are made in order to describe the outlines of the modern cultural challenge. The nature of all cultures is marked by their unconscious nature. If you live in a culture and are part of it, you don’t have to think in order to be at home. An unconscious Orthodoxy, in the modern context, is likely to become a secularized version. The modern culture in which we live is a secularized culture – thus we have no choice but to think about what it means for the faith. How do we enculturate the faith in a culture that inherently spurns the nature of that faith?
The largest non-Protestant group in America that successfully resisted secular culture for a time were the immigrant Catholic groups who came into the U.S. from the late-19th century to the early 20th century. Needless to say, the secularism they faced was weak, and still “churchly.” However, they resisted the lures of assimilation through strong Catholic neighborhoods, Catholic schools, orphanages, hospitals and other institutions. They survived by creating something of a parallel culture. Today that parallel culture has been deeply depleted. Once strong school systems have been devastated in many places, both by increasing costs, decreasing vocations for the religious who once staffed the schools, and the dispersion of Catholic populations.
The movement to “mainstream” Catholic culture, following the Second Vatican Council, hurried this process along, just at the time that the secularization of the culture was gaining speed. Plummeting Catholic Church attendance, and rejection of Church teachings have accompanied the process. In many areas, Catholic populations are indistinguishable from the surrounding culture – existing as secular Catholics.
Orthodox immigration never gained the cohesion or the force of numbers of their Catholic neighbors. Those meager numbers have declined steeply as a result. Without large numbers of converts, Orthodoxy in America would be in an institutional crisis. But the conversion of parents by no means secures the adherence of children (or grandchildren). Raising Orthodox families, and creating an authentic Orthodox cultural expression, have yet to succeed in America (with obvious anecdotal exceptions).
Mission strategy in the modern world would do well to think about long-term models. Much of Orthodox mission in modern culture follows a pattern similar to Protestant Churches – including some of their worst aspects. Parishes are commuter communities. My own parish is one of three that serves a large metropolitan area. We have some members who drive an hour or an hour-and-a-half to get to an Orthodox Church. Our experience is not unusual. Success for a parish is often marked by its ability to pay its bills, pay a priest (though these are often part-time positions), and eventually construct a building. “Success” is not marked by the enculturation of the faith in the lives of the faithful. Much of this is the result of necessity. Commuting consumers is the default position of religious believers in America.
What I am describing is the essential character of the present arena of our salvation. Because secularity is cultural it will often be invisible – simply part of the way we do things and the way we think. Fr. Alexander Schmemann thought that secularism was the great heresy of our day. It will not be enough to write about or discuss it (let the reader take note). It is the personal and communal struggle of the faith. The non-Orthodox, our brothers and sisters, would do well to pay equal attention, for the secularism of our culture is eating away at us all.
The Catholic solution, as remarkably successful as it was, is not realistic today. We live in commuter suburbs (often) in a dispersed manner. Institutions such as schools require enormous capital and populations. Many parish communities have managed to create “micro-institutions,” an important and God-blessed effort. But the effort to live an integrated Orthodox life requires struggle – and most will likely fall short.
That struggle will be an unrelenting offering of the self to God. To be shaped by the life of the Church, rather than finding a place within our consumption for Church “activities,” will often seem obsessive. It will feel counter-cultural in a faith that is not inherently contrarian. Those who keep the prescribed fasts at any time of the year easily feel that all they ever think about is food. How can you fast in a fast-food culture?
The small, lesser disciplines (observing the fasts, keeping the feasts) will seem light in comparison with the greater struggle for the transformation of the inner life. The primitive Church was in a situation not unlike our own. Though in a matter of centuries Christians would change the face of the Roman world, when St. Paul wrote Christians were living within the belly of the beast. He said:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Rom 12:1-2).
May God give us grace!
"And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good..."
"All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men."
"Each ounce of matter belongs to God and is to find in God its fulfillment. Each instant of time is God’s time and is to fulfill itself as God’s eternity. Nothing is "neutral.” For the Holy Spirit, as a ray of light, as a smile of joy, has "touched” all things, all time—revealing all of them as precious stones of a precious temple."
"Blessed is the souls that loves her brother, for our brother is our life."
+ St Silouan the AthoniteThe late Fr John Meyendorff wrote the article below in 1988 when there was still momentum for the Orthodox Joint Commission.
"Don't try to create the perfect parish...you'll eventually be the only one left!"
“Whoever loves their dream of Christian community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, no matter how honest, earnest and sacrificial their personal intentions may be."
"We shouldn't seek the ideal community. It is a question of loving those whom God has set beside us today. They are signs of God. We might have chosen different people, people who were more cheerful and intelligent. But these are the ones God has given us, the ones he has chosen for us. It is with them that we are called to create unity and live a covenant. We choose our own friends; but in our families, we do not choose our brothers and sisters; they are given to us. So it is in community life."
On the Mother of God
By Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
It is not always easy to speak of the Mother of God to Christians whose tradition may find little or no place for her in worship or in prayer. To begin by talking about the theology of the Incarnation leads quickly to the heart of the matter, but is likely to be counterproductive. In this sermon, preached at the University Church of Great St Mary's, Cambridge, on 19 May 1985, a different approach is used: we are introduced to the person, to Mary as an example of what it means to be a Christian and a child of God. Surely this is the proper introduction to one whose fiat made salvation possible for us all.
I want tonight to speak of the Blessed Virgin, of the Mother of God, in her relation to us; to try to look at what we can learn from her, what she is as an image - almost an ideal image - of what we should be. I want first of all to make a point concerning the Orthodox way of calling her the Mother of God. By this we mean simply that she is the one who brought God Incarnate into the world. Of course, she is not the mother of the Word of God according to his divinity, but without her the Word would not have been made flesh, the Son of God would not have become the Son of Man.
An English writer, Charles Williams, describes the event in a most wonderful way, as it seems to me, indicating at the same time the reality of the event and the decisive role of the Mother of God. He says that when the time was right, a maiden of Israel proved capable of pronouncing the name of God with all her mind and all her will and all her flesh, and the Word became flesh. It is a gift of self, and it is at the same time an unreserved and heroic acceptance: a gift of self in humility, and an heroic acceptance because of what it could have been, what is meant humanly speaking.
Some of you may remember that the word 'humility' comes from the Latin humus, the fertile ground. Humility is not a condition which we try to ape by saying that we are unworthy, that we are not as good as others imagine us to be - if they do. Humility is a condition of the earth, lying completely open and surrendered: the earth which is open to all actions, of mankind, of the rain, accepting the refuse and accepting the furrow and bringing fruit, surrendered, offered and given.
This is the essence of humility and this is the kind of humility which we see in the Mother of God. And this is something which we could learn and which is so difficult to learn, because we are so continuously and so painfully afraid of offering ourselves, of surrendering, of giving ourselves to God or even to those who love us and whom we love. Surrendering gifts is frightening, because it implies also a sort of frailty. To refuse oneself, to resist, gives us a sense of strength and vigour; and yet it is not our strength that can achieve great things.
You probably remember how Paul the apostle asked God to give him strength to fulfil his mission, and how the Lord said, 'My strength is made manifest in weakness. My grace sufficeth unto thee'. And the weakness of which the Lord speaks, of course, is neither laziness nor sloth nor timidity. It's another weakness, it's that of surrender.
If I had to convey it in images I would speak of the way in which a child is taught to write. A pencil is put into his hand, the mother takes the hand in hers, and then begins to move it; and as long as the child does not know, and cannot foresee, what is expected of him, the lines are so perfect, the straights are straight, the curves are curved. The moment the child begins to imagine he understands what is expected of him, becomes helpful, pushes, pulls, and turns, it becomes a scribble. Isn't that exactly what happens to us when instead of listening deeply, silently, listening intently in the stillness of our heart and ready to wait on God, we make haste to understand what he wants, and try to do it before we have understood?
The same is true (in terms of analogies) of the way in which a surgical glove, so frail that the nail can pierce it, tear it, put on an experienced, skilled hand can work miracles. Replace its frailty by the strength of an armour's gauntlet and nothing will be possible. And the same will apply to the image of a sail on a sailing ship. The sail is the frailest part of it and yet, directed in the right way, it can engulf the wind and carry the heavy, strong, resisting structure to its haven.
This is the kind of weakness, of frailty, of surrender, that we can see in the generous gift of the Mother of God to her Lord. She is the one who is the response of the whole creation to the maker. God offering himself and the creation in her person, accepting him, receiving him, worshipping and lovingly, freely and daringly.
When the Mother of God came to Elizabeth her cousin, Elizabeth exclaimed: 'Blessed is she who has believed. It will be done to her according to the promise of God'. She is the one who above and beyond all creatures has believed - believed in the sense of trusting the Lord, unreservedly and unconditionally.
We do not often think of what the words of the archangel at the Annunciation spelt. The archangel told the Virgin that she will bear a child, and we wonder, we marvel, at the name of this child Jesus who is our saviour; but at that moment the promise was also a threat. According to the law of the Old Testament an unmarried girl who bore a child was condemned to stoning. She did not say, 'But this cannot be, it will cost me my life'. She did not either say 'it cannot be' because she believed that every word of God can be fulfilled, every promise of his. She said, 'Here am I, the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to his will'.
And his will was, humanly speaking, her death, unless a miracle occurred. We must learn something from this, because so often we are afraid of a promise or a prompting from God. What is the cost which we shall have to pay? What is the risk entailed in obeying and following the commandment of God or the call?
And in that the virgin of Israel proved a worthy daughter of Abraham, the one who is Isaac. The Lord had promised to Abraham that he would have a son, that this son would be the beginning of a race as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sand of the beaches. Then suddenly, when the son was already a little boy, fully alive, loved, growing, opening up to the future, the Lord commanded Abraham to bring him as a blood offering, and at that moment Abraham believed God more than he believed his promise. He trusted God to know what he was doing in the certainty that God's word was truth.
The Virgin was in the same position. She trusted God because his word was truth, and we must learn if we want to belong to that new creation of which she was the first, if we want to be of the race of the Mother of God, if we want to be God's own people through whom God is present in the world, we must learn to trust, to believe, to be as faithful as she promised to be.
Then we can see another moment of her life. In St John's gospel there is the story of Cana of Galilee, a wedding feast in a village, people gathered who had brought to the feast all they possessed, all they could give; and long before their hearts were satiated with joy and with peace, long before they could say, 'We have had enough and we can go home, carrying with us a heart fulfilled', the feast was coming to an end. The family was poor, the wine was coming to its end.
And then the Mother of God turned to the Lord and said they had no wine. A simple remark; and Christ turned to her with a question, on which we do not dwell because we are piously accustomed to accept whatever we read in the gospel unthinkingly, or dismiss it also unthinkingly. Christ turned to her and said, 'What have we got in common, you and me?'
The question I think means, 'Are you turning to me because you are my mother, because you brought me up, because I was obedient to you in the course of all my childhood, and you expect me now to do your bidding? Or is there any other reason? If it is this, if our only link, the only thing we have in common, is your motherhood, according to the flesh, mine hour has not yet come. We are still in the realm of natural events'. The Mother of God does not argue. She does not say anything to him. She turns to the servants and says: 'Whatever he may say to you, do it'. Whatever he may say. And then Christ, seemingly contradicting his own words that his hour had not come, works the glorious miracle of Cana, transforming the waters of ablution into the good wine of the kingdom. What happened? What happened between the question and the words of the Mother of God? Just one thing. Instead of arguing she made an act of perfect faith, and by this act of faith in her divine son she established the Kingdom of God. She established Christ in this wedding feast as the king of heaven, as the Lord, and because through her the Kingdom had come, what was impossible in terms of the natural world occurred eschatologically: that is, the future and eternity poured into time, and within this eternity what cannot be contained by time happened.
Here is another thing which we can learn from her. It is not enough for us to believe more or less, we must establish for others that situation which is the Kingdom of God and in which things may happen to them and for them.
There is an old saying that God can enter into any realm provided a human being opens the door. We are that kind of doorkeeper. Doorkeepers usually keep doors shut: our vocation is to keep a door open for God who knocks at every door to find a door open.
In moments of strife or moments of tension, when we have no words and do not know what to do, we can sit still, turn to the Lord and say, 'Lord, I believe. Come, and give us thy peace'; and continue praying in the midst of the storm, in the midst of the strife, in the midst of the terror. Pray that the Lord, who is the Lord of the storm, as he is the Lord of peace, may come and spread his peace as he did on the lake of Tiberias when he commanded the waves to be still and the wind to be silent.
This is our vocation. Our vocation is to be sent like light into the darkness, with our divine hope where there is no hope; like salt where there is corruption. Our place as Christians is not in the safety of our Christian communities, but in the storm that must be stilled; at the heart of corruption that must be stopped; at the point of hopelessness where we must bring a hope which is beyond all human hope. Light that shines in the darkness, that is our vocation, and the image that we find in Cana of Galilee, so quiet and peaceful, opens up on all the tragedies of the world, all the events, great or small, that begin in a family and end in international conflict.
And then, lastly, two events which I would like to bring together. The presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Crucifixion. Every male child first-born of a woman was to be brought to the Temple as an offering. If we read back into the Old Testament about the institution of the act we discover that God commanded the Hebrews to bring the first-born male children of every family to the temple as a blood offering, as a ransom for the first-born of Egypt, who had to die that the Jews might go free. Every first-born male child was therefore brought and God had the right of death and of life upon him. Century after century God accepted a vicarious offering, turtle doves and sheep, and once only in the whole of history he accepted a human offering: his only begotten Son became man who had to die on the Cross to redeem mankind - so that the two events are really connected with one another. But the mother who brought this child knew that God had all power over him of life and death, and unhesitatingly, in humility and faithfulness, brought this child.
Later, when we see Calvary as described in the Gospel, we do not see a mother fainting or a mother protesting or a mother clamouring for mercy, as so many pictures have it. At the foot of the Cross we see the Mother of God wrapt in deep, tragic silence seeing the fulfillment of what had been begun when she brought her child to the Temple. She stood silent, at one with the divine and human will of her son: she was fulfilling the offering which she had begun thirty-three or so years before. At one with the will of God, at one with the will of her divine son, renouncing her own will, her own hopes, in an act of offering.
This is something that very few of us will ever have to face in life, or at least I hope so; but it happens all the time in various parts of the world, and it has happened throughout history when one person has allowed another to give his or her life for a cause, for God or for men. Without a word of protest, sharing in the heroic offering. I would like to leave these images with you, however incomplete and imperfect they are. Look at them and ask yourselves. Where do I stand? What would I do, placed in the same circumstances?
The Mother of God was the response of all creation to God's love, but God's love is sacrificial love. At the heart of the love of God there is the gift of self, the Cross. May God grant us to learn from this frail maiden her heroic simplicity and her wonderful wholeness. And let us learn from all the steps of her life, all the self-denial and the gift of self, all the beauty of her surpassing humility and its perfect obedience to the law of eternal life. Amen.
Sourozh 1980. N. 21. P. 22-33
What is Worship For? Part 2
By Khoria Frederica Mathewes-Green
Posted on Thursday, September 19, 2013 at
http://www.frederica.com/writings/what-is-worship-for-part-2.html
Yesterday I wrote on “What is Worship For?”, but I forgot to answer the question. I said that it is not the time for evangelism, and shouldn’t be designed with non-believers in mind. But what is it for?
Worship is for God; we could expand that and say worship is for believers to offer to God. But even once we’re clear that worship is the work of the believing community, there’s a possible confusion. We might think the purpose of worship is to give believers a good worship experience.
This is subtle, because a worship leader might think the best way to worship is to arrange the songs and other elements to move and inspire worshippers, who will then turn whole-heartedly to God. In fact, that might sound like exactly what worship is supposed to do. But it’s another mis-direction. It leaves us focused on the process inside the worshipper, instead of on God.
In the first place, this is manipulative; it makes the hour of worship a process imposed on churchgoers, aimed at directing their thoughts and emotions into the right channels. People can usually sense when they’re being manipulated. Men, especially, hate to have their emotions tampered with, and I expect this is a reason most congregations are predominantly female, and we assume that women are more religious than men are (though that’s obviously not the case with conservative varieties of Islam and Judaism).
I recall a chapel service at a Christian college where two girls with guitars were leading the audience in a hymn that featured the line, “I lay my head upon his chest.” Every time that line came around, the male professors near me would just stop singing.
But some people might actually like this focus on their worship experience, feeling that it’s appropriate for churches to serve their preferences, just like restaurants do. Church-shopping is common, as people sample many different churches in their search for the one that feels best.
Unfortunately, the church that feels most comfortable is not the one that will challenge you. We are called to deep change, transformation in Christ, and the hard work of overcoming the poison of habitual sin. If you search till you find a church that feels just right, it’s likely to reinforce you as you already are.
A focus on the worshipper also burdens him, because it means worship succeeds or fails based on how he feels. He can look around during a hymn and notice others who look moved or inspired, while he himself feels nothing. He wonders if there is something wrong with him. Maybe his faith is too weak; maybe God has rejected him. Since the general mood during worship is upbeat (except for those times everyone is directed to be serious instead), the person who comes in feeling less than chipper will know that good manners requires holding it in. Church-time can come to seem very artificial. When you’re worried or sad it’s painful to be around happy people. Singing a hymn about how God takes care of me when I’m sad doesn’t really help.
I got an email this morning from a person who said he attended a church meeting where one of the newer leaders wanted to remove the Creed and the general confession from the Sunday service, because they were a “turn off.” This led to a discussion of the purpose of worship, and he said that, for him, it was about “alignment.” In worship he comes into the presence of God, and is lined up with him, so to speak. In our daily lives we turn away from God through our anxieties and temptations; our attention is scattered in all different directions. In worship, as we face the Lord, we are brought into right order with him.
This alignment is like what happens to a steel needle when it is brought into contact with a magnet. When the needle is manufactured it’s not magnetic, because the atoms inside are pointing in all different direction. But when the needle is touched by a magnet, those atoms begin to turn. They become aligned as the magnet is; they become magnets themselves.
When we are thus aligned with God we are made one with him, transformed by his power. We don’t just become like him, in a superficial or analogical way; we actually become bearers of his presence, as the Burning Bush was filled with fire.
My correspondent wrote that, while describing this process, he said, “I speak the ancient words” of the liturgy. That’s a potential complication. In churches where the tradition is to put worship together almost from scratch every week, the authority for that worship resides in the pastor and worship leaders. Its depth is limited to the depth of their own wisdom, insight, and prayer life. Liturgical churches simply have an advantage here, because they don’t have to generate the content of their worship. The ancient liturgies still exist, and some churches have never stopped using them for all 2000 years. The Orthodox Eucharistic service is like a rack railway, one that is designed to climb a mountain. I can get on the train on Sunday morning, and it will carry me all the way to the top. It doesn’t matter whether I have emotions about worship or not; the Liturgy itself does the work.
As I said, this is more complicated for churches with a tradition of assembling the worship service new each week, but that does give you the freedom to try out the ancient prayers and services. They’re can be found in books and on line. I think it is less successful to just stick in a few ancient prayers, because you’re not wise enough to be an editor of those ancient texts; but if that is all you can do, it’s still something.
Years ago I met a young woman who told me she attended “the Celtic service at the First Baptist Church.” When I did a double-take she said, “The Boomers want a contemporary service, with rock music and all, but the young people, of course, want something more traditional.” They had located ancient Celtic prayers via the internet and were worshipping with vestments, candles, and incense (until the smoke alarm gave them too much trouble).
One thing that surprised me after I became Eastern Orthodox was that there was far less emphasis on believers being united with each other in worship. Previously, the prayers and hymns about communion were all about community. Now, they’re about the power of Christ’s presence in the sacrament and my unworthiness and unpreparedness to receive it. Communion does unites me to other worshippers, of course, but the understanding that the bread and wine really become Christ’s Body and Blood push other thoughts to the side.
I should clarify that I’m not recommending that go back to worship styles and hymns of a few decades or a century ago. That’s still a part of the culture we inhabit today, and it’s probably not disruptive or challenging enough to make a difference. Worship from thousands of years ago, from entirely different languages and cultures, has more of a chance of shaking you up.
Finally I have to ask, to what extent is worship supposed to teach the faithful? The Orthodox liturgies and prayers are full of meaty content, apparently intending that worshippers will understand and remember it, and not designed solely to glorify God. If you imagine that you were an illiterate peasant 1500 years ago, about the only time you would hear the scriptures would be during worship. The icons on the walls would serve as a picture bible, presenting the important scenes of bible and church history. The worship experience—the embroidery, incense, vestments, jewels and so forth—would be the most beautiful thing you encountered all week. Since everything is set to music, you can take it with you, and bring it to mind during the week. Some of the more important prayers are sung three times. We learned our ABCs by singing them over and over, and we learn church history and theology the same way.
I’m always impressed, on the Sunday of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, at the amount of detail the hymns give us in describing the heresy of Arius, the arguments against him, and even his miserable end (he went into an outhouse and, it sounds like, exploded—yes, we sing even about this). We’re not singing these things in order to inform God about it. It must be intended to teach worshippers history and theology that they should know.
Likewise, it is right that there be a sermon or homily expounding the day’s scripture readings. An ancient practice is the moment when worshippers greet each other with a holy kiss—we see this referenced in St. Paul’s letters. So having insisted all this time that worship ought to be directed to God, I must admit that some elements teach and inform worshippers as well.
With that allowance, however, we still must answer the question “What is worship for?” with “Worship is for God.” We need to worship God, because it puts us in right “alignment” with him. God doesn’t need our worship; God doesn’t need anything the human race can offer. But when we drift from him we become scattered and confused. Worship brings us before our Creator, the only source of love that is worthy of the name. The more we focus on him alone, forgetting about ourselves, the more we will be healed.
"Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her." Luke 1:38
"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known." 1 Cor 13:12
"Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh, and trotted across to the Lion.
'Please,' she said, 'you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd much sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.'
'Dearest daughter,' said Aslan, planting a lion's kiss on her twitching velvet nose, 'I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.'"
Here's a very interesting post from Pearl of Great Price Blog which resonates with FrDn Steve Hayes' post "Liturgy, worship and digital doodads":
"Follow along" - How projector screens and liturgical texts may actually be more a hindrance than a help in the liturgy - (Fr. Aidan Kavanagh)
http://pearlofgp.blogspot.com/2013/03/follow-along-how-projector-screens-and.html
Ask Samuel L. Jackson, the only thing scarier than 'snakes on a plane,' are projector screens in an Orthodox church! When you think of projector screens being hung above (or even in front of) an iconostasis projecting the liturgical text, your first inclination might be to assume that such use of modernity must obviously be a good thing. Rationally, it would only make sense that this technology would help parishioners "follow along" during a divine liturgy, allowing everyone to be fully engaged in the worship. Makes sense, right? Well, not quite. This well intended addition which has crept into our liturgical worship over the past few years may actually be more a hindrance than a help.
As we all should know, participation in the divine liturgy involves every person in a parish, not just the priest, deacon, and choir - it is to be participated in corporately. Our goal in liturgy isn't to mindlessly recite or listen to someone else recite prayers, but rather, it is to experience communion with God and with the body of Christ, that being the Church. The words being prayed should become our words expressing the prayers of our heart. The liturgical text should not be viewed as some magical incantation someone wrote centuries ago that requires a congregation to patiently and mindlessly allow for the prayers to have their affect on the gifts present on the altar. It is also less important to be caught up trying to 'follow along' and more important to truly be present in that corporate liturgical dance.
Some might be thinking here, "What about visitors and catechumens?" – Great question! Of course all churches should make sure they have books available for new comers. However, making these texts available should be for the express purpose to encourage these individuals to also to participate in the liturgy, the books should never be allowed to be used as a type of distraction from what is happening around them. Imagine for a moment while you are watching a film someone hands you the script to the movie so you can 'follow along' - would it be safe to assume that most people wouldn't enjoy doing that? Imagine what you'd miss! Would you or anyone you know be just as involved in the plot of the film if they were simply reading, neither really watching and/or listening? This is one of the many reasons why musical and theater performances do not hand their patrons the text being used. A person is meant to live the experience, not to 'follow along.'
Typography, by its nature, separates and compartmentalizes information, making it impossible for a complete and rich experience. Applying this observation to reading off a screen while participating in liturgical worship, it comes as no surprise why many complain that liturgical prayers often lack a 'prayerful feel.' And how could such liturgies be prayerful when they are reduced to a 'read-along'?
Delving into this dilemma further, it may be worthwhile examining just how text and typography actually influences our cognition and what affects it may have on our engagement with the world. Canadian communications theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan, wrote extensively on the effects of typography and text on individuals and society. According to McLuhan, unlike in times past or in cultures where typography is not considered the primary mode of communication, we in our modern Western culture have significantly lowered our ability to synthesize the world around us. It may be worth mentioning that McLuhan also believed that the invention of print technology and its ontologically disjunctive nature contributed to the rise of individualism, capitalism, and nationalism - all of which could be argued are anti-liturgical ideologies.
Below is an excerpt from Fr. Aidan Kavanagh (a liturgical theologian) on the affects of text on the liturgy and our liturgical participation. Enjoy!
Fr. Aidan Kavanagh
The affects of text on the liturgy and our liturgical participation
Fr. Aidan Kavanagh (1933-2011)
Catholic priest and Yale professor
"But an even more important development than liturgical hypertrophy was 's unavoidable slide into textual absorption, something stimulated by the invention of printing. Northern Europeans became literary humanists rather as southern Europeans had become aesthetic humanists, and proponents of the Reformation were largely men of the north who fell as easily into textual obsession with the Bible as they did into mistrust of urbane aesthetes from south of the Alps. The technology of printing helped to blow apart a moribund medieval world, unleashing forces which the modem world copes with uneasily still. And while it would be too much to say that printing reduced God's Word into words, since writing itself was responsible for that, it would be true to say that printing turned God's Words into a text which all people, literate or not, could now see as lines of type marching across a page. God's Word could now for the first time be visualized by all, not in the multivalency of a "presence" in corporate act or icon but linearly in horizontal lines which could be edited, reset, revised, fragmented, and studied by all—something which few could have done before. A Presence which had formerly been experienced by most as a kind of enfolding embrace had now modulated into an abecedarian printout to which only the skill of literacy could give complete access. God could now be approached not only through burning bushes, sacralized spaces, and holy symbols and events, but through texts so cheaply reproduced as to be available to all. Rite and its symbols could be displaced or got round altogether, and so could the whole of the living tradition which provided the gravitational field holding them together in an intelligible union. Rite became less a means than an obstacle for the new textual piety. And once rite receded, so did the need for that kind of assembly whose common burden was the enactment of rite rather than attendance upon didactic exposition of set texts. The truth lies now exclusively in the text; no longer on the walls, or in the windows, or in the liturgical activity of those who occupy the churches. Protestant iconoclasm was thus not, nor could it have been, selective or corrective. It was programmatic and across the board. It did not modify an old equation but wrote a new one.
The liturgy was thus constricted to a set of texts which could not only be put cheaply into the hands of each member of the assembly, but which could be altered quickly and controlled effectively even down to the details of layout and typography by groups of experts whose competencies were often tangential to the rite itself. Under such conditions, the liturgical action tended to shrink from being a complex diversity of intermeshing ministries and roles working together toward common ritual and symbolic purpose, to concern itself more with the individual reaction of the worshipper to a text held in the hand and followed with the eye. Sermons, exhortations, and biblical readings could be followed with the eye as they were being read aloud by the minister. The liturgy began to shift from rite as an enacted style of common life carried on in rich symbolic ambiguity to the simultaneous reading and recitation of printed texts which were increasingly didactic in nature.
It is not easy for us who live on this side of the invention of printing to sense how very novel this sort of liturgy was to one who had never seen liturgical texts during worship but had only heard them, to one who therefore never felt compelled to sit still in ranks of immovable pew resembling lines of type marching across a page and to follow what was said aloud by watching a text or reading a score."
(Just to be clear, liturgical books are not inherently evil, but our obsessive need to 'follow along' may be pulling us away from experiencing what is happening around us and with us in the liturgy. The pinnacle of corporate prayer is thus reduced to an individualistic pursuit. We should lay aside all distractions, even the personal pious ones. )
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Source:
+ Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, pp. 103 -106
+ Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy, pp. 124 –126
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| The Creation of Adam and Eve, late 20th c., Fresco, St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Shrine Church, Greenlawn, NY |
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| Crucifixion, 1209, fresco, Studenica Monastery, Serbia. |
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| Christ as the Ancient of Days, Gospel book, Byzantine, 1297, tempera on vellum, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge. |
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The Ladder of Divine Ascent, late 12th c., tempera and gold on panel, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.
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| St. Maria (Skobtsoba) of Ravensbruck, Janet Peters, 21st c. |