Ecclesiastical tradition does not put the voice of the past in the place of the voice of the present; in it the past does not kill the present but gives it full force... Tradition must be creative and at the same time conservative. There is no contradiction between these two elements but they are essential and are indispensable to each other. Tradition cannot be conserved unless be continually developed. And it cannot be developed unless it takes place on the shoulder of the past.
“Conservatism” and “Development” are two facets of the same process, which we call holy tradition.
It is worthy to note that this development of the life of the Church is realized not by the act of individuals but the act of the Church, as a witness of the Holy Spirit who lives in the Church, and without declination from her apostolic and patristic mind.
“Conservatism” and “Development” are two facets of the same process, which we call holy tradition.
It is worthy to note that this development of the life of the Church is realized not by the act of individuals but the act of the Church, as a witness of the Holy Spirit who lives in the Church, and without declination from her apostolic and patristic mind.
+ Fr. Tadros Malaty, Traditon and Orthodoxy, 53-54
First of all I would like to figure out what this notion means. “New”...New things can be invented. Life is the same, nothing has changed, the old needs are still there, yet a man, bored with established traditions, tries to change and break up the old, and invents something new. Even in this there is essentially no temptation, because these notions are bound to fail. There is no demand, and nobody needs the supply. The most inveterate, the most hopeless failures take precisely this path. But there are other ways for the “new” to emerge.
For instance, there existed an ancient tradition, based on a Gospel text, of standing in church at the Palm Sunday vigil holding palm branches. This tradition was observed in Byzantium, and that without any difficulty, since it was easy for them to find palm branches. But imagine a Palm Sunday vigil in Moscow or even in Kiev. Where will they get palm branches? The tradition has to be changed. People start cutting pussywillow branches. Probably warily at first, afraid of leading people into temptation — it’s a matter of a clear deviation from the Gospel text.
Later nothing was left of the temptation, the new thing became a tradition, and so much so that many would probably be tempted now if they were offered fir or birch branches instead of pussywillows. Now there are probably Russian people in Africa, where palm branches are easily obtained, who think: “How’s that? ‘Pussywillow Sunday’ without pussywillows?” In the same way, probably, Byzantine dried figs and olives during the Great Lent were replaced in the Russian north by pickled cabbage. No Greek Typikon makes any mention of this pickled cabbage, but imagine Russian lenten tradition without it! These are all little everyday things, you may say. Let them be little; they show the essence of the matter more easily, because the same things happen on a serious level as well.
There is thus a “new” that is not invented by the idle human mind, but that follows inevitably from the conditions of life.
Every attempt to preserve the old on such occasions is either impossible (like palm branches in the north), or does not correspond to the spirit of the old tradition: in Constantinople the simplest food was olives, and so they were prescribed during Lent, while in Moscow an insistence on olives would not be the simplest thing — olives are a rarity there, a delicacy. The simple thing would be cabbage.
+ St Maria of Paris, "Mother Maria Skobtsova: Essential Writings" Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. (New York: Orbis Books, 2003) 91-92
