Too funny!!!

It’s really kind of sad isn’t it? Think of it, 10 centuries ago, this same church (ie Constantinople) shocked the world by sending missionaries to the Slavs in Moravia with an alphabet, specifically designed to allow the Slavs to understand the Bible. If you go back and read the contemporary literature, you get a sense of the excitement surrounding this “project”, which had been going on for 30 years in the monasteries of Bithynia when St Cyril (Constantine) showed up. While St Cyril is given credit for the Glagolitic alphabet, it seems more likely that he put the finishing touches on a project that had long been in the works.

The only modern equivalent that I could come up with was the Apollo Project..that’s the degree of excitement and anticipation which surrounding this “project”. It was momentous, and the Byzantines knew it. Keep in mind that Sts. Cyril and Methodios were contemporaries of St. Photios..and we are talking about a period when the “best the brightest” minds of the day (St. Cyril St. Photios, Leo the Mathmetician) all ended up in church service. What a difference from today eh? Don’t think mental misfits; think Kennedy Administration Harvard whiz kids…and you are in the right pew.

There was a letter, which accompanied the Mission to Moravia which helps to give a sense of the value the Byzantines applied to this sharing of the alphabet. It is alluded to on P 75 of the book Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs by Anthony-Emil Tachiaos, who says:

After adequate preparations, in the spring of 863 the group of missionaries set off for Great Moravia, taking with them gifts and a letter from Emperor Michael III to Prince Rastislav. The Life of Cyril contains an adapted summary of this letter:

Michael assured Rastislav that God, seeing his faith, “has now, in our time, revealed letters in your tongue, a thing which has not happened for a long time, but only in ancient days, so that you may be included among the great nations which praise God in their own tongue. Moreover, we are sending you the one to whom He has revealed them, a virtuous and devout man and a most learned philosopher. Therefore, accept a gift greater and more valuable than gold and silver and precious stones and all transient riches.

Unbelievable eh? 10 centuries later, people like you (and me) are asking, “Does Constantinople celebrate Pentecost?”

Tell me we haven’t moved backwards? Tell me St Photios and St. John Chrysostom are not spinning in their graves seeing things like this occur?

THE church which evangelised half the world, using LANGUAGE as the main weapon in it’s arsenal…THE church which argued with the Trilingualists in Rome, ultimately convincing the Pope to sanction the use of a local language…THE church which was a beacon to the barbarians for 10 centuries…

…that same church is now afraid to translate the liturgy into understandable Greek in Greece, and resists translating the liturgy into English in North America.

It’s enough to make you ill.

Lord Have Mercy!!!

Best Regards,
Dean

Chrys, I heartily agree. The proper celebration of the liturgies of the Church needs a seperate post. I feel this is important because we have done yeoman work on this blog in correctly formulating the historical, canonical, and intellectual narrative of Orthodoxy in North America. It would all be for naught if the Episcopal Assembly actually does produce something worthwhile but the liturgies remain erratic.

Just checking.

I would heartily second Fr. John’s endorsement of Cappella Romana’s Divine Liturgy in English. The Thyateira translation is a masterwork (by Fr. Ephrem Lash), and although eschewing Elizabethan English for modern, it still retains the dignity and high-register necessary for liturgical texts.

The setting of the music is itself very important. John Boyer approached the composition of the music from the ethos of the Byzantine composers: he took the musical principles of Byzantine composition and applied them to the text rather than the previously-common method of fitting the text into pre-existing melodies.

The end result is that it works. Not only does the music sound like it was made for the text (it was), but it is in continuity with our received musical tradition. It proves the error in the old thinking that ‘Byzantine chant will never work for the “western ear”.’ One hopes that others will take this traditional approach to heart and neither err on the side of manipulating texts to match melodies, nor pushing for an artificially-constructed ‘new form’ of chant in opposition to our tradition.

Father, Thank you.

Given the importance of this issue, some of your previous comments and the availability of the CD as an example of what we are missing, I think a discussion on the current – and the proper – state of the liturgy might warrant a separate post. This is especially important since we recognize, as Priest-monk Gregory-Francis noted, that the liturgy is a school of theology. Indeed, as I was thinking about this and the importance of the actual form of the liturgy in forming our faith, I was reminded of a passage that played a critical role in changing my old notions about liturgy. With your indulgence, I offer the excerpt here:

“Metropolitan Anthony,” I began, “five years ago when I visited you I attended the services which you yourself conducted. And I remarked to you then how struck I was by the absence of emotion in your voice. Today, in the same way, where it was not you but the choice, I was struck by the same thing, the almost complete lack of emotion in the voices of the singers.”

“Yes,” he said, “that is quite true. It has taken years for that, but they are finally beginning to understand . . .”
. . .
I put my question further: “The average person hearing this service – and of course the average Westerner having to stand up for the several hours it took – might not be able to distinguish it from the mechanical routine that has become so predominant in the performance of the Christian liturgy in the West. He might come wanting to be lifted, inspired, moved to joy or sadness – and this the churches in the West are trying to produce, because many leaders of the Church are turning away from the mechanical, the routine–”

He gently waved aside what I was saying, and I stopped in mid-sentence. There was a pause, then he said: “No. Emotion must be destroyed.” He stopped, reflected and started again, speaking in his husky Russian accent: “We have to get rid of emotions . . . in order to reach . . . feeling.”

. . . He continued: “You ask about the liturgy in the West and in the East. It is precisely the same issue. The sermons, the Holy Days – you don’t know why once comes after the other, or why this one now and that one later. Even I you read everything about it, you still wouldn’t know, believe me.

“And yet . . . there is a profound logic in them, in the sequence of the Holy Days. And this sequence leads people somewhere – without their knowing it intellectually. Actually, it is impossible for anyone to understand the sequence of rituals and Holy Days intellectually. It is not meant for that. It is meant for something else, something higher.

“For this you have to be in a state of prayer, otherwise it passes you by –”

“What is prayer?” I asked.

He did not seem to mind my interrupting with this question. Quite the contrary. “In the state of prayer one is vulnerable.” He emphasized the last word and then waited until he was sure I had not taken it in an ordinary way.

“In prayer one is vulnerable, not enthusiastic. And then these rituals have such force. They hit you like a locomotive. You must not be enthusiastic, nor rejecting – but only open. This is the whole aim of asceticism: to become open.”

–Jacob Needleman, Lost Christianity (1990), pp. 24-25.

The link for the CD of which I speak:

http://www.cappellaromana.org

The Divine Liturgy in English in Byzantine Chant

Cappella Romana’s highly anticipated two-CD release of the Divine Liturgy in English set to Byzantine Chant. A male ensemble led by Alexander Lingas chants the service’s hymns, psalms, and responses in a resonant natural acoustic according to the most authoritative Byzantine traditions, including works adapted from Petros Peloponnesios (+1778), Nileus Kamarados (+1922) and St. John Koukouzelis (+ca. 1341).

The Very Rev. Dr. Archimandrite Meletios Webber (priest) and the Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis (deacon) render in full all of the litanies and prayers of the entire Eucharistic assembly. Issued with the blessing of His Eminence Archbishop +GREGORIOS, this 2-CD set employs the official translation of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, and features a 40-page booklet with an annotated text of the service and essays on Orthodox worship and Byzantine chant by the Very Rev. Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), Alexander Lingas, and John Michael Boyer.

I’d like to find a copy as well. (At the risk of opening a can of worms, it sounds like the same deft approach was used with the Typikon that was used with the calendar. And I here I was thinking that such autocratic changes were supposed to be characteristic of the “imperial” approach of the West, not the conciliar approach of the East.)

As for Who Hash, it comes from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. (Okay, it’s really a sign that I have kids.) Of course, in the story, it is supposed to be a good thing. The Grinch, in his effort to deprive the Who’s of their Christmas celebration stole even the last can of Who Hash. Here, however, it serves as a suitable place holder for “horse . . .puckey.”

Fr, I’d like to order this CD that you talk about. Where could I get one? (Also, what does “who hash” mean?_

I think it is true of all parishes in Greece under the Abp. of Athens and EP parishes of North America; it may be elsewhere, but I cannot say for sure.
The recent recording of the Divine Liturgy and Orthros by Alex Lingas’ choros, Capella Romana with Archim. Meletios Weber as celebrant provides a restored version of the Canon as well as the Liturgy Prokeimenon which is also elided in common contemporary Greek parish practice. The disc demonstrates that it is not impossible to do the services in the canonical way. Who’d a thunk it.

So many people that attend our parishes are very, very highly educated compared to even 50 and 100 years ago. An average group probably has a person who is a professional musician or music instructor or professor. Same for gifts of language and so on.

It isn’t necessary to have ‘one official translation’ and having ‘one official translation’ is probably not a good thing since it is likely to reflect the sense and sentiment of whoever the official translator is that has favor that season and may not capture what people understand the words to mean elsewhere.

So I am not afraid of having many translations and muscial variations — so long as the pastors and so forth are making sure the dignity and accuracy is good.

Except, except for the Creed, the Lord’s prayer, and an agreed English version of Christ is Risen. For lots of reasons being able to go to any Orthodox parish and be able to have a common version of those two things be not just close to what you knew but the same, thats a good thing.

Fr John, I was not aware of this. Is this true for parishes in Greece or for all EP eparchies?

Speaking of “Who Hash” what about the Synod’s corruption of the Typikon resulting in the “Greatest Hits of Orthros” which is de riguer since the XIX c. in Greek parishes. A Greek priest is actually not allowed to celebrate the service in a logical manner.

Speaking of flags, has anybody heard about this latest idiocy being implemented? Or has it died a merciful death (like the diocesan landgrab and offer of Turkish citizenship)?

geo

Harry,

_ Addressing your second concern first: I don’t disagree that the services of the Church ought to be comprehensible to the people, but I also don’t see that that’s the real issue for the Synod in their prohibition of independent translations.

_ Do I feel more, or less in communion depending on translation? No, not so much–my use of ‘in communion with…’ was more to emphasize the role liturgy has in the constitution of the unity of the Church. I think there are ‘shades’ of disunity in the concern expressed by the Synod. Certainly, when I visit a parish whose English translation is markedly-different from our own (how many versions of ‘O Gladsome Light’ do we have in English?), I feel out-of-place and find the text to be a distraction and hindrance to prayer. I know I’m not the only one who finds this discomfiting. If we feel so uncomfortable worshiping in other parishes because of differences in translations, then I do think this is a legitimate concern, and one that ought to receive due consideration.