Today I had lunch with an old friend. After graduation from High School I enlisted in the Army and ended up at Fort Polk, LA. I met this guy named Dave who was also from Massachusetts. We were together there for three years and had some great experiences. We went our separate ways, and now almost 20 years latter we had lunch together. He is still in the Army and just came back from a year in Afghanistan. It was so great to see him. We shared stories and laughed a lot. Great day!
Weekend
Although is is Tuesday I am finally getting around to posting the weekend activities. What a weekend it was. Saturday night I attended a wonderful concert at a Synagogue in Hingham, Massachusetts. At the invitation of my Sister-in-law. Five cantors from various places came together for this concert. The first half was all religious music and the second half was filled with show tunes. Great singing and the people were very warm and welcoming. We could learn much from them and from their attitude. At the beginning of the concert they lite the candle for the second day of Hanukkah. Great little ceremony and man can the people sing.
Sunday was the usual except we had 64 people in church, a new record. A memorial service for a parishioner who fell asleep in the Lord 40 days ago, then off to bless the food for the family Christmas party, quick trip to the cemetery to bless the grave, then back to the hall to the Christmas party and the visit of Santa. What can I say.
All would have been fine except at 5:15am the fire alarm pager went off for a 3 alarm fire that I responded too. I got back to the church at 8am to get ready for Liturgy. I was exhausted by days end, but the final episode of Survivor was one so I got 40 winks and then watch the show. Good ending to a great weekend.
28th Sunday After Pentecost
Colossians 1:12-18
Luke 14:16-24
The Gospel for this Sunday is about the man that throws a great banquet and everyone has an excuse and decides not to come to the banquet. So the man sends out his servant to try and get people to come but everyone is busy and refuses to come.
This is a great example of the Eucharistic banquet that we serve each liturgy in the church. How many times do we have a liturgy and very few people come or on Sunday when the church is full, very few people come forward at the time of communion to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. At each Divine Liturgy we prepare a great banquet and the Lord Himself invites all to come and partake. The words, “approach with the fear of God, in faith and with love.” Are the words that the priest uses to call the faithful forward to receive this great sacrament. Many people are not prepared due to grave sin, but are not prepared because of laziness in their preparation and hence the reason they do not come forward.
The great Orthodox Theologian Fr. Alexander Schemman once described this very same thing and used this analogy to describe what the Gospel is trying to say. Imagine that you prepare a great meal and invite your friends over. You put all the food on the table and you all sit down and look at the table. What a wonderful spread you have laid out for your friends. After sometime, you gather up all the food and throw it in the garbage and you never eat any of it. This is what happens on Sunday. We prepare the feast and invite people to come, and then when no one comes, we throw it away, in a figurative sense of course. If reception of the sacrament is not the reason we are there, then why are we? What is the purpose of coming to church if we are just going to watch what is going on? Perhaps we should just have a movie shown in the church on that day, and people can come and eat popcorn.
Sadly for years in the Orthodox Church people strayed away from frequent reception of communion. Twice a year was, and for some, still is the norm. We need to do something to change this practice. The grace we are missing is a grace we cannot afford to miss.
We are called to bring the light into the dark world. This light needs fuel to keep burning, that fuel is the Body and Blood of Christ that we receive at the Divine Liturgy. If we do not keep the light burning, who will? And if there is no light, then darkness takes over… And that is unacceptable.
Funeral
Yesterday was my fourth funeral since coming here almost three years ago. In the grand scheme of things that is not many, but in a parish this size that is many more than we should have.
The funeral liturgy itself is very beautiful and the priest does not have much to do. It is a work out for the cantor who has to chant every part of it.
I preached on the fact that although we will miss the person, we should rejoice at the same time because for us it is not the end, there is more and we will be together again one day. I did not know the gentleman that well but I can tell from the stories I heard over the last week that he was truly a gentle man and a great friend to many. We waked him in the church, an old tradition that is making a come back. He then spends the night in the church before the funeral. This man loved his church very much so it was indeed a fitting send off for him to be able to spend the night in the church.
The service at the cemetery is very short, and then off to a local place for the mercy meal. I will try and post more about the Orthodox Funeral Liturgy at another time.
Bum Fights
Yesterday I tuned in to the Dr. Phil show. I am a somewhat regular viewer of the show and tune in when the topic catches my eye. For some reason I knew this one was going to be real stupid. There is this guy who goes around paying the homeless to fight on camera. He paid this one poor soul in booze to pull his teeth out with a pair of pliers. What is this world coming too. He actually said that he is helping these people. Someone needs to help this guy for sure.
What has happened to people that we treat others as entertainment? Now I am a fan of reality TV and watch my fair share, but this is crazy. As Dr. Phil said, he is a supporter of everyones first amendment rights, but I think this goes too far.
27th Sunday after Pentecost
Ephesians 6:10-17
Luke 13:10-17
This past Sunday the Gospel passage was about the woman who had an infirmity for 18 years and was healed by Jesus. On the surface another healing took place, however this one was a little different. Jesus healed this woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and that is a big no no. Right away the leadership gets mad and chastises him for healing her. Jesus fires back that each of them would save an animal if it got caught in something on the Sabbath why not this woman.
For me, this passage is more about the rules than about healing. We are faced with people who are caught up in the rules and not the fact that Jesus just saved this woman from a life of pain. I think that sometimes in the church the same thing happens. We get caught up in the rules and not necessarily in the fact that something miraculous is happening. Is the liturgy any less valid if it is served in the parking lot with no vestments, or rather in a splendid cathedral with all the trappings of the church. Now don’t get me wrong, I love that stuff, but is it necessary? The guys and gals serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have church on the back of HumV and the priest, if there is one, serves in his fatigues with his body armor on and maybe, has a stole on. Is this a valid service?
There is this term that we use in Orthodoxy called Convertitis. This is an affliction for us converts that we get hung up on all of the rules of the church and not on what the rules are for we cannot see the forest through the trees. Can we have oil today, is meat allowed this time of year, was my metania low enough, are the candles in the right place, did I say 300 Jesus Prayers and is my prayer rope tied right around my wrist. These are the kinds of questions that we converts ask ourselves. Notice I lumped myself in there…
What Jesus is saying here is not that the rules don’t matter but sometimes there are more important things than the rules. We have liturgical rules for a reason, so we don’t have priests just making things up, even though they do! The point is that sometimes for pastoral reasons we change things.
What is important is the Cross, the grave, the third day Resurrection as we say in the liturgy. That’s what is important. Sometimes how we get there is not as important as what we do when we get there.
Liturgical Language
My last post has started me thinking about language. Now I hope I do not insult anyone with my ramblings but I have been thinking of this for sometime now. How do we, the Orthodox Church, grow in this country? In many places immigrants are still arriving and sustaining parishes. But here in the village for example there has not been an immigrant for years. How do we reach converts or others and bring them into the church? The name of my parish is St. Michael’s Romanian Orthodox Church. All of our liturgical services are in English with a sprinkling of Romanian. However, when one looks for a church, and sees the word Romanian or Greek, or Albanian I think one would assume that everything would be in that language. If you do not speak that language, then your not going to show up.
My parish is third generation and many of the parishioners no longer speak the language and the language that they do speak is a very different dialect of Romanian than people speak now. As a historian I look at things from history and allow history to color things for me. When Christianity was on the move and spreading into various places on the earth, the church of the east spread faster in places than the church of the west. One reason for that was that the missionaries did not use their own language they would learn the local language and have services in the vernacular. St. Herman of Alaska, Enlightener of North America and one of American Orthodoxy’s greatest saint, came from Russia but learned the local Alaskan language and taught the people.
Now fast forward to today, and if one comes to an Orthodox Church, for the most part, they have to learn another language. I said this last night and I have seen this in my own Romanian Archdiocese as well. I love that people will just assume that you speak the language of the people. Folks would come up to me last night speaking Greek. I barely speak English let alone Greek or even Romanian for that matter. Anyway I digress, again…
So what do we do? The attendance at Vespers last night showed me that in some parishes using another language other than English does not hurt, but if I was to switch to Romanian here in my parish I would loose people. What is the answer? How do we proceed into the next generation? How many people have we lost from our churches because the liturgical language is a language that they do not speak anymore? Are we holding on to things that are hurting us and a people rather then preserving us? These are hard questions to answer and have caused many heated discussions over the years. Language is culture, and culture defines us as a people. And we should hold on to that. It makes me sad that many people here no longer speak the language that their ancestors spoke, but I guess that is progress.
I don’t have the answers and I am not sure there are answers to many of these questions. But, I feel, if Orthodoxy is going to survive on this land of ours, then we need to adapt and change linguistically so we don’t loose anyone else.
Comments? But please be nice…
St. Spyridon Vespers
Last night I had the opportunity to attend Vespers at St. Spyridon cathedral in Worcester. What a wonderful night filled with much prayer. About 400 people were in attendance as well as about a dozen or so priests and a deacon. His Eminence Metr. Methodios was there and it is always nice to serve with a bishop. The choir from Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, MA provided the music and it was truly prayerful. My only comment would be that Vespers was served almost entirely in Greek. This is such a shock when I come from my little parish here in the village where all services are in English. However, one can still pray regardless of the language, God understands us all.
I also met some fans of the Blog. I did not realize that people actually read this thing. Yes some people leave comments and the site meter tells me that over 700 people have come by, but I wonder if people really read what I write. So a shout out to Pres. Joanna who I met last night. Thanks for reading and thanks for saying hello last night.
Today
Today promises to be a little quiet and I like that. I have a meeting at 12pm at the funeral home to make the arrangements for the funeral this week. After that Vespers at St. Spyridon Cathedral in Worcester in celebration of there feast day tomorrow. One of the great things about being here in the Worcester area is that there are 12 Orthodox Churches and all of the priests work very well together. We support one another in many ways, and going to service at each others churches is one of those ways. Sometimes there are more clergy there than laity but that is okay. All that matters is that we join together in prayer.
Yesterday was very busy and not my usual Sunday. After Liturgy, I had to leave coffee hour early and I don’t like to do that, I attended the festive banquet for our sister parish St. Nicholas in Shrewsbury. What a wonderful time and His Eminence Archbishop Nicolae of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese was there. It is always nice to be able to see ones bishop. The last time I was with him was in July in Chicago. He is very interested in how we are doing in our parishes and always asks about people that he has met. He is a very spiritual man I am for one am happy to have him as our bishop. He is young and energetic and is breathing new life into the archdiocese.
I will post some of my thoughts from the Sunday Scripture readings latter on today.
Conception of the Theotokos
Today, those of us in the Easter Church, celebrate the Conception by St. Anna of the Holy Theotokos. Yesterday the Western Church celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Celebrating the same feast but in different ways. The difference in the two feasts revolve around the understanding of Ancestoral or Original Sin. The difference comes in how the sin is transmitted and what needs to happen for the sin to be removed. This is a topic for a longer post so for now we can just say that in the Orthodox tradition the sin is inherited but not the stain or guilt of the sin therefore the Theotokos did not need to be Immaculaty Concived by her parents.
Here is a little snipit from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Website about the fest:
According to the ancient tradition of the Church, since Saint Anna, the Ancestor of God, was barren, she and her husband Joachim remained without children until old age. Therefore, sorrowing over their childlessness, they besought God with a promise that, if He were to grant them the fruit of the womb, they would offer their offspring to Him as a gift. And God, hearkening to their supplication, informed them through an Angel concerning the birth of the Virgin. And thus, through God’s promise, Anna conceived according to the laws of nature, and was deemed worthy to become the mother of the Mother of our Lord
I am working on the longer post so stay tunned.
Update: I found this great essay that I think will answer all of the questions. Written by Rev. Fr. Antony Hughes, Rector of St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I don’t think I could do a better job. I am not a theologian, I am a historian and I think Fr. Antony has done fine work here.