E-Zine Article: Love and Liturgics by Fr. Apostolos Hill
When I was a much younger man and had first met my wife I was oftentimes quite ridiculous. I admit this freely! Denise and I look back on those days leading up to our wedding now and chuckle. For I would frequently get off of work late in an evening, hop in my little yellow Chevette, and drive 35 miles to her parents’ home in the country just to see her for a half-hour or so before driving another 35 miles back home. I easily spent 3 times as much time in my car than I did with her but I didn’t care. Being with her was the highlight of my day (and still is) and I traversed every mile joyfully. And then when I got back to my house I would even call her again before turning in for the night. I really can’t say much to my kids today about excessive telephone use when I remember the untold hours I spent on the phone with Denise.
No one had to prod me or remind me to drive out to Denise’s house. Seeing her was and is never onerous or burdensome, never an obligation but always, only a great joy. I kept and still keep pictures of her close at hand so that when we were apart I could be reminded of her. And no one ever had to remind me to do nice things for her, to remember her birthday, or our anniversary, or St. Valentine’s day. Seeking to please her and to bring a smile to her face was and is as natural as breathing.
Years later, I am reminded of these sweet memories at the oddest times. For instance, when I find myself standing in front of the holy altar for one of the many divine services we enjoy in our Cathedral parish and I get a glimpse of the great mystery of God’s love for us and how far it surpasses our own, even the intense love of a young starry-eyed engaged couple, I stand in awe of it. God’s love for us so lavishly demonstrated in the coming of the Son of Man into the world and His giving of His body and blood to us in the eucharistic gifts so that we might be in union with Him stuns me to silence.
But the real curiosity for me stems from the degree to which Orthodox in this country today hold the precious gift of His love and our participation in it in the divine services of the Church in such slight regard. I don’t mean for this column to devolve into a screed but I am absolutely mystified at the institutionalization of our meager liturgical life these days. Understand that, not having been raised Orthodox and not having enjoyed in my youth the full flowering of prayer as it resides in the liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church, I’ve not yet learned to take it for granted. For me, the sine quo non of my prayer life is to gather together as a praying community and offer our collective prayers to the God who listens. That so few even make the attempt to do so today strikes me as a monumental tragedy.
Blessed as we are with a beautiful edifice in which to worship, we are a magnet site in Denver for Cathedral tours. School groups, retirement centers, non-Orthodox catechism classes, civic groups, and others frequently come to the Cathedral to see the splendor of our iconography. And typically during these tours and presentations the question will arise; “What is being Orthodox all about?” One could respond to such a question in a myriad of ways. But I always speak first about prayer as I tell them that if they really don’t like praying, coming frequently to church for services, saying one’s prayers in the home and throughout the day, they may not really find Orthodoxy to their liking since, at least in my estimation, to be Orthodox is to pray. And yet I have begun to feel a bit uneasy about such brash statements when I look at the very sparse participation in our services.
That virtually no one attends Sunday Orthros these days has been long recognized as established fact. That Saturday and festal Vespers services, where they are still even scheduled, attract only that mere handful of “religious fanatics” or people with “nothing better to do” goes un-remarked and unchallenged. That the vast majority of Sunday Church goers arrive whimsically at any time of their choosing, even as late as “With the fear of God, faith, and love draw near” has become so entrenched is taken as normal.
How did we arrive at so pitiable a state?
In the interest of full disclosure I would have to start by assessing blame to us celebrants. Sir Thomas More’s famous maxim to King Henry the 8th that “silence gives consent” comes here to mind. Inappropriate actions become bad habits if left unchecked and uncorrected. Correction of such actions carries inherent risks but as priests we are called to lovingly correct as part and parcel of our, or more specifically Christ’s, priestly ministry. And many people have come to be abused of the strangest and most heterodox notions of what the divine services are all about. Some attend the services to “hear the beautiful music,” others to “witness the pageantry” of the liturgy, and still others to hear beloved languages and affirm national and cultural affinities, all quite laudable aims I suppose but quite irrelevant to what corporate prayer is all about. For, correctly understood, leitourgia is about none of these things. Rather it is about the leitos, the people of God, offering up their ergon, their energy and efforts to God in prayer. The very word “liturgy” then implies an active and not a passive role on the part of those present. Again, here I blame us as celebrants for allowing the malaise of non-participation to fester unchecked. Is it little wonder that our people today deem the liturgical tradition of the Church to be quite irrelevant to their day-to-day lives when – even when they attend the services – they are relegated to the role of passive observer? I have even heard Orthodox people tell me “You know, Father, I don’t need to go to Church to pray!” Or, “I can feel close to God anywhere.” I have even heard Orthodox people tell me that in lieu of regular attendance at the divine services they enjoy listening to their favorite self-styled televangelist! Now, as a former protestant, I might have expected to hear such unenlightened pap to come tumbling out of the mouths of the heterodox but to hear it from our own parishioners is staggering!
This unhappy situation has given rise to a false dichotomy today vis-à-vis our own orientation toward the services. One the one hand there are those who neglect the services and dismiss the form and formulae of the typikon is quite meaningless. For them, we are free to change, alter, cut, and experiment with our liturgies as our whims direct with no appeal whatsoever to the liturgical traditions of the Church or the blessing and oversight of our Hierarchs, without which we skate on very thin ice. And on the other hand we see an entrenchment of rigid rubrical formulae such that one begins to wonder if we’re worshipping a liturgy or worshipping God in a liturgy. When, as recorded in the second chapter of St. Mark’s gospel, the Lord was questioned by the Pharisees about the disciples eating ears of corn on the Sabbath, he replied; “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” (ver. 27) Both positions are extreme in that both fail to address the very real spiritual needs of an American Orthodox community now largely ignorant of their own spiritual heritage of prayer. Our situation is like that of an heir to vast riches living in squalid poverty because he doesn’t know what he possesses.
Our people today are wandering in needless ignorance through a mine field of soul-corrupting entertainments and distractions and the remedy that they need but do not know to seek is to be found in a return to our corporate life of prayer. In the divine services of the Church time itself is rendered sacred. Xronos, that unrelenting time of Shakespeare’s refrain “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day and all our yesterday’s have lighted fools the way to dusty death,” becomes for us the kairon of the Kingdom of God. Our people need not carry the weighty burden of meaningless time. In the offering up of the eucharistic gifts matter itself and all of the cosmos is rendered sacred as an offering to Christ in response to His love. We are twice sacred, having been created in His Image and then having been redeemed by His coming. Our people need to know that God’s loving providence is not limited to Sunday mornings. They must come to see themselves, their families, and everything that possess as a gift from God. And in the offering up of the eucharistic gifts, work and human toil find their ultimate fulfillment as well. We don’t offer up mere grapes and stalks of wheat but bread and wine. We are invited to “work together with” – in synergeia – the Holy Spirit to offer Him the elements to be transformed in the Divine Liturgy by which we are united to Him in the one chalice.
Like my opening muse on the youthful exuberance of young love, we must come to see our life of prayer in the Church not in the cold transactional language of “obligation” or (Panagia mou!) “good luck.” Instead, we must enter into the life of prayer as an offering up of our love for God. Is it that we don’t love God today and so disregard being with Him or is it that we don’t know how to love God because the link between the divine services and our spiritual life has been so long neglected? To be an Orthodox Christian is to pray, just as to be in love with someone is to desire that person’s presence. Desire is the missing element! God’s desire for us is so strong that He stops at nothing to demonstrate it for us. Conversely, our desire for Him is or seems to be so meager that being in His presence in the divine services is just not worth the effort.
What’s to be done to correct this very sad state?
Do we throw up our hands and simply say; “well the real Church has always been very small,” and descend into a type of fortress mentality, holding the services as our own unique property to be meted out only to those few who share our enthusiasm? I pray not. Christ the Good Shepherd bids us leave the ninety and nine to pursue the one so we must surely leave the one to pursue the ninety and nine! Do we continue to forego the liturgical tradition of the Holy Church of Christ in favor of programs, concerts, lectures, sports, festivals, cultural events, committees, and whatever new idea blows into our midst from the flea-market of popular religion? God spare us from such a fate!
We need to first become persons of prayer ourselves for we cannot give to others that which we do not first possess. We need to foster a love for prayer and for standing in Christ’s loving presence. We need to kneel at the feet of the Crucified One and beg his mercy on us that we might complete our lives according to His designs. And having done this, we must patiently but relentlessly teach and educate our parishes to connect to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the divine services of the Church. A return to pastoral liturgics is needed to move beyond the entrenched/whimsical paradigm we are held in thrall to today. Kat oikonomeia, or “by economy” only works if it stems from an awareness of what has always been considered normal. But it breaks down if our traditions are forgotten and we’re just making it up as we go along.
Let us so love Jesus Christ that being with Him in our daily personal prayers and in our corporate life of liturgical prayer becomes for us our raison d’etre and not merely an afterthought. Let us learn or re-learn to live our lives in a liturgical way, according to the rhythm of the Church’s life of corporate prayer. And in so doing let us leave behind the tired husk of dead quasi-religion and pseudo-spirituality that masquerades as a living faith today. To do anything less is to deny the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the peril of the souls of men and women for whom He came and bled and died and rose from the dead as Lord and Victor. May it never be said of us that we have “neglect(ed) so great a salvation” (Heb. 2:3) “Not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Heb. 10:25).
In Christ,
Fr. Apostolos Hill