THE MALANKARA ORTHODOX LITURGY

Holy Qurbana Since the 17th century, the Malankara Orthodox Church uses the Syrian Orthodox Liturgy, which belongs to the Antiochene liturgical tradition. The East Syrian (Persian), Byzantine, Armenian, Georgian, Maronite liturgies also belong to the same liturgical family. In the first half of the fifth century, the Antiochene Church adopted the anaphora of Jerusalem, known under the name of St James, the brother of Our Lord. In the forth and the fifth centuries, the liturgical language of Jerusalem and Antioch was Greek. Therefore, the original form of St James liturgy was composed in Greek. Following the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Eastern Church was divided into two, one group accepting the council and the other opposing it. Both groups continued to use the Greek version of St James. The Byzantine emperor Justin (518-527) expelled the Non-Chalcedonians from Antioch and they took refuge in the Syriac speaking Mesopotamia on the Roman-Persian Border (modern Eastern Syria, Iraq and South East Turkey). Gradually, the Antiochene liturgical rites were translated into Syriac. New elements such as Syriac hymns were introduced into it. It was Mar Gregorios of Jerusalem, who came to Malankara in 1665 who introduced Syrian Orthodox liturgical rites in our Church. The most striking characteristic of the Antiochene liturgy is the large number of anaphoras (Order of the celebration of the Eucharist). About 80 are known and about a dozen are used in India. All of them have been composed following the model of St James. Structure of the Eucharist 1.Preparation rites (tuyobo):The important elements of the preparation rites are the vesting of the celebrant and the preparation of the bread and wine on the altar. The priest places the bread in the paten and pours the wine in the chalice and holds them in the form of a cross. Then he remembers the names of the faithful, the sick and the departed. Then he places the paten and the chalice on the altar and covers them with the veil (Sosappa). The preparation rites are concluded with censing. 2. Public celebration or Pre-anaphora:The pre-anaphora begins with a solemn procession around the altar. Formerly at this time the bread and wine were solemnly brought to the altar in a procession. During the procession, the congregation sings the anthem (manitho) composed by Patriarch Mar Severios of Antioch (+518). This entrance hymn is a beautiful summary of our doctrine of Christ. In fact there are several liturgical hymns and prayers that describe the faith of the Church in a rather simple style. After the procession, the priest begins the Trisagion, which is addressed to Christ. 3. Reading of the Scriptures:Then the Epistles and the Gospel are read. Formerly, the lessons from the Old Testament were also read at this moment. The Gospel is the “life-giving proclamation” of the words and deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our worship and our hope are founded on the salvific work and the life-giving words pf the Lord. In the early Church, the Scripture reading was followed by the sermon, a custom still followed by many Churches. Sermon is an important element of the worship and it aims at explaining the meaning and relevance of the text that was read. 4. Promiun-Sedra and the Blessing of the Censor.The Syriac word Sedra means ‘row’ or ‘series’. Sedra is a series of prayers and meditations. Promiun (Greek word means introduction) is the introduction to Sedra. Promiun and sedra help us to participate in the Holy Qurbana with devotion and attention. Then as the first step of the censing of the whole church, the celebrant offers incense and blesses the censer. The blessing of the censer in the Name of the Holy Trinity implies that we offer our prayers to the Triune God. Incense and censer are the symbols of Christ, who “offered Himself as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph.5:2). According to the Book of Revelation, ‘the prayers of the saints ascend before God as an incense’ (Rev.5:8). Therefore the offering of incense means that the prayers of the Church ascend towards God as a fragrant offering that pleases God. 5. The Nicene Creed:Creed is the summary of the faith of the Church since the apostolic times. Chanting of the Creed in the Holy Qurbana and in all prayers and sacramental celebrations means that we are worshiping in accordance with the faith of the apostles and the Church fathers. Creed is the confession of our faith in the Holy Trinity, the Church, one baptism, the Kingdom of God and the final resurrection. These fundamental doctrines are regularly evoked in our prayers. 6. Offering of the Holy Qurbana:The part of the celebration that follows the Creed is called ‘Anaphora’ (Greek word means ‘offering’). As the first step, the priest washes his hands, symbolizing the purification of the heart. Then he kneels down before the altar and says an inaudible prayer and commemorates the names. 7. Kiss of peace and the lifting up of the veil:Kiss of peace is exchanged in accordance with our Lord’s words to reconcile each other before offering a sacrifice (Mtt.5:23-24). Then the deacon asks the people to bow down their heads and the priest prays God to send His blessings upon those who have assembled before Him. Then the priest lifts up the veil with which the paten and chalice are covered. The lifting up symbolizes that the life-giving and heavenly mysteries are revealed through the Holy Qurbana. This is followed by the Trinitarian blessing. 8. Introductory Dialogue:With the dialogue (Lift up your hearts…, Let us give thanks to the Lord..) the central part of the celebration begins. The priest says the prayer of thanksgiving, which evokes God’s mercy towards us. In fact the whole Holy Qurbana is a thanksgiving (Eucharist) for the great things that God had done for us by sending His Son for our salvation. Then the congregation chants the ‘Sanctus’ (= holy) or the angelic hymn (Is.6: 3), implying that we are joining the heavenly worship and praising God along with innumerable angels. 9. Words of Institution:The celebrant signs crosses over the bread and wine proclaiming the institution of the Eucharist by Christ in His Last Supper. Thus the event that took place in the Upper-room has been evoked and we are made participants in it. The Roman Catholic Church gives undue importance to the Words of Institution and teaches that the bread and wine are ‘transformed’ into the body and blood of Christ when the priest pronounces them. This is known as ‘transubstantiation’ and the Orthodox Churches do not accept this theory. 10. Anamnesis or the Commemoration of the Salvific works:During the Last Supper, Our Lord instructed His disciples : “Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk.22:16; 1 Cor.14:24-25). Following this commandment, the priest evokes the events in the earthly life of our Lord and His second coming. The Holy Qurbana has been founded on the salvific works of our Lord and it anticipates His second coming and the life in the coming world. 11. Invocation of the Holy Spirit (Epiclesis)Invocation of the Holy Spirit is one of the characteristic traits of the Orthodox liturgy. In the Anaphora of St James, we ask God the Father to “ send the Holy Spirit upon us and upon the Eucharist placed on the altar”. The Holy Spirit descends and makes the bread and the wine the very body and blood of Christ. The same Spirit comes and abides in us to make us the Church, the Body of Christ. 12. Intercessions (Tubden):The intercessions contain six canons (‘set of prayers’), each consisting of three prayers. The first three canons commemorate the living and the rest the departed. The intercessions are the prayers for the well being of the whole members of the Church, both living and the departed. Among the departed saints, we remember those who have lived as witnesses to Christ, especially the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, the martyrs, and all the doctors of the Church who have zealously guarded the apostolic faith. 13. Fraction:The fraction ceremony is the preparation for the communion. The prayer during the fraction evokes the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, the living bread who was “broken” on the cross for our salvation. 14. The Lord’s Prayer:Here the Lord’s Prayer serves as the preparatory prayer for receiving the Holy Communion. The phrase Give us this day our daily bread has been often interpreted as a request for the Holy Communion. At the end of the Qurbana, we address God “Our Father” and thus we confess that we are His sons through our communion with Christ. 15. Holy Things to the Holy:This is an invitation to receive the Holy Qurbana, as well a warning about its sacredness. The entire congregation cries out: The One Holy Father…Holy Son, the Holy Spirit with us. This means that through the Holy Qurbana, we have been granted communion with the Holy Trinity. Then the service is concluded with the Kukliun, which a cycle of prayers seeking the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the saints, as well as commemorating the departed priests and faithful. 16. Holy Communion and the Thanksgiving:The priest first receives the communion, followed by all those who are in the Madbaha. Then the Holy Mysteries are brought to the people to communicate them. In the thanksgiving prayer that follows, the priest gives thanks to God for His abundant mercy “wherewith He has made us worthy to partake of His heavenly table”. With the dismissal, the celebration is concluded. Meaning of the Holy QurbanaHoly Qurbana is our participation in the Body and Blood of Christ. This faith has been founded on Our Lord’s words during the Last Supper (This is my Body..my Blood..). Following our Lord’s instruction Do this in remembrance of Me, we offer the Holy Qurbana. St Paul says: “ As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor.11:26). Since the apostolic times, Holy Qurbana was the central act of the Sunday worship (cfr. Acts 20:7). Since the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ, St Paul instructs to participate in it with great devotion and care (1 Cor.11:27-28). According to St Paul, through our participation in the one Eucharistic bread we become one in Christ: “ The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? Because there is one bread, we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17). In fact, the goal of the incarnation was to unite the humanity as the sons of God, because, as a result of sin, we had become alienated from God. Baptism and Eucharist are the means to bring human beings into union with Christ. Sacraments, daily prayers, Bible reading, the faith of the Church, all have one aim to make us one in Christ. The Church and its arrangements, especially the symbols help us to meditate on Christ and to live in communion with Him and to worship the Triune God. Meaning of the Symbols:Symbols represent invisible divine realities. They are the means of creating a sense of divine presence. A symbol can either be an object or an action. Bread, wine, chalice, paten, altar, cross, candles, and censer are some of the symbols that we use in the celebration of the Holy Qurbana. They are used to express the depth of the meaning of the celebration and its divine character. The use of symbols is not against the teaching of the Bible. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel used a large number of symbols. The second commandment prohibits the making of ‘graven image, or any likeness of anything in heaven, on earth or in sea’ (Ex.20:4). But the Jews never understood it as a prohibition of the use of symbols in their worship. Thus they considered the temple of Jerusalem and the objects in it as most holy. The temple, the altar and the Ark of the Covenant were the symbols of God’s presence in the midst of Israel. The cover of the ark, known as ‘the mercy seat’ and the images of two cherubim above it were considered as the most important liturgical objects (Ex.25:10-22). The cover of the ark was qualified as Yahweh’s throne or footstool. Christianity has inherited the custom using symbols from the Old Testament. Revd.Dr.B.VargheseProfessor,Orthodox Theological Seminary, Kottayam source: http://malankaraorthodoxchurch.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=242

American Orthodoxy?

An interesting post from The Ochlophobist in which he reflects on the difficulties of embodying the Orthodox faith in American culture. He offers five comments that are worth reflecting on: 1. What authentic human culture existed in American locals in prior generations is now dead, even if it remains in caricature form. Thus Orthodoxy is not to "incarnate" into American culture, or to save or baptize American culture. There is no authentic American culture anymore. Orthodoxy in America must seek to create an American culture. There are certain local cultural "ingredients" which might be used, but what needs to be sought is a new cultural creation. 2. This can only be done by coming to terms with the secularism that rules American life and disabuses what would otherwise be authentic American cultural forms. Until we acknowledge the pervasiveness of secularism and its dreadful hold on virtually all aspects of our lives, we are simply playing the games of boutique religion. 3. The fundamental problem - if one seeks for Orthodoxy to become fully fleshed and blooded in America, completely embedded in the existential ethos of this place and people, how does one go about it in a pluralist society in which all things are sought (usually with success) to be commodified and delegated to a percentage of market share? How does one avoid, on the one hand, becoming a particularly placed fleshed and blooded micro-culture that is separationist (the Amish), or, on the other hand, how does one avoid becoming a religious movement which fully collaborates with secular materialist culture (Evangelicalism)? Assuming that we do not want to run to the hills, how do we fully confront and transform an ever morphing ethereal pluralist materialist übercommodified anti-culture? 4. Should we even be seeking the transformation of America at large? America is colossal, too big in any number of ways. Would it not be more modest, and might it not be more appropriate with regard to discernable human culture, to seek rather a Delta Orthodoxy, an Upper-Midwestern Orthodoxy, a New England Orthodoxy, an Appalachian Orthodoxy, a Pacific Northwestern Orthodoxy, a Canadian plains Orthodoxy, and so forth? 5. There must be no agenda. As soon as we have as our agenda to “win America for Christ” Orthodoxy style, we have become one agenda competing in a saturated market of agendas, and we have then condemned ourselves to petty market share. The American Orthodoxy of mission statements and evangelism strategies is simply more of the Evangelicalish-materialist banality. If there is to be a full existentially realized Orthodox culture in America, it must come to be because this is what Orthodoxy is, how she realizes herself in a place. There is a charismatic and fragile human element to this. Such will not be brought about because Orthodoxy has been marketed well. Ironically, those most concerned with religious market success doom Orthodoxy to cultural failure, precisely because they do not understand their own commitments to secularist materialism, and the fact that there can be no Orthodox-secularist culture that is truly a culture. Not to mention the pragmatically obvious – that in a pluralist-materialist setting, Orthodoxy will never rise above the fray of constant competition (a competition which assumes and implicitly teaches a fundamental relativism among competing truth claims) and the trite mechanisms associated with such an environment. American Orthodoxy?The OchlophobistWed, 30 Apr 2008 11:49:00 GMT My thoughts on the Ochlophobist's comments: Thinking about my own experience of the Orthodox Church both in the "rust belt" and the West Coast, I think Ochlophobist is on to something in point 4. The Orthodox Church on the West coast, and for that matter in much of the Pacific Northwest and old West, is relatively wealthy. Unlike the midwest and middle Atlantic regions, small economically and demographically struggling parishes are relatively (though of course not absolutely) unknown on the West coast (and the Pacific Northwest and Old West). Ethnic identity is also less intense in the western United States. Point 5, the necessary of not having an agenda, is also on target, though I would prefer the notion of detachment to the phrase "no agenda." For better and worse, the large number of ex-Evangelical Christians has set the tone for Orthodox witness here in America. Again, while there has been some good from this, for exactly the reasons outlined by Ochlophobist, I would be hard press to say that this infusion of Evangelical Christian sensibilities is a good thing. While yes, we must take Evangelical Christianity seriously as the religious language of American society, it often seems that it embodies a religious world view that as commodified as the wider American milieu. And then there is the toxic convergence of phyletism and Evangelical sectarianism that especially, though not exclusively, on the West coast takes the form of 19th century Russian peasant chic (i.e., let's all dress as we imagine the dressed and spoke in Holy Russian in the golden age of the 19th Century--think a rather distressing tendency of some converts to dress like Fundamentalist Later Day Saints.) Where I might disagree (and his and your comments are welcome on this point) from the Ochlophobist is with his assessment of American culture--or rather the absence of an American culture. Here I think I would say that yes, on a popular level at least, American society is increasingly less humane--less humanistic in the best sense of the term. But there is underneath this popular culture, a deeper, more humane, more humanistic culture grounded not simply in the Enlightenment, but also in some of the best of western culture (in is hard for me to read Thomas Jefferson and NOT hear echoes of Aquinas). We see this deeper culture evident not simply in the classical works of American political philosophy (e.g., the Declaration of Independence and the supporting literature, but also the US Constitution and its apology in the The Federalist Papers, and before that the writings of de Tocqueville) and contemporary thinkers in that tradition (for example, John Courtney Murray). And then there is the range of American literature, novelists, short story writers and essays, as well as the arts, musicals and films to which we can appeal to as embodying the best of American culture as such. All that said, I think Ochlophobist is on to something--we are not as a Church prepared to actually incarnate the faith in an American context. This is not, I hasten to add, primary a matter of a deficient theological education. No, it is not that we do not understand the Fathers (though there is much work that needs to be done there for sure), but that we do not understand the foundations of the very society in which we live. As I have alluded to at other times, putting aside for the moment our interest in Orthodox theology, there is to my view of things, a very disturbing anti-Western, and really anti-intellectual, trend in the Church. As a quick example, more often than I care to recount, I have sat with Greek immigrants and Greek-Americans who were quite proud of the Greek language, but woefully ignorant of classical Greek philosophy and literature. More than once, I have found that I was the only one at the table who had read Aristotle or Homer. What I'm getting at is this, to embody the faith in American means that we need to not only be well grounded in that faith, but also the deep cultural roots of America. Sadly, and this is significantly weaker a word that I would like to use, for many Orthodox Christians the point of being in the Church (and this includes not only "converts" but also "cradle" Orthodox) is to NOT have to wrestle with the culture. In a word, for all our newly found evangelical enthusiasm, we remain sectarian. We are more interested in the "low hanging fruit" of unhappy Evangelical Christians, mainline Protestants and disappointed Catholic and Episcopalians then we are in really doing the work required to present ourselves as a credible alternative to secular culture. To use a phrase I heard recently, we are concerned more with "nickels and noses" than in doing the hard work of transfiguring American culture. So thanks to the Ochlophobist for his usual insightful and provocative obsevations. In Christ, +Fr Gregory source: http://palamas.blogspot.com/

Priestly Attire

In issue no. 6 of The Russian Pastor, an article by Archpriest BorisKizenko, "Do not associate yourself with this age," was printed. There hetouched upon the question of whether or not priests should wear theircassocks or riasa. I would like to share a few thoughts on this matter. Very often in the sphere of Church laws and traditions we, for one reason oranother, allow ourselves to compromise these laws. In our society today, thereasons and circumstances for such compromises can seem very justifiable.However, the danger lies in the fact that any compromise can becomehabitual, and the compromised behavior then becomes the norm, giving rise tofurther compromises and a general degradation of standards. Fr. Boris veryaptly describes this progression in his article. At a time when we areperhaps at risk of completely losing the ideal in the realm of priestlyattire, it is fitting to review the Church rules and directives concerningthe attire of a priest, as well as look at some examples from contemporarylife which shed light on this question. 1) The 27th Canon of the 6th Ecumenical Council states: "None who is countedwith the clergy should dress inappropriately, when in the city, nor whentravelling. Each should use the attire which was appointed for clergymembers. If someone breaks this rule, may he be deprived of serving for oneweek." Here everything is clear. If you do not wish to wear a priest's clothing, donot dare to stand before the altar of God. 2) The great interpreter of Church Canons, Balsamon, in his interpretationof the 14th canon of the 7th Ecumenical Council, which speaks of theordination of readers, notes: "He who has put on black attire with thepurpose of entering the clergy, cannot remove it, for he has stated hisintent of serving God and therefore cannot break his promise to God andridicule this holy image, as other ridiculers do." If constant wearing of "black attire" is expected of the first rank of thepriesthood, the reader, then all the more does it refer to those who arefully in the rank of the priesthood. 3) In the questioning period of the candidate before the ordination, thecandidate to the priesthood, in the presence of his spiritual father makesthe following promise: "I promise to wear the clothing appropriate to mypriestly rank, not to cut my hair nor my beard... for through such unseemlybehavior I risk belittling my rank and tempting believers" (Promise #5). It is important to note here that, in confirmation of his promise thecandidate kisses the Gospel and the Cross and signs his name. 4) The 16th rule for the priests of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad says:"A priest, who is fully supported by his parish, and is given theopportunity not to work at a secular job, should have the appearance of anOrthodox priest, that is, should have long hair, a beard, a riasa, wear across of a proper style, and not one he has thought of himself and in hisexternal appearance fully exemplify a true pastor." We must remember that if the Church canons and laws were not important, theChurch would not have written them. Physician heal thyself. I must admit, that I am a young priest, and at timesfind it very difficult to follow the above rules. There are times when one'snerves are raw, and I want to go somewhere with my Matushka and children andnot stand out, i.e., be "one of the crowd." I am overweight, and in thesummer it is hard to bear the heat in my cassock. Yet all this merelyexposes my weakness, my lack of desire to constantly be a confessor of myfaith; my lack of desire to suffer for Christ even to the most microscopicdegree. In my battle with this weakness, I have found inspiration in a fewtrue life accounts, which I would like to share. The Matushka of one priest, who serves in one large American city, wherepagan and Satanic cults are rampant, told me of this incident: Batiushka always wore either his cassock or riasa with his cross. After hisarrival in the city, he grew accustomed to the fact that, when walking alonga street, or in stores, some people reacted to him with hatred. Some evenhissed at him openly as they walked by, others would actually spit at him.All this Batiushka interpreted as attacks of servants of Satan, upon apriest of Christ. Once it happened that he and Matushka were walking alongthe sidewalk in the main business district of the city. Suddenly, a womanwho looked like a witch jumped out in front of him. She started to scream athim with a frightening voice of a sickly cat, and gestured threateninglywith her arms, as if she wanted to scratch out his eyes. Then sheimmediately disappeared into the crowd. The priest and his wife made thesign of the cross and continued on their way, having grown accustomed tosuch occurrences. But then Matushka realized something. This time, for somereason, Batiushka was in secular attire. Nothing in his external appearanceshowed that he was an Orthodox priest. Even his long hair and beard werenothing exceptional in contemporary circumstances. It is clear that a priest in a spiritual plane is always a priest, even whenhe is not dressed properly. The evil powers feel this and most probably arepleased with our "compromises." A certain priest decided to have a photograph of himself made. He put on hiscoat and hat. For some reason he was embarrassed to be photographed with across on. He took the cross off and put it into his left coat pocket. Thephotograph was taken, developed and printed. To the amazement of both thephotographer and the priest, on the photograph there was a huge ray (byshadows one can see that this ray is not from the sun), which pointed to thepocket, where the hidden cross lay. Batiushka asked to have this publishedafter his death. In a small parish of the Russian Church Abroad, because of the size of thecongregation, the rector holds a secular job. He works as a nurse in a localhospital. I was certain that he removes his cassock when he goes to work.However to my surprise, I discovered that this Batiushka works in hiscassock, putting a lab coat on top of it. This is regarded with respect byboth medical personnel and the patients. Often many patients even requestthat the "priest-nurse" take care of them. Concerned about the question, "should and can a priest possible always weara cassock?", I began asking the grown children of elderly or deceasedpastors, whether or not their fathers always wore a cassock. Almost everyonehas answered in the affirmative, recalling that they rarely saw theirfather-priest without a cassock. There are even cases where the childrensaid that they never saw their father without a cassock. This means that therequirement of the Church is possible to fulfill with God's help. One onlyneeds to try. A priest of a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. From Orthodox Life, Vol. 41, No. 1, (Jan-Feb 1991), pp. 26-29. Translated byMatushka Maria Naumenko from Russkiy Pastyr (The Russian Pastor) #7.+ + +Proper Clerical Dress You make a religion of robes, beards, and long hair. I know that the churchcanons say that we should have beards and I know your arguments about longhair. I am unimpressed. I am a follower of Christ, not man-written andman-enforced rules....Robes look weird and cause people to laugh on [sic]us. They do not win over people to Orthodoxy....I dress like a RomanCatholic and you dress like Mohammedan Turks. Who is more in the [sic]tradition? Did you ever hear of anyone being defrocked for what he wears?No. For serving like a lot of you Old Calendarists after he was kicked out?You bet. Case closed....Keep sending your journal, since I find certainuseful purposes for the paper. (Fr. [initials deleted], Canada) Your question, which we received several years ago, despite its somewhatsaucy tone, provides us with an opportunity to clear up certainmisunderstandings about a subject of spiritual importance to contemporaryOrthodox Christians. As you point out, the traditional appearance of anOrthodox Priest‹the attire and grooming which he should maintain at alltimes, both in public and private‹is a matter of canonical regulation. TheSacred Canons of the Church reflect the proper functioning and life of theBody of Christ; they are not simply laws and rules, but guides to the lifein Christ and patterns by which to accommodate the action of the Holy Spiritto our daily activities. They are inspired and binding on all who live inspiritual sobriety and uprightness. And though they are enforced by men‹oneof the clear duties of the clergy, and especially the Bishops, is, in fact,to uphold canonical order‹, they are nonetheless Divinely inspired. TheSacred Canons are also an integral part of Holy Tradition, which, togetherwith Scripture, forms the ground of administrative authority on which ourFaith is built. The inner and outer cassocks traditionally worn by Orthodox clergy are, tothe pious, objects of tremendous respect and veneration. Anyone whoconsiders them "weird" is unenlightened. Nor does anything appointed by theChurch, enveloped as it is in Grace, impede our witness as OrthodoxChristians. Ignorance or simple bigotry account for instances in whichclergymen are ridiculed for dressing in a traditional manner, and thetreatment for ignorance and bigotry is not the abandonment of our customs,but, once again, the enlightenment of those who ridicule us. Moreover, ourtraditional Orthodox clerical dress witnesses openly to the Grace of thePriesthood. Many times our own clergy, who maintain such dress, encounteryoung children who, yet untainted by the vanity of the world, will turn totheir parents and remark, "Look, it¹s Jesus." Such incidents speak forthemselves and attest to the importance and nature of Orthodox Priestlyattire. The idea that the traditional dress of an Orthodox Priest has itroots in Turkish vesture‹whether secular or religious‹is a contrived pieceof historical fantasy that has often been used to justify contemporaryinnovations in clerical garb. Under the Turkish yoke, certain changes in cutand style can be observed in monastic and Priestly dress, but these areinsignificant. Our clerical styles predate the Moslem yoke, and indeed itwas from the Desert Fathers, who inhabited many of the areas where Islamfirst flourished, that the Islamic clergy took many of their customs‹fromthe robes that they wear to the minarets (which are modeled on thestructures in which the ancient Stylites lived and prayed, that is,"pillars" with a small cubicle on top). The round white collar, bib, and business suit which you call "RomanCatholic" clerical dress is neither Roman Catholic in origin nor much morethan normal street garb with a special collar. Papist priests, like Orthodoxclergy, dressed in cassocks and special headgear well into this century.Only in the last few decades have they adopted what is actually Protestantclerical clothing or simply street clothes. As for the issue of deposition,let us note, first, that Orthodox clergy have, indeed, been suspended andeven deposed for abandoning traditional clerical dress. St. Evalalios, apredecessor of St. Basil the Great in the See of Cappadocia, deposed his ownson for abandoning traditional Priestly garments for "unsuitable" attire.Second, while clergy in Greece, at least, have been routinely deposed by theNew Calendar State Church for returning to the Patristic (or Old) Calendar,deposition for "Old Calendarism," were it valid‹as the Blessed ElderPhilotheos (Zervakos) once commented‹, would logically force the StateChurch of Greece to depose many of the Fathers of the Church, includingthose who specifically condemned the calendar innovation, in the sixteenthcentury, in three separate Church Councils. We would also remind you that St. John Chrysostomos, deposed falsely and forwhat was his actual fidelity to the Faith, not only refused to recognize hisillicit deposition, but continued to serve, in defiance of what wasmanifestly a spiritually wrong and invalid pronouncement. As such, he set astandard which many Old Calendarists today, falsely maligned and punishedfor acting in good conscience out of reverence for Holy Tradition, haverightly taken as their own. Like him, we trust that many of these mistreatedtraditionalist champions for Orthodoxy will win a Heavenly Crown for theircourage. At the same time, we pray that those who have wronged them anddivided the Church by innovation will escape that fearful "reward" which St.John Chrysostomos himself assigns to ecclesiastical politicians and falseshepherds who misuse the Church¹s powers; that is, Hell. From Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XIV, No. 2&3, pp. 16-18. source: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/clergy_dress.aspx

A Letter Concerning the Views of Frs. Alexander Schmemann and Alexander Men

April 16, 1998 (Old Style)

Dear Brother Petko: Christos Anesti! Christos Boskrese! I greet you in the joy of Pascha, asking for your prayers and the holy blessing of Bishop Photii. My greetings to your clergy and Faithful in Bulgaria. Thank you for your letter and greetings. We have, to the best of our ability, compiled a few statements, in response to Bishop Photii's request, about Father Alexander Schmemann and Father Alexander Men. I hope that they will be helpful to you. In essence, both Father Alexander Schmemann and Father Alexander Men were prominent representatives of the liberal approach to Orthodoxy that is still characteristic, today, of what is often called, here in the West‹and especially in traditionalist circles‹, the "Paris school" of theology (in reference to one faction of the Russian emigre community in France, which was organized under the Eparchy of Metropolitan Evloghy, following his separation from the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad). Calling these two men "liberals" may seem subjective, at first, but in fact Father Alexander considered himself to be a spokesman for a more liberal Orthodoxy and was, from time to time, an outspoken critic of Orthodox traditionalism. This seems almost obvious to us, here in the West, but is, in fact, something rather astonishing to Orthodox in Eastern Europe, who have little knowledge of the kind of renovationism that holds forth in the so-called Orthodox Church in America (known as the Metropolia, before its recognition as an autocephalous Church by the Moscow Patriarchate), a jurisdiction in which Father Alexander spent the greater part of his life and which was an outgrowth of the Eparchy of Metropolitan Evloghy. While not denying that each of these men had some good points to make, or that they were Orthodox by formal confession and conviction, one should be very cautious about their ideas. This is especially true since these ideas enjoy, unfortunately, wide circulation in this post-Communist era, and nowhere more so, perhaps, than in traditionally Orthodox countries like Russia and Bulgaria. Oddly enough, for all his liberal theological tendencies, and in spite of his avowed disdain and not-so-well-disguised hatred for the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), Father Schmemann perhaps unwittingly wrote one of the best defenses of the very ecclesiology of resistance which undergirds our very existence as Churches walled off from innovating "official" Churches like the State Churches of Greece and Bulgaria. In an article entitled "Problems of Orthodoxy in America: The Canonical Problem" (St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, Vol. VIII [1964]), he put to rest what he considered to be patently false ideas about canonicity and ecclesial validity. According to one point of view, Father Schmemann noted, "to be 'canonical' one must be under some Patriarch, or, in general, under some established autocephalous church in the old world" (p. 69). This idea reduces canonicity, he argued, to subordination, which thus becomes the basic principle of ecclesiastical organization, as if a Patriarchate, however venerable, were eo ipso the source of canonicity or legitimacy. By contrast, he opined, "in the genuine Orthodox tradition the ecclesiastical power is itself under the canons and its decisions are valid and compulsory only inasmuch as they comply with the canons. In other terms, it is not the decision of a Patriarch or his Synod that creates and guarantees 'canonicity,' but on the contrary, it is the canonicity of the decision that gives it its true authority and power. Truth and not power, is the criterion, and the canons, not different in this from the dogmas, express the truth of the Church" (p. 73). No Bishop or Synod can make canonical what is uncanonical, any more than either can square the circle. According to Father Schmemann, Bishops who fail to preserve Tradition in its fullness and sanction deviations from the truth of the Church are condemned by the Canons. By this logic, those Hierarchs who not merely sanctioned the New Calendar innovation, but actually imposed it on their respective local Churches, and thereby deviated from the fullness of Tradition, stand condemned by the very Canons which they pledged to uphold when they were Consecrated! Strangely enough, once the former Metropolia, of which Father Schmemann was such a prominent clergyman, received its autocephaly from the Moscow Patriarchate in 1969, renaming itself the "Orthodox Church in America" (OCA), Father Alexander no longer endorsed the ideas that he so eloquently expounded in the aforementioned article. Prior to 1970, the Metropolia was recognized by no "official" Orthodox Church (although it was de facto in communion with some of them). Even in the mid-1980s, as Father Thomas Hopko, one of the leading spokesmen for the OCA and the successor of Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff as Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, has admitted in print, his Church was still awaiting official recognition from the Greek-speaking Patriarchates and from those of Romania and Serbia (see "Fifteen Years of Autocephaly," Sourozh, No. 21 [August 1985], pp. 43-44). In the course of seeking such recognition, the traditional ecclesiology set forth by Father Schmemann in his 1964 article was jettisoned by OCA theologians‹Father Alexander among them, as you can see in his critique of the "Sorrowful Epistle" of Metropolitan Philaret (The Orthodox Church, November 1969)‹in their desire to conform to the ecclesiology of officialdom and "Patriarchalism," if I may coin a term, that is so widespread among modernist Orthodox. In his journey from the Metropolia to Moscow and autocephaly‹an autocephaly which he helped broker in collusion with the Russian Patriarchate while it was still under communist domination!‹, Father Schmemann betrayed his own ecclesiological views, adopted the very attitude against which he had earlier argued, and showed himself to be a theologian of expediency, when the occasion demanded it. Let me emphasize that, as a traditionalist Orthodox believer, I am not guilty of the stupidity and bigotry which is often attributed to critics of Father Alexander by those who have made of him a virtual Church Father. Thus, in a published review of his last book, The Eucharist (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1988), I paid tribute to his "wonderful wisdom about the Eucharist and commentaries on liturgical theology which...are the marks of a provocative and original thinker and scholar." I also noted that this book was "well worth reading" (see The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2 [1989], pp. 173-175). At the same time, I pointed out that I have always had profound misgivings about Schmemann's renovationist approach to liturgical scholarship, arguing, for example, that he not only fails to discover pastoral and spiritual reasons for the development of liturgical rubrics, but likewise virtually never attributes liturgical change to the action of the Holy Spirit. Here, again, we have clear evidence of the better thinking that we sometimes find in Father Alexander, as well as evidence of his shortcomings and deviation from the Patristic consensus. These shortcomings are nowhere more obvious than in Father Schmemann's problematic work, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1975). The late Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, a brilliant theologian and Professor at the Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY, wrote an incisive critique of this work, shortly after its publication, in which he draws attention to the obvious spirit of renovationism that permeates the entire book (see "The Liturgical Theology of Father A. Schmemann," reprinted in Selected Essays [Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996], pp. 82-102). Father Michael cites with astonishment Father Alexander's observation that "Orthodox writers are usually inclined to 'absolutize' the history of worship, to consider the whole of it as divinely established and Providential" (Introduction, p. 72), rightly adding that what looks to the non-Orthodox West (and to those, like Father Schmemann, who were unduly influenced by Western scholarship) like a petrification or fossilization represents for us Orthodox "the finality of growth, the attainment of all possible fullness" (p. 85). By contrast, Father Alexander, "leaving aside the idea of an overshadowing by Divine Grace, the concept of the sanctity of those who established the liturgical order,...limits himself to a naked chain of causes and effects" (p. 86). Schmemann's is scarcely an Orthodox way of explaining liturgical development. It is symptomatic of the darker side of his theology. Father Schmemann, as Father Michael further points out, tends to view the acceptance of Christianity by the Emperor St. Constantine as marking a rupture in the inner structure of the Church's life and as introducing a "liturgical piety," unknown in the early Church, in which the "center of attention is shifted from the living Church to the church building itself, which was until then a simple place of assembly," such that "the temple becomes a sanctuary, a place for the habitation and residence of the sacred" (Introduction, pp. 89-90). The very term "liturgical piety" is an invention of Father Alexander that has no precedent in the nomenclature of the Fathers of the Church. Needless to say, neither does his impious view of St. Constantine the Emperor, whose very Christian confession Father Alexander's fellow professors at St. Vladimir's have at times called into question. More specifically, Father Schmemann, in his understanding of the Church's liturgical development, supposedly detects a transformation in the interpretation of the Eucharist, in the wake of the Edict of Milan, away from the early Christian understanding of an "ecclesiological union in an assembly of the faithful, the joyful banquet of the Lord," to an "individual-sanctifying" understanding, as if there were some conflict between the union of believers among themselves and the union of each believer with Christ through partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ. In a similar vein, he finds objectionable what he perceives as a division, in the fourth century, between clergy and simple believers at the expense of the New Testament idea of the people of God as a single "royal priesthood." Without basing his argument on any Patristic evidence, he maintains that the laity were considered profane, when in fact the Fathers who occasionally used such language were clearly referring to pagans and others who had not received the illumination of Baptism or who accepted Christianity as a mere formality, rather than in a spiritual sense. In instances such as these, we see a clear deviation by Father Alexander from very basic notions of "liturgical piety." Father Schmemann, however, reveals the full extent of his dependence on heterodox scholarly prejudices when he writes that after the fourth century there was an excessive emphasis on the veneration of Saints as intercessors before the Throne of God, indicating the "eclipse of catholic ecclesiological consciousness" (Introduction, p. 166), and on the sanctifying power emanating from the Relics of Saints, to the supposed detriment of the early Christian (and Christocentric) tradition that a Martyr or Saint "was first and foremost a witness to the new life and therefore an image of Christ" (Introduction, p. 145). As Father Michael astutely observes, Saints are honored precisely "because in them Christ is glorified"; likewise, we venerate the Icon and Relics of a Saint "guided not by the calculation of receiving a sanctification from them, or some kind of power, a special grace, but by the natural desire of expressing in action our veneration and love for the saint" (p. 98). Needless to say, Father Alexander's understanding of the veneration of Saints and Holy Relics, at least from a traditional Orthodox way of thinking, is innovative, impious, and wholly at odds with the dogmatic traditions of the Church. With regard to the particular book that you mention, Of Water and the Spirit (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974), like Schmemann's other works, it must be approached with caution. All of the strictures that I urge vis‹vis his book on the Eucharist apply to this and other books by Father Alexander. His works can only be recommended as an example of how not to write Orthodox theology. Nonetheless, aside from my caution, there are, as I noted above, some good elements in Schemann's theological works. For example, Father Alexander was deeply opposed to the minimalism and secularism that he so clearly saw in contemporary Orthodoxy. In one place in his study of Orthodox liturgical theology, he recounts a shocking example of the in-roads made by secularism into the life of the Church. One Lent, he tells us, he was visiting a parish to hear confessions. To his amazement, a man walked up to him holding some sort of ticket, asking for "absolution." Apparently the man thought that because he had paid the annual fees for membership in his parish (a widespread system in America), he was "entitled" to receive "absolution" without making a genuine confession of his sins! Of course, we traditionalists are just as upset by such an empty, ritualistic approach to Orthodoxy. For this reason we can read the works of Father Schmemann with some degree of sympathy. However, this sympathy is constantly at odds with Father Schmemann's disrespect for the spiritual content of the Church's Mystery and his rejection of the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit in her liturgical development. Thus, in his book, Of Water and Spirit, rather than acknowledge the integrity of extant Baptismal practices, Father Alexander suggests‹albeit circumspectly‹that various changes and innovations be adopted in the Church's prevailing customs. Once more, we see that spirit of liturgical renovationism that smacks so much of contemporary Roman Catholicism, and this in the context of some very Orthodox thoughts! When, in the context of an extemporaneous sermon in Sofia three years ago, I referred to Fathers Schmemann and Meyendorff as "the most perverted theologians who have spoken within the Orthodox Church," I had in mind precisely the tainting of their Orthodoxy by their participation in the ecumenical movement and by their reliance on Western scholarship. The late Father Georges Florovsky, with whom I discussed these two theologians personally on numerous occasions, also expressed serious reservations about the Orthodoxy of Father Schmemann, to say nothing of the quality of much of his theological scholarship. A good deal of his theology was, according to Father Georges, "Uniate in tone, if not substance" (see "Comments on the Late Fathers Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff: A Reply to Mr. Ognian Rangachev," Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XII, No. 4 [1995], p. 14). This may be shocking to those who think, following his posthumous rehabilitation by the OCA, that Father Florovsky was a colleague of Father Schmemann or (forgetting that Father Georges was once in the ROCA) that he was a great champion of the OCA. In fact, however, Father Florovsky was unceremoniously dismissed from St. Vladimir's Seminary and set off on his own, openly expressing throughout his career disdain for that institution and many of its professors. Nor did he died in the OCA, but, rather, directly under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. He distinguished himself, subsequent to his dismissal, as a professor of Church history at Harvard University and as a Professor of Religion at Princeton University, where I met him and where my assistant, Bishop Auxentios, studied with him. With regard to Father Alexander Men, who was cruelly murdered in September of 1990, he was undoubtedly a remarkable figure in the Russian Church, who did much to propagate Orthodoxy under very difficult conditions. However, as a recent biography of him reveals, he was also thoroughly ecumenical in his outlook. As a student in the 1950s, Father Men began to explore the works of thinkers like Nicholas Berdyaev, Father Sergius Bulgakov, and Alexis Khomiakov. Although initially drawn to the writings of Khomiakov, he soon found the innovative and liberal ideas of Vladimir Soloviev more to his liking. As you may know, Soloviev was an ardent admirer of Papism‹even receiving communion from a Russian Catholic priest on one occasion‹, and was very much at odds with the Slavophile movement exemplified by Khomiakov. Later in life, Father Alexander spoke admiringly of "St." Francis of Assisi in one of his sermons. According to his biographer, he "was celebrated for his openness to other Christian confessions, and especially towards Catholicism." He liked to cite the words of Metropolitan Platon of Kiev: "Our earthly walls of separation do not go up to heaven." Father Men taught that the "church" is one (that is, is a single body in which Orthodoxy is but one element) and that Christians have been divided "especially by their narrowness and their sins." When asked whether he had ever considered becoming a Roman Catholic, as some of his former parishioners had recently done, Men replied: "For me, the Church is one. I think that it would be meaningless" (see Yves Hamant, Alexander Men: A Witness for Contemporary Russia: A Man for Our Times, trans. Fr. Steven Bigham [Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1995], passim). The identity of his murderers has never been discovered, or has, perhaps, been hushed up by the authorities. Anti-semites have been accused of it (Father Alexander was of Jewish origin), and even conservative monks from the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, who disliked Father Alexander's liberal views, have been identified as his possible murderers! In any event, it is surely premature, if not, given present evidence, inappropriate, to call him a Martyr; it is perhaps even open to debate, given his devotion to ecumenism. At any rate, time and caution are called for in this case. If Father Alexander Men was a true Martyr, God will eventually reveal this. It is our duty to wait. Incidentally, his appearance, like that of Father Schmemann, was not at all traditional. Both men had trimmed hair and goatee beards; they also seldom wore their rasa. While these may be personal failings, they are nonetheless symptomatic of a disregard for Holy Tradition which went, in the case of both of these clergymen, far beyond accidents and touched on essence. I hope that these comments, inadequate though they may be, will help His Eminence, Bishop Photii, to counteract the adverse influences on his flock of those who mistake these two men as traditionalists and Orthodox traditionalists. In the case of Father Schmemann, this is simply naive. In the case of Father Alexander Men, we would do well to wait and exercise caution and prudence. Please convey my metanoia to His Eminence. I remain, The Least among Monks, + Archbishop Chrysostomos + + + From the "Church News" section of the Fall 1998 edition of Orthodox Tradition: BOOK BURNINGS. According to an article by Maxim Shevchenko in the Russian publication Nezavisimaia Gazeta (29 May 29, 1998), on May 5, 1998, a number of books by Fathers Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, and Alexander Men were removed from the library of the Orthodox Ecclesiastical School in Ekaterinburg and publicly burned. According to the article in question, this action was ordered by the local Bishop, Nikon of Ekaterinburg and Verkhoturie (a clergyman of the Moscow Patriarchate), following a decision of the Diocesan Council, in which questions were raised about the confessional integrity of some of the writings of Fathers Schmemann, Meyendorff, and Men. Shevchenko, who has written widely in defense of ecumenism, in reporting on the book burnings, describes "...Fathers John Meyendorff and Alexander Schmemann" as the "greatest Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century." He goes on to say that: "There is nothing new in the position taken by the leadership of the Ekaterinburg diocese. According to testimony from those who had the good fortune to study under Fr John Meyendorff, even during his lifetime he had to endure the sectarian tricks of schismatics from the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. There were known cases when he, an Orthodox priest, arrived at a church of the migrs and he not only was not invited to the altar but was not even permitted to kiss the cross after the liturgy....Now this amazing philosophy of schism within Orthodoxy has arrived and been confirmed within the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Moscow...." While a demure attitude towards the phenomenon of public book burnings is natural, and especially regarding works which, whatever their deficits, also contain proper Orthodox teachings, the claim that Fathers Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff are the greatest theologians of the twentieth-century Orthodox Church gives us cause for deeper reflection. Whatever the contributions of these two men, both avid ecumenists, they immediately pale before such great spiritual figures as Archimandrite Justin (Popovich) or Protopresbyter George Florovsky (also an avid ecumenist, at one point in his life, but later a very erudite critic of the ecumenical movement). And these are but two of many similar figures that we might cite. The gratuitous, anecdotal, and biased references to the ROCA in this article, too, prompt some reconsideration. If Mr. Shevchenko's ecumenical leanings have so blinded him to the actual deficits in the works in question (including very serious dogmatic errors in the writings of Father Alexander Men), and if his hostile and unwarranted slap at the ROCA is representative of the mainstream views of theologians and journalists loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate, perhaps purer Orthodox readings and books of a more traditional bent are much needed in Russia. One may not wholly agree with the tactic, but making room on the shelves for books that build, rather than compromise, personal faith, in such a circumstance, is perhaps not a bad idea. source: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/schmem_men.aspx

West Syrian Worship

IntroductionThe West Syrian Church, known to many as “Jacobite” (after Jacob Baradeus, the 6th century reorganizer of the West Syrian Church) and as Monophysite (after the erroneous idea prevailing in Byzantium and the Latin West that the West Syrians believed only in the divine nature of Christ), historically inherited the Semitic, Palestinian tradition of Christianity, though not uninfluenced by the Hellenic milieu in which they lived. The Syrian tradition broke up soon into four families - the East Syrian (Edessa), the West Syrian (Antioch), the Melchite (Greek) and the Maronite (Lebanon). Liturgical ritesThe West Syrian church has probably the richest and most diverse heritage in the matter of encharistic anaphorae and canonical offices. In addition to these are the rites of baptism and Chrismation of which three different forms are known. Ordination rites also vary substantially; the whole liturgical corpus also includes rites of matrimony (separate rites for first and second marriages), burial (different for clergy, laymen, women and children), anointing of the sick (not extreme unction - again different for clergy and laity), profession of monks, consecration of churches and altars, translation of relics etc. The Eucharistic LiturgyThe liturgy is now - a - days celebrated mostly in the vernacular - Arabic in the Middle East, English in America, Malayalam in India and so on - though certain portions may still be said by the priest in Syriac. The officiating priest and the people alternate in practically all the prayers, and the deacon plays an important part, admonishing and directing the people to stand with fear, pray and understand the nature of the event that is going on in the Liturgy. Choirs have not been allowed to usurp the place of the congregation as in certain other certain liturgies. Some scholars have spoken of a hundred different west syrian anaphorae, though only about 70 can be traced by the present writer. Some of these, especially the principal anaphora of St. James goes back in its basic structure to the Jerusalem Church of Apostolic times. Other anaphorae come from 2nd (Ignatius of Antioch) to the 14th centuries, if we take the names of the anaphorae at face value. New liturgies continued to be created in every century up to the 14th, though production was most prolific from the 4th to the 7th. The twelth century produced at least six new anaphorae and about the same number was produced by the 13th. With the 13th century the development reached its peak in Gregory Bar - Hebrews and has remained more or less static ever since. Two peculiarities of the West Syrian rite are (a) the liturgy of Incense between the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the Eucharist proper; and (b) the prayer of adien to the altar at the end of the liturgy - The liturgy of incense which recalls the offering of incense in the Temple (Exodus 30:1-10) seems to have replaced the dismissal of the Catechumens, and comprises a general absolution of the priest and people before the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. It also represents a sort of offertory, for incense symbolizes the good works and prayers which are wellpleasing to God. It symbolizes also the prayers of the departed saints which mix with those of the congregation, as a true spiritual offering of praise and adoration. The epiclesis occurs in all the 70 known liturgies, though the form of the epiclesis varies verbally from anaphora to anaphora, as also does the verbal content of the “words of institution.” Not all the 70 anaphorae are in common use. The ones most commonly used in India are St. James (on all principal feasts, for the first Eucharist offered by a priest, or offered at a new altar), Dionysius Bar Salibhi, St. John Chrysostom and St. John the Evangelist. The canonical offices for ordinary days is called the Schhims, and has recently been translated into English by the Benedictine Fr. Griffiths. The more eleborate office, the Fenqith, has not yet been translated into English or Malayalam and is rarely used even in the Syriac. The Syriac text of the Fenqith is available in our Indian edition as in a moral edition (1886-1896). One major feature of the Eucharistic liturgy and the daily offices is the Sedro, a long meditative - homiletical prayer, preceded by a pro - emion which seems to be an elaborated form of the Gloria. These prayers are rich in theological content, and play a considerable role in the religious education of the faithful, especially in the absence of biblical preaching. An introduction and critical text of the Syriac anaphorae with latin translation have been published by the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome (Anaphorae Syriacae, 1953). The 9th century commentary of Moses Bar Kepha on the Syrian liturgies was published with an English translation by R. H. Connolly and H. W. Codrington (Two commentaries on the Jacobite Liturgy). The people communicate rather rarely, the legal minimum of once per year being observed by most, usually on Holy Thursday. Communion is in both kinds, usually by intinction for the laity. The priest usually administers, though the deacon is allowed to serve communion to the laity. Reservation of the sacrament for adoration is forbidden, it may be reserved in case of need for the sick, and for those who fast till the evening. Confession before communion is often demanded, though this is not necessary for those who communicate frequently. Fasting from the previous midnight is required. The lections during the liturgy of the word are three, one from the acts or Catholic epistles (representing the twelve), then from the Pauline epistles, and then finally the Gospel which is read with great ceremony by the officiating priest. Sermons had gone out of use, but are coming back more recently as priests become better trained. The creed recited is the Niceno - Constantinopolitan, introduced into the liturgy by Peter the Fuller in the 5th century as an anti-chalcedonian measure. Two of the west syrian anaphora lack the actual words of institution - Mathew the Shepherd and Sixtus of Rome. The latter says simply: “He, when he was prepared for his saving passion, by the bread hich by him was blessed, broken and divided among his holy Apostles, gave us his propitiatory body for life eternal; in a like manner, also by the cup etc.” The canon of the mass, with words of institution, ananesis and epitlesis is said aloud by the priest, with responses from the people. Select Bibliography1. Fortescue, A The Lesser Eastern Churches, London, 1913.2. de Vries, W. Sakramententheologie bei den Syrischen Monophysiten, Rome 1940.3. Ziade, I article on Syrienne (eglise) in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, Paris 1914, vol. 14,pp. 3017- 3088. H. G. Dr. Paulose Mar Gregorios Metropolitan source: http://malankaraorthodoxchurch.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=121&Itemid=240

THE LITURGICAL THEOLOGY OF FR. A. SCHMEMANN

By PROTOPRESBYTER MICHAEL POMAZANSKY

In past centuries the greatest peril to the Church of Christ came from false teachers who were singled out and condemned because of their dogmatic errors. Thus the early Fathers and Councils condemned Nestorianism, Arianism, Monophysitism, Iconoclasm, etc. But the enemy of man's salvation does not sleep, and in our day, when there is no basic new heresy‹unless it be that conglomeration of heresies, ecumenism‹he has inspired various currents of "renovationism" within the Church, which have attacked chiefly the life and practice of traditional Orthodoxy, beginning with the outright Protestantism of the "Renovated" or "Living Church" in Russia in the 1920s, through the reforming uniatizers of the Church of Constantinople (Patriarchs Meletios Metaxakis and Athenagoras, Archbishop Iakovos) to the numerous would-be reformers who may be found in almost every Local Orthodox Church today. In this article the workon liturgical theology of one well known and widely respected contemporary Russian theologian is carefully criticized and its "reformist" tendency pointed out. In all fairness it should be noted that Fr. work on probably does not see himself as a "reformer," and it will doubtless be left to other less sensitive souls, another generation removed from the life of genuine Orthodoxy, to draw the inevitable iconoclastic conclusions from Fr. Schmemann's already Protestant views. The author of this article, Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, one of the last living theologians to have graduated from the theological academies of pre-Revolutionary Russia, has taught theology to generations of Orthodox priests, and now teaches and resides at Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, New York. (Text from ORTHODOX WAY, Jordanville, 1962. All page numbers in the text below are from the English edition of Fr. Schmemann's book.) B EFORE US is a work of Archpriest (now Protopresbyter) Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (Paris, YMCA Press, 1961; English translation: The Faith Press, London, 1966). The book is presented as an "introduction" to a special course in liturgical theology projected by the author. In it are indicated the foundations of a proposed new system of theology, and then there is given an historical outline of the development of the Rule or Typicon of Divine services. The basic part of the Introduction to Liturgical Theology‹the history of the Typicon‹is based primarily on Western scientific investigations in French, English, and German, and partially on Russian sources. The author is convinced that he has succeeded, as he expresses it, in "escaping the Western captivity" while using non-Orthodox sources. He writes: "We categorically reject the understanding of the Peace of Constantine (i.e., the era of Constantine the Great) as a 'pseudo-victory' of Christianity‹victory bought at the price of compromise" (p. 86). But such affirmations are not enough in themselves, and we consider it our obligation to focus attention on the book's contents in one respect: has the author indeed escaped the Western captivity? As many facts testify, he has in fact not escaped it. THE ORTHODOX LITURGICAL ORDER: THE PRODUCT OF HISTORICAL CAUSE AND EFFECT, OR DIVINE INSPIRATION AND GUIDANCE? IN INVESTIGATING the chief stages of development of the Rule of Divine services, or Typicon, the author looks upon them as upon an ordinary historical manifestation, formed as a result of the influence of changing historical circumstances. He writes: "Orthodox writers are usually inclined to 'absolutize' the history of worship, to consider the whole of it as divinely established and Providential" (p. 72). The author rejects such a view. He does not see "the validity of principles" in the definitive formulation of the Rule; in any case he acknowledges them as dubious. He rejects or even censures a "blind absolutization of the Typicon" while in practice this is joined, in his observation, to a factual violation of it at every step. He acknowledges that "the restoration of the Rule is hopeless;" the theological idea of the daily cycle of services he finds "obscured and eclipsed by secondary strata in the Ordo" which have lain upon the Divine services since the 4th century (pp. 161-2). The ecclesiological key to the understanding of the Rule, according to the author, has been lost, and it remains by the historical path to seek and find the key to liturgical theology. Such a view of the Rule is new to us. The Typicon, in the form which it has taken down to our time in its two basic versions, is the realized idea of Christian worship; the worship of the first century was a kernel which has grown into maturity in its present state, when it has taken its finished form. We have in mind, of course, not the content of the services, not the hymns and prayers themselves, which often bear the stamp of the literary style of an era and are replaced on by another, but the very system of Divine services, their order, concord, harmony, consistency of principles and fullness of God's glory and communion with the Heavenly Church on the one hand, and on the other the fullness of their expression of the human soul‹from the Paschal hymns to the Great Lenten lamentation over moral falls. The present Rule of Divine services was already contained in the idea of the Divine services of the first Christians in the same way that in the seed of a plant are already contained the forms of the plant's future growth up to the moment when it begins to bear mature fruits, or in the way that in the embryonic organism of a living creature its future form is already concealed. To the foreign eye, to the non-Orthodox West, the fact that our Rule has taken a static form is present as a petrifaction, a fossilization; but for us this represents the finality of growth, the attainment of the possible fullness and finality; and such finality of the form of development we observe also in Eastern Church iconography, in church architecture, in the interior appearance of the best churches, in the traditional melodies of church singing: further attempts at development in these spheres so often lead to "decadence," leading not up but down. One can make only one conclusion: we are nearer to the end of history than to the beginningŠ And of course, as in other spheres of the Church's history, in this one also we should see a destiny established by God, a providentialness, and not a single logic of causes and effects. The author of this book approaches the history of the Typicon from another point of view; we shall call it the pragmatic point of view. In his exposition the basic apostolic, early Christian liturgical order has been overlaid by a series of strata which lie one upon the other and partially supplant each other. These strata are: "mysteriological" worship, which arose not without the indirect influence of the pagan mysteries in the 4th century; then the liturgical order of desert monasticism; and finally the final working over which was given by monasticism that had entered the world. The scientific schema of the author is thus: the "thesis" of an extreme involvement of Christianity and its worship in the world of the Constantinian Era evoked the "antithesis" of monastic repulsion from the new form of "liturgical piety," and this process concludes with the "synthesis" of the Byzantine period. Alone and without argumentation stands this phrase as a description of the stormy Constantinian Era: "But everything has its germ in the preceding epoch" (p. 73). The author even pays tribute to the method that reigns completely in contemporary science: leaving aside the idea of an overshadowing by Divine grace, the concept of the sanctity of those who established the liturgical order, he limits himself to a naked chain of causes and effects. Thus does positivism intrude nowadays into Christian science, into the sphere of the Church's history in all its branches. But if the positivist method is acknowledged as a scientific working principle in science, in the natural sciences, one can by no means apply it to living religion, nor to every sphere of the life of Christianity and the Church, insofar as we remain believers. And when the author in one place notes concerning this era: "The Church experienced her new freedom as a providential act destined to bring to Christ people then dwelling in the darkness and shadow of death" (p. 87), one wishes to ask: And why does the author himself not express his solidarity with the Church in acknowledging this providentialness? THE CONSTANTINIAN ERA WE ALL KNOW what an immense change in the position of the Church occurred with Constantine the Great's proclamation of freedom for the Church at the beginning of the 4th century. This outward act was reflected also in every way in the inward life of the Church. Was there here a break in the inner structure of the Church's life, or was there a development? We know that to this question the self-awareness of the Orthodox Church replies in one way, and Protestantism in another. A chief part of Fr. A. Schmemann's book is given over to the elucidation of this question. The era of Constantine the Great and afterwards is characterized by the author as the era of a profound "reformation of liturgical piety." Thus the author sees in the Church of this era not new forms of the expression of piety, flowing from the breadth and liberty of the Christian spirit in accord with the words of the Apostle: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty‹but rather a reformation of the interpretation of worship and a deviation from the early Christian liturgical spirit and forms: a point of view long ago inspired by the prejudices of the Lutheran Reformation. A propos of this, it is difficult to reconcile oneself also to the term "liturgical piety." In the ordinary usage of words, piety is Christian faith, hope and love, independently of the forms of their expression. Such an understanding is instilled in us by the sacred Scriptures, which distinguish only authentic piety (piety is profitable unto all things ‹ I Timothy 4:8) from false or empty piety (James 1:26, II Timothy 3:5). Piety is expressed in prayer, in Divine services, and the forms of its expression vary depending on circumstances: whether in church, at home, in prison, or in the catacombs. But we Orthodox scarcely need a special term like "liturgical piety" or "church piety," as if one were pious in a different manner in church than at home, and as if there existed two kinds of religiousness: "religiousness of faith" and "religiousness of cult." Both the language of the Holy Fathers and the language of theology have always done without such a concept. And therefore it is a new conception, foreign to us, of a special liturgical piety that the author instills when he writes: "It is in the profound reformation of liturgical piety and not in new forms of cult, however striking these may seem to be at first glance, that we must see the basic change brought about in the Church's liturgical life by the Peace of Constantine" (p. 78). And in another place: "The center of attention is shifted from the living Church to the church building itself, which was until then a simple place of assemblyŠ Now the temple becomes a sanctuary, a place for the habitation and residence of the sacredŠ This is the beginning of church piety" (p. 80), a "mysteriological piety." In his usage of such terms one senses in the author something more than the replacement of one terminology by another more contemporary one; one sense something foreign to Orthodox consciousness. This fundamental point is decisively reflected in the book in the views on the sacraments, the hierarchy, and the veneration of saint, which we shall now examine. THE SACRAMENTS AND THE SANCTIFYING ELEMENT IN SACRED RITES THE AUTHOR adheres to the concept that the idea of "sanctification," of "sacraments," and in general of the sanctifying power of sacred rites was foreign to the ancient Church and arose only in the era after Constantine. Although the author denies a direct borrowing of the idea of "mysteries-sacraments" from the pagan Mysteries, he nonetheless recognizes the "mysteriality-sacralization" in worship as a new element of "stratification" in this era. "The very word 'sacrament,'" he writes, citing the Jesuit scholar (now Cardinal) J. Danielou, "did not originally have the meaning in Christianity that was subsequently given it, a mysteriological meaning; in the New Testament Scriptures it is used only in the singular and with the general significance of the economy of our salvation: the word "sacrament' (mysterion) in Paul and in early Christianity signified always the whole work of Christ, the whole of salvation;" thus, in the author's opinion, the application of this word even to separate aspects of the work of Christ belongs to the following era. In vain, however, does the author cite a Western scholar concerning the word "sacrament," if in St. Paul we may read the precise words: Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries (sacraments) of God (I Corinthians 4:1). The Apostles were stewards of the sacraments, and this apostolic stewardship was expressed concretely in the service of the Divine stewardship: (a) in invocatory sermons, (b) in joining to the Church through Baptism, (c) in bringing down the Holy Spirit through laying on of hands, (d) in strengthening the union of the faithful with Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, (e) in their further deepening in the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, concerning which the same Apostle says: Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom (I Corinthians 2:6-7). Thus the activity of the Apostles was full of sacramental (mysterion) elements. Basing himself on the ready conclusions of Western researches in his judgments on the ancient Church, the author pays no attention to the direct evidence of the apostolic writings, even though they have the primary significance as memorials of the life of the early Christian Church. The New Testament Scriptures speak directly of "sanctification," sanctification by the Word of God and prayer. Nothing is to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayers (I Timothy 4:4-5). And it is said of Baptism: Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified (I Corinthians 6:11). The very expression cup of blessing (I Corinthians 10:16) is testimony of sanctification through blessing. The apostolic laying on of hands cannot be understood otherwise than as a sanctification. A special place in the book is occupied by a commentary on the sacrament of the Eucharist. The author maintains the idea that in the early Church the Eucharist had a totally different meaning from the one it subsequently received. The Eucharist, he believes, was an expression of the ecclesiological union in assembly of the faithful, the joyful banquet of the Lord, and its whole meaning was directed to the future, to eschatology, and therefore it presented itself as a "worship outside of time," not bound to history or remembrances, as eschatological worship, by which it was sharply distinct from the simple forms of worship, which are called in the book the "worship of time." In the 4th century, however, we are told, there occurred a severe reformation of the original character of the Eucharist. It was given an "individual-sanctifying" understanding, which was the result of two stratifications: at first the mysteriological, and then the monastic-ascetic. Notwithstanding the assertions of this historico-liturgical school, the individual-sanctifying significance of the sacrament of the Eucharist, i.e., the significance not only of a union of believers among themselves, but before anything else the union of each believer with Christ through partaking of His Body and Blood, is fully and definitely expressed by the Apostle in the tenth and eleventh chapters of the First Epistle to the Corinthians: Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's Body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many die (I Corinthians 11:27). These teachings of the Apostle are concerned with individual reception of the holy Mysteries and with individual responsibility. And if unworthy reception of them is judged, it is clear that, according to the Apostle, a worthy reception of them causes an individual sanctification. It is absolutely clear that the Apostle understands the Eucharist as a sacrament: The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ? (I Corinthians 10:16). How can one say that the idea of "sacrament" was not in the Church in apostolic times? Maintaining the idea of the total "extra-temporality" of the Eucharist in the early Church, Fr. A. Schmemann considers as a violation of tradition the uniting to it of historical remembrances of the Gospel. He writes: "In the early Eucharist there was no idea of a ritual symbolization of the life of Christ and His Sacrifice. This is a theme which will appear laterŠ under the influence of one theology and as the point of departure for another. The remembrance of Christ which he He instituted (This do in remembrance of Me) is the affirmation of His 'Parousia,' of His presence; it is the actualization of His KingdomŠ One may say without exaggeration that the early Church consciously and openly set herself in opposition to mysteriological piety and the cults of the mysteries" (pp. 85-6). Despite all the categoricalness of the author's commentary on the words: This do in remembrance of Me, it contradicts the indications of the New Testament Scriptures. The Apostle says outright: For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come (I Corinthians 11:26). That is, until the very Second Coming of the Lord the Eucharist will be joined to the remembrance of Christ's death on the Cross. And how could the Apostles and Christians of the ancient Church pass by the thought, while celebrating the Eucharist, of the sufferings of Christ, if the Saviour in establishing it, at the Last Supper, Himself spoke of the sufferings of His Body, of the shedding of His Blood (which is broken for you, which is shed for you and for many), and in Gethsemene prayed of the cup: Let this cup pass form Me? How could they not preface the joyful thought of the resurrection and glory of the Lord with the thought of His Cross and death? Both Christ and the Apostles call upon us never to forget the Cross. THE HIERARCHY AND THE SACRAMENT OF PRIESTHOOD THE AUTHOR adheres to the idea that only in the post-Constantinian era did there occur a division into clergy and simple believers, which did not exist in the early Church and occurred as the result of a "breakthrough of mysteriological conceptions." The very idea of the "assembly of the Church," he says was reformed: "In the Byzantine era the emphasis is gradually transferredŠ to the clergy as celebrants of the mystery" (p. 99). "The early Church lived with the consciousness of herself as the people of God, a royal priesthood, with the idea of election, but she did not apply the principle of consecration either to entry into the Church or much less to ordination to the various hierarchical orders" (p. 100). From the 4th century on, he continues, there can be traced the "idea of sanctification," i.e., consecration to the hierarchical ranks. Now the baptized, the "consecrated," turn out to be not yet consecrated for the mysteries; "the true mystery of consecration became now not Baptism, but the sacrament of ordination." "The cult was removed from the unconsecrated not only 'psychologically,' but also in its external organization. The altar or sanctuary became its place, and access to the sanctuary was closed to the uninitiated" (p. 101); the division was increased by the gradual raising of the iconostasis. "The mystery presupposes theurgii, consecrated celebrants; the sacralization of the clergy led in its turn to the 'secularization' of the laity." There fell aside "the understanding of all Christians as a 'royal priesthood,'" expressed in the symbol of royal anointing, after which there is no "step by step elevation through the degrees of a sacred mystery" (p. 100). The author quotes St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who warned against revealing the holy mysteries "to profane impurity," and likewise similar warning of Sts. Cyril of Jerusalem and Basil the Great. In the description cited here of the Constantian era and thereafter, the Protestant treatment is evident: the golden age of Christian freedom and the age of the great hierarchs, the age of the flowering of Christian literature, appears from the negative side of a supposed intrusion into the Church of pagan elements, rather than from the positive. But at any time in the Church have simple believers actually received the condemnatory appellation of "profane?" From the Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem it is absolutely clear that he warns against communicating the mysteries of faith to pagans. And St. Basil the Great writes of the same thing: "What would be the propriety of writing to proclaim the teaching concerning that which the unbaptized are not permitted even to view?" (On the Holy Spirit, ch. 27). Do we really have to quote the numerous testimonies in the words of the Lord Himself and in the writings of the Apostles concerning the division into pastors and "flock," the warning to pastors of their duty, their responsibility, their obligation to give an accounting for the souls entrusted to them, the strict admonitions of the Angels to the Churches which are engraved in the Apocalypse? Do not the Acts of the Apostles and the pastoral Epistles of the Apostle Paul speak of a special consecration through laying on of hand into the hierarchal degrees? The author of this book acknowledges that a closed altar separated the clergy from the faithful. But he gives an incorrect conception of the altar. One should know that the altar and its altar-table in the Orthodox Church serve only for the offering of the Bloodless Sacrifice at the Liturgy. The remaining Divine services, according to the idea of the Typicon, are celebrated in the middle part of the church. An indication of this is the pontifical service. Even while celebrating the Liturgy the bishop enters the altar only at the "Little Entrance" in order to listen to the Gospel and celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist; all remaining Divine services the bishop celebrates in the middle of the church. The litanies are intoned by the deacon at all services, including the Liturgy, outside the altar; and the Typicon directs priest who celebrate Vespers and Matins without a deacon to intone the litanies before the Royal Doors. All services of the Book of Needs (Trebnik) and all sacraments of the Church, except for the Eucharist and Ordination, are celebrated outside the altar. Only to augment the solemnity of the services at feast day Vespers and Matins is it accepted to pen the doors of the altar for a short time, and that only for the exit of the celebrants at solemn moments to go to the middle of the church. During daily and lenten services the altar, one may say, is excluded from the sphere of the faithful's attention; and if the celebrant goes off into the altar even then, this is rather in order not to attract needless attention to himself, and not at all to emphasize his hierarchical prestige. One must consider an evident exaggeration the idea of the appearance from the 4th century of a new "church" piety. Christians who had been raised form the first days of the Church on images not only of the New Testament but also of the Old Testament, especially the Psalter, could not have been totally deprived of a feeling of special reverence for the places of worship (the House of the Lord). They had the example of the Lord Himself, Who called the Temple of Jerusalem "the House of My Father;" they had the instruction of the Apostle: If any man defile the Temple of God, him shall God destroy (I Corinthians 3:17), and although here in the Apostle the idea of temple is transferred to the soul of an, this does not destroy the acknowledgment by the Apostle of the sanctity of the material temple. THE INVOCATION AND GLORIFICATION OF SAINTS SPEAKING OF the invocation and glorification of saints in the form in which it was defined in the 4th to 5th centuries, Fr. A. Schmemann underlines the excessiveness of this glorification in the present structure of our Divine services, and he sees in this an indication of the "eclipse of catholic ecclesiological consciousness" in the Church (p. 166). But is not the trouble rather that he does not enter into the catholic fullness of the Orthodox view of the Church? What is it in the Divine services‹something significant, visible to everyone‹that distinguishes the Orthodox Church from all other confessions of the Christian faith? It is communion with the Heavenly Church. In this is our pre-eminence, our primogeniture, our glory. The constant remembrance of the Heavenly Church is our guiding star in difficult circumstances; we are strengthened by the awareness that we are surrounded by choirs of invisible comforters, co-sufferers, defenders, guiders, examples of sanctity, from whose nearness we ourselves may receive a fragrance. How fully and how constantly we are reminded of this communion of the heavenly with the earthly by the content of our whole worship‹precisely that material in place of which Fr. A. Schmemann intends to build his system of "liturgical theology!" How fully did St. John of Kronstadt live by this sense of nearness to us of the saints of Heaven! Is this awareness of the unity of the heavenly and the earthly justified by the Revelation of the New Testament? It is completely justified. Its firm general foundation is found in the words of the Saviour: God is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for in Him all are living (St. Luke 20:38). We are commanded by the Apostles to remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their lives (Hebrews 13:7). Protestantism is completely without an answer before the teaching of the Apostle in Hebrews 12:22-23, where it is said that Christians have entered into close communion with the Lord Jesus Christ and with the Heavenly Church of angels and righteous men who have attained perfection in Christ. And which for us is more necessary and important: to strive for ecumenical communion and union with those who think differently and who remain in their different opinion, or to preserve catholic communion of spirit with those teachers of faith, lamps of faith, who by their life and by their death showed faithfulness to Christ and His Church and entered into yet fuller union with Her Head? Let us hear how this side of the Church's life is accepted by Fr. A. Schmemann. He affirms that there occurred an abrupt change in the Constantian era in that there appeared a new stratum to worship in the form of "the extraordinary and rapid growth of the veneration of saints" (p. 141). As the final result of this, with us "the monthly Menaion dominates in worshipŠ The attention of liturgical historians has been for some time directed at this literal inundation of worship by the monthly calendar of saints' days" (p. 141). Concerning this supposed "inundation" of worship we shall note the following. The execution of the daily Vespers and Matins requires no less than three hours, while a simple service to a saint takes up some four pages in the Menaion, occupying only a small part of the service. In the remaining services of the daily cycle (the Hours, Compline, Nocturn) the remembrance of the saints is limited to a kontakion, sometimes a troparion also, or it does not appear at all; and it occupies a small place in the services of Great Lent. If the day of worship is lengthened by a festive service to a saint, precisely thereby it acquires that "major tone," for the diminishing of which the author reproaches the contemporary Typicon. Let us continue the description given in the book of the glorification of saints. The author writes: "In the broadest terms this change may be defined as follows. The 'emphasis' in the cult of saints shifted from the sacramentally eschatological to the sanctifying and intercessory meaning of veneration. The remains of the saint, and later even articles belonging to him or having once touched his body, came to be regarded as sacred objects having the effect of communicating their power to those who touched themŠ The early Church treated the relics of martyrs with great honor‹'But there is no indication,' writes Fr. Delahaye, 'that any special power was ascribed to relics in this era, or that any special, supernatural result would be obtained by touching them. Toward the end of the fourth century, however, there is ample evidence to show that in the eyes of believers some special power flowed from the relics themselves.' This new faith helps to explain such facts of the new era as the invention of relics, their division into pieces, and their movement or translation, as well as the whole development of the veneration of 'secondary holy objects'‹objects which have touched relics and become n turn themselves sources of sanctifying power." Let us note: under the pen of an Orthodox writer this description shows a particular primitivization and irreverence. "At the same time," the author continues, "the intercessory character of the cult of saints was also developing. Again, this was rooted in the tradition of the early Church, in which prayers addressed to deceased members of the Church were very widespread, as evidenced by the inscriptions in the catacombs. But between this early practice and that which developed gradually from the 4th century on there is an essential difference. Originally the invocation of the departed was rooted in the faith in the 'communion of saints'‹prayers were addressed to any departed person and not especially to martyrsŠ But a very substantial change took place when this invocation of the departed was narrowed down and began to be addressed only to a particular category of the departed." Thus it turns out, according to the author, that if we appeal with the words 'pray for us' to the departed members of the Church without reference to whether they were devout in their faith and life or were Christians only in name, then this fully corresponds to the spirit of the Church; but if we appeal to those who by their whole ascetic life or martyr's death testified to their faith, then this is already a lowering of the spirit of the Church! "From the 4th century onward," continues the excerpt from the book, "there appeared in the Church first an everyday and practical, but later a theoretical and theological concept of the saints as special intercessors before God, as intermediaries between men and God." This is a completely Protestant approach, unexpected from an Orthodox theologian. It is sufficient to read in the Apostle Paul how he asks those to whom he writes to be intercessors for him and intermediaries before God so that he might be restored to them from imprisonment and might visit them; in the Apostle James (5:16): The prayer of a righteous man availeth much; in the Book of Job (42:8): My servant Job shall pray for you; for him will I accept. The author continues: "The original Christocentric significance of the veneration of saints was altered in this intercessory concept. In the early tradition the martyr of saint was first a foremost a witness to the new life and therefore an image of Christ." The reading of the Acts of the Martyrs in the early Church had as its purpose "to show the presence and action of Christ in the martyr, i.e., the presence in him of the 'new life.' It was not meant to glorify the saint himselfŠ But in the new intercessory view of the saint the center of gravity shifted. The saint is now an intercessor and a helperŠ The honoring of saints fell into the category of a Feast Day," with the purpose of "the communication to the faithful of the sacred power of a particular saint, his special graceŠ The saint is present and as it were manifest in his relics or icon, and the meaning of his holy day lies in acquiring sanctification (?) by means of praising him or coming into contact with him, which is, as we know, the main element in mysteriological piety." Likewise unfavorable is the literary appraisal by the author of the liturgical material referring to the veneration of saints. We read: "We know also how important in the development of Christian hagiography was the form of the panegyricŠ It was precisely this conventional, rhetorical form of solemn praise which almost wholly determined the liturgical texts dealing with the veneration of saints. One cannot fail to be struck by the rhetorical elements in our Menaion, and especially the 'impersonality' of the countless prayers to and readings about the saints. Indeed this impersonality is retained even when the saint's life is well known and a wealth of material could be offered as an inspired 'instruction.' While the lives of the saints are designed mainly to strike the reader's imagination with miracles, horrors, etc., the liturgical material consists almost exclusively of praises and petitions." (pp. 143-146). We presume that there is no need to sort out in detail this whole long series of assertions made by the author, who so often exaggerates the forms of our veneration of saints. We are amazed that an Orthodox author takes his stand in the line of un-Orthodox reviewers of Orthodox piety who are incapable of entering into a psychology foreign to them. We shall make only a few short remarks. The honoring of saints is included in the category of feasts because in them Christ is glorified, concerning which it is constantly and clearly stated in the hymns and other appeals to them; for in the saints is fulfilled the Apostle's testament: That Christ may dwell in you (Ephesians 3:17). We touch the icon of a saint or his relics guided not by the calculation of receiving a sanctification from them, or some kind of power, a special grace, but by the natural desire of expressing in act our veneration and love for the saint. Besides, we receive the fragrance of sanctity, the fullness of grace, in various forms. Everything material that reminds us of the sacred sphere, everything that diverts our consciousness, even if only for a moment, from the vanity of the world and directs it to the thought of the destination of our soul and acts beneficially on it, on our moral state‹whether it be an icon, antidoron, sanctified water, a particle of relics, a part of a vestment that belonged to a saint, a blessing with the sign of the cross‹all this is sacred for us because, as we see in practice, it is capable of making reverent and awakening the soul. And for such a relationship to tangible objects we have a direct justification in Holy Scripture: in the accounts of the woman with a flow of blood who touched the garment of the Saviour, of the healing action of pieces of the garment of the Apostle Paul and even of the shadow of the Apostle Peter (St. Luke 8:40-48, Acts 5:14-15, 19:11-12). The reason for the seemingly stereotyped character of church hymns, in particular hymns to saints, are to be found not in the intellectual poverty nor the spiritual primitiveness of the hymn-writers. We see that in all spheres of the Church's work there reigns a canon, a model: whether in sacred melodies, in the construction of hymns, or in iconography. Characteristic of hymns is a typification corresponding to the particular rank of saints to which the saint belongs: hierarchs, monk-saints, etc. But at the same time there is always the element of individualization, so that one cannot speak of the impersonality of the images of saints. Evidently the Church has sufficient psychological motives for such a representation. As for the petitions to saints, they have almost exclusively as object their prayers for our salvation. Is this reprehensible? Is there here a lowering of church spirit? Thus did the Apostle Paul pray for his spiritual children: I pray to God that ye do no evil; and for this also we pray, even for your perfection (I Corinthians 13:7)> If in prayers, especially in molebens, we pray for protection from general disasters and for general needs, this is only natural; but these molebens do not even enter into the framework of the Typicon. CHURCH FEASTS WE SHALL CONCLUDE our review with a question of secondary importance, namely, concerning Church feasts as they are presented in the book.. The author agrees with a Western liturgical historian that for ancient Christians there was no distinction between Church feasts and ordinary days, and he says in the words of this historian (J. Danielou, S.J.): "Baptism introduced each person into the only Feast‹the eternal Passover, the Eighth Day. There were no holidays‹since everything had in fact become a holy day" (p. 133). But with the beginning of the mysteriological era this sense was lost. Feast days were multiplied, and together with them ordinary days were also multiplied (So asserts the author; but in reality it is precisely according to the Typicon that there are no "ordinary days," since every day there is prescribed the whole cycle of church services). According to Fr. A. Schmemann, the bond with the liturgical self-awareness of the early Church was lost, and the element of chance was introduced in the uniting of feasts among themselves and the "Christian year." The author gives examples: "The dating of the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord on August 6th has no explanation other than that this was the date of consecration of three churches on Mount Tabor" (p. 136), whereas in antiquity, according to the author's assertion, this commemoration was bound up with Pascha, which is indicated also by the words of the kontakion: that when they should see Thee crucifie