After attending a wonderful Christmas Divine Liturgy yesterday at Holy Resurrection Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church in Potomac, Maryland (which was almost identical to the Divine Liturgy in my parish when I was in high school), I was not quite ready to let go of Christmas (yes, I know that we new calendar types celebrated Theophany on Friday!). So for my second Divine Liturgy today I went to my neighborhood Roman Catholic parish. The Liturgy there is quite awesome. The average Sunday Mass is about 70 minutes (today’s was 80 minutes). The hymns for the Feast of the Epiphany (Three Kings) were well chosen and well led by the choir. The Mass was well celebrated, the homily well preached, and the singing tremendous.

During the Mass I was struck with the signs of a good liturgy. I am posting this because I have come across cantors who are actually upset when these things happen. By this post I hope simply to provide a little food for thought.

The opening hymn was unfamiliar to me, and I don’t remember the name (although it was easily sung from the missal). But guess what happened? The choir intended to sing three verses and stopped. The people didn’t stop. They kept going with the fourth verse. Luckily the organist and the choir figured it out almost immediately and joined in.

The “Gloria” was one of those were the people repeat the refrain “Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth” and then the choir sings the words of the Gloria. Well, in this parish the people love the Gloria so much they sing the words right along with the choir, even though the book clearly directs “choir / cantor”.

It didn’t happen today, but at a previous Mass I attended there the choir had attempted to change the verse to the Alleluia (this parish almost always uses the generic “Speak O Lord, you servant is listening. You have the words of everlasting life.”). But the people ignored the choir and their different words and sang the words that were used on most Sundays.

At the “Lamb of God” the people sing the whole hymn. They don’t go quiet while the choir or cantor sings the first part of each line.

They sang all the verses to the offertory hymn (“We Three Kings”), the Communion Hymn (“What Child is This”) and the closing hymn (“The First Noel”). [This is in contrast to parishes that seem to think that a single verse will suffice.]

Why are these signs of good liturgy?

Because the people have become so comfortable with the liturgy that they know exactly what to do and they are not afraid to open their mouths and sing. I have been an occasional visitor to this parish for about the past 20 years (as long as I have lived in this house). I can see the work that has gone into the liturgy and the stability of liturgical ‘repertoire’. They have a large selection of hymns that they do throughout the year but they seem to have settled on a limited number of settings for the fixed parts of the Mass. They have 2 “Kyries”, 2 “Glorias”, 3 versions of “Holy, Holy, Holy”, one "Our Father" (although they normally recite it) and 3 versions of “Lamb of God”. It seems one version for Christmas/Epiphany and again throughout Pascha, one for “Ordinary Time” and another for Advent and Great Lent. I think that they also have about 4 or 5 different melodies for the “Alleluia” and the Memorial Acclamation.

What they have is stability in liturgy.

About 15-20 years ago my pastor had invited me into the rectory to hear an audio tape he recorded of the Divine Liturgy on the previous Sunday, a Sunday when neither I nor any of the other cantors were present. The singing was tremendous. You could barely tell that there was no cantor. The first prompt by the priest was on “Shout joyfully”, and again with “Only-begotten Son” (#1). The priest only needed to give them the first notes (so they knew which melody they were singing). My first reaction was that I was greatly annoyed that the cantors were not missed. After awhile I realized that it was actually a compliment to the cantors. We had created a very stable liturgical atmosphere in which the people could sing with gusto and abandon.

Dear Administrator,

Words can't convey how much I appreciate your post above.

Bill

The editing ghost strikes again!

This post puts into words what I have been thinking about recently. The parish in which I was first "byzantinized" possesses this sort of familiarity and the singing just flows. It is truly the worship of the people. In some other parishes I experience a "choir" singing hard-to-pick-up arrangements (that vary too often as well and depend upon written music).

It is a disservice to the people to make the worship less accessible and reserved to specialists.

Organ?? In an orthodox church

Yes an organ .

In some Orthodox parishes in North America it was introduced in the late 50s to early 60s to encourage "congregational" singing. Most have since done away with them, and the move is to eventually get rid of them all . It was found that it did not help encourage congregational singing but instead drowned out bad singing. Many parishes for their part through education and using easier pieces have picked up on congregational singing. We can only hope that the church continues to return to this form of worship.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Michael Brooks said:
It is a disservice to the people to make the worship less accessible and reserved to specialists

Unfortunately, many's the time when people have trouble finding their way in services- especially if they are unfamiliar with them. Catechesis would help a lot, but oftentimes there is little or no opportunity for it, and sometimes little interest. People are often expected to roll with the punches, and to educate themselves in the finer nuances of the services, instead. Would it were not so.

Perhaps I was unclear. It was the Roman Catholic parish that had the organ, not the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox parish.

Amen to that, Bill.

Thank you, Administrator (John) for this post.

Let us hope and pray more and more Roman Catholic parishes are able to develop the kind of good Liturgy you have seen and experienced at this neighborhood parish.

"Whoops...my apologies. Didn't realize until I typed it out that I was on a thread where I probably don't belong since I am not a cantor - just someone who sings with the others in my parish...but wanted to show my gratitude. Forgive if inappropriate for me to post here. Thanks."

Porter

John, once again you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. Stability, "predictability", so to speak, is important.

When people get used to a certain "flow", you can't just go pulling the liturgical rug out from under them. It seems often the liturgists don't get that sometimes. The other night we were singing the Theophany Troparion in Tone 1 (Obikhod) - the RC guests were harmonizing along with us although they had not been exposed to it before.
DD