It's not THAT hard. All you need is $1500 worth of books.....

Seriously, I know private "readers vespers" at home is a very poor substitute for the real thing and that it's almost impossible to do it properly. But sometimes a poor substitute is all we can do.

So I'd reiterate the point, those whose parishes make the effort to have Vespers and Orthros - critical prayers of the liturgical Sunday - are very lucky.


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Oh Lord although I desired to blot out
With my tears the handwriting of my many sins
And for the rest of my life to please thee through sincere repentance;
Yet doth the enemy lead me astray as he wareth
Against my soul with his cunning.
Oh Lord before I utterly perish do thou save me!

It is, of course, true that a complete set of service-books is expensive. There is little that can be done about that problem (I did not say there is nothing that can be done about it!). Some publishing houses make it a little easier to purchase the books over a period of time; others do not. The two English editions of the Menaion currently available are both actually rather a bargain when one considers the expense of producing such books for what is inevitably a rather small market. But the fact of the matter is that we need the service-hbooks. The books are not going to print themselves, or bind themselves (binding costs more than printing these days - ask me, I know only too well! The principle given us by the Lord Jesus Christ remains true: "where your treasure is, there will your heart be". Anyone who wants to become seriously familiar with the Byzantine services needs the appropriate books; there is no way out of it.

There is, as I hinted above, something that could be done. Ridiculous amounts of money and other scarce resources are being wasted in duplicating efforts, and that is a luxury that our Church cannot afford. With a genuine willingness to agree on basic criteria, and to find solutions to certain controversial passages, it would be much less difficult to publish the complete set of service-books in a uniform edition at a lower price without sacrificing quality. I don't see this happening now or in the immediate future, so I bless the name of those brave people and publishing houses who are getting English translations of the service-books into print. If we don't care for the functional variety of English these publishing houses use or we would prefer another approach to translating - well, who is standing in the way? Meanwhile, save your pennies, bug your friends, and buy the existing English service-books and thank Almighty God that someone has had the gumption to translate and publish them.

Fr. Serge

my idea was that the Vespers and Orthos aren't to be done privately but in public, with the entire community. i might add the fact that you can't sing all the service by youself, it is almost impossible, trust me, I did that at least 4 or 5 times and had to think about again about that!

claus ion my brother in Christ-

I think in principle we are in 100% agreement. However, the reality here in the US is that some parishes don't want to do this, and even in those that do only a small number of the parishoners come. We wish everyone would be there; in reality if we have these services it's sometimes only a few people plus the clergy.

And as for your earlier question:


In my parish these services are shared between the readers, the deacon and the priest. In our Horlogion (book of the hours) it lays out specific parts for each of these persons. The psalms, troparia, the canon the selections from the Octoechos and Menaion and the like are chanted by the readers. Most of the litanies are done by the deacon. Some of the litanies and all the blessings are done by the priest, and the Gospel is proclaimed by the priest.

Fr. Serge-

I'm in complete agreement. I think your estimate of two menaia is a bit low; as I recall when you look at the universe of Catholic and Orthodox publications there are several. I do think it's silly to go to all the translation effort for maybe 20 parishes or so, and wish that each eparchy (or group of eparchies) didn't have its own translation. It all comes from basically the same Greek or Slavonic texts, yes? Surely one or two translations would be good enough?


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Oh Lord although I desired to blot out
With my tears the handwriting of my many sins
And for the rest of my life to please thee through sincere repentance;
Yet doth the enemy lead me astray as he wareth
Against my soul with his cunning.
Oh Lord before I utterly perish do thou save me!

Let me be cynical for a moment ...

Priests often receive 'donations' for serving Divine Liturgies. Maybe if they could request stipends for non-sacramental services they'd be more inclined to serve Vespers, Matins, etc.

Never mind the stipend. I'll be ecstatic with a small number of reliable people willing to commit themselves to coming to the services, reading, chanting, and serving.

Fr. Serge