I'd like to share with you some great news!

St. Philip the Apostle Byzantine Catholic church in Sacramento, California will offer a Divine Liturgy in Church Slavonic on the occasion of the feast of the Protection of the Theotokos. The Divine Liturgy will be held on October 1 at 5:30 pm.

All are invited to attend! (We would especially appreciate the presence of those who can actually sing the liturgy, since most of us cannot.)

If I were there, I'd help,even as a "pravoslavnyj"!

Now if only these could be held on a regular basis like they were 20 - 30 years ago. Oh times, why hath thou forsakest us? I remember I had to learn the Slavonic Divine Liturgy as part of my ECF and Altar Boy training way, way back when.

As a youngster we went to the Ukrainian Church here way back in the 40's and the Liturgy was in Slavonic and everything was learned from memory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When the language was changed to modern Ukrainian...boy the trouble...the melody was the same but the syllables in Ukrainian were hard to force into the melody at times BUT!!!eventually it worked.
After years of just Ukrainian we forgot the Slavonic completely Then in the 70's my brother and I went to the Ukrainian SSR at that time and attended Divine Liturgy in the Church of the Nativity(?) in Ternopil. The Liturgy was in Slavonic and for a few seconds we were at a loss..........but then instantly the Slavonic words flowed from our lips as if we had never forgotten them as if it was just yesterday and not decades ago. The old timers there looked at us in amazement and asked us how we were able to sing everything. What a happy memory!!!!! But here in Canada we have not heard the Old Slavonic since that time
Congratulation on your Liturgy МНОГАЯ ЛІТА

Unworthy but
Kolya

Good news! This year, the seminarians at Christ the Savior Seminary in Johnstown(ACROD) are taking a class in the use of Church Slavonic!

My wife and daughter have both taken OCS twice--the former at GU and Harvard, the latter at Penn and Chicago. I think this means they are more proficient in Slavonic than about 90% of all the priests in most ostensibly Slavic jurisdictions in this country.

I kindly asked if my priest has a copy of the old Ruthenian recension book, because he's one of the few who can read some slavonic, and actually uses it, in his vesting prayers.

You can get a complete set from Eastern Christian Publications, in twelve volumes.

Try the world...
.

You would have been quite welcome by me! It was well attended esecially for a Tuesday evening at 5:30 pm (rush hour commute) About 20 or so attended, with two priests concelebrating.

The only glitches were technology related. The battery on my digital recorder went just before the start of the liturgy, no time to run out and buy a new one and I didn't have the spare battery I thought i had. The other glitch was the pictures I took are stuck on my SD card which now locks up my computer when I try to copy the images to the computer.

looking around, and looking at at that monthly payment package which does seem more manageable :p.

I am sure ROCOR priests where there is no exclusive use of English know Slavonic best. I wonder, however, how well their Russian parishoners understand.

Try pronouncing Slavonic in a Ruthenian or Ukranian parish using the ROCOR standard pronunciation of CS and one can understand the wisdom of using English or Ukrainian vernacular.

Let's not forget that the Serbian Orthodox use the ROCOR version of Church Slavonic, too. However, I honestly believe that the Ruthenian/Ukrainian standard is probably a bit easier to pronounce.

If by "version" you mean "pronunciation" then that's not quite correct. Serbs have their own way of pronouncing Church Slavonic distinct from Russians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, etc. These days, in Serbian Orthodox parishes, the choir will sing in Church Slavonic while the priest frequently does his portions in modern Serbian.

Fr. David