www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Books I recently bought "Divine Office of the Byzantine-Slavonic Rite.

I'm pretty excited about this book. I'm planning on studying it while comparing/contrasting it to other Eastern Catholic and Orthodox texts. Eventually I might talk to my priest about becoming a cantor for days when the cantor can't make it.

For anyone who has this book, can someone help me with something? How exactly am I supposed to read the Canon? It seems pretty complex to me, and unless I'm not finding it in the book, there seem to be some things missing. What I've found missing are parts of Odes 1-8.

In the Octoechos, the Sunday canon includes only Hirmos 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8*, -* not the refrain, troparion, and exapostilarion - and the full Ode 9 ( Hirmos, refrain, troparion, Exapostilaron). The weekdays, and feasts found in the Triodions, include Canon - Ode 9 only. Do I take the refrain, troparion, and exapostilarion from Ode 9 for all previous odes, where only the hirmos is supplied?

Or am I reading this completely incorrectly?


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I don't have that particular book so my comments are general.

Most parishes abbreviate Matins. So it seems logical that the book includes (in English) only the texts most commonly used by parishes. For example, at Sunday Matins my parish sings Ode 1 in full, sings the short litany, then continues with Ode 9. If you were seeking to do "full" Matins you'd likely need additional texts.

If you are interested in becoming a cantor I would focus on learning the melodies that never change. First, those for the Divine Liturgy, then for Vespers ("Blessed is the Man", "O Lord, I have cried' in 8 tones, "O Joyful Light, etc.) and then for Matins. Such hymns constitute the frame of the service. Then learn the the melodies for the troparia and prokimney. And so on.

Best wishes.

Thanks, that is some good advice. The melodies that never change are all in my parish's Divine Liturgy book, and I know them all quite well. Matins and Vespers, however, the books only are put out when they are served, so not often. Of course I could ask my priest if I could make a copy of them, but the Ukrainian Catholic church doesn't have anything close to the Ruthenian Metropolitan Cantor Institute website where literally everything is there and you could basically learn it all yourself.

We Ukrainian Catholics, however, since 2018 have been holding a Singing Convention. https://ugccmusic.com/ The website is lacking, but it seems to be conference where "cantors, singers, choir directors, clergy, and all those interested in church singing gather for the annual Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Singing Conference, “SingCon,” a weekend of prayer, learning, and fellowship." Its an hour away at the Philadelphia UGCC Cathedral next year, so I might go.

That book makes many compromises to fit 'lots' into one volume. Blame the Basilians (this is an English translation of their 'Breviary', warts and all).

I wanted to add, does anyone here have experience with Archbishop Joseph Raya's "Byzantine Daily Worship"? It's described as a Byzantine Divine Office in one volume, here.


http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2007/02/byzantine-divine-office-in-one-volume.html#.X5i85x9OlTs


I found it available at Alleluia Press.

Archbishop Raya's "Byzantine Daily Worship" has been a staple since it was published in the late 1960s. I've had my copy since the late 1970s and it is currently held together with tape. In many eparchies it's been replaced with their own publications. If you're looking for a one volume book I highly recommend it. [The average layman certainly does not need more.]

Archbishop Raya's Byzantine Daily Worship is excellent. The only thing about it that catches one's "Eastern eye" with some alarm is the note that is placed under the Second Sunday of Lent. it is stated that on that day there was the ancient commemoration of Gregory Palamas and that his theology contained "some errors which were later refuted by Greek and Russian theologians."

Have always wondered about why this statement is there. What were the errors of Saint Gregory Palamas? Were they the Latin charges of "quietism" hurled at him that one may sometimes come across in later RC writers? Does this mean that the authors of this otherwise excellent office-book consider Palamas some kind of heretic? And who were those "Greek and Russian theologians" who refuted the "errors of this theology?"

If anyone could shed some light on this, it would be greatly appreciated!

Alex, I believe the errors of Gregory Palamas are that he can be read has espousing panentheism (God is in everything) almost to the point of pantheism. That has been the biggest issue that folks have brought up. We are reading his homilies, and I have not seen any of that. He seldom talks about his theories on essence and energies, except for the Transfiguration and on certain feasts of the Theotokos, and is careful about his language (so far-we are not done yet, but these were given when he was in Thessalonika, I think after the council about his teachings).

Available online is Theosis and Gregory Palamas [scribd.com] by Norman Russell. Russell's The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition [amazon.com] is a standard reference on the subject. His work is considered the contemporary version and extention of the 1938 classic treatment Divinization of the Christian According to the Greek Fathers [amazon.com] by Fr. Jules Gross. In the 2006 St. Vlad article Russell concludes:
This is another case where, as Fr.Georges Florovsky, I believe, readily acknowledged, a Roman Catholic (here the priest-scholar Gross) was at the vanguard of the Neo-Patristic Synthesis that he (Florovsky) envisioned.