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THE TRANSPOSITION OF THE SERVICES

Throughout the centuries the faithful have observed Great Week and Pascha with fervor and great solemnity. Twice each day in the morning and in the evening, they would gather in the churches to celebrate the designated service at the appointed times. However, at some point in history the appointed times of the services began to change. The morning services were moved to the preceding evening and the evening services to the morning. It is not clear when and why these changes began to occur. By the middle of the nineteenth century, if not much sooner, it had become a common practice throughout the Orthodox Church. P. Rombotes in his book Christian Ethics and Liturgics.[44] published in Athens in 1869 makes reference to the custom, as does the new Typikon of Constantinople.[45] The reasons for the change appear to be ambiguous. Both Rombotes and the Typikon mention that it was done to accommodate the people.[46] This may have meant any number of things. For example, the new Typikon hints at one such possibility. By mentioning the fact that the ser�vices were very lengthy, it implies that the transposition occured in order to address this problem.[47]Another reason for the change may have come about as a result of some socio-political factors during the Ottoman rule. For example, a rule regulating the time for the public assembly of the Christian populace may have resulted in the shift of the services. Sometimes, an imposed practice in one generation or period has a way of becoming permanent.

Perhaps the most plausible reason for the rearrangement of the divine services is based on late medieval attitudes concerning the time of the celebration of the Divine Liturgy and the recep�tion of Holy Communion. According to long held popular beliefs, it was thought that the morning hours of the day were the most suitable and acceptable for the reception of Holy Communion. This being the case, it follows that all celebrations of the Divine Liturgy should be placed in the morning hours, regardless of the fact that some such celebrations were in fact nocturnal in nature.

An additional factor of considerable importance, which may also help explain the transfer of the morning services to the previous evening is the vigil or extended nocturnal service. There were several different types of vigils in the early and medieval Church.[48] Their structure, content and length varied according to purpose and local custom and usage. They were conducted as late night, all-night or pre-dawn observances. Vigils were held on the eve of great feasts as a sign of watchfulness and expectation. We know from several early and medieval documents that the Pas�sion of our Lord was observed liturgically in both Jerusalem and Constantinople with some type of vigil service.[49] There is suffi�cient evidence to connect the present Great Friday Orthros with these earlier vigil services. It is reasonable to assume from this that the present Orthros was originally observed as a nocturnal celebration. Thus, as the order and hours of the divine services of Great Week began to change and shift, this service - and by extension the other morning services of the Week - was advanced to earlier evening hours.

Whatever the reasons for the transposition of the services, we have in fact inherited a particularly peculiar tradition, which cir�cumvents both the normal liturgical practice as well as the natural order of things. Beginning with Great Monday and lasting through Great Saturday, the divine services are in an inverted position. Morning services are conducted the evening before and evening services are celebrated in the morning of the same day. Thus, on Palm Sunday evening, we conduct the Orthros of Great Monday and on the morning of Great Monday we celebrate the Vespers with the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy.[50] This pattern places us one half day ahead of the historical events and the natural order.

Of particular interest in this matter, is the order of the divine services for Great Thursday contained in the now defunct Typikon of the Great Church.[51] The services of the Orthros and the Trithekte in this Typikon are assigned to the morning hours, while a series of long services are designated for the evening hours. They are: the Vespers, followed by the Nipter (Washing of the feet), to which the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil is added beginning with the entrance of the Gospel. Before Holy Communion was distributed, the Patriarch also consecrated the Holy Myron. After the Divine Liturgy came the service of the Pannychis. In the Cathedral Office the Pannychis was a type of vigil service. This particular Pannychis on Great Thursday commemorated the pas�sion of the Lord. The twelve Gospel pericopes narrating the events of the passion were read at this service. These pericopes are the same as those now read in the present service of the Orthros of Great Friday, which in current practice is con�ducted on the evening of Great Thursday by anticipation.

From this description we learn at least two things. First, that Great Thursday evening in the late medieval church was supplied heavily with a series of long services. Second, the commemora�tion of the passion was conducted in the context of a vigil service (the Pannychis) on the night of Great Thursday. Because of the length of these services, I think we can safely assume they lasted well into the night. Can we assume also that Great Thursday eve�ning with its overburdened liturgy became the pivotal day in the process that saw the breakdown of liturgical units and their transposition to earlier hours? The Vesperal Divine Liturgy, for the reasons stated above, may well have been the first to be dislodg�ed from its original moorings, moving steadily forward in the day until it came to be celebrated in the morning hour. Next, the Pan�nychis or Vigil lost its original meaning and began to gravitate to an earlier hour. As these arrangements gradually evolved, the transposition of the morning services to the preceeding evening became the established practice.

Difficult as it may be, however, I believe that the Church is obliged to press the issue through careful study and find a way to restore the proper liturgical order. She can do no less, if she is to be true to her quest for and commitment to liturgical renewal and reform. St. Symeon of Thessalonike (+ 1429), an inspired stu�dent and teacher of liturgy noted in one of his treatises that once the Church has clarified and determined correct liturgical usages, we are obliged to change even those things that have become a practice by default. While we must honor and reverence our liturgical inheritance, we are also obliged to look at it more careful�ly and to distinguish between Tradition and custom. Here let me stress the point that it is the Church in her collective wisdom that must authenticate the need and procede to the reform of liturgical practice and usage.

The Origins of Pascha and Great Week - Part II
Alkiviadis C. Calivas

http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8505.asp

My thanks - and the thanks of others, certainly - to Father Deacon Lance for posting these two articles. Father Alexander Schmemann's piece I had read before; Father Calivas's article is new to me.

There can be no disagreement that the Church has a serious obligation to maintain an ongoing thorough study of the divine services, but there should also not be much disagreement that in such a study care is necessary in several ways (as the physical scientists will tell us, even observing something has an effect on what is being observed).

When it comes to Holy Week and Pascha, the texts of the services are profound and rich and will repay the effort of studying them - and this work is in its infancy. We need to know more and still more about, for example, the Biblical and patristic references in those texts, the relationship between the words and the music in the original Greek, changes that occurred when Greek texts were translated into Slavonic, and so on. We also need to encourage a greater participation in those services which are usually blessed with minimal attendance, and we need to consider carefully how we should revive those services which have fallen into desuetude in some places.

All this, I dare to suggest, should essentially PRECEDE any thoughts of introducing major changes - such as drastic alterations in the received timing of the services. Anton Baumstark reminded us several decades ago that the services of Lent and above all Holy Week are "resistant" to change (this has come to be called "Baumstark's Law"). We must tread carefully; hasty action can cause immense pastoral damage.

On the specific issue of timing, which seems to be a concern of some people at the moment: we do well to remember that the services have grown and developed organically. As Father Taft puts it, observing such a process is "like watching a flower grow". It would be inaccurate to assume that the services reached their present form by a given date - say 1200 AD, just for a hypothetical example - and that at a later given date someone "decided" to shift all the timing so as to have Vespers in the morning and Matins in the evening. No, these things happened together, quite gradually, and interacted. For a simple example, consider Resurrection Matins (most of which is attributed to Saint John of Damascus). Despite the name "Matins" and some surviving traces of Matins in the service itself, the texts of the service presume that this is being done while the world outside the door is in darkness - processing through the streets carrying lighted candles at 9 AM would be nowhere near as effective as the same procession is at midnight. Any attempt to begin the service after sunrise would be liturgically and pastorally destructive - and I say this from experience. [Hypothetically the whole service should begin at midnight and END at dawn - and I've experienced that too, but the average parish cannot face standing in Church at the peak of Paschal joy and dynamism all night long).

My conclusion? We urgently need far more research - and much of that research is made easier by the use of computers (to track down patristic references, for example). Meanwhile, at Holy Week and Pascha above all, we need to remember Lambert Beauduin's ever-valid dictum that where worship is concerned we may not change what we do not fully know and understand.

Incognitus

Father Deacon Lance,

Thank you for posting these links and articles. They offer much food for discussion and, I believe, support the perspective I have offered. To recap my position (which I made at some length much earlier in this thread), I am not adverse to a review of the Divine Services of Great and Holy Week and possible future adjustments to it. What I am adverse to is simply rearranging the services without thought and, more importantly, without consideration and conformity of what the rest of Byzantine Orthodoxy is doing. The Liturgical Instruction issued by the Vatican directs us to restore and, only after restoring, renew, and to renew along with Orthodoxy. None of the currently proposed revisions to our Liturgy (the Divine Liturgy or the moving around of the Holy Week services), IMHO, conforms to the directive.

Please let me select a few points from the articles you posted for consideration and comment:

From Father Schmemann�s article:

�The liturgical rules of the Orthodox Church prescribe that the Divine Liturgy is to be celebrated after Vespers on certain fast days. These days are: Thursday and Saturday of the Holy Week, the eves of Christmas and Theophany and the Feast of the Annunciation.

Since about the second century, the Divine Liturgy has been a morning service. Evening Divine Liturgies were prescribed only for the great feast days (as Schmemann notes above). I am not totally adverse to the possibility of evening Divine Liturgies, but we can see from our own history in the United States that the scheduling of Divine Liturgies anytime has been a major reason that the celebration of Vespers and Matins has fallen into disuse in most of our parishes. We have taught whole generations that unless the service is one in which we can receive the Eucharist, it is not worth attending.

Regarding the Feast of the Annunciation (to use the occasion of when Holy and Great Friday falls on the Feast of the Annunciation), it appears that the original form was more like Divine Liturgy in the morning and Vespers in the evening (the typicon prescribes the texts for Vespers for March 26th, not for March 25th). When the Lenten services began to be anticipated by one half day the Vespers was celebrated at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy, then eventually appended before the Divine Liturgy. During lent, the Lenten day runs from midnight to midnight but the festal day still runs from sunset to sunset. So if we simply move the Vespers and Divine Liturgy from morning (which is the �received� timing) to later at nightfall, in an attempt to fix it, we wind up not celebrating the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Annunciation itself, but on what is technically March 26th! No, if one were to consider a possible restoration of the timing of the Divine Services during Holy Week the answer is not to drag the Divine Liturgy from the day of feast until the evening (when it becomes the next day) but to either leave the Divine Liturgy in the morning (and to it attach Matins) or to anticipate it by celebrating it with Vespers the evening before. But this is where the discussion becomes complex so I will leave it and move on.

�We have thus a definite relationship between the time (�kairos) of the Eucharist and the fast, which is to precede it. This �eucharistic fast� must be lengthened or shortened depending on the nature of the day, on which the Liturgy is celebrated. The Typikon considers it self-evident that Divine Liturgy is always preceded by strict abstinence, therefore the general sense of all these instructions is that the greater the holiday, the earlier is the Liturgy celebrated and hence the shorter is the period of abstinence.�

The Holy Suppers we celebrate on the eves of Christmas and Theophany are not fasting meals in preparation for the Vespers and the Divine Liturgy for these feasts. They are festive meals that come after the reception of the Eucharist after the Vespers and Divine Liturgy on the eves of these feasts, with the Lenten aspects kept in tact because there is another Divine Liturgy in the morning on the feast itself at which the faithful would again receive the Eucharist. The recent custom of having a huge Holy Supper on Christmas Eve (12 foods, etc.) and then immediately heading off to Vespers and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil is not in accordance with our fasting tradition. My personal recommendation here would be for those parishes which seek to have an Eucharistic evening service celebrate the Vespers and Basil Divine Liturgy at 4:00 PM so that the Holy Supper may follow and be seen as a celebration, but one that is still a preparatory one to the Divine Liturgy on the Feast itself (although given the small size of our parishes two Divine Liturgies for the feast is not always the best course of action). Our Church really needs to consider the whole concept of fasting and its Gospel origins. Schmemann offers much insight here. Fasting �precede[s] every Eucharistic celebration. Expectation must precede fulfillment.� Again, I am not suggesting a �rigid �rubricism�� but a true analysis and return to our tradition together with the rest of Orthodoxy.

From Alkiviadis C. Calivas� article:

�Difficult as it may be, however, I believe that the Church is obliged to press the issue through careful study and find a way to restore the proper liturgical order. She can do no less, if she is to be true to her quest for and commitment to liturgical renewal and reform.�

I agree with the call for careful study. To it I add the need to preserve the traditional order until the entire Byzantine Orthodox Church makes a change. There are those in Orthodoxy who are looking at the structure of the Lenten services but no one has yet proposed a major reconstruction of them. We in the Ruthenian Church, who are only beginning to restore what we have lost, should not have the audacity to change what we are only beginning to understand. I believe that it would take one or more full generations of celebrating the received liturgical tradition before our Church, as a whole, can begin to speak to it.

One of the main problems with simply moving the timing of the Divine Services is that they did not stop developing at a fixed point in history (as Incognitus points out). If one simply moves them one only succeeds in creating new problems.

Let�s examine the texts of Pascha (Resurrection) Matins. The structure of this service did not take its present form until well after the Vespers and Divine Liturgy of St. Basil was moved from the evening of Pascha (Saturday night) until Saturday morning. But if one simply �fixes� the problem by moving Pascha Matins from Saturday evening (or midnight) to Sunday morning (so that one may celebrate Vespers and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil on Saturday night), we wind up singing the following during the daylight hours: �This most splendid and saving night is sacred and all-worthy of solemnity. It heralds the bright day of resurrection on which the Eternal Light, in the flesh, has shown forth from the tomb to all� (from Ode 7). The hymns of Paschal Matins are symbolically geared to the Light of Resurrection conquering the darkness (symbolized by the darkness outside the church). We see the shroud with the image of the dead Christ disappearing in the darkness and the candles piercing the darkness, filling all things with Light (�Today all things are filled with light� from the 3rd Ode). We journey together with �The women with Mary, before the dawn� and, with them �[find] the stone rolled away from the tomb.� These journeys with candles lose their symbolism in the brightness of the day if this service is moved to Sunday morning.

Now one can argue (and possibly rightly so) that Pascha Matins should be celebrated �before the dawn� so that we see the Light overtaking the Darkness. But the service looses its symbolism when celebrated once it is already light. �Let Habakkuk, speaking in behalf of God, stand with us at the divine watch. (Ode 4)� � �Let us rise at early dawn and bring to our Master a hymn instead of myrrh; and we shall see Christ.� (Ode 5) �Bearing torches: let us meet the bridegroom, Christ, as He comes forth from His tomb. (Ode 5)� �Early in the morning before sunrise, as if it were already day, myrrh-bearing virgins were seeking the Sun, previously descended into the grave.� (Oikos) We stand with Habakkuk holding lighted torches (in the form of candles). We wait for early dawn to bring a hymn to the Master.

This is only a quick review of the symbolism of Pascha Matins. And I won�t touch the Ambon Prayer for the Chrysostom Liturgy which presumes that the Church is gathered together with lighted candles. Nor will I touch the music of the Vesper / Basil DL for Holy Saturday which is definitely not carried over from when it was a paschal Liturgy.

Now in some places (including my own parish) there has been a move to restore the Vespers and Divine Liturgy of St. Basil to Holy Saturday evening and to immediately follow it with Pascha Matins. But this doesn�t work and only succeeds in getting the people to choose another Liturgy or to stay at home. I�ve seen this model employed at the parish I belong to. In ten years we have gone from an 11:00 PM service (Matins + DL) with 350+ in attendance to an almost four hour marathon of services with less than a hundred (Vespers + Basil DL + Procession + Matins + Basket Blessing). Other parishes report the same results. Rescheduling and forcing together services which did not develop together only succeeds in turning away the faithful.

I agree wholeheartedly with Incognitus� quote: �Meanwhile, at Holy Week and Pascha above all, we need to remember Lambert Beauduin's ever-valid dictum that where worship is concerned we may not change what we do not fully know and understand.�

Admin

I posted this last year and never got a response--can anyone help? Maybe one of the reverend Fathers? Maybe I'll get an answer by Great Friday this year--errrr, though it's Annunciation as well, so maybe the rules change again! ;-)

"I have additional question on Great Week practices and the current reform that no one can seem to answer. The "pew book" that we used on Great Friday AM for Strasti/Matins specifically mentions the non-ringing of bells on Great Friday. Is this an accretion to the Ruthenian tradition from the Latin rite who silence bells after the Gloria on Maundy Thursday until the Gloria on Holy Saturday? I have attended Burial Matins at the local Orthodox parish on Great Friday evenings and they toll the bell during the procession around the church with the Shroud. Should we be doing the same during our procession on Great Friday at Vespers? Does anyone know the legitimate tradition. I believe that the Union of Uzhorod and perhaps Brest specifically mention that we should NOT be forbidden to ring our bells on Great Friday. Anyone?"

Am just doing some work with the rubrics of Good Friday. My source certainly mentions the use of the bell after each Gospel during the Passion Matins. I shall report back on later services that day, God willing, and will attempt to check the text of the Union of Brest.

Incognitus

IIRC, one chime (assume on the blagovest?) for the 1st reading, 2 chimes for the 2nd, etc. correct?

As for the Union of Brest...
Looks pretty clear to me. I can't imagine any 'Romans' forbidding ECs from ringing bells, but can definitely picture EC clergy saying "No, we can't ring bells today!"

Σώσον, Κύριε, καί διαφύλαξον η�άς από τών Βασιλιάνικων τάξεων!

The custom of not ringing bells from Holy Thursday until the Easter Vigil is a Roman Catholic one. I don�t know when or how it developed. It does seem to fit with the context of the Roman Catholic Liturgy of Good Friday (on Holy Thursday after the Mass the altar is quietly stripped and left bare and left that way until the Easter Vigil).

This custom of keeping the bells silent appears to have drifted to the East. My guess is that at first the Latins found the bell ringing on Good Friday by the Byzantines to be bothersome and then directed them to keep their bells silent. It must have been an issue since it is addressed in the Union of Uzhorod (I haven�t checked Brest).

I know some Orthodox parishes also adopted this custom (or, at least, retained it when they switched from a Greek Catholic jurisdiction to an Orthodox one). I am familiar with an agreement between OCA and Byzantine Catholic parishes (which were located a block from one another) NOT to ring bells on Good Friday or Holy Saturday on both calendars out of respect for one another.

One of the most emotional things I can imagine is to celebrate Jerusalem Matins (Holy Saturday Matins) on Good Friday night. This service is the funeral for Christ. Imagine the entombment procession around the church with the shroud with the bell tolling slowly and the people singing �Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us� to the funeral melody.

Admin: This custom of keeping the bells silent appears to have drifted to the East. My guess is that at first the Latins found the bell ringing on Good Friday by the Byzantines to be bothersome and then directed them to keep their bells silent. It must have been an issue since it is addressed in the Union of Uzhorod (I haven�t checked Brest).

JK:Considering how little Pascha of the GC's and Easter of the RC's coincided, it's amazing that this even had to be written into the Union documents.

Admin:I know some Orthodox parishes also adopted this custom (or, at least, retained it when they switched from a Greek Catholic jurisdiction to an Orthodox one).

JK:None of the (RO)Orthodox parishes in my area silence the bells that I am aware of, though none are ACROD, and wouldn't have had many, if any, Latinizations when they were formed.

Admin:I am familiar with an agreement between OCA and Byzantine Catholic parishes (which were located a block from one another) NOT to ring bells on Good Friday or Holy Saturday on both calendars out of respect for one another.

JK:This seems kind of weird to me--again, our Pascha and theirs rarely coincide.

Admin:One of the most emotional things I can imagine is to celebrate Jerusalem Matins (Holy Saturday Matins) on Good Friday night. This service is the funeral for Christ. Imagine the entombment procession around the church with the shroud with the bell tolling slowly and the people singing �Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us� to the funeral melody.

JK:It was--absolutely beautiful. All the faithful carrying candles, following the clergy with the shroud, just as it was going totally dark. Then returning the shroud to the tomb again, and hearing the Ezekiel prophecy of the dry bones.

I guess I just want to know--officially, have we removed that Latinzation and should we now ring the bells on Great Friday?

It�s not a question of different calendars. The Romans didn�t want the Byzantines ringing bells from the RC Good Friday until their Easter. Likewise, once the custom moved East, the BC and OCA parishes agreed not to ring bells during these days on both calendars.

I�m not sure they ever carried the weight of official law. The Holy Week books prepared by Msgr. Levkulic and published by the Byzantine Seminary Press are approved for use but are not mandated for use. If something�s never been officially promulgated there is no need to unpromulgate it.

The issue is really one of education. People have grown accustomed to not ringing bells on Holy Friday and Holy Saturday. If a parish desired to return to a more traditional usage of the bells I would recommend appropriate catechesis first.

When I was young, we used two types of wooden "clappers" instead of bells - one more of a ratchet and the other a wooden hammer-head that swung on a arm and struck a wooden baseplate. Where these came from I had no idea.

When visiting Bratislava a couple of years ago we stopped in the museum of old folk music instruments in the castle. To my surprise many versions of the instruments, very old, were housed there. I don't know if Latin Slovaks ever used them or if the were also common in other countries, but would be interested to here if anyone else knows anything about these clappers.

Djs,

When I visted the "Zamok" museum in Uzhorod, they
had one level completely devouted to Rusyn musical
intsruments. There were many photographs of "clackers" and I believe they even had a few on display. I have heard that these wooden "glockenspiels" are very similiar in tradition to the many "monastic" wooden boards and malets that are used to call the monks to prayer.

Ung-Certez

Did you use them Good Friday/Holy Saturday in Windber? (IIRC they came in instead of the bells after the 9th or so Gospel on Thursday night.) Does anyone still use them? How about in the old-old country?

Djs,

Yes, we did (and still do) use them in Windber parish. I never attended any Paschal Divine Liturgies in the Rusyn homeland, but do believe they are still used in Eastern Slovakia and Transcarpathia.

Ung-Certez

Do RC Slovak or Polish parishes use them?
Do ACROD parishes use them?

I believe their use in the Ruthenian Recension still has some connection to the monastic
wooden bells.

Ung-Certez