www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Uncanonical services as supplementary spiritual nourishment

Hey, wait a minute, I'm a cantor too and I love singing the Tone 4 samopodobny velichanya to the Theotokos from the Moleben.

I think there is a certain amount of empathy amongst cantors, Andrew, because they more than most understand what has been lost, abreviated, disused, etc. and continually have to deal with that tension. I completely agree with you, Andrew, about the model, Jesus Christ. That is the best and most direct explanation I have seen in a long time.

This is a "both and" situation. We definitely need to resablish the services of the Typikon/Horologion as foundational, but at the same time we can't just ignore popular devotion, either, at least not in the short term.

I agree that the Molebens and Akathist should be "supplimentary" but should not completely be suppressed. They have their own unique liturgical beauty.

Andrew, Molebens and Akathists to Christ don't fit the "model"?

Dear All,

Some pertinent quotes from the recent Vatican document Directory on Popular Piety & the Liturgy might prove illuminating...

"The expression "pious exercise" in this Directory refers to those public or private expressions of Christian piety which, although not part of the Liturgy, are considered to be in harmony with the spirit, norms, and rhythms of the Liturgy. Moreover, such pious exercises are inspired to some degree by the Liturgy and lead the Christian people to the Liturgy. Some pious exercises have been established by mandate of the Apostolic See or by mandate of the Bishops. Many of these exercises are part of the cultic patrimony of particular Churches or religious families. Pious exercises always refer to public divine revelation and to an ecclesial background. They often refer to the grace revealed by God in Jesus Christ and, in conformity with the laws of the Church, they are practiced "in accordance with approved customs or books" (Directory on Popular Piety & the Liturgy, para. #7)

"The term "popular piety" designates those diverse cultic expressions of a private or community nature which, in the context of the Christian faith, are inspired predominantly not by the Sacred Liturgy but by forms deriving from a particular nation or people or from their culture. Popular piety has rightly been regarded as "a treasure of the people of God" and "manifests a thirst for God known only to the poor and to the humble, rendering them capable of a generosity and of sacrifice to the point of heroism in testifying to the faith while displaying an acute sense of the profound attributes of God: paternity, providence, His constant and loving presence. It also generates interior attitudes otherwise rarely seen to the same degree: patience, an awareness of the Cross in every-day life, detachment, openness to others and devotion" (Directory, para. #9)

"Lack of consideration for popular piety, or disrespect for it, often betrays an inadequate understanding of certain ecclesial realities and is not infrequently the product not so much of the doctrine of the faith, but of some ideologically inspired prejudice. These give rise to attitudes which: 1) refuse to accept that popular piety itself is an ecclesial reality prompted and guided by the Holy Spirit; 2) do not take sufficient account of the fruits of grace and sanctity which popular piety has produced, and continues to produce, within the ecclesial body; 3) not infrequently reflect a quest for an illusory "pure Liturgy", which, while not considering the subjective criteria used to determine purity, belongs more to the realm of ideal aspiration than to historical reality" (para. #50)

Though this document addresses primarily the situation in the Western Church, I believe the same principles pertain to the discussion here.

On a related note from my own experience as a monk - our community has had its share of arguments over "liturgy vs. devotions". It has been my experience that many (by no means all) who denigrate popular devotions are also those for who the zeal of participating in the liturgical life of the Church is also lagging. In fact I had one monk tell me that daily Mass is a private devotion that we would best do away with. The best response to this line of thinking was from one of our monks who was killed last year. He said you can't fake in public what you don't do in private!

PAX

Benedictine,

Bishop Hilarion is entitled to state what he wants. He does bring up some interesting points though. He doesn't make a distinction between 'liturgy and devotions' as you do, but rather between canonical and uncanonical services. The issue is the replacement of prescribed services (per the Tyicon) with unprescribed services. This brings to mind questions of why do we ignore how the Church asks us to pray? You can quote any other document to make a case, but the problem remains.

What would you say if we replace the canonical scriptures with spiritual writings? Replace Paul's letter to the Romans with passages from the Philokalia. The spiritual writings ARE beneficial and can be centered on the mystery of Christ, but they are NOT canonical readings prescribed by the Church lectionary. Do you get the point?

Let me make another analogy. Can you imagine the outcry in many of our churches if we took down the icons (written according to iconographic canons) and replaced them with pious religious pictures? Religious pictures DO tell us a lot about the subject they depict, but are NOT canonically written.

The problem we face is our gradual distancing from the theology of the church and how our prescribed canonical services can teach us our faith. We opt for substitutes. We grope for sentimental sounds-good piety. Chanted stichera become 'hymns.'

Case in point: In the past, we have read that the "rock" in Matthew 16:18 is Peter. Yet, nowhere in our Pentecostarion do we find that. Instead, we sing that the "rock" is Peter's confession of faith our even our faith in Christ. If we never chant our stichera we would never be exposed to such a theology, but rather make narrow claims that it can ONLY mean Peter's person (as an argument for the papacy rather than for the mystery of faith). Note though that "rock" has several meanings besides Peter's person or his or our confession of faith. I'm not denying that it doesn't have interpretive value for Peter's person.

Things really get messy when one realized that half of our Resurrectional troparia/kontakia texts are based on the uncanonical scriptures!

God bless!
Cantor Joe Thur

Dear Joe,

With all due respect to His Grace Bishop Hilarion (I hope that's the right honorific) - my point, and I think the point of the Directory on Popular Piety & the Liturgy and many other posters on this thread, is not that uncanonical devotions, para-liturgical services, or whatever you want to label them should REPLACE the liturgical rites of the Church, but that they can co-exist with and benefit official worship.

In other words, why do they have to be looked upon in opposition - as if praying the Rosary or an Akathist somehow takes away from the liturgy? Believe me, I've sat through all sorts of liturgy classes in my higher studies where the professors absolutely loathed and ridiculed any form of piety, viewing it as the enemy of full conscious and active participation in the liturgy. Also I've heard the horror stories of "with-it" Dominicans snatching & tearing up old ladies rosaries in order to "free" them to appreciate liturgy. Needless to say, the simple faith of the people HAS been abused.

At our Abbey we had quite a fight to have a Holy Hour of Eucharistic adoration for vocations once a week. You would have thought we asked for human sacrifice! BTW, this was an additional community exercise - it didn't take the place of any hour of the Divine Office.

I am very leery of those who would posit the false dichotomy between these 2 (IMHO) necessary aspects of a well-rounded spirituality.

PAX

P.S. BTW as part of our mandated office of Vigils we do in fact read Patristic and other "spiritual writers" for lack of a better term. To be honest, I often prefer some of these readings to the more obtuse OT passages.

P.P.S. Best of luck on your diaconal studies!

Benedictine,

Once again, and it is getting old, the problem is the replacement of canonical services with uncanonical ones. Why is this point so hard to get?

What is lost in the ecclipse of the canonical services is the ability to see and speak with the mind of the Church. A theologian is one who prays. But prays what?

Fr. Robert Taft writes in his article, '"Eastern Presuppositions" and Western Liturgical Renewal' the following:

"Western Christology runs the danger of disturbing the trinitarian structure of Christian piety. All Christians, of course, believe in the Holy Trinity. But here I am talking about a community's actual faith consciousness and its liturgical expression, which in the liturgies of the Christian east is, in my view, incomparably superior to what was traditional in the Latin west."

How does one tap into that "faith consciousness" if there is no "liturgical expression" to participate in?

We may think we have the answers, but without the exposure to what the Church teaches in its school of prayer, will we ever get it?

Fr. Taft continues:

"Problems in the history of the theological tradition are resolved not by western references to the Council of Trent or eastern flights of fancy concerning "sobornost" and "eucharistic ecclesiology," salted with a couple of commonplaces from some patristic anthology of long overworked proof-texts, but by the careful, close reading of all the sources, and attempting to fit all the tesserae into the mosaic."

And isn't this the bigger problem: the fact that an unexamined liturgical life is not worth celebrating? If our church's canonical services are ecclipsed or become extinct because we simply give up on them, then we basically declare that our School of Prayer/Theology is worthless and unmeaningful. And so we look for quicky one-liners (prooftexts) and flights of fancy to remedy our very small lexicon of theological tradition. We grab a few paragraphs from the CCC, a few quotes from EWTN and CNS, pepper them with cheep apologetics that reduce our tradition down to differences between us and them, and think we have it down pat. In the meantime, we blow bye the grand library of our school of prayer found in our liturgical services, Menaia, Pentecostarion, Triodion, etc. Like the family Bible that sits on the coffee table unopened, they too collect dust.

But what exactly does 'lex orandi, lex credendi' mean? If our liturgies don't have anything to teach us because they aren't simply celebrated anymore, then we have to find supplements in popular piety and dogmatic pronouncements.

God bless!
Cantor Joe Thur

Just a clarification. The Menaion for June 30th (Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles) does say that:

I realize Joe's argument does not hinge on this point. Nor would I disagree that there are more than one way to understand the "rock" of Matthew 16 in the Fathers...or even in Catholic documents today (John Paul has even referred to Mt 16:18 as referring to the Church being built on the "faith of Peter.")There certainly is more than one way to understand the application of "rock" in Matthew. It cannot be interpreted narrowly as only being St Peter's person. The liturgical texts refer to Christ as the "rock," St Peter's faith as "the rock," and St Peter himself as the "rock":

and also the apostles:

David Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

Dear Diak,

I wholeheartedly agree. Let's not proscribe appropriate popular devotions or uncanonical services, but also let us be sure that we are preserving the Vespers, Matins, Liturgy cycle including feast days.

Probably, some of us have seen more degradation of the Church's beautiful canonical cycle of worship than others. What I have seen brings great pain to my heart.

I can imagine a parish that I know of in my diocese that has a regular noncanonical Monday evening "Prayer Service." Were it the Eve of the Theophany on a Monday night, they might just as soon do their regular Prayer Service and forget the Eve of Theophany. Their mother parish didn't even have a Divine Liturgy on Theophany one year AND it was on a Saturday!!!! (I told the administering bishop about that one!)

In Christ,
Andrew

Dear Joe,

It seems that we are talking past one another , so please let me try to clarify my position...

First, I agree with you and Bishop Hilarion that uncanonical/popular piety should not replace the riches of the liturgical tradition.

The only caveat that I am making is that there is a tendency, in promoting an understanding of the fullness of liturgical life and all the theological import that it has therein, to view other forms of religious expression as defective or inferior. Well, I disagree the this assessment.

Our spiritual traditions - whether East or West, are much more complex and richer than what is contained ONLY in the official texts of worship. Can one really say that they have an Orthodox ethos by knowing the liturgy alone and ignoring such extra-liturgical realities as the Jesus Prayer? Is one fully conversant in Catholic spirituality with merely a grasp on public liturgy while ignoring the contributions of the various schools i.e. Franciscan, Jesuit, Carmelite, & Dominican? (I guess I am prejudiced since I teach a class on Christian spirituality at our seminary.)

Even in my own Benedictine observance, where the liturgy and Scripture have the pride of place they should, being a faithful follower of the Rule of St. Benedict is so much more than getting these two elements down pat. There is also the whole monastic milieu - what takes place outside of the oratory that shapes us to be disciples of the Lord.

Once again, I don't mean to be contentious. I validate the basic premise of your point. The full cycle of the liturgy should to available to all the faithful so that they may benefit from its profound theological insight. I just would add that we can also learn theology outside of the official prayer of the Church.

In fact because these extra-liturgical practices are informed by the sentiments of God's faithful - they too are part of the prayer of the Church.

PAX

Dear Friends,

I really DO appreciate Cantor Joseph's bringing up this really central issue and I love the directions in which it is going.

I'm going to take Diak up on his excellent suggestion to have a "Reader's Services Q&A" and I've got a lot of questions that need answering.

The only other issue in my life that concerns me more is my ongoing understanding of women . . .

But the serious question/reflection I wanted to raise here is in conjunction with what Fr. Taft raised in his excellent book on the Office that has to do with the canonical/non-canonical prayer issue raised by Cantor Joseph and the issue discussed by Benedictine.

In commenting on the monastic offices, Fr. Taft develops the position that monastics followed different principles than the cathedral Churches in cities.

Monastics, for example, read the scriptures and the psalms right through sequentially without any sort of divisions or liturgical selectiveness. This monastic practice was incorporated into our Office via the Byzantine Psalm and scripture readings at Matins and Vespers - something St Benedict also did with his Typikon of getting through the Psalter in a week, although he dispersed the Psalms throughout the offices as such.

Monastics tended to use the Psalter itself as their office, especially eremitical ones and knew it by heart.

The "cursus" Fr. Taft refers to for monastics also often included a short, oft-repeated prayer that was used throughout the day and also when monastics worked at their handicrafts.

One monk, as Taft notes, prayer the first two verses of Psalm 51 constantly.

He prayed this all the time as he made 17 baskets daily for the market to support himself.

Of these, he gave two baskets to another monk as payment to him to pray over the holy Father as he slept and took some needed rest . . .

For such monks, the oft-repeated short psalmic verse WAS their office as well.

This was likewise included into the Byzantine office with the possibility that one could replace offices with the Jesus Prayer prayed certain numbers of times.

The RC Church also prescribes, at least in the Third Orders, the repetition of Our Fathers and the Rosary that could take the place of Offices.

Now I come to my point (yes, I do have one ).

This has to do with the ability of people in the world to pray, period.

I use the Reader's Services and the Psalter frequently - I'm not bragging, but I don't let a week go by without getting through the Psalter.

HOWEVER, there are times when I need to pray and when I can't get to the Office.

I've found the Rosary and the Jesus Prayer as great helps in this regard that satisfy spiritually in a complete way - they are ways to pray always, just like the daily monastic cursus of a repeated phrase.

And I can't say that these aren't "Offices" - just that they are used when I can't get my books or downloaded Readers' Service files out.

So, yes the canonical hours have the priority - but even over and above this is the priority to pray always.

In addition, the Byzantine Office has made room for the expression of "greater devotion" via the possibility to pray more of the Psalter (Lenten offices allow additional psalms for most of the hours) and through the use of beautiful Canons, including Akathists, that are used at Matins and at Compline.

The Canons to the Cross and the Saints of the weekly cycle do what the Akathists do.

At the end of Compline, one may say as many Canons and Akathists as possible - East Slavic monastics can go for most of the night using these.

My own view regarding the Russian Hierarch's commentary here is that he is certainly correct.

In Russia, akathists to popular icons and saints are WILDLY popular - like our Rosaries and Stations of the Cross here ).

When the Patriarch of Moscow glorified as a local Moscow Saint a holy, blind prophetic woman (St Matrona), there were, on that day alone, 10,000+ molebens requested and served to her throughout Moscow!!

In addition, the Rule of the Psalter is also very popular in Russia and Ukraine where the Office winds up lost somewhere . . .

I also think what Russia is struggling with is NOT exactly the same sort of thing that we in North America are struggling with.

Here, we have imitated to a large extent paraliturgical services of the Latin Church, services and devotions that CANNOT fit anywhere in our Office - period.

Canons and Akathists and Kathismata, even when served on their own, are, after all, LITURGICAL prayers (taken out of context when we do them in isolation to the Office).

Russia only has the problem of getting people to place these liturgical items back into their proper horological setting.

I submit that if our people here were as addicted to Akathists, Canons and the Psalter as they are over 'there,' we'd have a renaissance of Eastern spirituality in our Churches.

At the same time, the question remains to be asked - how can we adapt the horologion and other Eastern liturgical, if non-canonical, services to the life of the laity so as to make them more accessible?

What of specific parish-based workshops to provide hands-on training to laity in how to do Readers' Services, the "how to" and why?

You Cantors and other liturgical experts here sometimes, I think, assume that we liturgicall unlettered laity can pick up what you know like the back of your hands and run with it - and we can't.

Alex

OK, Alex, having said that you can volunteer to go tell Pani Kapusta that she can't have her Moleben anymore...you think you have women problems now

I'm having difficulties with a strict black-and-white disctinction between "canonical" and "uncanonical" services. As Archimandrite Robert Taft has pointed out, and Alex alluded to above, the current Typikon/Horologion in the Slavic churches represents a predominantly monastic development. Much of the "cathedral usage" or ancient parish usage is no longer extant in the Byzantine liturgical corpus.

Just thinking out loud here. Popular devotion has existed since the very beginning of the Church. In fact during the first few centuries it was apparently much more spontaneous than today. And if anyone has studied the development of the Typikon they realize that in the first 1000 years this was a highly dynamic process.

I am having a bit of difficulty determining where that line is drawn, esepcially if the particular devotions (Akathists, Canons, Molebens) have arisen within the tradition? Again, if it is a direct importation from the Latins, etc. that is another story.

Is current Byzantine popular devotion in this way (Akathists, Molebens, etc.) a process of "natural response" to the decline of cathedral services better suited for parish usage than the monastic Horologion??? Sounds like another PhD dissertation topic...

I have to kinda wonder if part of the issue isn't numbers. That's numbers of bodies.

I'm thinking of the most vibrantly alive RC parish I know. They have 5 masses each Sunday, the lines are long for confession because ther are usually only three priests hearing - you get the picture. I think they have on the order of five priests or so - and the parish is several thousand strong. There are GOBS of "extra" sevices (some we would call canonical, some perhaps "semi" canonical and others purely devotional). It's an effort, but not a superhuman one to get all the players in place for virtually any service anytime - with good attendance - because in addition to excellent catechesis & motivation, there is a huge pool of folks to draw from.

I'd sure love to see Vespers and Matins (or at least some reasonable part of 'em) celebrated in our parish more often. (Read: on occasions other than just on major feasts.) I don't expect it to happen - at least not under our current pastor - and I'm not casting any kind of blame. At our parish, any service celebrated is canonical (with the *sigh* exception of the Novena to the Divine Mercy once a year.) But even so, we don't have many of 'em outside of Divine Liturgy. I daresay I am not alone in saying that neither I nor my pastor are entirely comfortable with all those services - he attended an RC seminary, and I haven't sung Matins often enough to be 100% confident...yet. If the good Lord and the Bishop eventually send us a pastor who wants to do these services, I look forward to becoming confident.
But the fact remains that in our parishes, a restoration of "more" of our liturgical heritage is likely to require a significant committment by a very few people. How many of our parishes have more than one priest? More than a couple of cantors (who have livings to earn and families to care for as well). I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but we shouldn't underestimate the effort involved if we're going to do it right.

I wonder if some of the popular devotional practices in vogue began simply because they were easier.

I'd love to feed my family delicious, nutritionally perfect meals every night, but sometimes I'm too tired to do much more than nod when they run for the peanut butter & jelly. I think this has been the case liturgically in a bunch of our parishes.

Just musing.


Sharon

Dear Mother Sharon,

B'shem haAv, v'haBen, v'Ruach haKodesh, Elochim Echod, Amen!

Yes, easier to be sure!

There is also, to my mind, the aspect of laity establishing their own "turf" in the Church via services and devotions that are "lay-centrered" rather than "clergy-centred."

In the East, this was often a practical necessity, but also because the services were often more readily understandable to the laity.

We know that East Slavic laity have historically used the Psalms and have read reader's services at home. This was done in winter time when churches weren't heated and people stayed at home.

There is a much greater emphasis on the "home Church" in our tradition, centred on the icon corner and rites of passages, daily family prayers etc.

Some have suggested that it was the Home Church that helped the Church survive during the soviet era - which is, of course, true.

St Dmitri of Rostov's Lives of the Saints and the Psalter were frequently used in the home.

The Psalter was often memorized by the laity - we know the Kozaks often memorized it and should they be captured, had a ready prayer resource committed to memory.

One such canonized Kozak, St John the Rusyn, would often go to a walled-up church near the home of the Turkish family he served to recite psalms from memory.

In the West, private devotions but also things like Perpetual Help Chapels allow the laity a sense of "our own turf" in prayer and worship.

The monastic movement was also a lay movement and St Francis himself, as you know, was never ordained a priest and recommended that his followers not get ordained, but for different reasons than those posited by earlier monastic founders.

Alex

Diak,

The late Fr. A. Schmemann would call that development a "synthesis." Bishop Hilarion uses canonical and uncanonical in regards to what is and what is not prescribed in the Typicon. The Typicon published by our church is for the entire Metropolia, not just monastic communities. Its contents reflect how our Church worships and prays. When we don't appreciate it or follow it or understand the flow, our liturgical life becomes one-dimensional. Everthing becomes the Mass, nothing but the Mass. Matins and vespers becomes a waste of time and incomprehensible.

Joe

Alex,

That is a horrible approach to the liturgy as being the work of the people. If the laity just only sing along with the cantors, there will be enough work for them to do.

I don't buy this "us-versus-them" model. Of course, history has shown a gradual exclusion of laity from liturgical participation, especially when our liturgical life was reduced down to priest-only celebrations (the Mass and nothing but the Mass). But this doesn't have to be.

Joe

And yet ideally, especially on Saturday evenings and the eves of Great Feasts, Great Vespers (either served separately or together with Matins as an "All-Night Vigil") prepares us for the Holy Eucharist, the Holy and Divine Liturgy with Communion, the following morning. "And there was evening and morning, the first day..."

OrthodoxEast