Liturgical Language

Posted on by Fr. Peter
My last post has started me thinking about language. Now I hope I do not insult anyone with my ramblings but I have been thinking of this for sometime now. How do we, the Orthodox Church, grow in this country? In many places immigrants are still arriving and sustaining parishes. But here in the village for example there has not been an immigrant for years. How do we reach converts or others and bring them into the church? The name of my parish is St. Michael’s Romanian Orthodox Church. All of our liturgical services are in English with a sprinkling of Romanian. However, when one looks for a church, and sees the word Romanian or Greek, or Albanian I think one would assume that everything would be in that language. If you do not speak that language, then your not going to show up.
My parish is third generation and many of the parishioners no longer speak the language and the language that they do speak is a very different dialect of Romanian than people speak now. As a historian I look at things from history and allow history to color things for me. When Christianity was on the move and spreading into various places on the earth, the church of the east spread faster in places than the church of the west. One reason for that was that the missionaries did not use their own language they would learn the local language and have services in the vernacular. St. Herman of Alaska, Enlightener of North America and one of American Orthodoxy’s greatest saint, came from Russia but learned the local Alaskan language and taught the people.
Now fast forward to today, and if one comes to an Orthodox Church, for the most part, they have to learn another language. I said this last night and I have seen this in my own Romanian Archdiocese as well. I love that people will just assume that you speak the language of the people. Folks would come up to me last night speaking Greek. I barely speak English let alone Greek or even Romanian for that matter. Anyway I digress, again…
So what do we do? The attendance at Vespers last night showed me that in some parishes using another language other than English does not hurt, but if I was to switch to Romanian here in my parish I would loose people. What is the answer? How do we proceed into the next generation? How many people have we lost from our churches because the liturgical language is a language that they do not speak anymore? Are we holding on to things that are hurting us and a people rather then preserving us? These are hard questions to answer and have caused many heated discussions over the years. Language is culture, and culture defines us as a people. And we should hold on to that. It makes me sad that many people here no longer speak the language that their ancestors spoke, but I guess that is progress.
I don’t have the answers and I am not sure there are answers to many of these questions. But, I feel, if Orthodoxy is going to survive on this land of ours, then we need to adapt and change linguistically so we don’t loose anyone else.
Comments? But please be nice…

St. Spyridon Vespers

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Last night I had the opportunity to attend Vespers at St. Spyridon cathedral in Worcester. What a wonderful night filled with much prayer. About 400 people were in attendance as well as about a dozen or so priests and a deacon. His Eminence Metr. Methodios was there and it is always nice to serve with a bishop. The choir from Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, MA provided the music and it was truly prayerful. My only comment would be that Vespers was served almost entirely in Greek. This is such a shock when I come from my little parish here in the village where all services are in English. However, one can still pray regardless of the language, God understands us all.
I also met some fans of the Blog. I did not realize that people actually read this thing. Yes some people leave comments and the site meter tells me that over 700 people have come by, but I wonder if people really read what I write. So a shout out to Pres. Joanna who I met last night. Thanks for reading and thanks for saying hello last night.

Today

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Today promises to be a little quiet and I like that. I have a meeting at 12pm at the funeral home to make the arrangements for the funeral this week. After that Vespers at St. Spyridon Cathedral in Worcester in celebration of there feast day tomorrow. One of the great things about being here in the Worcester area is that there are 12 Orthodox Churches and all of the priests work very well together. We support one another in many ways, and going to service at each others churches is one of those ways. Sometimes there are more clergy there than laity but that is okay. All that matters is that we join together in prayer.
Yesterday was very busy and not my usual Sunday. After Liturgy, I had to leave coffee hour early and I don’t like to do that, I attended the festive banquet for our sister parish St. Nicholas in Shrewsbury. What a wonderful time and His Eminence Archbishop Nicolae of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese was there. It is always nice to be able to see ones bishop. The last time I was with him was in July in Chicago. He is very interested in how we are doing in our parishes and always asks about people that he has met. He is a very spiritual man I am for one am happy to have him as our bishop. He is young and energetic and is breathing new life into the archdiocese.
I will post some of my thoughts from the Sunday Scripture readings latter on today.

Conception of the Theotokos

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Today, those of us in the Easter Church, celebrate the Conception by St. Anna of the Holy Theotokos. Yesterday the Western Church celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Celebrating the same feast but in different ways. The difference in the two feasts revolve around the understanding of Ancestoral or Original Sin. The difference comes in how the sin is transmitted and what needs to happen for the sin to be removed. This is a topic for a longer post so for now we can just say that in the Orthodox tradition the sin is inherited but not the stain or guilt of the sin therefore the Theotokos did not need to be Immaculaty Concived by her parents.
Here is a little snipit from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Website about the fest:

According to the ancient tradition of the Church, since Saint Anna, the Ancestor of God, was barren, she and her husband Joachim remained without children until old age. Therefore, sorrowing over their childlessness, they besought God with a promise that, if He were to grant them the fruit of the womb, they would offer their offspring to Him as a gift. And God, hearkening to their supplication, informed them through an Angel concerning the birth of the Virgin. And thus, through God’s promise, Anna conceived according to the laws of nature, and was deemed worthy to become the mother of the Mother of our Lord

I am working on the longer post so stay tunned.

Update: I found this great essay that I think will answer all of the questions. Written by Rev. Fr. Antony Hughes, Rector of St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I don’t think I could do a better job. I am not a theologian, I am a historian and I think Fr. Antony has done fine work here.

Death

Posted on by Fr. Peter
This past week I received a call from a parishioner to inform me of the death of one of the other parishioners. I have learned here in my almost three years as pastor that this is the way things usually go. I think there have only been two times when someone has been in the hospital that I knew about it before they got out. Anyway I digress.
The man who died was really not known to me. Now this is a problem for me since we only have 75 members of this church. You would think I would know them all, but this is a flaw in my pastoral ministry that I do not know them all. This is something that has been bothering me all week. How can I make this better. So the man who died has no family. His parents are both dead and several years ago his unmarried sister died. This man never married and there are no living relatives that can be found. However, some of his friends in the church have stepped forward and his church family has taken over for him. But before this happened it was a day of phone calls between the social worker at the hospital, myself, the police department, lawyers and the like trying to gain information on this man. He was a very quiet man who I would see at church and sometimes at coffee hour. However I learned many things about him as I looked for information.
He was a veteran of the United States Air Force and was one of the Air Traffic Controllers that lost their jobs in the early 80’s. He lived in a small apartment not far from the church and continued to work at a local optical manufacturing plant. His parents were born in Albania and there may be relatives living there, that will be the task for the coming week.
I started to think about how many others are there that are in similar situations but have no one, no church family, or other family, that would care for them and see that they get the appropriate burial. We have an obligation as Christians to care for those around us, and I would extend that to those that are not members of our individual churches.
No one knows if this man has a will or where it could be found. So the legal process takes over and an administrator has to be appointed to go through his belongings and search back through his life for clues. This detail has fallen to me as father of the church family. I do not mind and I am not complaining about it, but how could we let this happen? How could we let one of our own get away from us like this? How could I, as the father of the community, allow on of my own die and not even know he was sick. I have not done my job for this man, and I pray that he will forgive me for my short comings in this area.
In seminary we spend years learning scripture, chant, liturgy, and other such very important things. Then you get to the parish and you wish you had some courses in accounting, office management, legal matters, taxes, that’s another story for another day, and other day to day things like that. If we are lucky we get an assignment with someone who has been doing this for awhile and can guide us or that the one that we replace has left things in a relatively good state. Then there is the opposite side of things. I do not know what the answer is but we some how need to find a balance between the theoretical and the practical. Most of us will never take another class or continue our education beyond what we already have and that is fine, but we need to hone our practical and pastoral skills that you can only learn by doing.

Advent Thoughts

Posted on by Fr. Peter
This advent season I have been re-reading the book The Winter Pascha by Rev. Fr. Thomas Hopko. A great little devotional reading book for this time of year. I usually read this book each Advent and follow up with this book on Great Lent in the Spring. It is amazing how many new things you can learn even reading the same books over and over. Here is something that I came upon today in my reading and I thought I would post it here.

Christians live between the two comings of Christ. They remember His first coming to be sacrificed. They anticipate His second coming to reign. This is vividly portrayed in traditional Orthodox church buildings where the “royal gates” of the icon screen in front of the altar table are flanked by the icons of the Theotokos and Child on the one side, and the Lord Jesus in glory on the other. To the uninitiated it may seem as though these are simply pictures of Mary and Jesus put on the same level. This is not so. The icons which frame the Orthodox altar are images of the two comings of Christ. Mary is not alone in her icon; she is holding the Christ Child, who is not shown as a baby, but as the Son of God incarnate “in the form of a slave… in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:7). This is the icon of Christ’s first coming. And the icon on the right of the doors is not a picture of Jesus as He was on the earth. It is His image in glory as King and Lord, the icon of His second coming.
The two comings of Christ are held together in Christian thought, action, and prayer at all times. They cannot be separated. When they are, it is the end of Christian faith, life and worship. The first coming without the second is a meaningless tragedy. The second coming without the first is an absurd impossibility. Jesus us born to bring God’s kingdom. He dies to prove His kingship. He rises to establish His reign. He comes again in glory to share it with his people. In the kingdom of God there are no subjects. All rule with the risen Messiah. He came, and is coming, for this purpose alone.
(The Winter Pascha, Thomas Hopko, pp. 92-93)

December 7th

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Today we remember the attack on Pearl Harbor. Much has be written on this subject and I am not going to add to those voices already speaking out and other such things. All I will say is that we should pray for peace in the world. One of the litanies in the Orthodox Liturgy ask us to do just that, …for peace in the world, let us pray to the Lord…

St. Nicholas

Posted on by Fr. Peter

From the Greek Archdiocese Website:

This Saint lived during the reign of Saint Constantine the Great, and reposed in 330, As a young man, he desired to espouse the solitary life. He made a pilgrimage to the holy city Jerusalem, where he found a place to withdraw to devote himself to prayer. It was made known to him, however, that this was not the will of God for him, but that he should return to his homeland to be a cause of salvation for many. He returned to Myra, and was ordained bishop. He became known for his abundant mercy, providing for the poor and needy, and delivering those who had been unjustly accused. No less was he known for his zeal for the truth. He was present at the First Ecumenical Council of the 318 Fathers at Nicaea in 325; upon hearing the blasphemies that Arius brazenly uttered against the Son of God, Saint Nicholas struck him on the face. Since the canons of the Church forbid the clergy to strike any man at all, his fellow bishops were in perplexity what disciplinary action was to be taken against this hierarch whom all revered. In the night our Lord Jesus Christ and our Lady Theotokos appeared to certain of the bishops, informing them that no action was to be taken against him, since he had acted not out of passion, but extreme love and piety. The Dismissal Hymn for holy hierarchs, The truth of things hath revealed thee to thy flock … was written originally for Saint Nicholas. He is the patron of all travellers, and of sea-farers in particular; he is one of the best known and best loved Saints of all time.

The truth of things hath revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an icon of meekness, and a teacher of temperance; for this cause, thou hast achieved the heights by humility, riches by poverty. O Father and Hierarch Nicholas, intercede with Christ God that our souls be saved.
Troparion of St. Nicholas 4th Tone
Father, hear our prayers for mercy, and by the help of Saint Nicholas keep us safe from all danger, and guide us on the the way of salvation. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Liturgy of the Hours

Parish Website

Posted on by Fr. Peter
For those of you who have not visited our parish website, I have made some changes today. Under the news section I have added the December newsletter for all to enjoy… Look for more changes this week.

Snow?

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Today is Monday, and I was ready when I woke up to see a little snow on the ground. We have been told all weekend that we should get ready for the first snow of the year. I have yet to see a flake. I am all ready, have the boots out, got the shovel out yesterday and cleaned it all up, we put all the outside stuff inside so not to get ruined in the snow, and nothing nada, not a flake, well snow flake anyway. So we sit and wait. If it does snow I will try and get some snaps and post them. I think snow is great except when one has to travel in it. As long as I don’t have anywhere to go, then bring it on.
error: Content is protected !!