Toward Attention

Gregorian Chant for the Dormition

Beautiful. This makes me homesick for a West I never had available to me, and feel robbed of. It makes me weep.

Joyous Feast! A Blessed Dormition to all fellow Orthodox who happen to be (or quite intentionally are) on the Old Calendar.

The Glory of Moses and the Glory of the New Testament

The Epistle section for today's daily scripture reading is from 2 Corinthians:

2Corinthians 3:4-11

    And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

I could not help but wonder, as I read this, whether the Apostle is assuming that some of this glory has to do with liturgical functions (and thus whether there is some significant liturgical continuity between the Jerusalem temple liturgy, which is typologicall united with the Sinai account here referenced), or whether the remark on "spirit gives life" (contrasted with "the letter killing") implies that the glory is not outward (and may very well have no outward manifestations), but inward (which might justify a kind of liturgical minimalism, such as is often assumed by biblical scholars to have been the case in the NT era).

I only ask this because "glory" is a technical word for theophany often, and theophany as it has to do with the divine radiance generated within a creature -- such as Moses, or, within the temple/tabernacle, in the "garments of glory," the garments that the high priest would wear.

Jesus Himself often spoke of "glory," especially in the latter chapters of St. John's Gospel.

Sorry for the sloppy thought, all.

The Good, the Mass, and the Ugly

A friend (HT: Joe) recently had me read this, Simcha Fisher's "Why I love My Ugly Little Liturgy."

If she is angry at the banality of the Novus Ordo, it is not because she is arrogant and haughty (though she might be), but rather because she is witnessing the profanation of a holy thing.

It doesn't matter if the Masses conducted are technically satisfactory if they are profane, ordered according to a spirit that is alien to the Church's 2,000 year history of liturgical worship -- and this holds even if they are conducted in a reverent spirit. Read Leviticus. If something is profaned, it must be purified. It cannot simply be returned to serve in the Tabernacle. Considerations about "requirements" are misplaced if the product is technically sufficient but functionally deficient.

Our souls may be evil and ugly but the Divine Liturgy, or Mass, is a manifestation of heaven on earth, and so should not be ugly. If we do less than we are able to do to make it beautiful and reverent, then this is sin. If it does not transport us, it's not doing its job, and thus it doesn't matter if it's "technically a valid Mass."

The Mass should change a person. One should be aware of the divine Presence. It is absurd to not feel the Presence of Christ but then to go through ex-post-facto legal "checks" to assure oneself that He was, in fact, there, because it was, technically speaking, a legit Mass. If one feels filthy and alienated after Mass, offended on God's behalf, disappointed that he or she wished to enter into the communion of saints but rather entered into a suburban living room dinner from the 60's, then the affirmation of Christ's Presence on the grounds that the Rite was "technically sufficient" is dishonest about everything happening.

If the entire culture of a communion trends towards ensconsing sin in its liturgical practice, nothing short of a very aggressive revolution should be entertained. Do not hold converse with people who endorese or even tolerate this ugliness. Do not eat with them. Do not worship at their parishes. Route them out as enemies, because they are. The childen who turn to the golden calf are slain by their fellow Israelites. Do not treat them uncharitably, do not jeer at them and mock them. Do not cease to pray for them and do not cease to love them. Do not withhold charitable giving or financial support.

Let them worship. Let them receive if they're not heretics, and they're willing to confess regularly like everyone else. Do not allow them to teach, do not allow them to preach, do not allow them to bleat their smarmy folk-trash tunes, do not allow them to plan or organize anything. Just cut them off from having any power or voice in your parishes. Zero tolerance is the only way to right this ship. You cannot be both inclusive and orthodox.

I'm feeling quite contentious. Perhaps the spirit of this post isn't any better than the spirit of such Masses...

Food and Drink

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst." (John 6:35)

I'd never noticed the links in this verse before.

Apparently, coming to Jesus means eating, and believing in Jesus means drinking -- not that "coming to Jesus" in some diminished sense is what this "eating" can be reduced to (it is clearly Eucharistic), and not that "believing in Jesus" reduces drinking to some subjective act of assent or trust or emotion or all of these coupled with spiritual experience. There's something of quenching a thirst, and sating an appetite -- the coming-to and the believing find their satisfaction in the inexhaustible terminus of eating and drinking, which should in turn increase the coming-to and the believing.

St. Jerome on the Communion of the Saints

I've had the occasion to go through St. Jerome's Letter to Vigilantius again. It's a good read. Very vitriolic, but a good read. Vigilantius was a tavern-keeper who took issue with many things in the Church, and accused St. Jerome of being an Origenist, even after receiving his hospitality. Here is an excerpt on the relevant topic:

Among other blasphemies, he may be heard to say, What need is there for you not only to pay such honour, not to say adoration, to the thing, whatever it may be, which you carry about in a little vessel and worship? And again, in the same book, Why do you kiss and adore a bit of powder wrapped up in a cloth? And again, in the same book, Under the cloak of religion we see what is all but a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches: while the sun is still shining, heaps of tapers are lighted, and everywhere a paltry bit of powder, wrapped up in a costly cloth, is kissed and worshipped. Great honour do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs, who, they think, are to be made glorious by trumpery tapers, when the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty, gives them light?

5. Madman, who in the world ever adored the martyrs? Who ever thought man was God? Did not Acts 14:11 Paul and Barnabas, when the people of Lycaonia thought them to be Jupiter and Mercury, and would have offered sacrifices to them, rend their clothes and declare they were men? Not that they were not better than Jupiter and Mercury, who were but men long ago dead, but because, under the mistaken ideas of the Gentiles, the honour due to God was being paid to them. And we read the same respecting Peter, who, when Cornelius wished to adore him, raised him by the hand, and said, Acts 10:26 Stand up, for I also am a man. And have you the audacity to speak of the mysterious something or other which you carry about in a little vessel and worship? I want to know what it is that you call something or other. Tell us more clearly (that there may be no restraint on your blasphemy) what you mean by the phrase a bit of powder wrapped up in a costly cloth in a tiny vessel. It is nothing less than the relics of the martyrs which he is vexed to see covered with a costly veil, and not bound up with rags or hair-cloth, or thrown on the midden, so that Vigilantius alone in his drunken slumber may be worshipped. Are we, therefore guilty of sacrilege when we enter the basilicas of the Apostles? Was the Emperor Constantius I. guilty of sacrilege when he transferred the sacred relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople? In their presence the demons cry out, and the devils who dwell in Vigilantius confess that they feel the influence of the saints. And at the present day is the Emperor Arcadius guilty of sacrilege, who after so long a time has conveyed the bones of the blessed Samuel from Judea to Thrace? Are all the bishops to be considered not only sacrilegious, but silly into the bargain, because they carried that most worthless thing, dust and ashes, wrapped in silk in golden vessel? Are the people of all the Churches fools, because they went to meet the sacred relics, and welcomed them with as much joy as if they beheld a living prophet in the midst of them, so that there was one great swarm of people from Palestine to Chalcedon with one voice re-echoing the praises of Christ? They were forsooth, adoring Samuel and not Christ, whose Levite and prophet Samuel was. You show mistrust because you think only of the dead body, and therefore blaspheme. Read the Gospel— Matthew 22:32 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob: He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. If then they are alive, they are not, to use your expression, kept in honourable confinement.

6. For you say that the souls of Apostles and martyrs have their abode either in the bosom of Abraham, or in the place of refreshment, or under the altar of God, and that they cannot leave their own tombs, and be present where they will. They are, it seems, of senatorial rank, and are not subjected to the worst kind of prison and the society of murderers, but are kept apart in liberal and honourable custody in the isles of the blessed and the Elysian fields. Will you lay down the law for God? Will you put the Apostles into chains? So that to the day of judgment they are to be kept in confinement, and are not with their Lord, although it is written concerning them, Revelation 14:4 They follow the Lamb, wherever he goes. If the Lamb is present everywhere, the same must be believed respecting those who are with the Lamb. And while the devil and the demons wander through the whole world, and with only too great speed present themselves everywhere; are martyrs, after the shedding of their blood, to be kept out of sight shut up in a coffin, from whence they cannot escape? You say, in your pamphlet, that so long as we are alive we can pray for one another; but once we die, the prayer of no person for another can be heard, and all the more because the martyrs, though they Revelation 6:10 cry for the avenging of their blood, have never been able to obtain their request. If Apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, when they ought still to be anxious for themselves, how much more must they do so when once they have won their crowns, overcome, and triumphed? A single man, Moses, oft wins pardon from God for six hundred thousand armed men; and Acts 7:59-60 Stephen, the follower of his Lord and the first Christian martyr, entreats pardon for his persecutors; and when once they have entered on their life with Christ, shall they have less power than before? The Apostle Paul Acts 27:37 says that two hundred and seventy-six souls were given to him in the ship; and when, after his dissolution, he has begun to be with Christ, must he shut his mouth, and be unable to say a word for those who throughout the whole world have believed in his Gospel? Shall Vigilantius the live dog be better than Paul the dead lion? I should be right in saying so after Ecclesiastes, if I admitted that Paul is dead in spirit. The truth is that the saints are not called dead, but are said to be asleep. Wherefore John 11:11 Lazarus, who was about to rise again, is said to have slept. And the Apostle 1 Thessalonians 4:13 forbids the Thessalonians to be sorry for those who were asleep. As for you, when wide awake you are asleep, and asleep when you write, and you bring before me an apocryphal book which, under the name of Esdras, is read by you and those of your feather, and in this book it is written that after death no one dares pray for others. I have never read the book: for what need is there to take up what the Church does not receive? It can hardly be your intention to confront me with Balsamus, and Barbelus, and the Thesaurus of Manichæus, and the ludicrous name of Leusiboras; though possibly because you live at the foot of the Pyrenees, and border on Iberia, you follow the incredible marvels of the ancient heretic Basilides and his so-called knowledge, which is mere ignorance, and set forth what is condemned by the authority of the whole world. I say this because in your short treatise you quote Solomon as if he were on your side, though Solomon never wrote the words in question at all; so that, as you have a second Esdras you may have a second Solomon. And, if you like, you may read the imaginary revelations of all the patriarchs and prophets, and, when you have learned them, you may sing them among the women in their weaving-shops, or rather order them to be read in your taverns, the more easily by these melancholy ditties to stimulate the ignorant mob to replenish their cups.

The Enthronement of the Lamb

As I read through the Gospel According to St. John, and at the same time re-edit this paper on the earliest form of the invocation of the saints, it occurs to me that the proper context for the material presented in that paper is the general meaning uniting the rites of the temple, and which is also seen in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John in the enthronement of the victorious and broken Lamb to the same Throne as the Father.

It occurs to me that this is what is fundamentally happening in the passion stories -- the enthronement of the Son. That is why, in St. Mark, the Passover begins with the Davidic triumphal entry on the colt, and why in St. John, there is so much emphasis put on Pilate's recognition of Him as King of the Jews, and the sign placed upon the Cross, the Throne.

Liturgy is about enthronement. We should think of this when we see the Cross on the Holy Table, and when we receive the Body and Blood, and when we sing the Cherubic Hymn, and sing "that we may receive the King of all, who comes invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts."

This is also what we are doing when we obey the commandments: enthroning God, responding to His enthronement. When we violate the commandments, we dethrone Him, we murder Him. "My people have rejected me as King over them."

Eamon Duffy on Pope Benedict

Can be found here. Nice read. Interesting. This from the man that brought us The Stripping of the Altars.

The Language of Eden

Looking at this post and this post on Moseback, and this post on the genealogy of the language of Paradise, I think there has to be a way to talk about Hebrew as a primordial language legitimately -- the narrative of Eden is linked to the temple (it is, I think, ultimately a (legitimate) mythical backdrop to explain the meaning of the temple and the exile), the temple offers access to primordial reality, and the temple sevice is in Hebrew, which means that all time that flows out of such a primordial experience is, well, an exile of sorts, and the language in which had this primordial experience was in...Hebrew. It is the language of Paradise. But not the only language, as there are other mountains on which the Mountain of God is present, and they do not only speak Hebrew. The only argument I can think of to validate Hebrew as the primordial language immediately becomes more cosmic -- we can say that Hebrew has a kind of primacy among Paradisical languages, for it was on the Temple Mount that Paradise first had a language ("salvation is from the Jews") -- but it cannot claim exclusivity, not along these lines of thought and life.

This Unfestive Secular Winter

Moments ago I rose up to play the Mediaeval Baebes album containing the song below, drawn by memory of it. Say what you will about their voices, the arrangement, etc. -- I enjoy it (I was initially put off by the marketing schtick used to try and sell this group as sexy, so I avoided them until I finally listened to them).

I don't know how much prep time went into rehearsing this music before it was recorded. I think it can be reasonably assumed that they spent at least a week, though that may be an over- or under-estimation. I can play any track on this CD and instantly access the fruit of this prep-work. I do not need to find and organize local talent, or organize the schedule of many people to make it happen. In short: I do not need to wait for an important occasion when local people might prepare for something like this and perform it, I do not need to wait for a festival.

Why the absence of festivals in this Secular Winter? Because we can access many of the features specific to a festival at our leisure. There is no need for a festival, there is no demand for aligning the experience of things like this with public rhythms, since they are available at any moment in the idiosyncratic rhythm of my daily life, which dances to other tunes than that laid down by our public life (no matter how many signs they put up, I always miss voting days) or the cycles of creation.

The absence of festival is isolating. Private consumption of music media always has a perverse and isolating element to it, like masturbating. It's not the same as singing a tune solo in echo of such occasions, or songs meant to be sung while one is daily laboring (I think of the psalms and their appointed hours). The component parts of a public festival have been stripped from it and made goods to be (optionally) bought for private consumption. Even the presentation of an otherwise wonderful song (the video below) must dance to the tune of conventions created for isolated viewers, conventions completely at odds with the spirit of the song, or the spirit of song per se.

I am greatly consoled that people still get together to form music bands, and that people still go out to see them play live. Unfortunately, this is still not quite festival, though it touches upon it. Bars and pubs have always been a bastion of a certain kind of festival, even if an alien element has been introduced to pub festivity since the rise of easily portable media forms.

The only real Festival I know of is the Divine Liturgy. Although the Divine Liturgy is no longer public in Secular Modernity, but the activity of a private, voluntary association, this voluntary association still has much the same form as a family group -- that is, though one can leave it, it still has some involuntary elements to it, keeping it from simply being the idiosyncratic preference of a consumer group.  

Guitar Masses and Reunion

In the comments of this news article, there is a great story explaining one element of disunion -- or a grave obstacle to union -- between the Orthodox Catholic and the Roman Catholic Churches.

The comments of one Glen seem to hit the nail on the head with regard to differences. As discussion of the merits and possibility of a reunion between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics was underway, Glen wrote this:

I’d like to interject a bit of practicality in this discussion as well. My wife is Polish. We met in Poland and married there while I was an assistant professor at the University in Poznan. She was raised as a devout Roman Catholic. I had been raised as a Protestant fundamentalist. We didn’t discuss religion much while dating (I know, bad mistake.)

After marriage, we moved to the U.S. and started attending church with my family at a Pentecostal church. A short while later, we moved away from my hometown for me to pursue a career, and we stopped going to church at all. A few years back, we started planning a baby, and my wife said that she would not even consider a child until we rejoined a church.

I said, okay, and started shopping for a protestant church. My wife went into full-scale rebellion. She absolutely refused to join a protestant church again. She had been miserable the first time, and saw no reason to revisit the experience.

To make her happy, I agreed to visit a Roman Catholic Church. I had attended mass frequently in Poland, and figured I knew what to expect. We attended a local Roman Catholic Church in Orlando, Florida for the mid-afternoon mass on Sunday.

The church was extremely modern, and looked more like a protestant church than the churches in Europe. The mass started with the priest, barely vested, walking around and talking to the vistors with a microphone. The mass proceeded with a few rock-n-roll songs and then the Host was distributed – by female Eucharistic ministers. My wife came UNGLUED. She started yelling at me in Polish that this couldn’t be a Roman Catholic Church. I told her to calm down. After the mass, we left and my wife kept asking, “Does the Pope know about this? Does the Pope know about this?”

Eventually we found our way into Orthodoxy. I’d like to say that it was for some kind of grand attachment to Orthodox Theology, but I can’t really. While I do think that Orthodoxy has superior merits in many regards to Roman Catholicism, I wouldn’t have stood on such principles had my wife been happy to be Catholic in the United States. Really, it came down to the fact that my wife was disgusted by the liberal church practices in the U.S., and didn’t want to be part of it. At the same time, I saw no real reason to join a Roman Church whose mass was little different from the rock-n-roll revivals I had grown up with. I figured that I might as well stay protestant if the Romans were going to offer me the same thing.

In Orthodoxy, my wife believes that she has found the church in which she was raised. If we lived in Poland, we would most likely simply be Catholic. As we are in the United States, we have to either be Greek Catholic or Orthodox to find the mystery and the majesty of the Divine Liturgy. We have no interest in being Greek Catholic, because we know many of them (including not a few priests), and they are among the most miserable people I know. The Roman bishops do not value their uniqueness or the traditions, and they spend almost all their time complaining about their treatment by the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

In short, I know that there are real Theological differences between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church. These are important, but for a lay person like myself, they are not the primary problem. The primary problem at this time for us in the pews, is that the current debased liturgical practices of the Roman Church are an embarrassment. They are, in fact, a scandal. The Roman Church must repair these serious deficiencies before I could ever partake of a chalice offered by a priest of the Roman Rite.

As a lay man, I don’t have the background to discuss ecclesiology, or purgatory, or the Immaculate Conception. Not really. But I do know if the liturgy inspires me and facilitates an encounter with God, or if the blaring of electric guitars is a distraction followed by being offered the Holy Host by a female lay woman.

After the conversation went forward some with a dozen or so posts by a dozen or so people, he responded to an accusation that he was anti-Catholic by writing:

I don’t have anything against the Roman Catholic Church. I have immense respect for Pope Benedict, as I had for his predecessor. Not being ‘ethnically’ Orthodox, I don’t have a dog in these Orthodox/Catholic struggles which are historically rooted. I understand the bitterness, as a historian, of the Catholic Poles versus the Orthodox Russians or the Catholic Italians versus the Orthodox Greeks. Understanding, however, is a long ways from condoning the ongoing bitterness on both sides. Eventually, you have to forgive and forget, which I think was Pope John Paul II’s message when visiting Greece.

I don’t consider your comments to be Catholic apologetics in any fashion. The Roman Church is important, and has contributed a great many things to the world that are positive. It is a bedrock of resistance, at least as far the Vatican is concerned, to the relativism that Pope Benedict XVI has decried.

Yes, my wife and I did try some other masses at other churches. The fact was, however, that every parish in our area sponsors ‘charismatic’ masses or ‘polka’ masses, or ‘Latin’ music masses. Every parish we looked at had women Eucharistic ministers. We even attended some baptisms of family friends, and were immensely turned off by the casual, non-sacramental way in which they were conducted.

Dan – converting to Orthodoxy was the hardest thing my wife has ever done. Her family was upset and angry for months. They accused her of turning her back on her nation and her heritage. For a Pole to become Orthodox was tatamount to renouncing her Polish citizenship and seeking to become Russian, in the minds of her family anyway. This was not done lightly, I assure you. Even today, in the OCA, my wife finds herself feeling uncomfortable with the Russian-feel of so many small ‘t’ traditions.

If we could have spared her this by joining the Roman Church, then we would have. Believe me.

The problem, as I said, was the degradation of the Roman Catholic worship. We couldn’t get past it. We looked at various ‘resistance’ Roman Catholic Churches that still practice the Tridentine Mass, but what was the point of that? We also considered Byzantine Rite Catholic, but that seemed to be a blind alley. As I said, we have numerous friends (many clergy) who are Uniates, and they were all miserable.

We originally came into a Greek parish. We stayed there for about four years, but eventually got tired of the Greek language and the Greek ethnic superiority. We are happy with the OCA, having been there now for almost a year and one Pascha. I love the Orthodox Church, its liturgy and its beauty. My wife is happy also. We worship liturgically, respectfully, reverentially, and in English. We have all that we need.

Could things be better? I believe that the Roman Church as shown in the funeral of Pope John Paul II is a place I could be at rest. It is the church whose masses I attended in small villages in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. If that Church comes back to American shores, then we will have something real to talk about. As long as the Roman Church is riddled with liberal bishops and clergy who are trying to protestantize the faith, unity will be an impossiblity.

Yes, I know that political liberals abound in Orthodoxy, and they bother the stew out of me. But they have had precious little impact on the worship of the church. We have no electric guitars, we still fast, we still practice ascetic discipline, we still take up our cross. The Romans need to re-learn these things in the U.S., and the Orthodox can teach them.

On the other hand, the Romans can teach the Orthodox many things as well. As I said, I don’t have a dog in the Roman-Orthodox fight, I’m just a lay schmuck trying to raise a family and prepare for eternal life. As far as I’m concerned, I’d like to see these problems behind us and all of us on one team, just not at the expense of the things that really, really matter.

I can't offer a more hearty "Amen" to this.

I wish things were different, too, but I can't sacrifice the truth of the faith and the fullness of life in Christ for what I have found in every Roman Catholic church I have attended. Every time I go, I really want to be surprised and won-over.

But Glen is correct about Tridentine Rite parishes: what's the point? What's the point of being a minority that's officially considered "just an option" when the "option" you represent is really normative and Spirit-given, as opposed to what has inserted itself as normative. There's no point in staying.

It's the same way in the Anglican communion for Anglo-Catholics. Really, what's the point? You're just tolerated. The traditions represented are indeed beautiful, but under such conditions, one can really only be a sectarian, along with all the psychological, social and spiritual baggage that brings. Isolated and alone, the good things that Tridentines and Anglo-Catholics stand for become the occasion for the strangest kinds of things and some very odd sins. If one is to grow in Christ, one needs a healthy church family which has the Church at its back, which has all who share in the One Cup in spiritual "solidarity" with each other, in Christ as He is known in the apostolic teaching.

If one is to focus on the Person of Jesus Christ, to keep His commandments and to follow in His paths; if one is to struggle to acquire the Holy Spirit and to keep oneself from the stain of sin; if one is to learn to love one's brother with Christ's love; then one cannot be part of some threatened minority community whose identity is rooted in liturgical and ethical (concerning one's ethos) differentiation from a larger community that one is nested within and which is hostile to the exotic marks of distinction that one's sub-community holds to. Those distinguishing marks may be well and good, but by living within such a tension, these very things become perverse, they swell out of proportion and become grotesque.

The Revivalist Protestants I know wisely call this "majoring in the minors." We might rightly accuse them of throwing out and being hostile to many of the sacramental means Christ has instituted by which He moves into our lives, but at least their focus is not on digging their heels in on right liturgical rubrics in the face of a sea of opposition. That makes for an environment that is not livable. I suppose this post is, in part, about a major reason why I left Anglo-Catholicism to seek all that it taught me to love in a place where those things thrived, and were normative, not the eccentric teachings of an ecclesioclique.