Language, Mission, and Hymnography

I noticed this beautiful hymn last week during the service for St. Innocent, Enlightener of the peoples of America:

"Peoples of two continents of diverse languages and customs, through thee rejoice today in the mystery of the fiery tongues: The fall of the cursèd Babel of human pride which had kept in enmity all nations of the earth until they were swept into the net of faith, worshiping the consubstantial Trinity."

I do not remember much hymnography making a comment on language itself, but then again, St. Innocent of Alaska is quite a unique character. If ever there was a Renaissance man, a jack of all trades, and one full of a true missionary spirit, completely focused on living out an incarnated Gospel, it is St. Innocent.

This hymn seems to speak of language and customs as keeping nations at enmity, and then, the mystery of the fiery tongues bringing all into worship of the Trinity. That just strikes me; I had not thought of language and culture as a division quite in that way, nor that Christ is working mystically through our life, in this fiery mystery, to "actualize" the Gospel in the world. That is: "incarnational", or becoming flesh, is the very act of "fleshing out" the Gospel, of uniting ourselves to him continually, and living in him and in the world.

Comments

  1. Strange HappeningsMonday, April 05, 2021

    I just noticed a liturgical "conjunction" with the hymnography above. This Thursday, we will hear the Babel passage. In Lent, the Vespers readings start at the creation and slowly work their way through Genesis. St. Innocent's day was last week and this Thursday, the Thursday of the fourth week of Lent, we make it to the Babel passage. The hymn above brings a new perspective to this passage.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did Christ Dwell Among or In Us?

One day last year, during a dogmatics class, the verse in St. John’s Prologue where he says Christ came and dwelt among us came up conversation. I forget why it came up, but what caught my attention was the little preposition: εν (“en”). That is what is normally translated as ‘among’ in most English translations, but to my knowledge it had more of the meaning of the English word ‘in’. ‘Among’ and ‘in’ have two very different meanings in my mind. Orthodox theology is very clear about God taking on human nature and deifying it. ‘Among’ sounds more like God coming, living alongside us, maybe the same place and same time, but still as something other than us. But I only have a feel for these words in English; what I really wondered was what the feel of the Greek word εν is in Greek, that is, to a native Greek speaker. When we were discussing this, Bishop Alexis happened to be right down the hall, and he spent more than twenty years living and breathing the services, the Scriptures, and the...
Read more

How to Pray for Ukraine

Ukraine's top Church leader, Metropolitan Onufriy, not only called on his people to pray, but gave them a prayer rule. It is short and simple, and he asked them to pray it at least once a day. Pray Psalm 90 (91) with twelve prostrations or bows.  "He who dwells in the help of the most high shall abide in the shelter of heaven's God."... Bishop Daniel of Santa Rosa (California), who spoke to one of the Ukrainian bishops in the past few days, suggested we all join them in their prayer rule, as well as fasting for them. All these events are happening just on the verge of Great Lent, and with such a disruption of daily life, Ukrainians will not be able to fast as they normally would. So, this is an opportunity to take up our brother's burden and carry it for him. And if you want to pray more specifically for the situation in Ukraine, you could either add some of the psalms below or occasionally  use them instead of Psalm 90, above. Below, you will see the "Peace ...
Read more

The Making of a Thai Paschal Troparion

This is the making of a paschal troparion, the hymn “Christ is risen from the dead…”, in the Thai language and from the Thai culture. For obvious reasons—my wife is Thai and the whole family is highly affected by our ties to Thai culture—we have closely watched the progress of the Orthodox Church in Thailand. If there had been a paschal troparion in Thai, we would have been using it in our house years ago. But instead, every year, we bemoan the lack of a Thai troparion and talk about how wonderful it would be to have one. It is a small consolation that we have a Chinese paschal troparion that we love, one that feels Chinese, and thus a little bit closer to our Asian home. And then, a Thai troparion appeared. A few weeks ago, my wife showed me a Facebook post with a Thai paschal troparion, sung by Matushka Ksenia , wife of a Russian priest serving a parish in Thailand. (In that video, he is singing the isan, the drone note, but it is my understanding that she wrote the troparion.) Jus...
Read more