Selections from Seminary

Today, here in Wayne County, the home of St. Tikhon's Seminary, we are officially moving to the "yellow phase" of reopening after the two months of quarantine and being restricted from going to church. Not that the quarantine was comfortable, but at least my head had begun to become acquainted with it. Now that some degree of reopening is on the horizon and there is potential to return to church and the Holy Eucharist, the temptation is to try to move back to "business as usual" and not keep a hold of the lessons I have learned during my isolation from church. One phrase that has continually come to mind these past two months is something that a friend of mine "quoted" on social media. He admitted that this is probably just a mis-quote from some or other ancient desert father, but regardless, there is a kernel of truth with a ready lesson: "Go to your cell and pray. If you can't find God in your cell, you won't find him anywhere." ...

I stumbled across a beautiful quote that really struck me in these days of being deprived of the Holy Eucharist. "How can one be capable of enjoying and finding delight in the presence of things for which one had not longing when they were absent?" These are the words of St. Nicholas Cabasilas in The Life in Christ , and he is primarily speaking of our salvation and of life eternal, and I am taking it somewhat out of context...but not totally. Our life in Christ, our union with him, is the beginning of eternal life. We commune with him here and now, that is, we are daily coming into union with him, through our efforts and through his grace. With that in mind, here is a little more context to St. Nicholas's quote: "The kingdom and vision of God and union with Christ are privileges which depend on willingness . They are thus possible only for those who have been willing to receive them and have loved them and longed for them. … How can one be capable of enjoying an...

Fresco in Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, Constantinople Holy Saturday Late morning or early afternoon:   Holy Saturday Reader's Vespers Between the Epistle and Gospel reading (during "Arise, O God, and judge the earth..."), we change the church's colors from dark to bright, because Vespers liturgically transitions us into the next day...Pascha. At home, this is a great time to add white or bright decoration to the icon corner and to put up an icon of Pascha, if you have such. For those who have taken on the struggle of the strict fast on Holy Friday till Vespers on Holy Saturday, the faithful partake of a little bread and wine after Vespers, along with some figs or dates (which could translate to dried fruit and nuts today). Reading the Acts of the Apostles: Following Vespers (which normally would have been a Vesperal Liturgy), the faithful would remain in church listening to the reading of the book of the Acts of the Apostles till time for the Paschal s...

This is an incredible opportunity to keep Holy Week even more full of prayer and the reading of the Holy Scriptures. As for the "tone" or manner in which we go through this week, Elder Vitaly of Tbilisi "taught that one should go to church during the whole of Holy Week and to not get involved with vain things. He would only allow food preparation. He would say that the days of Holy Week sanctified all the days of the year. Holy Monday sanctified all the Mondays of the year, Holy Tuesday the Tuesday of the year, and so on." This echoes the Book of Exodus, and its guidelines for keeping the Passover: "No servile work shall be done on them; and whatever must be done by each soul, this only shall be done by you" (12:16). But don't forget to prepare for the Pascha Feast!  I will mention this again at the end of this post, but the Artefact Institute is providing a free download of a wonderful way to celebrate the feast at home with food, ...

In the Preface to the Orthodox Christian Prayers prayer book, there is a wonderful little paragraph that echoes many of the responses I have heard to our COVID-19 quarantine. I have noticed that many responses, from Met. Tikhon to Bishop Alexis , from Abbot Sergius to Archimandrite Zacharias , have emphasized that this quarantine is a time to turn to God in prayer. I would warn against counting out their opinion because they are monastics and unlike us in the world, but the common monastic response is no accident: these are men whose spiritual life is not dependent on going to church services, but rather on the foundation of prayer and communion with Christ in the "secrecy of their room". The prayer book has this encouraging word for us: "As disciples of Christ and his imitators, Orthodox Christians pray together at church, offering the services of Vespers, Matins, the Hours, and above all the Divine Liturgy. We may also pray in small groups outside of church, with...

I have never used Typica so much as I am now, that is, now that we are quarantined away from church due to the CoronaVirus. The Typica service, in the same way as Small Compline is more appropriate for use at home than Vespers , is not a Liturgy replacement. It developed as its own service to be celebrated by those who are distant from clergy, without a choir, and without any additional resources to do a service. Not only it is the appropriate service to serve when you cannot go to Liturgy, it is perfect for our self-quarantined, isolated situation. So, if you would have normally gone to Liturgy on a Sunday morning or a feast, but are not able (like if you were quarantined at home due to a pandemic or something), this is what is usually used. It is formatted so that you can print it out, two-sided, and fold it into your own Typica booklet. If you want to take it a step further, you could staple it (but only if you have a really long stapler) or sew/tie it together. I sewed it. ...

We are so accustomed to going to Vespers at church, that most of us have never thought about why what service is done when. That is all we know. And now, when we cannot go to church, it would be natural to feel a need to do the same thing at home, to "go to church" home and do the same things we would have done in the church building. But we can't do that! Almost nobody out there, besides the choir director and maybe a reader, knows how to put Vespers together. Could we learn? Sure. Are most people going to do that? No. In the recesses of Church history, there is a point that could really help us out. There were two main avenues by which our services were developed. Keep your eye open for which of these two avenues sounds the most like our COVID-quarantined situation. One avenue is the "cathedral rite", which primarily comes out of Constantinople and is based on the services as they were developed in the cathedral, that is, around the patriarch, near the e...

It is the Eve of the Feast of Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel announces to Ever-virgin Mary that she will bear a child, the Son of God. And we, restrained to our homes, will not be able to celebrate this beautiful feast in our local parish. What should we do at home? As I have said before, there is no law or rule about how to celebrate the services at home. (At church, we should do it right, and there is great meaning in the liturgics.) Yes, there is such a thing as "readers services", and that is a great thing to do, if you have the resources to use and the experience and confidence to pull it off. For those folks: keep doin' your thing. For the rest of us, I will propose two options: one with prayer book only, and two using the prayer book and one additional source found online. Prayer Book Only: Since this is the Feast of Annunciation, and the real cycle of services has additional elements to the normal Vigil, it would be fitting to add something appropriate...

So, what about Orthodox services makes them incompatible with live-streaming? There are a few aspects to this, and I will not attempt to cover them all at once. So, in this article, I will focus solely on one particular reason: physical presence is essential . I asked my kids about this, that is, I asked what would be the good and bad side of watching an Orthodox service online. Very practically, they said such things as, "you could not venerate the icons", "you could not be anointed with holy oil", and chief among them all, "you could not take the Body and Blood" of Christ at the Eucharist. I actually gave them a bit of a hard time about all this: why could you not venerate your icons at home while watching a service on the computer? Why could you not receive anointing with some of the holy oil we have on the icon corner? And their answer makes so much sense: if you are going to venerate your own icons at home and stand in front of them and pray, why ...

In reading through responses to the question of whether we should live-stream Orthodox services , I was challenged by several of the questions posed to me in response. I am going to divert my attention briefly to Protestant reactions, not at all in a demeaning way, but rather to challenge Orthodox Christians to think through our decisions of how we "do church" in these days of self-quarantine and isolation, before we unwittingly miss the benefit from the struggle we have been handed. If I asked myself, when I was a Protestant what I do when I go to church, the first answer out of my mouth would probably be "worship". If I pressed myself further and asked what else I did at church, what else is important in the service, I would have to say the sermon, so...learning or finding encouragement. And if I posed the trick question to myself, "Do you pray at church?", I would probably be taken aback and say, "Of course." This is probably where I would...

This Third Sunday of Lent is the Sunday of the Cross. I did not remember, until doing our Saturday evening "Vigil" here at home, that there is a beautiful glimpse forward to Pascha! When I picture this service, I picture prostrations; I picture almost a burial procession with the cross on a bed of flowers. There is one thing I had forgotten: in Matins, we sing the hymns from the Paschal canon... This is the day of Resurrection. Let us be illumined, O people. Pascha, the Pascha of the Lord. For from death to life and from earth to heaven has Christ our God led us, as we sing a song of victory! For "Vigil" tonight, here at home, we read Small Compline inserting the appropriate canon from the Triodion. Using Compline was a choice to stay simple, since it can be read from the prayer book with no extra resources (way easier than trying to put together Vespers). Inserting material from the Triodion is more "fancy", but I was only intending to read the canon,...

My first reaction to hearing of Protestant family and friends live-streaming services was somewhat emotionally detached. "I guess that is ok for them, but you could not digitally commune of the body and blood of Christ." Then, within a day or two, I started hearing of Orthodox churches streaming their services, and it has thrown me through a series of questions and thoughts about what the implications might be. We already have all these barriers between us and God...and to be clear, the barrier is us, not him. He is everywhere present; we are rarely fully present anywhere. It is already too easy to go to church where everything is set up for prayer and for my thoughts to be everywhere but prayer. Now, not being able to go to church, we are praying at home. Praying at home is usually going to be much more potentially distracting, if for no other reason than the church is designed to draw us into worship in every way: sight, sound, smell, touch, and even taste. Most homes d...

Father Zacharias was supposed to speak here at St. Tikhon's tonight. So, in lieu of listening to him, I will share this recent epistle of his concerning the CoronaVirus. This is a good word. It took me a few days to finally sit down an read it, though, since I saw how long it was. So, I have bolded certain passages to help you skim a few highlights and decide if you want to read all of it. Archimandrite Zacharias St. John the Baptist Monastery in Essex, England Written on 17 March 2020 St. Patrick, Bishop of Armagh, Enlightener of Ireland St. Nicholai of Zhicha, the New Chrysostom Part I Many people are in confusion and others panic because of the threat of the Coronavirus epidemic that spread in the whole world. I think, however, that this should not happen, for whatever God does with us, He does it out of love . The God of Christians is a good God, a God of mercy and lovingkindness, ‘Who loveth mankind’. God created us out of His goodness in order to share His life ...

I will admit it: I want to pray something at home to "replace" a service at church that I cannot attend, but it is hard. I am scared of how long it will take. It is harder to think about 45 minutes of prayer at home than it is to go to church and pray for that same 45 minutes. If it is any encouragement, I offer this... First, it does not have to be 45 minutes. Second, if it is, all the more grace you receive for toughing it out. Here are some examples of what can be done, probably only needing your prayer book: A Vespers service that you usually attend at church can very appropriately be replaced with Small Compline, since that is also an evening service, and that is easy to just read straight through in the prayer book. You could also read one of the akathists or canons available in the back of your prayer book. Those can be prayed by themselves, if you are not too liturgically adventurous, and that is fine. It is prayer! If you want to put a canon or akathist into ...

How do I adjust my prayers when I cannot attend church like normal? Here is how we have adjusted our "prayer rule" here in my house, at least, for now. Our normal prayer rule as a family remains unchanged. And, for us, that is basically a shortened version of the morning and evening prayers, but that could be whatever is normal for you. Then, all the times we would have gone to church, we replace with something "extra" at home.  That "extra" could be just about anything, but I would suggest something simple that you could read straight out of the prayer book. That is what we have done, for the most part. If you want more details, feel free to read the next post with more detailed information of how to do those "extra" prayer services at home . The basic idea of what we have done is to... Keep a regular, daily prayer rule. Replace a missed service at church with something at home. Ok...I do have one last thought:  keep the scheduled t...

In these days of isolation, my family here, like many Orthodox Christians around the country, is more cut off from church, and we are still adjusting to what we should do in response. Our prayer rule is most certainly changing, and though I will speak more specifically about this in tomorrow's post, we are mainly trying to keep our normal church schedule (whenever we would normally be going to church) here at home. Here is mainly why I write, though: I received a note last night from our spiritual father addressing these days of no church gatherings, and hope you will find it as encouraging as I did: And dear Father, I know this is a time of difficulty for all the clergy. Like the Apostles, you now find yourself locked up, away from the broader community of the Church, just relying on Christ...but relying on Christ alone is always a good place to be . Your little home is your little your ark, your little Church, your little Jerusalem in a darkened world.   Do your best to profi...

As restrictions on attending church continue to rise, the faithful will be increasingly reliant on their own prayer at home. Having limited or no access to Holy Communion is a huge blow to suffer, but there is a precedent to which we can look to gain inspiration as to how we should proceed from here. It is a little early, yet, to be speaking of St. Mary of Egypt; her Sunday of Lent is still three weeks away. However, her life is commonly read at Vigil the preceding night, and thus, many of us are well-acquainted with her story. In particular, we should notice how the two saints mentioned in the life, St. Mary herself and Abba Zosimas, both had "restrictions" on their access to Holy Communion, too. St. Mary's was quite extreme, for having gone off into the desert, she lived forty-seven years outside of all communion any another person—excepting the persons of angels and the person of Christ himself. Abba Zosimas and the monks of his monastery are probably a better exa...