THE SALVIFIC AND BINDING CHARACTER OF ORTHODOX WORSHIP
By His Eminence Archbishop Stylianos of Australia
In our previous article we analysed the dual function which the Doctrines and the Canons of the Church have for the entire People of God since they both oblige and guide towards Faith and Action. We had also stressed that sacred Worship, as a third protective factor, summarizes and energizes the Doctrines and Canons, sanctifying them through prayer and the HolySacraments.
As a result, the ‘offering’ of divine Worship ‘for all things and in allthings’, precisely because of this generality and catholicity, becomes the most active, the direct and continuously experienced unassailable ‘protection’ of the faithful.
Consequently, as heretical and forbidden as it would be for one to ‘improvise’ in the sphere of the Doctrines and the Holy Canons, in absentia of the formal opinion of the Church, it is equally heretical and indeed sacrilegious to experiment without theologicalsoundness and reverence in the area of sacred Worship. This, after all, is the reason why the main body of the Divine Liturgy and the Services of the Holy Sacraments was constituted very early.
Furthermore, the ‘format’, the Schema, of public prayer in the Church was consolidated with regard not only to the language and the texts, but also to the melody as well as the Order of Services and the mode of movements and gestures (typikon), into sacerdotal forms enriched by antiquity.
Here we should recall of course that all these external and ‘material’ elements of Worship, though visible – yet transmitting to us invisible grace – are not, however, ‘magical’ means directing us to some idolatrous ceremonialism.
Despite this, the very manner in which they have been structured so ‘prudently and orderly’, that they might express in a God-pleasing way the genuine phronema of the prayerful ‘EucharisticCommunity’, does not allow for any change or addition that might do an injustice to the spirit and the sacredness of
Worship.
The fact that for many centuries the whole body of the Church throughout the universe unceasingly worshipped ‘the God of our Fathers’ through the same ‘forms’ with homologous and identical phrasal means, was not simply a matter of external disciplineor of superficially mimical uniformity.
It was and remains primarily an issue of the deepest conviction and fundamental faithfulness to the uniqueness of the Church. And this uniqueness is understood as ‘unison’ and ‘consensus’, not only amongst its earthly members (horizontally) but also amongst those ‘in heaven’ (descendingly).
Only in this context can the unity of the Church be viewed as being beyond time and beyond the world, whilst lived as an unfading continuity.
And it is well known that even the Protestants in the World Council of Churches, strongly influenced by the expositions of authentic Orthodox theologians with whom they have collaborated for whole decades, have been convinced to speak about the unity of theChurch as ‘catholicity in space’ and ‘catholicity in time’.
Following the above, it is incomprehensible how the Church of Greece, especially in recent years, has risked blatant and most impious innovations in the sphere of Worship which are in stark contradiction to the meaning of unity and continuity of the Orthodoxthrough the ages.
By this of course we do not refer merely to the vestments and the opulence of the Clergy in general, especially that of the Hierarchs, during the Divine Liturgy! More specifically werefer to the tasteless and altogether needless addition of supposed ‘Ceremonies’ and ‘Services’ which in no way express but rather radically offend the holiness and sanctifying power of Orthodox Worship.
A very recent and most characteristic example is the ‘ceremony’ performed on the hill next to the Holy Monastery of Penteli in Athens and witnessed by Greeks everywhere on television.
Three large Crosses, with three large Crucified Bodies. And the Prelate of the Church of Greece surrounded by other Clergy, ‘taking down’ the Crucified Christ – as if in Worship – and in continuation literally ‘parading’ Him with western ‘brass bands’ playing mournful worldly marches and ‘fanfare’, as if conducting the funeral of a mere mortal!
And of course we cannot rule out that these theologically-deficient Clergymen participating in such a ‘theatrical’ undertaking are under the naïve misapprehension that in this way theyare rendering the Holy Passion of Christ ‘more alive’! It also cannot be ruled out that this mistaken impression is supported by the fact that they see the uninformed crowds following them ‘mesmerized’ and ‘weeping’. And one asks:
Do not the thronging multitudes react in exactly the same manner, ‘as sheep without a Shepherd’, when viewing movies or theatrical performances that have been chanced from time to time, especially in the West, out of clearly profiteering motives by the show business merchants of everything sacred and Holy?
Let us recall the recent film ‘The Passion of Christ’ by the Australian producer Mel Gibson which of course did not provoke only the Jewish people. Even more so, for different reasons, it raised the objections of many pious Christians.
For the Orthodox especially, the ‘Engomia’ hymns chanted each year by the prayerful congregations of the faithful during the ‘Burial Lamentations’ are absolutely didactic within the purely ecclesiastical climate and programme of divine Worship.
In other words, it is not just the theological ‘singularity’ of the Sacrifice on the Cross which prohibits whatsoever ‘re-enactment’ or ‘imitation’. Equally it is prohibited by the express ‘astonishment’, even of the angels, as to how ‘the Life was laid in the tomb’.
Of course these worshipful and hymnological ‘coordinates’ of the Church express the characteristically Orthodox faith and teaching that the all holy Body of the God-Man Christ did not experience ‘corruption’ during His experience of death.
In closing with much anguish the above dutiful denouncements –whose deeper injurious effect on the laymasses should not have preoccupiedonly the courageously theologizing ProfessorChristos Yiannaras, although notpart of a Theological Faculty (!), - wecall upon the Theological Schools ofGreece, at least, to assume their responsibilitiesat last with relevant ‘resolutions’pertaining to the above. By God’sgrace we are not lacking in distinguishedscholars of Liturgics, not the least ofwhom is the prominent, recently retiredand internationally recognised Mr IoannisFountoulis.
This Article was published in the Greek Australian newspaper
TO VEMA June 2004