Glory be to Jesus Christ!
Just a few things:
1. Great Vespers this Saturday will be at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church at 5:00 p.m. Last Saturday was at Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Church and it was a fantastic turnout. Please make every effort to come out and participate.
2. Divine Liturgy at 10:00 a.m. this Sunday. Reading of the Hours and the hearing of confessions will be at 9:30.
3. Passia Service is at 6:00 at All-Saints Parish in Transcona.
4. If you have not gotten your Perogy orders in yet, please do so as soon as possible. Please get them into Sylvia Kitzul.
5. Please see the bulletin for the schedule of services during Holy Week. You will notice that I have stated on Holy Pascha that we begin at 5:15 a.m. with Paschal Matins. Please don’t ask me when the Divine Liturgy will start. Just show up at 5:15 a.m. and enjoy.
6. So, this past Sunday was the first Passia service. In Winnipeg here, it was held at the Metropolitan’s Cathedral. Many of you who have been to that Cathedral, know that it is pretty big. Seats, oh I don’t know, 800, maybe more? So, even if you put 100 people in there, if they are spread out it can look…sparse.
We did not have 100 people at our passia service. Maybe half that, maybe a bit less. Here is what I don’t understand. If you are in a church that big, and everything is happening at that front of the church, why are people still compelled to sit very far away and so spread out? I don’t understand. You could have driven a bus through the pews and no one would have been hit because that was how spread out they are. One of my parishoners put forward that theory that maybe there is almost a barrier between what the priests are doing and laity who come for the service. That maybe somehow, what we as clergy do is somehow “off limits” to the laity. The clergy come out, all vested and that it can be, somehow intimidating. That the laity are only there as observers and not as actual participants. Sadly that is how many non-Orthodox view our church. It is a church where there is no real involvement or investment made by the laity. The priest stands up there and says everything, does everything, the choir sings the responses and the laity just sit there.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Our liturgy is one hundred percent interactive, our services are one hundred percent interactive. We pray together. We worship together. We commune together. Liturgy comes from the Greek word Liturgia which means “the work of the people”. So Divine Liturgy means the divine/holy work of the people. There is no service without the people, there is no service without the priest. Both are necessary. And yet there is this disconnection, this barrier/separation.
To be honest with you, those that chose to sit that far back, I personally think it is rude. I really do. No one has yet to give me a good reason to sit that far back. There are only two reasons I can think of why my parishoners would sit that far back. One is that I am so incredibly handsome that they need to be that far back so that they will not be distracted by my devastating good looks. Two, I am such a bad priest that they are always looking for the closest exit. More than likely it is the second one.
I think sitting that far back is like being invited to someone’s house for a gathering/celebration and then spending your time avoiding and distancing yourself from your host and all the other guests. For some reason, we have this tradition in our church that we fill the church up starting at the back instead of starting at the front. But just think about it for a minute how much more connected we would be to the Liturgy, to each other if we did the opposite of what we currently do. We sat up front, we sat together.
You want to be connected and interested in the liturgy, it doesn’t happen at the back of the church. Maybe that is why I have always liked the smaller churches I have been blessed to serve in. Everyone is close together, you can see the faces, see who has stayed awake during one of my boring and rambling sermons. There is a sense of true community, of being a family when we make that effort to connect with the priest, with our fellow parishoners. When we actually decide to sit closer to one another.
If you sit at the back of the church you attend, move up a pew or two. It won’t kill you, honest. If you sit up front, here is a novel concept: invite the person that sits at the back to come up front and sit with you and tell them that you want to sit with them and pray with them and share in the service with them. Tell them that you want to share the best seat in the house with them.
Answer to last week’s question:
True or False? In Chapter 5 of John’s Gospel Jesus heals a man who had been ill for eight years. False. The man had been ill for 38 years (John 5:5)
This week’s question:
Complete the fourth beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”
See in church!
In Christ,
Fr. Evan
