Modern worship on Mount Athos and Constantinople

Divine services in our Russian Church, from the very beginning of the adoption of Christianity almost to the present day, have been in constant dependence on the divine services of the churches of the Christian East in general and the Byzantine Greek Church in particular. Our Church maintained a particularly lively and constant connection with the Byzantine Church, from which we received Christianity, the first archpastors, liturgical books and enlightenment in general. True, there were times when this connection weakened somewhat, and the influence of Byzantium on Rus' in all spheres of our political and religious life seemed to cease, but unfavorable circumstances passed and the spiritual young daughter joyfully extended her hands to her mother - the Byzantine Church. Because of this, the same changes, the same phenomena that we see in the Byzantine Church, occurred almost simultaneously in the internal structure and life of the Russian Church. Having provided the Russian Church, at the very beginning of its existence, with liturgical books and a fully developed ritual of Orthodox Christian worship, the Byzantine Church continued to develop its worship further, created new rites and successions, or introduced into the old ones new ritual features that had not been in liturgical practice until then, replaced some church statutes with others, etc. etc. The Russian Church, in the person of its representative, the Metropolitan of Kyiv, in most cases a natural Greek or, at least, installed with the consent of the Patriarch of Constantinople, vigilantly followed all these changes, listened sensitively to the voice of her mother and tried to transplant these developed forms entirely onto Russian soil, to introduce the same rites and sequences into their liturgical practice. Hence the diversity in the lists of the same rites, which we see in the liturgical monuments of Slavic-Russian writing from the 12th century almost to the 18th century. All the attempts of the best archpastors of their time, such as Metropolitans Cyprian, Photius and Macarius, were resolved with nothing and led to completely opposite results. Instead of destroying the diversity of liturgical practice in worship, these individuals, by publishing and translating liturgical rites in the latest editions, with features hitherto unknown in our liturgical practice, increased the number of lists of liturgical rites and introduced new features into practice 1 . Only in the second half of the 17th century, thanks to the energy, persistence and decisive measures of the famous Moscow Patriarch Nikon, it was finally possible to put a limit to further layers in our liturgical practice, introduce the desired monotony into it and establish a certain order and order. This attempt was successful, thanks to the assistance in this case of the famous great Moscow Council of 1666–67, but at the same time it fatally caused two equally undesirable historical phenomena, the so-called Russian schism and the separation of the Russian Church from the Byzantine Church in the sphere of liturgical influence. As is known, the appearance of the new Service Book, corrected by Patriarch Nikon based on the Venetian editions of the Greek Euchologia and approved at the great Moscow Council by the Eastern patriarchs and metropolitans, caused a sharp protest and reluctance on the part of adherents of the “old rite”, the old liturgical books, to accept the new Service Book into church practice. This protest turned into open indignation against the church and civil authorities, giving rise to internal political-religious turmoil, which required incredible efforts and even bloody sacrifices to suppress. This is not enough. A part of the Russian people, quite numerous, separated completely from the ruling Church and formed themselves into “followers of the old rite” or schismatics, who, although not to the same extent as before, remain to this day Protestants against the current system of church and church-liturgical orders. This sad phenomenon in our history, although it did not stop the book correction that had begun, which continued until the very end of the 17th century in Moscow, and in southern Rus' even throughout the entire 18th century, once and for all forced the spiritual government to abandon this kind of decisive changes in the area of ​​our worship, a new book correction, so as not to arouse unrest and new protests among the ignorant masses of the people, who were ready to go to the fire for the sake of the letter iota. Because of this, the Russian Church, from the end of the 17th century to the present day, has remained with the same liturgical books that it received from the hands of Patriarch Nikon and his immediate successors. Meanwhile, the liturgical practice of the Byzantine Church continued to develop further, managed to develop new liturgical features, some new rites, entire services in honor of saints celebrated in the Russian Church, and even created a new Typicon for parish churches, separating these latter from monasteries, which had their own charters, their own rules, leaving these latter to use their Typicons and adhere to the customs developed by the conditions of the monasteries themselves and historical reasons that also influenced the peaceful hermit life of the ascetics of St. Mount Athos, Sinai and other places. Therefore, at present, an attentive observer interested in the state of worship in the east can see the same customs and orders in the monasteries, regular monasteries, monasteries and cells of St. Mount Athos and others in the parish churches of Constantinople, Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities. For these and other customs and practices in the area of ​​worship, there are important and completely valid reasons and grounds, justified by the Statutes maintained by these churches and monasteries and the conditions of a given place and time. Such a difference in liturgical practice in the East does not surprise anyone, does not tempt anyone, but on the contrary, it seems natural and completely understandable to everyone, because, as the current Bulgarian Typikon puts it, “in other circumstances those who exist in peace and joy and prosperity have to pray, in others those who exist in towns and cities, and in others those who exist in deserts and in travel and in war, in others in living in sacred monasteries, and in others laboring like angels in seclusion and silence” 2. The best representatives of the strict Athos monasteries, as we had to talk to them more than once, justify even those reductions and deviations in the current liturgical practice, which we often saw in the churches of Constantinople and which are not justified by the current Church Charter. Apparently, the modern liturgical practice of the Russian Church is in different conditions. Having received its current Typikon in 1682, then finally corrected and supplemented in 1695, it is invariably regulated by this Charter. Strict Russian monasteries, laurels and monasteries, cathedral churches and remote village churches do not know any other Charter than the “Typikon, that is, the image of the church succession in Jerusalem to the holy laurels of our venerable and God-bearing father Savva. The following also happens in other holy monasteries in Jerusalem: similarly in other holy churches of God” 3. Judging by this, one might think that our liturgical practice stopped in its development, froze in the forms we had developed back in the 17th century and was not subject to any new complications or influences from outside. Meanwhile, this is actually not the case. The connection with the Byzantine Eastern Church, severed de jure, in fact continues unabated to this day, and the Russian Church secretly takes an active part in the forward movement of the liturgical practice of the Byzantine Church. This participation is expressed in the influence of the practice of the Eastern Byzantine Church on the Russian one, on the one hand, and in the latter’s acceptance into its liturgical practice of rituals, customs and services developed in the east in later times, on the other. True, many are unaware of this influence or the connection between our modern liturgical practice and the Eastern one, considering the customs that currently exist in it to be the unwritten tradition of deep antiquity, but anyone who has studied, or at least listened carefully to the liturgical practice of the Eastern churches of our time and even glanced briefly at their current liturgical books, cannot deny this living, historically established connection, to break which would be the greatest injustice and brutal violence. The liturgical rites and customs adopted from the East, entering our modern liturgical practice, as we said, are firmly embedded in it and sometimes produce some kind of discord with the customs and rituals contained in our modern liturgical books, perplexing our pastors, especially young ones, and challenging our archpastors to resolve these perplexities. In order not to go far for examples, let us point out many customs in modern liturgical practice during Holy Week. Everyone is well aware of the touching and touching ritual of bringing the Shroud to Vespers on Good Friday, encircling it around the church at Matins on Saturday, reading the Gospel in different languages ​​at the Easter liturgy and other customs; and yet all these rituals and customs are not contained in our modern liturgical books; they came to us from modern Greek practice 4 and are not performed in the same way everywhere and always 5 . Performed from year to year, many of these rituals and customs do not yet produce any particular complications in our modern liturgical practice, but those that are repeated after decades, without any doubt, cannot but raise questions and bewilderment. This is, for example, the custom of bringing out the Shroud on Good Friday if the Feast of the Annunciation occurs on that day. The first custom, adopted, as we said, from the East, in combination with the second, has no place in the modern practice of the Greek Church 6 , but for us it exists as a necessity in view of the fact that in our modern Typikon there is a special, so-called Mark’s chapter for such a case, and such a confluence of services is possible 7 . Therefore, in the first case, when the removal of the Shroud is performed at Vespers on ordinary Good Friday, it is a simple and natural matter and does not arouse any bewilderment, in the second, when the removal is performed on Friday of the Annunciation, when Vespers is combined with the liturgy, when, finally, the very moment to which the practice and Charter of the great Church indicate the removal of the Shroud is left by our Charter, i.e. the stichera on the verse, the troparion “Blessed Joseph” after “Now you let go” and the Trisagion are not sung 8, the questions themselves arise: how to carry out this removal of the Shroud and at what time? The solution to these issues created an entire literature 9 , gave rise to several of the most contradictory orders of the diocesan authorities 10 , made known several practices regarding the present case and gave rise to the appearance of a special decree of the Governing Synod of 1855 11 , which for some reason has little significance in regulating our practice regarding this case 12 . The examples we have indicated clearly indicate that liturgical practice cannot be stopped in its development, cast into once and for all definitely developed forms, because the practice is completely dependent regarding its development on the development and life of the Church itself or the society of people who make it up, the needs of which this practice serves. Developing and becoming more complex in its gradual course, our practice, according to the long-established connection of the Russian Church with the Eastern Church, has borrowed and is borrowing from there and hitherto ready-made forms, rites and customs, and evaluates its own local customs and rituals for the most part, as in scale, agreement or similarity with the practice of the Greek Church. If we look closely at the official orders of our Holy Synod and diocesan bishops regarding our liturgical practice, we will see the same thing here, i.e. on the one hand, the responsiveness of our liturgical practice, despite the dead letter of our modern liturgical books, to the needs and requirements of the given time, and on the other, for the most part, an unspoken indication of the dependence of new liturgical rites and customs on Eastern Greek practice. Because of this, one can observe a very characteristic and curious phenomenon in our modern church life, namely, that our liturgical practice sometimes stands independently of any dependence on our modern liturgical books, and the regulator of our worship - the church Typicon (Charter) in such cases not only exerts its authoritative influence on it, but, on the contrary, itself becomes completely dependent on liturgical practice and, as it were, completely fades away in front of it, giving rise to the above difficulties and causing bewilderment on the part of our pastors and even archpastors. In view of everything we have stated, we find it not only interesting, but also very useful and important for our pastors, as people most interested in issues of modern liturgical practice, as evidenced by the numerous questions proposed by the editors of the magazine “Guide for Rural Pastors” on the issues of this practice, to acquaint them with the state of worship on Mount Athos and in Constantinople, as representatives of liturgical practice in parish churches and in strict ascetic monasteries and hermitages. The information and notes we have collected about the worship of the Eastern churches and presented by us in a well-known system will give our pastors the opportunity to understand the state of modern worship in the East and its relationship to our modern worship, unexpectedly for them, they will simply and categorically explain and solve many questions that interest them from our modern liturgical practice and, finally, will give an answer to many of the Russian people, who have repeatedly asked us, personally, the question: why or how in Russian In the monasteries of Athos, worship continues “in a continuous order” until seventeen o’clock 13, when these monasteries are guided by the Typikon, printed in Moscow. Information and comments regarding the worship of the modern Christian East were obtained by us partly through our personal observation and study of it, during our trip to the east last summer, partly through conversations and inquiries about the features of this practice from people interested in these features in the east itself 14, and partly, finally, through our acquaintance with modern liturgical books used in the practice of Constantinople and Athos and which have become known to us more widely partly also during this journey. Of course, we will not go into all the subtleties of the differences between Eastern worship and ours, since this would require a lot of time and a lot of work on our part, and would not have practical significance for our readers, which is what we mainly mean, but we will report only the most interesting and important features in which Eastern worship differs from our modern one. But before we begin to present the very features of the liturgical practice of Athos and Constantinople, we consider it urgently necessary to say a few words about the modern statutes or typikons that guide both practices, to explain their origin, historical fate, and to make a concise description of both Typikons according to the data that we currently have. Let us add to this brief information about the modern Greek Euchology, as a guiding book for pastors during worship and complementing the order of services found in the Typikon, and about the structure of churches on Mount Athos and in Constantinople today, so that the very features of modern liturgical practice in the East will be more understandable and meaningful for us. For more information about this, see our article: “Who is to blame?” Rukov. for rural paste No. 49 and No. 50 for 1885 Typical. church according to the order of Christ's great Church, assembled. Konstantin Protops. great church, transl. from Greek and adapted to Slavic. books by Neophyte Hierarch. Rylsky, teaches. theological Hulk. schools, ed. G. K. Protopsalt. Constant 1860, p. 4. Typical. Ed. Kyiv. 1824 Typical. RKP., kept in the church of the Iveron Athos Monastery, copied in 1878 by the archimandrites of this monastery Hilarion and Athanasius from the Dionysia Charter of 1624, chapters. 44, p. 101; τυπικον εκκλησιαστ. εν Αυην . 1885, p. 210. See our articles: “Bringing out the Shroud at Vespers on Holy Friday”, “Bringing out the Shroud and Gospel at Matins on Holy Saturday and walking with them around the church”, “Reading the Gospel on the first day of Easter in different languages and the rituals accompanying this reading”. Rukov. for rural paste 1885 Nos. 9, 10, 13. ΕΙ τυχοι ο ευαγγελισμος τη αγια και μεγαλη παρασκευη η τψ μεγαλψ σαββατψ, says the Typikon of the great Church, μετατιυεται και ψαλλεται την ιδιαν ημεραν του παςχα, i.e. If the Annunciation occurs on Holy and Great Friday or Great Saturday, then the service to the holiday is abandoned and sung on the very day of Easter. In a note, the Typikon even explains the reasons for such a transfer (Τυπικ. εκκλησ. 1885 ετ. εν. Αυην. σελ. 131 σημ. α). As for Athonite practice, there is no such transfer of the feast of the Annunciation to Easter, but also, as we will see later, the difficulties that are encountered in our practice do not exist (Τυπικ. rkp. 1878 Iversk. Monast., p. 130). Typical. 1824 Kyiv. ed. l. 244. Lithuania diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 9; Izv. according to Kazan. diocesan 1877 No. 1, No. 3; Moscow diocesan Ved. 1870 No. 14; Astr. diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 10; Yaroslav. diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 2; Taurus diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 4; Min. diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 2; Ryazan. diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 14; Kharkov. diocesan Ved. 1877 p. 168; Smol. diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 4; Samar. diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 5; Tamb. diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 5; Tulsk diocesan Ved. 1877 No. 4. See our article “Carrying out the Shroud at Vespers on Holy Friday” by Rukov. for rural paste 1885 No. 9, pp. 252–259. Nikolsk. priest Benefit to scientific Charter of the Theologians. Right Churches. St. Petersburg 1874, ed. 3rd, p. 604. See the quotation from the diocesan gazettes of various dioceses. Russian mon. St. great martyr Panteleimon on St. Mount Athos, ed. 7th, Moscow, 1886, p. 115. In this case, the hieromonk of the Russian Athos Panteleimon Monastery, Fr. Mina is a person very interested in such issues and even keeps notes for memory about the peculiarities of liturgical practice in her monastery. With the assistance of the revered librarian of the Russikovsky Monastery, Fr. Matveya, Fr. Mina made for us excerpts from his notes regarding those days of the yearly service that could not be the subject of our personal observation. In this case, we consider it our pleasant duty to testify our deep gratitude to the mentioned fathers of the unforgettable Athos monastery. You might be interested in: