Liturgical Tradition of the Christian East
“What! I have never heard of an Eastern, Byzantine rite in the Episcopal Church....or anywhere in the Anglican Communion! I didn’t know it was ok to use a liturgy other than that of the Book of Common Prayer and other authorized services. Are you sure this is legal? Are you really Anglicans?”
These, of course, are the kinds of reactions one might easily find when someone discovers that we are Anglicans who use the liturgy of the Byzantine Orthodox East. So, let me assure you from the start that we are indeed “legal”. We are a community fully in accord with the Canons of the Episcopal Church. And we are Anglicans. Interestingly enough, and extremely important for us, there is a canon— Title 1: Canon 16.1— in the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church which explicitly allows and envisions the possibility of a community like us. It states the following:
Whenever a Congregation of Christian people, holding the Christian faith as set forth in the Catholic creeds and recognizing the Scriptures as containing all things necessary to salvation, but using a rite other than that set forth by this Church, shall desire affiliation with this Church, while retaining the use of its own rite, such congregation shall, with the consent of the Bishop in whose Diocese it is situate, make application through the Bishop to the Presiding Bishop for status.
We are indeed a community of Christian people, holding the faith of the Catholic creeds and recognizing the Scriptures as containing all things necessary for salvation, but we worship....at least some of the time....using a liturgical rite that was born and developed in the eastern part of the Christian Church.
There are, of course, numerous eastern rites. Our particular rite is known as the Byzantine Rite because its mother church is “Byzantium”, more commonly known as Constantinople (today it is called Istanbul). This is the Rite used by nearly all Eastern Orthodox and Greek (or Byzantine) Catholic Churches.
Our community celebrates the Eucharistic Divine Liturgy, according to the Byzantine liturgical tradition on the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month and on some major Holy Days. On the other Sundays and feasts we use the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer. Remember that the Catechism of the Episcopal Church explicitly says that the term, “Divine Liturgy”, is one of the names Anglicans use for the “Holy Eucharist.” The Holy Eucharist is called Lord's Supper, and Holy Communion; it is also known as the Divine Liturgy, the Mass, and The Holy Eucharist is called the Great Offering.”
Ever since the 16th century, there has been often a close and positive relationship between the Church of England and other Anglican Churches with the Eastern Orthodox Churches. In the late 19th century, for example, full communion between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Church of England was nearly achieved. In 1919, the Estonian Orthodox Church was in the process of asking the Archbishop of Canterbury to consecrate the next Estonian Orthodox bishop. Had this happened, there might well have been an entire Byzantine-Rite province within the jurisdiction of Canterbury. For various political reasons, however, this never came about, but it does show how close the Anglican and Orthodox traditions really are, despite their cultural variations.
The Byzantine Rite developed around the liturgy as celebrated in the “Great Church” of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) in Constantinople, and from there this Greek liturgical tradition was transmitted to all the daughter Churches of Constantinople in the Middle East and throughout the Slavic world. Significantly, the same Constantinopolitan Rite has been, and still is, used by all these Churches even though the language of the liturgy has varied tremendously. The Orthodox never followed the practice of the western medieval Church in imposing the use of a single language—Latin in the West—as the only acceptable liturgical language. Linguistic variety was the Byzantine Orthodox principle with regard to liturgy.
The liturgy which our community of St. Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles celebrates has been shaped by this universal Orthodox tradition and particularly by the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church in America, especially as embedded in, and reformed by, the Orthodox Monastery of New Skete in upstate New York. Like New Skete, we also have attempted to restore certain ancient features of the Byzantine liturgy, such as a more explicit Gathering rite and the use of readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, and to eliminate some of the repetition and accretions that have occurred over the centuries in Byzantine liturgy.
If you attend the celebration of the Divine Liturgy in our community, you will notice that its cultural expression—texts of hymns, music, art, ritual gestures, etc.—is different from the English expression of Anglican churches throughout much of the Anglo world. If, however, you look carefully, you will also notice that structurally our Byzantine Liturgy is very similar to that of the Book of Common Prayer in many ways. Like the Anglican Liturgy, our Byzantine Liturgy has the same fundamental components:
a Gathering rite,
a service of the Word with three Scripture readings,
Prayers of the people in various places,
the Eucharistic Offering, or Anaphora,
a Sending Out ritual.
In addition, the understanding of what is happening in the Liturgy is expressed in ways similar to that of the Anglican tradition: the Eucharist is the sacrament of the Assembly, the sacrament of the Kingdom of God, the Sacrament of the Word, the sacrament of Unity, the sacrament of Thanksgiving, the sacrament of Remembrance, the sacrament of the Holy Spirit, and the sacrament of Communion. Both Anglican and Orthodox theological and liturgical traditions place great emphasis on the mystery of God, and so also on the mystery of the Eucharist. Both are centered on the Trinity and the Incarnation, but both are also somewhat allergic to theological over-definitions.
Some of the unique features of the Byzantine Rite that you may notice are the following:
the full use of the body and senses (similar to Anglo-Catholic liturgy)- bows, prostrations at times, incense, ornate vestments,
the liturgy is almost completely sung or chanted— there is an eight-tone musical tradition appointed to be used over a sequence of eight weeks
the use of leaven bread and the distribution of Holy Communion by intinction on a spoon,
the place of icons is more central than in western liturgy- they are censed and venerated,
the Resurrection of Christ is always a central feature of the Sunday celebration; Resurrectional hymns are appointed for each Sunday,
there is a strong sense of, and emphasis on, communion with the Mother of God and the Saints.
Attending a service of a strange liturgical rite can, of course, be somewhat scary and overwhelming. But give it a try! None of us bite, and we are always ready and willing to help new-comers participate in our celebration of the Eucharist. Learning to pray within the mystery of the Trinitarian God with those who do it somewhat differently can be a real gift—it can begin to teach all of us how to live into the otherness of our brothers and sisters in Christ.