October 27: Liturgy at Ashley 11 a.m.
PATRONAL FESTIVAL FIRST EVENSONG 7 p.m.
November 3: Liturgy in Dunedin 10 a.m.
November 7:S.MICHAEL'S PATRONAL FESTIVAL VESPERS (and Matins) 7.00p.m.
November 8:S.MICHAEL'S DAY: LITURGY 10a.m. November 10: Liturgy at Ashley 11 a.m.
November 17: Liturgy in Dunedin 10 a.m.
November 24: Liturgy at Ashley 11 a.m.
 December 1: Liturgy in Dunedin 10 a.m.
December 8:(Conc.B. V .M.)Ashley 11 a.m.
December 15: Liturgy in Dunedin 10 a.m.
December 22: Liturgy at Ashley 11 a.m.
CHRISTMAS: Midnight Mass at Ashley
Liturgy in Dunedin 10 a.m.
December 29:Liturgy in Dunedin 10 a.m.

 

FOR CONVENIENCE' SAKE it seems a good idea therefore to publish the names and numbers of accounts held in the Church's name:

1. ALL CHURCH ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE OF THE DUNEDIN PARISH ( including travelling costs, and all books and other equipment tor services):


THIS FINANCES expenses of our Church at national and international level, and the Archbishop is a signatory and can draw on it.

This holds the collections at S.Michael's and is operated by the Secretary or one of the other Trustees.

This is spent at the priest's discretion on any needs within S.Michael's parish.

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(from previous page)
(to be continued)

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Most of this issue is devoted to one article (see inside pages) which seems to carry forward the theme of the Orthodox spiritual tradition which we began in the last issue. Although written in Britain, it not only informs us of Orthodox life in that country, but touches on many themes that apply equally to English-speaking Orthodox anywhere. In particular, it confirms that so much of what is best in the English religious inheritance is affirmed, not renounced, by becoming Orthodox. see notes on back page.

  ON THE feast of Pentecost, 6th June 1982, an historic event took place in the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom in London, when His Eminence Archbishop Methodios ofThyateira and Great Britain ordained to the Episcopate Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies in the University of Oxford and a monk of the Brotherhood of St John the Theologian in Patmos. The historic significance of this event was referred to by the Bishop-elect in his Address, when he said: 'To the best of my knowledge this is the first time since the division between the Greek East and Latin West that a person of British birth has been ordained to the Orthodox episcopate'.

 He went on to draw attention to the significance of the event for Orthodoxy in Britain: 'The Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain remains faithful to its Hellenic heritage - as the Russian theologian Fr Georges Florovsky used to say, "Spiritually we are all Greeks" - yet at the same time it is ceasing to be a church of foreigners or temporary residents, and it is becoming a local church, with deepening roots in the soil of this land'.

 The same point has been made on a number of occasions by His Eminence the Archbishop and he repeated it with emphasis in his sermon on that Sunday: We are no longer mere sojourners, or dwellers within the diaspora of our Holy Church, but a permanent church established in Great Britain, where, as genuine citizens of this country, we mix while at the same time we are spiritually a permanent part of the Church of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
 Bishop Kallistos saw in the present situ- ation an opportunity, or 'Kairos', for Orthodoxy. The great Orthodox emigration to the West which had marked the 20th century was no mere historical accident; it showed the presence of 'the guiding hand of Providence', 'great numbers around us in the Western world, far more perhaps than we ourselves imagine, are thirsty for the distinctive word that Orthodoxy alone can speak..

This is why Orthodox worship combines to a degree which at first surprises, and then draws the visitor, an overwhelming sense of transcendence with great apparent informality and a genuine popular quality. This is why the Orthodox do not need to practise or rehearse ceremonies - as Bishop Kallistos once put it to a young bride who wanted to know when the wedding rehearsal would be: 'The mysteries of the Orthodox Church are "happenings" - they cannot be rehearsed', (i) or, as an Anglican clergyman once put it to me, 'How 1 envy you. lf you forget something during the Liturgy you can just go and get it'. This same natural combination of the earthly and transcendent explains the legendary length of the Orthodox services. Although it is possible to celebrate the divine Liturgy with dignity in an hour, the Orthodox like to take their time - or perhaps God's time - over their worship. As a monk of the Great Lavra said to me during the Agrypnia for St Athanasios a couple of years ago, 'Ten or twelve hours is very reasonable for an Agrypnia, fifteen though is somewhat overdoing it'. At first the newcomer finds it strange that the church may be nearly empty when an office starts and only gradually fill up as it progresses, but then he comes to see that the worship of God is never-ending, that our aim must be to 'pray without ceasing', but that most of us are prevented in this world from realising this aim. We do, though, have the privilege from time to time of joining in the hymn of the angels, of taking our place before the throne of the divine majesty and joining our praise to that of heaven. Our prayer is never 'private', but always a sharing in the prayer of the Church. That is why there is no individual obligation on the Orthodox priest to 'say the office' each day. (ii)  The office is said each day by the Church, as a whole, which is represented in this respect particularly by the monasteries. As the Metropolitan of Ierissos said in a sermon at the Great Lavra: 'For the last twenty-four hours we have been privileged to join in the worship of God almost without a break. For those of us who live in the world this is a great privilege and a great joy - a foretaste of Paradise'.

 
This idea of sharing in, of taking our own small place in the great hymn of praise offered by all creation, both seen and unseen, unto its Creator, leads to another aspect of Orthodox worship which attracts the newcomer, strange though it may seem to begin with, and that is the almost obstinate refusal of the Orthodox Church to update or adapt its worship to the supposed needs of late 20th-century man. The first time one hears the monks at a great vigil ceasing to sing intelligible words and launching into what at first seem interminable 'te-re- rems', one is taken aback, even shocked; but then one is reminded that the being of God is beyond all the skill and mastery of human language to express, that the praise of God must in the end become a song without words and that all our words are but stumbling steps on the road to wordless contemplation. And so with the words of the hymns and prayers: they have been given to us, handed down to us by 'our fathers among the saints', by men and women who have advanced, and who had advanced while still on earth, far beyond us in the love and contemplation of God. As we pray with the Church we are like children listening to the grown-ups' conversation. We understand perhaps very little, but one day we shall be able to take part: already there are some words, some phrases that we can make our own. Not that verbal comprehension is absolutely necessary. Although there are now more opportunities for English people to take part in services in their own language, it will still often be the case that they will have to attend offices in Greek or old Slavonic. When I say that verbal comprehension is not absolutely necessary, I am not claiming that it is not in itself desirable - clearly this would go quite against the ancient tradition of the church normally to use the language of the people worshipping; and I know at least one Englishman who had attended services in Greek with his wife for many years but who had never thought of joining the Church until he heard the Liturgy in English and realised that he was quite at home in the Church and that Orthodoxy is simply Evangelical Christi- anity and not something foreign and exotic. On the other hand many of us who have become Orthodox through churches whose language we did not understand, know that it is perfectly possible to pray, and to pray ecclesially, even when the language is unfamiliar: indeed to stand silently before God during the long hours of vigil of which one perhaps understands scarcely a word, armed only with the monastic weapon - the Komvoschoinio - may be the first step up on the road to the prayer of the heart. (iii)

   The great treasure-house of the Church's prayer appeals to the English, with their strong sense of history and con- tinuity. If England has been able to develop and maintain free and democratic institutions without the violent revolutions that have often been necessary elsewhere, it is in part due to this sense of history: to our ability to crown a constitutional monarch with all the ancient ceremonial, much of which goes back to the coronation ritual of the Roman Emperors of Byzantine. Logically the monarch should become a president in lounge suit, or coat and skirt, but the outward trappings of ancient monarchy sugar the pill of the republican reality. Lounge-suited Presidents of France or the United States enjoy far more power, are in reality far closer to 'Le Roi Soleil' or 'Good Queen Bess', than the present Queen. But the 'reasons of the heart' have little time for logic and so it is with the Church.
  Perhaps we may think of the Church as an old family house, full of the bric-a-brac of generations, heirlooms and reminders of our family's past, of those who have gone before us, yet left us something of themselves. The Orthodox, like the English, are not over fond of 'having a good clear out' - we may dust a little here, polish a little there, but we like to live with the well loved treasures that our Fathers have handed down to us. We do not easily 'move the marks which our Fathers have set'. There are probably few Orthodox who could explain each phrase of the creed, give its historical origin, or the reason for its inclusion, but all Orthodox are aware when they say it that they are proclaiming their adherence to the Faith they have received and which they hope to pass on; that they are proclaiming their unity with the Church of all the centuries, their fellowship in the Communion of Saints. This sense of the Communion of Saints is one of the hallmarks of Orthodoxy. The icons that crowd the walls of the church, that have the place of honour in the prayer-corner of the home, are the visible reminders of this 'goodly company' of those 'who have been pleasing to God in all the ages'. The line between the living and the dead is a thin one - between those who work and pray on earth and those who sleep in Christ. For the Orthodox the difference between life and death is that the living stand on the floor of the church, while the dead look down from the walls. Hence that sense of familiarity with the Fathers, the impression that the great figures of the past are well loved members of the family only recently departed, that newcomers so often find among the Orthodox. And linked to this is the nearness of the 'supernatural'. Greek has no special word for 'miracle' - some 'thavmata' may be 'paradoxa' but they are all in an important sense natural. Two years ago St. Athanasios' body gave off the 'odour of sanctity' throughout the two days of his feast at the Great Lavra, and an old monk remarked to me, as we sat under the stars during the Lity and watched the monks creating the Saint's ikon in coloured sugar for the Kolytes, 'The old man hasn't done that for years. But I know why he's done it this year: it's to show he approves of the fact that we have gone back to the Coenobitic rule',

 The average modern man is at first ill at ease in a world in which what he would call 'miracles' are in an important sense ordinary, but in the end he will perhaps come to see that if the Saints begin to be transfigured into the glory of the Resurrection here on earth then there are no rules for what this may do to the physical body in the manuals of biology. If the Orthodox take the sayings in the Gospel about 'faith moving mountains', or doing 'greater things' than the Lord himself quite literally, it is because they have experience of them. Renan may exclude all reference to the supernatural in his Life of Jesus but his reason 'that no one has ever witnessed a miracle' is rejected by the experience of countless Orthodox Christians, both simple and learned, devout and lukewarm.

  The English are proud of their freedom and jealously defend it. Sometimes, as in 1939, to the shedding of blood, sometimes, it must be confessed, less seriously. Thus it has taken the English far longer to introduce a law governing seat-belts in cars than it did in France, which proclaims the importance of 'Liberte' on all its public buildings. This spirit of freedom draws the English to Orthodoxy, for in Orthodoxy they find the same spirit. It often surprises people when they are told that, despite appearances, the Orthodox Church is the least clerical of churches. An Orthodox Bishop was once asked why he had not visited a certain parish for many years and he replied: 'The Bishop does not go where he is not wanted'. The late Archbishop Athenagoras told me that what had most shocked him at the last Lambeth Conference he had attended was not the theological liberalism or the question of the ordination of women so much as the fact that the bishops could speak as private individuals. 'An Orthodox Bishop', he said, 'can only proclaim the faith of his people '. In the last analysis it is the People of God who are the guardians of the Faith - the People of God baptised in the Spirit, enlightened by Christ, born again as sons of the Father. The freedom of the sons of God may not always produce tidy solutions, may, in this fallen world, produce conflicts and tensions, but the conflicts and tensions are family conflicts, family tensions, and are lived in the love of brothers for each other and for their Father in Heaven.

 Footnotes: (i) Which is not to say that a rehearsal - especially for a wedding where bride or groom is unfamiliar with what to do - might not be quite suitable. But any suggestion of amateur theatricals- unfortunately seen in some modern attempts to revive (or contrive) ceremonial -  is quite alien to the spirit of Orthodoxy. Converts especially need to beware.
(ii) In point of fact, theGuidelines for the Priest" issued in New York for the Antiochian clergy do require him to read at least daily Vespers and Matins; in the Church if possible, if not, at home. In this the Antiochian Church is perhaps untypical of Orthodox jurisdictions; but the further one is from the great centres of monastic life, the more one feels, it may be, the need to keep alive a sense of being part of the prayer of the Church.
(iii) This necessity of attending services in a foreign language is even more common in N.Z. The more people of English background wish to feel "at home" in Orthodoxy and be themselves in language and culture, the more important it is to be immersed in the worship of the existing Orthodox nations being "at home" in THEIR language and culture. The absence of services in English should always be accepted as an opportunity for learning and growth, never as an excuse; however desirable it may be that English should be widely used.  FrJ.

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Father Jack Witbrock, P.P. of S.Michael's, with cure of the Church of Antioch in N.Z.:
S.Michael's Church,72 Fingall Street, Dunedin.                                                                Ashley Community Church of S.Simon and S.Jude.
                                                                                                                                                                 ASHLEY, No.2 R.D. Rangiora.
                                                                                                                                                              Telephone: Rangiora (0502): 5673

  For many centuries now, every year at Easter, the Patriarch, dressed in the simplest clothing (nowhere to hide matches) goes alone into the tomb of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, carrying an unlighted candle. When he emerges, it is alight, and the light kindled by divine grace is passed to all as Easter begins. I first read of this miracle in the book 'with the Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem' (Graham) which was picked up in a second-hand display a few years ago. The author, an Englishman, tells how he travelled round Russia in the last days of the old regime and joined the shiploads of pilgrims that went to the Holy Land, sailing so as to avoid being held up by the Turks, and walkng round all the holy sites, ending in Jerusalom for Holy Week. I refer those interested to the book which is circulating among our people. This is the source also of the remarks I recorded for TV for use on a hymn programme to go out on the after noon of the Orthodox Easter. In advance I apologize for any distortions inevitably arising in boiling my words down to ¼ of their length; the true version is in Mr. Graham's book. The miracle, I was told recently, is known to continue until this day; and perhaps this is one reason why the Orthodox have not been in a hurry to bring the Easter date into line with modern astronomy, as has been done by some with the fixed feasts.

  I forget when and how this spontaneous Light began in Jerusalem (see Graham); but it must have been very early, as it was surely responsible for the spread of the ceremony of the Easter Light over the entire Christian world, both East and West. A story is told of S. Patrick, that on his first Easter in Ireland he braved the wrath of the Druids, who also had a spring-time fire ceremony; and it was death to light any fire before the Druids had kindled theirs. A film made some ycars ago showed the Druids on a hilltop, looking across to where Patrick, on a nearby hill, had lit the Light of Christ's resurrection in the midst of that pagan land; and he was saved from theDruids only by the intervention of the King, who listened to him and gave him permission to preach throughout his kingdom.

  Since the Gospels tell us of the finding of the empty tomb at first light, christians have always consirered that the actual Resurrection must have taken place during the night, and universally it has been celebrated during the night. The service-books of both East and West contained two Masses: one a 'Vesperal Liturgy' with prophecies concerning the Passover and Exodus from Egypt, and a second, belonging to Easter Day itself. Over the centuries the first Mass seems to have crept back to the Saturday morning, and it is quite recently that western churches restored it to the night, thus giving meaning again to the ceremonies of light. But in the East these ceremonies continued as a popular and living tradition, being attached to the Matins that precedes the second Mass. This seems to be why we have 1) a Liturgy on Saturday in which there is a transition from Lenten to Easter Vestments and the Resurrection is symbolised, a service to which, however, few people go; 2) No Liturgy for Easter Day itself, but instead the Vespers service, often 'anticipated' in the morning.

  But is it not curious, that every year a miracle occurs in Jerusalem, well known (says Graham) even among the Muslims, and yet nothing is published about it, so that even many Orthooox are unaware of it? It must be well known also to the Israelis, whose ancestors managed not to be convinced by the original resurrection. It could be investigated any year with all the apparatus available to a modern western-style state... Perhaps, like the Shroud of Turin, it is given us so that we are not deceived by those who want to make religion into a private (= please- yourself) matter. The Shroud also would have remained unknown except for the efforts of those Catholics who saw the point and kept bringing it up; and it was not the public media that made it known. Perhaps God has sent forward into our faithless 20th century miracles testifying to Christ's resurrection, so that we should not forget that our faith is founded, not on wishful thinking, not on preference for the christian "value-system," not on the creation by the christian community of a "Christ of faith" projected over the historical Jesus, but on events that convince by their simple matter-of-factness. I have always found S. Thomas an attractive Saint, because he asks the questions I should have wanted to ask had I been there: can we really be sure of this? Let's not fool ourselves' Are we sure? And he got his answers, anticipating, perhaps, by many centuries, the famous saying of, I think, Mr. Sherlock Holmes: "When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, HOWEVER UNLIKELY, must be the truth." It was in that spirit, not the spirit of a happy dream, that the first christians referred to the resurrection, and the Church Fathers present it in the same way: a fact believed, and reported unwaveringly even in face of death, because unmistakably witnessed.

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has been in my files for quite some time, since it took my attention as a very sensible treatment of the subject; it seems a good time to print it now that we have almost ready a new printing of LITURGY booklets for the congregation. These are designed to allow the congregation to join in with a good deal of the music which our singers have learned over the last few years, and which is likely to become our standard setting. It is based mainly on the "STANDARD BYZANTINE LITURGY" published some years ago by the Antiochian Publications Dept in New York; but has been arranged so as to be (we hope) easier to follow. The Liturgies of S. John Chrysostom and S. Basil have each been printed in separate booklets; the text as in the "Service Book" for priests is given in full, including parts sometimes omitted; and such music as is neither too difficult (as the Cherubimic Hymn) nor too obvious (as the responses to the little Litanies (Ektenias), is printed exactly where it comes in the text. We hope this will encourage 1) singers to use these settings 2) the people to increase their singing further 3) everyone to follow mentally the silent prayers, especially in S. Basil's Liturgy, and those prayers which are often omitted.
  It would be wrong if the desire for congregational singing had the result of reducing all music in Church to what is simple enough for even the unmusical to sing; or if we were to dragoon people into taking part pbysically, when what matters is spiritual participation; but while a choir, or a reader and cantor, are there so as to free the people from forced participation in everything, and from worrying about " what is going to happen next?" ; the choir or cantor are NOT there to exclude the people from freely taking up those melodies that they know and love.

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  Congregational [public] singing in church is...a strictly Orthodox tradition, for it is of ancient Christian origin. The restoration of congregational singing in our time must be hailed, for it has the most profound roots in the very concept of our Divine Services, in which all the faithful must accept participation "with one mouth and one heart".

  The very structure of our Orthodox Divine Services, which requires a constant interchange, like a roll-call, of the exclamations of the priest and deacon with the reading of the tonsured reader, and the singing of the people, already presupposes the most active and conscious participation of all "those standing" in the Divine Service being celebrated, and not just a passive presence in the church, even if it is accompanied by private prayer.

  Such an active participation of the laity in the Divine Services is indicated by those numerous notations in the Typikon and Divine Service books where the word "1ik". . . is very often replaced by the pronoun "we", as for example, "we sing in the most attractive voice, 'Lord I have Cried'," or, "and we sing' Joyous Light'," (Typ. Ch.2). Very often, instead of the word "lik", the expression, "people" is used: "and the people sing" (e.g. rubrics for Great Saturday at vespers). From this, the exclamation of the priest in the Divine Liturgy, in which he calls upon the worshippers to glorify and sing praises to God not only with "one heart," but also with "one mouth," becomes comprehensible.

  Thus, according to the concept of our Divine Services, all the faithful must take part in the singing, if not in all, then at least in the majority of our Church hymns, rather than standing in church like only idle spectators and listeners. The church is not a theatre, where one goes only to see and hear beautiful singing, but a place of common prayer, in which all must participate in a fully conscious manner. All the more proper is such participation in the singing of the Symbol of Faith, which is our common confession of faith, and in the singing of the Lord's Prayer. "Our Father, " which is sent up from the person of all of us to God, our common Father.

 The intrusion into our Divine Services of western concert-singing, accessible only to specially experienced singers with careful and lengthy preparation, forced out the choir of believers from a living participation in common liturgical singing and made those who come into church only listeners, but not living participants in common Church prayer. In this western theatrical singing, all the attention is concentrated not on the words, but on the melody, which is more or less artificial - with bravura or sentimentality - but not at all churchly. Under the influence of this singing, in which it is often impossible to even make out the words, and which is deeply alien to the Orthodox ascetical spirit, many began to come to church not for prayerful participation in the Divine Services, as in a common action of all the faithful, but only "to listen to beautiful singing", in order to experience aesthetic pleasure, which is, unfortunately, accepted by many in our time as a prayerful feeling. This, in union with irreligious upbringing and irreligious, often Godless, school education, penetrated by an atheistic and materialistic spirit, lead to a greater and greater departure from genuine church mindedness and the understanding of the Divine Services by the broad majority of the believers. As a result, there has been a very great weakening of the immense significance of our Divine Services as a "school of religious training". Believers often come to church only "to cross the forehead, " as the expression goes, but everything that takes place in church is alien and incomprehensible to them. It is, therefore, not amazing that we now find people who request to receive Holy Conununion at the all-night vigil, and are sincerely perplexed and even offended when they are refused. **

  The disappearance from our churches of congregational church singing and its replacement by a theatrical form of church singing by special "choirs" has undoubtedly aided the alienation of our society from churchmindedness. Thus, the surest path for a return of our irreligious society to the Church is the return to the ancient practice which is in accord with the Church rubric: the restoration of congregational singing in our churches.

** The "All-night Vigil" often held by the Russians consists of Vespers and Matins. It is  not a Liturgy so there is no Holy Communion. The Bishop means to stress the ignorance shown.

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This issue of SPOTLIGHT is the first to be typed in my workroom which has occupied me in buiding and setting-up since mid-December. Surrounded by my books and ES loudspeakers, I feel at last that perhaps I am now at home here. This labour has also freed a room in the house to be a guest room as well as a studio for Julia. With the installation of the wood-stove, the house is becoming more comfortable, and maybe it will not be long before the necessary paint and paper outside and in have been done. The garden was not a great success this year; it will need to be built up above water-level, and a shelter-belt is clearly very necessary. but meanwhile quite a lot of vines cane up, no trees died, and a few chooks, ducks and geese have arrived from various directions, as well as 2 sheep and 2 goats and a rabbit.

  There have really been quite a number of visitors so far from other centres, both from Dunedin and from the North. A small loyal band has attended services here, and for the meantime we do not have the time or the wherewithal to take our service into Christchurch or to go chasing the slackers. The sale of my Dunedin houses has provided a background income of mortgage payments for the next 5 years, which together with Julia's earnings is extremely modest, but allows me to be free to work up the land, and to be available for Church work so far as money permits. In addition I have been called on rather a lot to relieve in the High School, which has been a considerable help.

  There has been an encouraging response in Dunedin to the changed arrangements. Not only have some members taken an the burden of my bus travel each fortnight, which has been a great help, but a desire has been expressed to activate local organisation so that things can be decided on and done without waiting for me - a change that I heartily welcome, and hope all our people will welcome the suggestion of reviving an active Church Committee. A meeting has been called for May 18 (the 2nd after Easter) afterChurch, where all the usual business of a general meeting (not annual for many years now) will be brought forward.

 Since early this year, I have been in Dunedin only overnight on the weekend that service is held. So it has been possible to concentrate on getting things in order here - and on daily prayers in the Church, which I have found to be entirely satisfactory as a spiritual home, as I expected. We have had excellent cooperation from the local Church Committee, and people appear to have accepted us as neighbours and friends. We appreciate this very much, and hope that things will gradually build up here to the point that we can make an acceptable contribution to local life in return.
  On May 11, I shall be in Auckland to celebrate a Liturgy. Over the previous 10 days or I so, we shall have the company of Alan and Mary Eades, who will also be coming to Dunedin  for the Holy Week and Easter services. The Bishop has asked me to assist Alan in his preparation in the hope that he may be ordained as a priest for the Auckland parish. I ask your prayers for us, for them, and for the Auckland people at this time.
 
On the last weekend in June, I am to be in Wellington for the meetings about the new Ecumenical body. I hope to see some of our people there and somehow share a service with them. When such events interrupt the sequence of fortnightly services, I have decided to let it continue as if there had not been an interruption; this will enable people to calculate for months ahead if necessary, and will, I hope, be less confusing.

I had hoped to carry on from the excellent article on ORTHOIOKY AND THE ENGLISH with an effort of my own to be called ORTHODOKY AND THE NEW ZEALANDERS. This will have to wait till next time.

                                                           May God bless you all.                                                                      -Fr  Jack

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