Devshirme

I can’t believe it has been so long since I blogged – my apologies.  Some thoughts on the week so far…

-Firstly, you may have read about the toppled sundial below.  The very next day, thanks to the diligence of Jim Economou and a generous plumber who was working at the church, the column was fixed and stronger than ever.  The plumber was working on the bathrooms at the church and took a few minutes to use his masonry drill and fix the sundial for us gratis.

-Tuesday night the choir sang a majestic version of the hymn of Cassiani, using the beautiful Loukia/Elpida arrangement.  This year I timed it – it was a tidy 11 minutes and 14 seconds.

- Wednesday we had our usual 3 services – presanctified liturgy in the morning and unction services in the afternoon and evening.  The afternoon one was filled with young children.  A reporter from a certain Greek-American paper was in attendance, so look for a story soon.

-Thursday morning is a big liturgy, and we start at 6:30 so people can come before work.  Most everyone leaves right after communion so that they can get to work on time.  This results in an interesting phenomenon – instead of people sitting in the middle of the church or towards the back, as is usually the case with first arrivals, everyone goes and sits right in the front.  I communed 140 people, including someone in an ambulance – an older fellow, he had fainted and was being taken to the hospital but wanted to receive first.  He was dehydrated and is now fine, thank God.  Note to older parishioners and those taking medication: be practical when it comes to fasting!  If you are older and not as strong as you once were you need some sustenance to make it through a church service – do not play games with your health.

I don’t want to be late for the Royal Hours service, so I am off.  More later…

Last night at GOYA we were roaming around the front of the Cathedral grounds cleaning up stones that had been tossed from the roof when the snow was cleared (there is a layer of stones on the flat sections of the roof).  At one point I was lingering near the sundial and started to point out to Harry V. the gnomon and dial of what most people assume is merely a decoration.  In fact the dial is angled and calibrated to tell time correctly – I checked this out when I first arrived here in Worcester.  I noticed, though, that there was a crack near the base of the column holding up the dial, and I soon discovered the column was sheared all the way through – mark this up as yet another casualty of the huge snowstorms we had this winter – no doubt piles of snow and fatigue caused this shearing.  Harry lugged the broken piece into the building for safekeeping, and the House Committee is already on the job of fixing it in time for Holy Week.

Yesterday was the annual Greek Independence Parade in Boston.  It is always in April in order to distance it from the St. Patrick’s Day parade – the city doesn’t want to shut streets down often – and so it is usually hit or miss with the weather.  This year we had a beautiful day, which resulted in a) us not freezing and b) a huge turnout both in the parade and on the sidelines.  The weather and turnout combined to give it a ‘best Greek parade yet’ feel.  Of course there was an enormous Cathedral presence.  We had two buses leave the church and another carrying people from Alexander the Great, so that makes three big buses from Worcester.  The Cathedral had our beautiful Parthenon float filled with Greek School students while many Cathedral peeps marched with the Cultural Center in the Pan-Macedonian section, and every step of the way we had Worcester people giving us shout-outs from the sidewalks.  The dancers from the Cultural Center performed several dances at the end of the parade as well.  Greek Boston put the pictures up last night. I have done the heavy lifting for you – if you want to see photos of our floats click here and here.

Tomorrow – Wednesday night – is the penultimate rotating presanctified liturgy here in the Worcester Orthodox universe, and as always it is at our Cathedral.  I will be celebrating it (the rubrics for this liturgy call for only one priest to serve) and so tonight as I read my usual sites on the internet I started thinking about the service and remembered an offhand remark Fr. Calivas made at our clergy retreat last year.  Father was discussing the liturgy of the presanctified gifts and its more penitential feel.  He said that at one time it was associated with the marriage ceremony.  This linking is long gone, of course, since the liturgy is only celebrated during Lent and there is no liturgy or communion with the Orthodox wedding service.  But I am very curious to know when this all came about, why, etc.  You can seemingly find everything on the internet but… I came up with absolutely nothing on the subject of the presanctified and marriage services together.  This gives me a good excuse to call Fr. Calivas to get the scoop – will report my findings when I do…

Today our family attended the premier Worcester cultural event of the season – the St. Spyridon Preschool Art Show/Open House.  The children as well as Ms. Jenn and Ms. Jackie worked very hard for five weeks in preparation for the opening.  The students learned about artists like Albers, Monet and Pollock while being exposed to a variety of mediums.  They tried their hands at many new creative art experiences, and the results speak for themselves.  The open house/art show continues Sunday after church – make sure to check things out.  Here are some photos:

The room was reconfigured for the event for maximum ease of passage and display surface:

Here is a mobile that Vaia made, as well as her self-portrait:

We had something a little different tonight at the Cathedral for a Lenten Friday.  Today was the feast of the Annunciation, and so tonight we celebrated the vespers for the synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel, which is celebrated on March 26.  So we did a vespers service and, towards the end before the trisagion prayers and after the hymn of Symeon (Lord now let your servant depart in peace), we had the third stanza of salutations.  There was no reading of the compline (Aspoile/Spotless) or chanting of the canon.  The chanters and priests managed to put the service together between the skeleton form in the liturgicon as well as the special material sent to us by the Metropolitan.   It was nice to do something different.  Before church I started talking to the older women who come to every service – God bless them – and explaining the different service we were having.  They all knew it already because they had watched a church broadcast from Greece several hours earlier.  It dawned on me that these stalwart attendees not only come to every – every! – service but they also watch all of the ones from Greece on the Greek channel.  What dedication!

They reminded me of the elders in my own family.  My great-grandmother was from Naples, Italy and came here way back in the day.  We have her wedding photo, where she was probably all of 15 years old, hanging at my ‘rents’ house.  She would go to daily mass and then amble over to the rectory to get the key to let herself into the church every afternoon to pray.  She did this every day for decades!  She was a very sweet woman, although she never hesitated to raise a fist in warning – the equivalent to the wooden spoon – koutala – of Greek grandmothers.  Ma, as we all called her, was the first person I mentioned in my “statement of intent” when I was ordained.  This is the moment in the ordination where you thank everyone from along the way and talk about what you hope to do and find in ministry.  I gave Ma the honored first position because, well, she certainly deserved it.  I was blessed to have her in my life until my second year of college, and I thank God for even that limited amount of time.

No, not that one.  Rather, the subject refers to my latest Cathedral News  (our quarterly magazine) article – it should be out in the next few weeks.  Here is an excerpt:

One of the most famous books of the entire Bible is the Book of Revelation (please note that it is singular and not Revelations).  Part of the fame of Revelation comes from the its language and subject matter; the striking imagery and fierce wording as well as what seems like encrypted writing have lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding of what is really just a typical example of a style of authorship knows as apocalyptic literature, such as that used in the Book of Daniel.  Revelation was only admitted into the Biblical canon after much argument and with reluctance.  It is the only book of the New Testament that is not read during Orthodox church services.  Interestingly, immediately before it in the Bible is another book that in its time was also very controversial but unlike its more famous neighbor it sits in relative obscurity – the Epistle of Jude.

Sunday evening Prez and I went over to Mishana’s ‘rents to celebrate Persian New Year and had a wonderful time.  Sunday was the first day of spring, although you certainly wouldn’t know it here in New England, and many cultures have this time as a holiday.  It was traditionally the start of the Assyrian new year, which is now celebrated April 1, and it is of course Purim.  This was our first time celebrating the holiday in the traditional manner.  Mish and her family coached us through the various parts.  A highlight was the attempt to balance an egg on its end at the very moment of the equinox – 7:20pm.  Here is a picture of Mishana and her cousin trying it.  We filmed it but alas – this year it was not meant to be:

Here is a gathering of many of the traditional items – you can read the Wiki article to get details on each.  The items have all been part of it for many years – only the Qur’an is a later addition:

The bushy thing in the foreground is sprouted lentils.  In Iran the thing to do would be to float them down the river to, as I understand it, send bad things away.  If there is no river nearby you just put them outside for the rain to take.

Of course there was food.  Again, the Wikipedia article breaks it all down.  Everything was delicious and we were able to keep the lenten fast – there was fish and rice and vegetables.  After I gave the blessing Eleni and I ate – believe me – and we were full but not stuffed unlike, say, at a typical Greek event.  The food was all light and fresh, and there was no cheese or bread, which of course are huge in Greek meals, so maybe that was it:

Again, it was a fabulous evening, and the best part of it was the company – what a joy to be with everyone for this celebration.

I mentioned in the subject celebrating the New Year twice.  Earlier in the day, Jasmin, who is Persian, was baptized in our church.  Adult baptisms are always special, but this one had an interesting twist – Jasmin chose to enter the faith on this day because it is Persian New Year and therefore a fortuitous time for the new life that comes not just with spring but also baptism.  So this joyous event was in a way our first celebration of the holiday on Sunday.

My old schoolmate Fr. Athanasius is visiting from South Africa, where he has started and serves many missions as well as a tremedous HIV/AIDS ministry.  You can catch him at presanctified and salutations services this week as well as Sunday at the Cathedral.  He visited with our GOYA tonight – below is a picture of him with some of the GOYAns.  There is a lot to talk about concerning this saintly man, so I will concentrate on one thing – the HIV/AIDS ministry.  South Africa is a place where five million (out of fifty million) are HIV-positive, and that is just the ones who report it.  The church’s ministry there concentrates on two things – ministering to those afflicted with AIDS, and trying to prevent the spread of this containable disease.  Father, in his talk to the GOYAns, talked about the importance of faithfulness.  The South African government has in recent years given out condoms and taken other such actions to try to stop the spread of HIV.  Numbers have risen despite, or perhaps because, of these efforts, with an increase in risky behavior.  Father emphasized that condoms and other measures are creations of man and therefore imperfect, whereas faithfulness to a partner comes from God and is thus perfect.  I have never thought of things in these terms – we were all enlightened and inspired by Fr. Akunda.

Yesterday was fun.  We had the Sunday of Orthodoxy liturgy and procession, with Fr. Dean and I wearing green vestments in honor of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which started a little bit after we finished with church.  This was the first time in five years that we have not had baptisms or other stuff on parade Sunday, so I went home, had a quick lunch, and walked from my house to a reviewing spot on Park Ave. with some friends.  I had an interesting walk.  Every block or two I would have an encounter where someone would greet me.  These ranged from respectful “hello Father” comments from homeless people to happy “hey padre!” or things of that nature to drunken “forgive me father” exclamations by people having way too much fun (or thinking they were).  Well, my presence at the parade was pretty much the most religious thing about it.

Like Mardi Gras, St. Patrick’s Day, and things associated with it, has largely lost its religious significance.  The parade, aside from a float from the KofC and maybe a few others organizations, had nothing religious about it.  It was largely an excuse to be with friends and drink beer.  And I understand this – it was a great time, and no one wants to do Bible study at a parade.  But we celebrate the saint for a reason, and there is nothing preventing us from reverencing the saint while also having fun.  I talked to Fr. Timothy briefly about this this morning – we need to do something.  St. Patrick is, after all, an Orthodox saint.  I am thinking a  Cathedral float in the parade next year depicting St. Patrick as he is shown in the icon as well as a reviewing area for Cathedral peeps.  We could have literature on the saint to give to people as well as party together as a community, which we all love to do.  It may not have much of an effect but at least we will be making a stand for the saint as well as having a good time while doing it.