A Church that Sings

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DSCF0160Great and Holy Friday, 2013

One of the struggles I had when I first became Orthodox was discovering within the Church a tradition of congregational singing not unlike what I grew up with in the Protestant Church. What one often finds in a typical Orthodox Church either here or abroad is that the entire service is sung by a choir, either amateur or professional, that performs pieces from a place removed, either in a choir loft or off to the side. The unconscious message this sends, especially if they are singing from the loft, is that the rest of the people in the nave are off the hook, and that their work consists merely of silent prayer in their respective place. Continue reading →

Act Now While Divine Services Last!

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For those of you in my faithful readership who have yet to experience an Orthodox Christian Holy Week, now is your chance. At an Orthodox parish near you, begins a week of services unlike any you have experienced anywhere else on the planet. If you are local to Boston, you are cordially invited to attend all of the services our parish offers. If you can only do one, come to either Saturday morning Liturgy or late Saturday night, early Sunday morning for the Feast of Feasts, GREAT AND HOLY PASCHA.

Worse case scenario, if you are unable to appear hypostatically (in person), you can at least listen to a youtube channel created that has much of the key music or the ever-mellifluous Ancient Faith Radio. WARNING: Once you have gone to one service, you won’t be able to stop, so clear your schedule for God because He deserves your praise more than baseball games, concerts, or that addicting TV series. Let the divine drama begin!

In Montreal for the People of Boston

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Our concert this past weekend in Montreal was an occasion too grand for words. It was an incredible honor to sing such a concert with two wonderful choirs, both ours, the Boston Byzantine Choir, and the theirs, the two choirs … Continue reading →

Fully Armed in Prayer

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Charles Krupa / AP

My phone rang this morning at 6:00am. “Such a strange time for anyone to be calling. It could not possibly be a salesman.” Caller ID said, “City of Boston,” and when I answered it, the robo-call voice on the other end spoke of a city-wide advisory to stay indoors while police were in hot pursuit of a suspect who was roaming the streets, extremely armed and dangerous. Now, it is one thing to hear of such tales from browsing too many conspiracy theorists’ websites late into the night. It is another thing entirely to get an official alert from city hall bright and early on a Friday morning. I immediately vowed not to make the same prayer-less mistake that I made earlier in the week when given similarly perilous news. In the wee hours of the morning, before most of my family even thought about arising, I said an Akathist prayer to the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas of Russia and followed it up with the Akathist prayers to the Mother of God that I spoke about in an earlier post. Continue reading →

Monks as First Responders

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Several years ago after the Virginia Tech Massacre, I wrote an article for our parish newsletter entitled Peace-keepers of Another Kind: Monks of 4th Century Antioch. Given the recent heroic efforts of the first responders at Monday’s Boston Marathon Bombing, I was reminded of this article, and thought it might be time to resurrect its contents for publication in this blog. I hope you agree that it is as timely today as when I first ran it six years ago.

GOODSAM1What does it take to restore peace to a city or country once overrun with violence and civil strife? This question is central in considering recent events both at home with shootings at Virginia Tech and abroad with the attempts of our military to quell sectarian violence in Iraq. A show of force by the ruling authority can help, but it is only part of the solution to what is a much greater spiritual problem, and often an excessive show of force may even make matters worse.

In fourth century Antioch, a crisis broke in the city when a group of citizens who disapproved of the Roman Emperor’s new taxes rebelled by desecrating his statue placed in the center of the city as a sign of his authority. They toppled the statue, tied it to the back of a horse, and dragged it through the city streets. In this ancient empire, any action taken against the Emperor’s image was considered a direct assault on the Emperor himself. These rebels started a riot and placed the whole city under the suspicion of the crown. Magistrates and troops were dispensed at once from Constantinople and rumors ran wild about who was to blame to the extent that all kinds of important public officials and common citizens fled for their lives to “undisclosed locations” around Antioch. Continue reading →

Urgent Prayers Needed for Boston

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I first heard of the tragedy that struck our fair city in the form of an email call for urgent prayer. And being the prayer warrior that I am… [ahem] well, no, you guessed it. Instead of instantly falling on my knees to almighty God and begging the protection and supplication of his saints and angels, I instead worried and hunted on the internet for information when information was least readily available.

I had been just four blocks away from the blast site with my three young children only several hours before the incident. We enjoyed a lovely morning of carousel and swan boat riding and were contemplating a trip into the spectator crowds around the marathon when a wiser notion [nudge from a guardian angel?] steered us underground on the metro and back towards home. Continue reading →

The Dogma is the Drama

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Just before the beginning of Great Lent, I was thumbing through my library wondering again what would be the best thing to read in this season of the fast. It is a good and pious practice during the forty days of fasting not only to increase prayers and attendance to church services but to practice some form of media fast and engage instead in one good spiritual book that will help one reflect on the life of Christ and repent of sinful habits. It was then that I came across an article which highlighted the book or rather set of plays that C.S. Lewis frequently read during Lent. This and the name Dorothy Sayers both caught my attention. Sayers is popular for her saying that “the dogma is the drama”; i.e., contrary to popular opinion that learning right doctrine is for dull and doltish people who like dusty libraries and don’t know how to have a good time, the dogma of the Church, relating first and foremost to the identity and work of Jesus Christ as He reveals the worship of the All-Holy Trinity, is rather for those who wish to engage in the greatest of all dramas.

Continue reading →

Orthodox Byzantine Music Concert in Montreal, April 20

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2013LentenConcert I don’t usually use this blog to advertise upcoming events, but I thought that since some of my subscribers might be local to Quebec, it would be good to hear in advance about an opportunity our little Boston Byzantine Choir of St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge has had to go international (well, okay, just across the border to Canada, but French Canada at least). Announcing a Lenten musical pilgrimage concert entitled From Adam to Christ: A Story of Rebellion to Redemption featuring our own choir and the parish choir of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church of Montreal. The concert will take place in two weeks on the Saturday before the Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt, April 20, 7:00 pm, at St. George’s, so if you are local, plan on swinging by to hear some extraordinary and otherworldly music. Click on the flier pictured left for more detailed information and stay tuned for at least one blog post from me in retrospect of the event. I can’t imagine visiting a world class city like Montreal and not having something to say about it!

Hasten to the Tomb!

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I had been planning it all week, but like all difficult things, when the time came to actually carry it out, I was lingering in the throes of early morning drowsiness. I have been trying for years to attend the Western Easter Vigil Service that I format every year for the parish where I am employed as an administrator. But for the last several years, the Eastern and the Western calendars have been in sync, and I would never miss a drop of Orthodox Holy Week, especially as I usually lead the service on the morning of Great and Holy Saturday.

But this year I had my opportunity, and I determined to seize it. Continue reading →