Enter into the silence, part two

Matins begin at 8:30 am, and the Divine Liturgy at 9:30. I arrive a few minutes before 8:30, planning to see the whole thing. This is a large, attractive red brick structure with a big parking lot, in a very nice residential neighborhood. A sign in front reads “Happy birthday, America.” The odd thing, though, is that there are only two other cars in the parking lot.

I drive around the neighborhood a couple of times, but each time I return to the church there are still only the two cars. In the narthex, I see a table holding lots of thin yellow candles next to an offering plate. I put in a dollar and take a candle. There are two tables with shallow sandboxes on either side of the doors to the nave. Someone has drawn a cross in the center of each sandbox, and there are three lit candles stuck into the sand at the tips of the crosses. I light my candle from one of those, and stand it near the back of the box. I hope this is OK. It seems like the thing to do – or else I’ve messed up their display somehow. No one is around for me to ask about this.

I think I am supposed to venerate an icon before entering the sanctuary, but the idea is so foreign to me that I just make the sign of the cross, open the door and walk in.

The nave is a beautiful room, octagonal in shape, with a center aisle and rows of pews, and a gorgeous painted domed ceiling depicting Christ Pantocrator (ruler of all). There are stained glass windows all around, with representations of saints and of scenes from the life of Christ. (The nativity is shown as occurring not in a stable but in a cave.) The pulpit is really impressive – an elaborate carved wooden thing, with a matching carved canopy above. The iconostasion is enormous, stretching across the entire front of the chancel. It must be at least eight feet tall. I can just see an altar table behind the iconostasion, through the center door, which is partially open. I sit down near the back.

I am the only person in the pews, in a church that could seat at least 350. This seems odd. But there is some kind of activity going on. A young man is moving things up front. A woman brings out a silver tray with a cloth on it, and sets that on a table near the front. Two older men stand near a sort of raised reading stand on which several books have been placed. It’s like an upright lazy Susan – they can spin the stand to access different books as they need them. There is what seems to be an icon made of silver standing on a table off to one side, with a candle burning in front of it, and the young man venerates it at one point.

Then the young man brings me a book – an enormous book, titled Orthros 1994. It is opened to the prayers for the day, printed in Greek and English. I thank him and think, this is great, I’ll be able to follow along if I can at least transliterate the Greek.

The two older men begin chanting. They chant very loudly and very fast. Although they take turns, they have a system whereby one man starts before the other one has finished, so that there is no break in the sound – it’s one unbroken loop of chanting. If one person were doing this, it would be impossible to maintain – you’d have to stop and take a breath now and then. But it seems that two people can sustain this solid wall of sound indefinitely. The men are turning the spinning reading stand with practiced ease, moving from chant to chant. I try to follow along in the book I’ve been given, but constantly lose track of where they are in their rapid chanting.

The weekly bulletin is printed in two columns, English and Greek. There is no order of service in the bulletin, just a list of “The Propers Today” (apparently they call the readings propers), information about the ecclesiastical calendar (today is the Feast of St. Prokopios, the patron saint of marriage), and information about this year’s summer camp.

The priest, Father Emmanuel Pratsinakis, is doing something behind the iconostasion. At times I can see his back, and I can sometimes hear him chanting or praying quietly (I think he is miked). I am still the only person in the pews, and I am sorry to think that I may be disturbing these men, which is not what I wanted to do.

Some parts of the Matins celebrate the finding of the Holy Cross by the blessed Helena, and the finding of the Precious Nails. A woman enters the sanctuary, carrying a large silver platter, which she sets in a pew. She venerates an icon and leaves again. The young man who gave me the Orthros appears again, now wearing a black robe. He picks up the platter and sets it on a table near the back. He then begins a lengthy process of setting up a table with tablecloths, candlesticks, a cross, and an elevated platform for the platter. The priest disappears for a while and comes back wearing new clothes – a long white robe this time. He does more praying or chanting, with his back to us.

About thirty minutes into the prayers, a man and woman (separately) enter from the back and take seats in the pews. So now there are three of us. A few more people enter. We all stand.

Father Pratsinakis is wearing a different robe now, embroidered with red crosses! People are walking forward and venerating an icon. The priest walks around the altar, down the middle aisle, and through the vestibule waving a censer and wafting fragrant aromas. At the end of this ceremony we sit again. The chanting from the front has not ceased. I peek behind me and notice that there are now many more burning candles in the little sandboxes in the vestibule.

By 9:30 there are six women and eight men in the pews. At about 9:50 there are approximately twenty people in the building, and the priest announces that the service is beginning. The two men are still ceaselessly chanting. The priest is also chanting, behind the iconostasion, and at some point he switches from Greek to English. He manages to make the word God have seven syllables – Go-o-o-o-o-o-od.

An acolyte comes out wearing a gorgeous, gorgeous golden robe. The cantors are now reading in both Greek and English, still very fast. One reading is about the gifts of the Spirit. The priest goes back behind the iconostasis, entering through the Beautiful Gate (the various openings have names). There are readings from Romans 12:6-14 (we all have different gifts), and Matthew 9:1-8 (healing of a paralytic).

People continue to arrive and sit in the pews. Father Pratsinakis comes out from behind the iconostasion and stands in the middle of the aisle to deliver his homily. It seems to me that preaching from a pulpit is going out of favor in American churches – even though this church has a humdinger of a pulpit, it’s not being used.

The sanctuary is filling up now – there are probably well over a hundred people. I notice that the women are wearing dresses, and I’m glad that I wore a skirt to this service.

The homily begins with a tiny bit of bragging – it’s difficult for someone who doesn’t know Greek to appreciate the passages for today, because some of the words and phrases used in the original are not fully translatable. Luckily, in this church we know Greek. Father Pratsinakis has a terrific speaking voice, and no Greek accent at all. (I wonder if he has a New Jersey accent when he speaks Greek.)

The topics of the homily are friendship (the paralytic man was brought to Jesus by his friends) and faith, which cannot exist in a life of solitude. There is always a social dimension to faith. A third point is that Jesus told the paralytic to take heart – the priest tells us not to let ourselves slump into depression or be consumed by our problems. We have no reason to become depressed or to feel insignificant if we look to Jesus. The homily is about ten minutes long. When he finishes it in English, he does it once again, this time in Greek. He seems to be more animated and louder when speaking Greek.

Next is the Great Entrance. The priest brings out holy gifts (covered dishes), and the acolyte walks backward before him, swinging the censer. More prayers are said, in Greek and English. One of the prayers asks for “a Christian end to our lives, peaceful, without shame and suffering, and for a good account before God.”

It is 10:50, and people are still arriving. About this time they seem to be getting ready for Communion. Another surprise – this is the first time I’ve ever witnessed paedocommunion – the practice of giving the elements to children, even babies. It’s very interesting. The priest has a long-handled spoon, something like an iced tea spoon, and he very expertly flips a drop of wine into the mouths of the babies and children who are brought forward, without touching the spoon to their lips. One young man, probably about two years old, pitches a fit, and his mother has to wrestle him into an immobile position so that the priest can flip the wine into his very wide-open, loud mouth.

I can see why churches might have wanted to discontinue paedocommunion. Roman Catholics dropped paedocommunion after about the first thousand years of Christianity, around the time of the Great Schism, when the western and eastern churches divided. However, for the first thousand years of Christianity paedocommunion was common in most churches. Some of the Eastern churches in full communion with Rome restored the practice of paedocommunion after Vatican II. More recently, some conservative Protestant denominations have begun practicing paedocommunion.

I’m not sure if I’m seeing this correctly, but it appears to me that people are picking up some rather large chunks of bread (Orthodox churches use leavened bread) at the Communion table, and carrying them back to their seats in the pews, eating them as they go. These are big pieces, not the kind of thing you can swallow in one bite. Can this be what is really happening, or am I misinterpreting this? This is really the most unusual Communion service of all I have seen so far – and it may very well be the most traditional!

At 11:00 there is a little ceremony around the table up front that had been set up earlier with a platter, candles, and so on. It seems to be some kind of memorial service, but the whole thing is rather mysterious to me. The offering is taken next, using baskets on long poles. After that the priest stands in the middle aisle and people line up on either side. They kiss his rings, and he hands them very large chunks of bread (using both hands for both lines of people). Is this another kind of communion? Whatever it is, people are now coming down the aisle again carrying bread, sometimes handfuls of it. Everyone seems to be having a good time, and enjoying this part of the service, whatever it is.

There’s an announcement about how they need more people to bake for the upcoming agora ( kind of annual bazaar), and then everyone exits. People are standing around the vestibule, chatting and eating chunks of bread. I leave the Orthos that was so kindly provided for me in the pew, and stand in the vestibule for a while. No one says anything, so I ask if there is a washroom, and someone points me downstairs. (Can you tell that I've hit upon the technique of asking directions to the washroom at the end of every service to let people know that a visitor is in the building?)

I go back up to the vestibule and stand around some more, but no one says anything. They are really all quite busy talking among themselves, in Greek and in English, and many people are hurrying out to their cars. So I walk back out to the parking lot, where more people are standing around talking and eating chunks of bread. They are all having a good time being Greek together.

There was no chance for any follow-up, as there was no visitor’s card to fill out.

In October I did go back for the Agora, which is a huge event. I can see why it takes a year to prepare. Enormous tents are set up on the church grounds, and under them are places where you can buy icons and other artwork. There are several areas where you can buy food and drink (including ouzo), and tables at which to sit and eat. Inside one room of the building they have created a Greek deli, with cases of cheese and various prepared dishes. There are literally hundreds of people here in the middle of the day, and I think the big crowd comes at night, for the dancing and music. I bought raffle tickets to win a trip to Greece (didn’t win), and walked through the building.

Parts of it contain museum-like displays of traditional Greek clothing. Two nice Greek ladies were in the sanctuary, and they offered me some of those big chunks of bread I had seen people eating during the service. They said it is called the Bread of Fellowship. It’s slightly sweet, very good.

It seems to me that this would be a hard church to join if you’re not Greek; the assumption seems to be that if you join you want not only to worship with this congregation, but to become more involved with your Greek heritage. The church offers classes for non-Greeks who marry Greeks, so that they can assimilate.

Here's the thing that sticks with me - what's this idea about entering into the silence? This was several hours of unbroken sound!! (Must be a metaphorical idea about silence.)