Liturgica – biblicalia

Lectionaries Old and New

Lectionaries are wondrous things. The way that various sections of text are interwoven with others realize in their combination an effect on the hearer that the individual elements would not otherwise exert. The skilful literacy, thoughtfulness, and prayerful attention invested in their creation and elaboration is clear in this effect.

I came to begin collecting these and many other lectionaries (which will eventually be added to this site) out of my curiosity regarding church readings of first the Old Testament, and then the apocrpypha and pseudepigrapha in lectionaries, in order to provide myself with a personal plan of study for those sets of readings. Finding such a variety of lectionaries was a pleasant surprise. The lectionaries that I present here therefore all contain readings of the Old Testament and/or apocrypha.

The “Lectionaries Old and New” menu, above, gives access to some very interesting ones, dating from the fourth through the twentieth centuries.

This is an updating of my original page “Lectionaries Old and New” which I wrote and first put online in 1998, or thereabouts. In putting this site back together, scraping away the accumulations of decades of internetty barnacles, the page was no longer needed. And yet, I like the blurb. So I shall keep it.

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The Last Eastern Orthodox Liturgy in Hagia Sophia

The last truly Orthodox Divine Liturgy in the Great Church, the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, took place December 11, 1452. On December 12, the “Patriarch” Cardinal Isidore (ostensible Patriarch of Kiev and all Russia, though deprived of his see by the Grand Prince of Muscovy, Basil) proclaimed the union of the Eastern Church and the Western described in the document Laetentur caeli, the result of the Council of Florence. All celebration of the Divine Liturgy to follow in Hagia Sophia, to the last celebrated on 29 May 1453 which was interrupted by slaughter of all in the church by the Ottoman Turks, were unionist and not properly Orthodox. It was in fact the opposition of many in Constantinople to the Union of the Council of Florence, initially led by St Mark Eugenikos of Ephesus (spokesman of the Eastern delegation and one of only two participants who refused to sign the council’s proclamation of union), that held off implementation of the union for so long after that non-ecumenical council ended on 6 July 1439.

The acceptance of this council by the Romans, that is the leaders of Constantinople, effected a break in relations with Muscovy, depriving them of badly-needed support in their struggle against the Ottoman Turks. Though the die seems already to have been cast by that time, it might have been the case that the Emperor, in rejecting the union, might have received more help from East than ever he did from West in the final struggle to save what was left of the Roman Emprire. The early modern period in the East might have begun very differently indeed had this been the case.

In this case, Esau sold his birthright for an empty bowl.

But this is only so much wondering over long-spilled milk.

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The Trisagion

Ἅγιος ὁ Θεός
Ἅγιος Ἰσχυρός
Ἅγιος Ἀθάνατος
ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς

Holy God
Holy mighty
Holy immortal
Have mercy on us

The above little prayer is one of the great treasures of the ancient Church. It’s called the Trisagion, and appears in the fourth century, after which to the present day it is used in the anaphora of Byzantine Divine Liturgies, and apparently in Greek in some Western liturgies as well. The thrice-holy hymn is generally understood to have emerged from the vision granted to the Holy Prophet Isaiah of the heavenly Seraphim, chanting, “Holy, holy, holy” at the throne of God (Isaiah 6), through the mediation of the vision granted to St John the Theologian in the Apocalypse (ch. 4). But real certainty, and much of its history, is not what interests me here. It’s rather an interesting thing that I noticed differs between the way this prayer is understood in the Greek and the English.

I think most people who read the English Trisagion think of this as a prayer addressing God as “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal.” Yet, while this is a possible reading in the English, it is not the case in the Greek. There, instead of a vocative address, we have a series of declarative statements, which are through ellipsis lacking verbs and connective particles: “Holy [is] God, Holy [and] Mighty, Holy [and] Immortal.”

In addition, I think the first phrase bears an implied personalization in the first person plural, following from the final phrase. So, the full prayer should be thus understood:

“Holy is our God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal. Have mercy on us!”

Only in the final phrase are we addressing God with this prayer. Before that, it is a prayer of confession, that our God is holy, mighty, and immortal. Could it be that this prayer emerged out of the martyrdoms? Was it a confession of faith on the part of some being tortured to death for their faith? It’s entirely possible, but we just don’t know. Regardless, it’s beautiful.

(These are some ideas that I had upon waking one day, while clearing my head of the fuzziness of the dream world. Usually my first waking moments are not so productive!)

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I see . . .

Τὸν νυμφῶνά σου βλέπω,
Σωτήρ μου κεκοσμημένον,
καὶ ἔνδυμα οὐκ ἔχω,
ἵνα εἰσέλθω ἐν αὐτῷ,
λάμπρυνόν μου τὴν στολὴν τῆς ψυχῆς,
Φωτοδότα, καὶ σῶσόν με.

I see your Bridal Chamber adorned, O my Saviour,
and I have no wedding garment
that I may enter therein;
make radiant the vesture of my soul,
O Giver of Light,
and save me.

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Motu Proprio et Catena Aurea

As many are already aware, on 7 July Pope Benedict XVI released a letter entitled Summorum Pontificum (official translation here, translation of the accompanying explanatory letter here), given motu proprio, that is, “of his own accord,” and not necessarily in consultation with any others. It is a decree of the Roman shepherd to all his flock. In it, Pope Benedict essentially derestricts a particular edition of the Tridentine Latin Mass, particularly (and only, by the way) that of Blessed Pope John XXIII promulgated in 1962. Since 1970, a newer edition of the Mass, called the Novus Ordo, the official edition of which is Latin but which is also more often celebrated in various approved vernacular translations, has been the standard, with the Tridentine Mass celebrated outside Rome in only a relatively few places which have received special permission for it. Pope Benedict’s motu proprio and explanatory letter make clear that the older mass was never abrogated, and encourages its use by making it easier for individual priests to celebrate it, and for groups of parishioners to request it. He charitably avoids blaming any of his subordinate bishops for being too stingy in their permission to allow celebration of the older form of mass, some of whom would apparently rather have clowns dancing through the sanctuary than ever allow an ancient form of the mass to be celebrated in Latin. The liturgical world for such people begins in 1970, while for many, they likely felt it ended. This recent derestriction of the older mass will hopefully be taken up by many in the months and years ahead. May their lives be greatly enriched by it!

Continue reading “Motu Proprio et Catena Aurea”

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An Enochian memorial?

The following prayer occurs in the Litany for the Departed, an Eastern Orthodox memorial service:

O God of spirits and of all flesh, who hast trampled down death and made powerless the devil and given life to thy world: Do thou, thyself O Lord, give rest to the souls of thy departed servants, NN, in a place of brightness, a place of verdure, a place of repose, whence all sickness, sorrow and sighing have fled away.
Translation: The Liturgikon (Antakya Press, 1994)

Two things in this short passage of the litany bring to mind the book of First Enoch, and I wonder if there’s any direct (or indirect) connection.

The first is the phrase “God of spirits and of all flesh.” This is similar to the title “Lord of Spirits” which is very common in First Enoch, particularly in the Book of Similitudes (or Parables) section, chapters 37 through 71.

The second is the requested place of rest for the departed: “a place of brightness, a place of verdure, a place of repose, whence all sickness, sorrow and sighing have fled away.” This brings to my mind First Enoch 22.9: “And this has been separated for the spirits of the righteous, where the bright fountain of water is” (from the Nickelsburg/VanderKam translation).

Neither of the parallels are particularly close, but I find the combination of these two somewhat distant allusions suggestive, indeed I found them striking when I first heard them. Whether the writing of the litany, the origin of which is lost to the mists of time, was influenced by First Enoch or not, there is another, more interesting and striking parallel. This is the shared understanding of the author of First Enoch and the author(s) of the litany (and hence also of Eastern Orthodox Christian believers for whom this litany is a canonical statement of beliefs) concerning the intermediate state, between death and resurrection, as a state in which one receives a foretaste of one’s eternal reward, whether good or bad, based upon one’s life.

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