A couple of weeks ago as we left church for our Sunday coffee and breakfast, my wife commented that the liturgy, the worship of the Orthodox Church, is like an opera.\u00a0 It tells a story with song, movement and image moving the participants from a start to a finish.\u00a0 Unlike an opera, participants are not just observers, a passive audience watching the story play out on a stage, but participants in the drama itself.<\/p>\n
I am reading a book, The Cloister Walk<\/span>, by Kathleen Norris, an author and a poet.\u00a0 Once again, I am finding how much I like prose written by poets.\u00a0 It is a treat to read.\u00a0 In a chapter called, “Exile, Homeland, and Negative Capability” that could stand alone as an essay, she writes:<\/p>\n The liturgical scholar Gail Ramshaw makes a valuable distinction between theology and liturgy: theology is prose, she says, but liturgy is poetry.\u00a0 ‘If faith is about facts,’ she writes, ‘then we line up the children and make them memorize questions and answers…But if we are dealing with poetry instead of prose…then we do not teach answers to questions.\u00a0 We memorize not answers but the chants of the ordinary; we explain liturgical action…we immerse people in worship so that they, too, become part of the metaphoric exchange.’ (p 61) I was reminded of this recognition, this reality, during Vespers on the day after the Feast of the Elevation of the Precious and Lifegiving Cross.\u00a0 This Feast is all about the centrality, the power, the effectiveness of the cross in Christian life and worship.\u00a0 The songs, the readings, the movement of liturgy on Friday and in the week or so afterwards all have this focal point.<\/p>\n Here is one of the hymns sung during this feast.\u00a0 Notice (and enjoy) its use of metaphor (deceived by a tree) and the wordplay (wood healed by wood, a fall brought down by another fall).\u00a0 These last two are practically puns.<\/p>\n Come, O you people A couple of weeks ago as we left church for our Sunday coffee and breakfast, my wife commented that the liturgy, the worship of the Orthodox Church, is like an opera.\u00a0 It tells a story with song, movement and image … Continue reading
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\nLet us venerate the blessed wood
\nThrough which eternal justice has come to pass.
\nFor he who deceived our forefather Adam by a tree
\nIs himself deceived by the Cross.
\nAnd he who gained possession of the creature endowed by God with royal dignity
\nIs overthrown in an amazing fall.
\nBy the blood of God the poison of the serpent is washed away,
\nFor it was fitting that wood should be healed by wood,
\nAnd that, through the passion of One Who knew not passion,
\nAll the sufferings of us who were condemned through wood should be remitted.
\nGlory to You, Christ our King, for Your dispensation towards us,
\nIn which You have saved us all,
\nFor You are good and the lover of man!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"