So today at Matins our priest gave me a new book to add to the pile of books I use to Cantor. Oh joy! More books to manage! 😉
The one I was handed today was the Byzantine Monthly Manaion, which contains many of the changable parts of Matins.
Tomorrow is October 2nd and we’ll be celebrating The Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian and the Virgin Martyr Justina. To help me learn the parts from tomorrow, I recorded myself singing them and I’ve included them below. They’re neither perfect nor polished, but here they are…
Saint Troparion(Tone 4)
Day Troparion (Tone 1)
Kontakion (Tone 4)
Prokeimenon(Tone 7)
Alleluia(Tone 6)
Communion Hymn(Psalm 111:6-7)
I think I’ll probably record the changeable parts in advance each time I’m singing Matins, so just in case anyone out there is also having to sing Matins and wants to learn them/suffer along with me, I’ll probably be posting them up here most days.
I’ve recently been writing to different Catholic sites offering to write some guest posts. As I’ll be taking my book manuscript to publishers shortly I thought it’d be good to get my name appearing on more websites 🙂
As I wrote my first email to an editor, describing the kind of topics I typically discuss, I wondered which of my articles have been the most popular. I knew which of my posts I most enjoyed, but what were the posts which were most popular among the readers?
Fortunately, WordPress has a variety of admin tools which allow you to gauge this. I found some of the entries rather surprising, so I decided to write a post identifying my top eleven most popular posts…
#1 OSAS and three cups of tea (11,000 views) I was initially surprised this post came out on top. It was the first part in a three-part response of a rebuttal to my post on Eternal Security. I think it received so many views because it was reproduced in its entirety over at Shameless Popery.
#2 He-Man, Christian Allegory and Transubstantiation (9,000 views) This is one of my favourites! This was a post I wrote for April Fool’s Day. Earlier in the year I had been visiting Washington DC and gone out for a drink with Joe Heschmeyer where I shared my tongue-in-cheek theory about He-Man. At his urging this insanity finally made it down on paper.
#3 IC XC (8,000 views) This was one of my early posts about the the letters found all over the interior of most Byzantine Churches. Apparently a lot of people want to know what they mean and Google sends them to me!
#4 Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Catholic (5,000 views) I think this one got all this traffic purely because of the title.
#5 What is the significance of “IHS”? (3,000 views) This was another post about Church decoration. Posts like this unfortunately attract the conspiracy theory loving, Jack Chick reading, surfers of the Internet (see the comments), but still, these posts seem to be very popular and I think I’ll write some more articles on symbolism in the next few months.
#6 Discernment with Fr. Matt Spahr (3,000 views) On my blog I host the recordings from the local Theology On Tap sessions and this has, by far, received the greatest number of downloads, even beating a talk on relationships by Jackie Francois-Angel! Fr. Matt is the pastor of the Immaculata in San Diego and is, in my humble opinion, one of the best homilists in San Diego.
#7 The end is nigh (3,000 views) Remember when Harold Camping said that the world was going to end?
#8 What Planned Parenthood does and does not do (3,000 views) This was a very recent post but got shared a bunch on Facebook. I feel a bit bad since it was originally Abby Johnson’s material, but still, it was good to get the information out there.
#9 Jesus, the New Moses (3,000 views) This was a real surprise! I’m not sure why, but apparently a lot of people want to read about the parallels between Jesus and Moses.
#10 Catholic Dating: Not wanting to be “that guy” (2,000 views) I had guessed that at least one entry from my “Catholic Dating” series would make the top-ten list. It turns out the most popular is the post where I talk about Catholic guys not wanting to be creepers…
#11 Vatican Wealth (2,000 views) This last entry also gained most of its popularity through Facebook shares. In this article I address the common assertion that the Pope lives like a king and that the Vatican should just sell everything they have…
This last weekend I joined the crowd of people outside Seattle’s Planned Parenthood. At 320 other locations around the country many others did likewise, protesting the country’s most well-known abortion provider. It was wonderful seeing all my friends from around the country posting their pictures on Facebook.
Much like last time in Seattle, the counter-protest presence was rather weak. I counted maybe six people who were identifiably there in support of Planned Parenthood. In contrast, the pro-lifers covered most of the city block:
As you can hopefully see, as usual there was a real cross-section of people present, both men and women, young and old. Read more
I could tell I was tired this morning… During the Divine Liturgy I went into autopilot as we sung the Creed, which unfortunately meant that I sang loudly “I believe in the Holy Spirit…who proceeds from the Father and the Son“. Oops!
In case you are unaware, in Eastern Christianity, the last part of that sentence is not included in the Nicene Creed. This creed was the product of two Ecumenical Councils, Nicaea and Constantinople, so technically we should call it the Nicene-Constantinoplean Creed.
The argument surrounding the clause “and the Son” is known as the “Filioque Controversy”, since “Filioque” is the Latin word which was added to the Creed in the West. This controversy dates back to the Great Schism of 1054. The history surrounding it is a little complicated, but the long and the short of it is that one of the reasons much of the Eastern Church broke communion with Rome was due to the addition of this word to the Creed in the West.
However, my purpose in this post isn’t so much to speak about the Filioque, but to talk about another slip up I made today when I sang “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God…”
More changes?!
Back when I lived in San Diego, I often attended the San Diego Orthodox Young Adults Group. Once when I was hanging out with them, one of my Eastern Orthodox friends asked me why the Catholic Church made so many changes to the Creed. What did he mean? There were changes in addition to the Filioque?! That was news to me! However, he then pointed out that in the West we say:
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
In the East, however, the phrase in bold, “God from God”, does not appear!
Creedal Variations
I spent a little bit of time digging into this issue and I was rather surprised to find out that there were actually quite a few creedal variations in the ancient Church. In fact, you could go as far as to say that all the ancient versions differ at least to some degree from the official text given at Nicaea and Constantinople.
For example, the Councils used the first person plural throughout: “We believe… We confess… We await…”. However, the Byzantine Churches changed it to the first person singular: “I believe… I confess… I await”. Historically, the Latin Church did the same, although until relatively recently, English-speaking Catholics would say “We”. However, following the liturgical reforms of 2011 and retranslation of the Roman Missal to represent more faithfully the Latin text, all Catholics now say “I” instead.
Another textual variation in the Latin text is the one mentioned by my Eastern Orthodox friend. It is true that, in addition to the Filioque clause, the Latin liturgical text has another difference. In the Latin, it reads “Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero”, which translates as “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God”. It turns out that the clause, “God from God”, although not found in the Creed from Constantinople, is actually found in the earlier creed from Nicaea. For some reason, this was retained in the Latin. The Armenian text includes this and other variations as well.
Conclusions?
So what should we conclude? I’m not really sure, but I think we can acknowledge two things. The first is simply that there is more variation in the “Nicene Creed” than we commonly think, and the second is that I need to make sure I have a nice cup of tea before I attempt to sing any complex theology in the mornings.
UPDATE: Michael Lofton just recorded a livestream with even more details on this subject:
Those of you who know me will know that I purposefully attend the “Extraordinary Form” (EF) of the Mass several times a year. This form of the Mass is sometimes known as “The Tridentine Mass” and is the Liturgy which our grandparents would have typically attended.
There’s much to commend the Extraordinary Form and I would love to see it become more widely available. However, as much as I love the older form of the Mass, I have to say, that when it’s done well, I actually prefer the “Novus Ordo” (NO) Mass. This is the amended liturgy which came about following the Second Vatican Council and which is more typically found around the world today in Roman-Rite Catholic Churches.
(Having said all that, I actually go to Byzantine Liturgy on Sundays)
Although I generally prefer the Novus Ordo, I think it’s safe to say that every Catholic has been to a typical parish Mass where the service has, well, left a lot to be desired… These banal liturgies have considerably nurtured the feeling among more traditional Catholics that the Novus Ordo was a considerable misstep in the development of the Roman liturgy. However, personally I think that when it’s done well, it’s thoroughly beautiful.
In recent months I’ve been in an extended email exchange with a friend who infinitely prefers the Extraordinary Form. During our discussion, I gave some suggestions of some simple things which can be done to elevate the typical Mass-going experience and I thought I’d share them here. Not all of these are Novus Ordo-specific, but in my opinion they would resolve many of the problems which are more commonly associated with the new form of the Mass…
I went to Vigil Mass last night and we were up late afterwards celebrating with the new members of the Church.
As a result, I didn’t get to Byzantine Liturgy this morning, which meant that I missed out on hearing St. John Chrysostom’s Pascal Homily. For those of you that don’t know, in the Byzantine Church, this Fourth Century homily is read by the priest at the Liturgy every Easter Day.
Since I didn’t get to hear it today, I decided to read it myself and put it up here for you all to enjoy. Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!
So today at Matins our priest gave me a new book to add to the pile of books I use to Cantor. Oh joy! More books to manage! 😉
I’ve recently been writing to different Catholic sites offering to write some guest posts. As I’ll be taking my book manuscript to publishers shortly I thought it’d be good to get my name appearing on more websites 🙂
