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“A c t iv e Pa r t ic ip a t io n ” of the
Fa i t h f u l in B y z a n t in e Lit u r g y
Vassa Larin1
Introduction
This paper poses a very Roman-Catholic question in the context of
Orthodox liturgical practice: Does the Byzantine Rite traditionally
foster the “full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical
celebrations” of all the faithful? This issue, one of the primary
concerns of the 20th c. liturgical movement in the West, the Second
Vatican Council addressed as follows in its Liturgy Constitution,
Sacrosanctum Concilium:
Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should
be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in litur-
gical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of
the liturgy Such participation by the Christian people as “a
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed
people” (1 Pet 2:9; cf. 2:4-5), is their right and obligation by
reason of their baptism. In the restoration and promotion of
the sacred liturgy the full and active participation by all the
people is the aim to be considered before all else, for it is the
primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are
to derive the true Christian spirit. Therefore, in all their apos-
tolic activity, pastors of souls should energetically set about
achieving it through the requisite pedagogy. (SC 14)2
1 This is a revised and expanded version o f a talk presented at the Orientale Lumen
Conference XVI: Ti)e Theology of the Laity, June 18-21, 2012, in Washington, D C .
An audio recording o f the original (unrevised) talk is available online: h ttp ://a n -
cientfaith.com /specials/orientale_lum en_xvi_conference/sr._dr._vassa_larin_or-
thodox.
2Vatican II, Sacrosanctum concilium, 4 Dec. 1963. A. Flannery (ed.), Vatican Council
II, vol. 1. The Conciliar a nd Postconciliar Documents (N orthport, NY, 20 045), 7 - 8.
67
68 ST VLADIMIR’S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
reading, and any other skills and arts related to public worship should be sought,
respected and used in celebration” (§30). E nvironm ent a n d A r t in Catholic Wor-
ship. Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy of the N ational Conference o f Catholic Bishops
(Washington, D C , 2005), 18.
70 ST VLADIMIR’S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
... When the deacon says, Let us all say, the phrase means noth-
ing other than this very thing—for all to pray together, not
only the choir (κΛΗρ), but all those found in the church. The
deacon further says: with our whole soul, and with our whole
mind, let us say. And what is it that we say ?Nothing other than
this common prayer: Lord, have mercy I The holy Chrysostom
writes [in his commentary on the Epistle] to the Corinthians
about this sacred prayer in the 18th instruction5: “For in the
penitential services there are prayers common to the priest
and to the people: and everyone pronounces one and the
same prayer, filled with mercy, and that is, Lord, have mercy!”
For this reason it is written in the Sluzhebniki (euchologies)
that “the people” pronounce this, or other (prayers) written
in the (appropriate) places. Now in the Holy Eastern Church
things are done not otherwise but as it is written. So where
5 The author oí ־this passage in the Typikon is quoting St John Chrysostom s sermon In
2 Co?'bom. 18, 3 (PG 61:527, = C P G §4429), preached in Antioch.
“Active Participation' o f the Faithful in Byzantine Liturgy 71
15 Ibid., 35.
16 I. A. Gardner, Bogosluzhebnoepenie Russkoi Pmvoslavnoi Tserkvi II (Jordanville, NY:
1977), 446.
17 In a letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan ( a d 9 8 -1 1 7 ), dated ca. a d 111-113,
Plinius the Younger reports that the Christians would “congregate and sing a song
together with one another to Christ as to a god ...” (conuenire carmenque Christo
quasi deo dicere secum inuicem). W. Rordorf, Sabbat u n d Sonntag in der A lten Kirche
II (Zürich, 1972), 7 9 -8 0 .
18 It is contested whether the following two verses in the first epistle o f Clement, Bish-
op of Rome, usually dated a d 96, refer to the congregational singing o f the Sanctus
in a liturgical context: “For the scripture saith, Ten thousands o ften thousands stood
“Active Participation ״of the Faithful in Byzantine Liturgy 75
the common prayer of the people at the end o f the Liturgy o f the
Word, and their “Amen” concluding the Eucharistic Prayer. 19
-In the New Testament itself the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corin
thians, “W hen you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a
revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation ... For you can all prophesy
one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged ...” (1 Cor
O f course, when Paul said that “all may prophesy,” he .)31 ,14:26
may not exactly have meant everyone, since just a few verses later
he famously added, “As in all the churches of the saints, the women
should keep silence (σιγάτωσ&ν) in the churches ... For it is shameful
for a woman to speak (kakeIv) in church” (1 Cor I4:34a ־-35b). Regard
less of what exactly Paul meant with this passage, it shows us that
female participation in liturgy was considered problematic long before
.women were excluded from singing in the medieval Russian Church
Scriptural scholars have long grappled with the textological and
-logical problematics of that passage in 1 Corinthians, which appar
ently contradicts this earlier verse in the same epistle, “... every woman
who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her
-head” (1 Cor 11:5).20 But we shall leave that discussion to the scrip
tural scholars. For the purposes of our liturgical observations, suffice
it to say that this Pauline passage is simply ignored in the Russian
Orthodox Church today, where since the late-19th c. women do
not “keep silence” but sing, read, and indeed “speak” (λάλειν) during
.liturgy—as do men
... the bishop and all the people rise from their places, and start
oft on foot down from the summit of the Mount of Olives.
All the people go before him with psalms and antiphons, all
the time repeating, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of
the Lord. And all the children, and also those too young to
walk, who are carried holding on to their parents’ necks, carry
branches—some palm and some olive. And thus the bishop is
accompanied in just the way the Lord was. (31, 3)31
The children mentioned here are evidently re-p resenting liturgically
the children mentioned in the Gospel account of the Lord’s entrance
into Jerusalem:
But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful
things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant; and they
said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus
said to them, “Yes; have you never read, O u t of the mouth of
babes and sucklings thou hast brought perfect praise’?” (Mt
2 1 :15- 16)
This is also a pastorally creative way to involve children in the liturgy,
by inserting them into the events of salvation history as those events
are anamnetically re-presented through the liturgical action.
Another cathedral rite from a later period, the 10th C. “Typikon
of the Great Church” in Constantinople, also involves children,
more specifically, orphan-boys (01 ορφανοί). During the stational
liturgy on December 18, for example, when the procession reaches
the narthex of the Chalkoprateia church and the singing of the
troparion ceases, the orphans enter the church singing “Lift up your
gates” (LXX Ps 23:7). After that, the singers take over and the rest of
the Divine Liturgy is celebrated. O ther processions, on December
24 and July 9, also involve orphans.32
Regarding the role of laywomen in the cathedral liturgy, it should
be kept in mind that aside from rare exceptions, “in Byzantine
Christianity as elsewhere, women were systematically ranked after
31 I am following Röwekamps interpretation o f this passage, ibid., 2 6 0-61.
32 J. Mateos (ed.), Le Typicon de la Grande Eglise, vol. I (Orientalia Christiana Analecta
165) (Rome, 1962), 139, 144, and 334.
82 ST VLADIMIR’S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
tersburg, 1894), 1-254, here 179, 189, and 191. Cf. Bertonière, Easter Vigil, 50, note
108.
38 H. M. Loparev (ed.), Knigapalom nik. Skazanie mest sviatykh vo Tsaregrade A ntoniia
Arkbiepiskopa Novgorodskogo v 1200 go du (Pravoslavnyi Palestinskii Sbornik 51 =
17.3) (St Petersburg, 1899), text 2-9."
39 Dmitrievskii, Bogosluzhenie, 405.
40 P. Perekrestov (ed.), Svia titel Ioann Shankhaiskii i San-Frantsisskii (Moscow, 2008),
5 8 2 .1 thank Fr Peter Perekrestov for this reference.
84 ST VLADIMIR’S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
The past does not present us with ideal solutions to the problem of
“active participation,” though it can be instructive on several levels.
First and foremost, a knowledge of the past exposes us to different
ways of doing liturgy, relativizing our present-day perception of
allegedly unchangeable traditions. Thus in the words of Gary Macy,
“History should always free us from the tyranny of the present,
perhaps all the more so when that present claims to be eternal,”42
opening up to us the possibility of change where it is needed.
The past might also heal our present-day complacency with the
state of our liturgy. As far as I have been able to observe, today we
as Orthodox are usually quite happy and even proud of our highly-
conservative liturgical tradition, and nowadays one never hears talk
of the “eucharistic crisis” to which Fr Alexander Schmemann called
attention almost thirty years ago.43
Unfortunately, we do not have statistical data from all the
Orthodox Churches to support my observation of “liturgical
complacency,” but the few reliable data at our disposal do seem to
point in this direction. In a recent study conducted by Alexei D.
KrindatschofParishioners and Realities o f Orthodox Parish Life in the
USA ,44 limited to the parishes of the Greek O rthodox Archdiocese
and the Orthodox Church in America, an overwhelming majority
(91%) of all respondents stated that “the aspect of their parish
they M O ST valued” was “Liturgy, sharing in Eucharist.”45 At the
same time, there was some, if not very strong, concern expressed
about congregational participation in the liturgy. W hen asked,
“W hat is needed for your parish to strengthen and grow?,” most
respondents opted for the reply, “More money” (57% felt this
would be “helpful,” 34% felt this was “very urgent,” and only 9%
42 G. Macy, “Impasse Passé: Conjugating a Tense Past,” in J. Y. Tan (ed.), The Catho-
lie Theological Society o f America. Proceedings of the Sixty fo u rth A n n u a l Convention,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 4 - 7 , 2009, Vol. 64 (Cincinnati, 2009), 1-20, here 9.
43 A. Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (Crestwood, NY: 1987),
9- 10.
44 A. Krindatsch, Tfje Orthodox Church Today (Berkeley, CA , 2008), accessed online on
December 12, 2012, at http://w w w .orthodoxinstitute.org/orthodoxchurchtoday.
html.
45 Ibid., 22.
88 ST VLADIMIR’S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
46 Ibid., 35.
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