Q&A: Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete

[frphoti]

As a priest, we see many days -especially during Lent- where two different evenings are liturgically the same thing. You get a lot of "in anticipation" services happening the day before, which liturgically (after sundown) are correct. However, the Great Canon is not done on the Sunday night, as the Vespers of Forgiveness is done then. On Monday night, Great Compline is done with the chanting of the first section of the canon.

This may not be the same everywhere due to necessity or local custom, but it is pretty well universal.

[Maria]

Thank you Father.

[jgress]

Some parishes do take some liberties, though. At St Markella's, on Clean Wednesday they do Great Compline first in the evening, and then afterwards they do Vespers with the Presanctified Liturgy, i.e. they do the services in the wrong order! I guess they have squeeze both into the evening to make sure people turn up, and then I imagine everyone is used to the Divine Liturgy being the "climax" of the service, so that's why they do it in that order.

At Holy Ascension Monastery I'm sure they do it all by the book.

[Jean-Serge]

Some parishes do take some liberties, though. At St Markella's, on Clean Wednesday they do Great Compline first in the evening, and then afterwards they do Vespers with the Presanctified Liturgy, i.e. they do the services in the wrong order!

That's a liturgical non sense!

[jgress]

Yeah I know. The proper way is to have Vespers and Liturgy earlier in the afternoon, followed by a meal (supposedly the first meal since Sunday evening!), and then Compline. But ordinary people have to work through that week. Fortunately, Clean Week this year coincides with spring break at my university.

[Matthew]

That's nothing. The parish I used to be in would celebrate pascha not at midnight but at 9am to 12:30 on Sunday morning because as the sage and pastorally contientious priest we had would explain, the kiddies get too tired at that time and miss the whole experience entirely and it throws the personal lives of parents with kids into chaos. So he reset the time for celebrating Pascha to the late morning. Ingenious!

It is amazing what a little logic and common-sense will do to improve on our outdated, and ill-adapted to modern life, traditions will do! Glad to see they have things figured out over there in Astoria.

[jgress]

Do I sense a hint of sarcasm?

How much to concede to human weakness is a very delicate pastoral question, one which is rightly left to the bishop to determine. On the one hand, the people should struggle to follow the Church's rules, which are only there to save us; on the other hand, the bishop has to discern where the bar is set too high and the people will be unable to attain it, just as God saw that we were unable to pay our debt of sin and condescended to pay it for us.

Relaxation of the rules has a long history in Orthodoxy; if you're Greek, you should be aware that the Typicon you now use was considerably modified by Violakis in the late 19th century, in order to accommodate the pastoral needs of the people, e.g. having the Matins Gospel postponed until after the Canon to give people time to turn up and reverence the Gospel.

It is true that an ongoing capitulation to the spirit of the world is characteristic of World Orthodoxy, and perhaps you see the same thing occurring at St Markella's. But the laxity of practice in World Orthodoxy is a symptom of their lack of faith. The reason we don't recognize them as truly Orthodox is because their bishops preach heresy, or are silent when others do. We haven't broken communion with them simply over the fact that they have pews or organs or shortened services.

I think one should give Metropolitan Paul the benefit of the doubt and not be smug about how much more correct one's own practice is.