another picture from the st. michael's conference

"And the Light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

I can't emphasize enough how awesome an experience it was.

the divine liturgy of saint james

Read the whole Divine Liturgy of St. James here. Experts tell me that this is one of, if not THE, oldest liturgy in use in Christendom. Some say it came from St. James the Just, the brother of the Lord. Most agree that it dates at least to the middle of the third century, and possibly rather earlier, though of course it has evolved in some ways down through the centuries. It was edited down, for example, by St. John Chrysostom. It already takes several hours to celebrate this liturgy. I wonder what it was like BEFORE its several redactions for the sake of brevity. The liturgy is used most widely among the Orthodox at Jerusalem, and is the principle liturgy of several Eastern Churches, including both the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Syrian Catholic Church (in communion with Rome).  Here is an excerpt:

DEACON:  Let none remain of the catechumens, none of the unbaptized, none of those who are unable to join with us in prayer.  Look at one another.  The doors.   All erect; let us again pray to the Lord.

THE PRIEST SAYS THE PRAYER OF INCENSE:  Sovereign Almighty, King of Glory, who knowest all things before their creation, manifest Thyself to us calling upon Thee at this holy hour, and redeem us from the shame of our transgressions; cleanse our mind and our thoughts from impure desires, from worldly deceit, from all influence of the devil; and accept from the hands of us sinners this incense, as Thou didst accept the offering of abel, and Noah, and Aaron, and Samuel, and of all Thy saints, guarding us from everything evil, and preserving us for continually pleasing, and worshipping, and glorifying Thee, the father, and thy only-begotten Son, and thy all-holy spirit, now and always, and forever.

THE READERS BEGIN THE CHERUBIC HYMN:  Let all mortal flesh be silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and meditate nothing earthly within itself.  For the King of kings and Lord of lords, Christ our God, comes forward to be sacrificed, and to be given for food to the faithful.  And the bands of angels go before Him with every power and dominion, the many-eyed cherubim, and the six-winged seraphim, covering their faces and crying aloud the hymn, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

THE PRIEST, BRINGING IN THE HOLY GIFTS, SAYS THE PRAYER:  O God, our God, who didst send forth the heavenly bread, the food of the whole world, our Lord Jesus Christ, to be a Saviour, and Redeemer, and Benefactor, blessing and sanctifying us, do Thou Thyself bless this offering, and graciously receive it to Thy altar above the skies.  Remember in Thy goodness and love those who have brought it, and those for whom they have brought it, and preserve us without condemnation in the service of Thy divine mysteries:  for hallowed and glorified is Thy all-honored and great name, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to all eternity.

PRIEST:  Peace be to all.

DEACON:  Sir, pronounce the blessing.

PRIEST:  Blessed be God, who blesseth and sanctifieth us all at the presentation of the divine and pure mysteries, and giveth rest to the blessed souls among the holy and just, now and always, and to all eternity.

take. eat.

The sacrifice of the God-man, Jesus Christ, in its radical self-referentiality refuses to permit itself to be objectified in anything like a sense-empirical transaction, nor even in intellectualization. Instead it draws the independent subjectivity of the beholder into itself. As death, it kills those who witness it. The epistemological free agent is incapable of resisting its radical compulsion, and is thus incapable of remaining epistemologically free. The Cross transforms those who would circumscribe it in thought, word, or deed. All things pass away in the theanthropic sacrifice, and all things are made new in the theanthropic resurrection. What the Cross compels, therefore, is a participation in itself. The Cross is a calling to itself; it is the true and universal human vocation. (Pseudo) Dionysius the Areopagite speaks in the following way of God the Son, in his singular Gift: “Through an excess of loving goodness He transcends Himself, and descends to dwell in all things by virtue of the ecstatic power beyond all being that comes forth from Himself,” (The Divine Names, 4.13). It is therefore not in an awesome display of what we have come to call “power” that the glory of God is revealed. (Our conceptualizations themselves must be reconfigured, born again.) Just as the divine Gift is entirely gratuitous, though it cannot be withstood; so the Power and the Glory, though incapable of being resisted, are themselves manifested in their Bearer having been entirely overcome and emptied. The Greek Orthodox theologian Archimandrite Vasileios, abbot of the Athonite monastery Stavronikita, puts it this way: “…We see the glory of God, not in the form of the Pantokrator, but revealed as it appears in the act of the Father’s offering and sacrifice of the Son: in the ultimate humiliation of the Servant of God,” (Hymn of Entry, 58).

The radical nature of this Gift is further radicalized in that it is supratemporalized, manifest as such in the liturgical sacrifice of the Eucharist. That is, the Gift gives itself supratemporally on thousands of altars through the millennia, and around the world. In the catholic identification of the consecrated Eucharistic elements with the flesh of the God-man, that is with the very substantiality of the Gift, Christ is “offered to us, broken and poured out,” (Hymn of Entry, 59). The economics of sacrifice thereby become altogether one-sided. It isn’t just that Christ is given to us; it isn’t just that he is given to us broken and poured out. The sacrificial Gift of Christ is his own flesh as food, his own blood as drink. It is given as that which is taken, in the fullest possible sense; rather, that which is not merely taken, but taken and consumed. The Gift is radically appropriated by the recipient. It is internalized in the fullest sense, and in being internalized, it internalizes the recipient. Christ enters substantially into the communicant and thus brings him, in turn, into the divine economy, into the very heart of the paschal mystery. The compulsion of the sacrificial Gift manifests itself in being consumed, and in consuming the consumer. “Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet,” (Judges 14.14). The experiential subject of the divine Sacrifice becomes its object, he is appropriated by the Sacrifice, and becomes the sacrificial victim in union with the Lamb, eternally offered before the throne of the Father.

It becomes clear in what sense the pure gift is beyond the horizon of expectation. The fetishized pure gift is only capable of being offered by a god. It only occurs in myth. In every case of thematized, temporal giving or sacrifice, the do ut des of paganism, the Derridean concern obtains. The gift is cancelled out by the expectation of reciprocity. It becomes, as soon as it is given and recognized, a market transaction, an exchange, and as such, a non-gift. But insofar as the pure gift only occurs in myth, insofar as it is only capable of being offered by the god, it does occur in the Christ myth. And because the holy sacrifice is God offering God, it is actual, and therefore possible. Because the sacrificial Gift is a gift of the theanthropic, of that which is very God and very man, it is capable of bridging the ontological, conceptual, and linguistic gap between the Giver and the receiver. It does so by bringing the recipient into the heart of the Gift, by transforming the receiver into that which is offered, into the Gift itself.

What is necessary is not so much a demythologizing of the event, but rather a mythologizing. It must be removed from the realm of the scientific, of the sociological. The mythologization occurs on two levels, both of which constitute instances of the signification of the Gift. First there is the pure gift itself, the sacrifice of the flesh of God which, as has been noted, is entirely self-referential. It is beyond the pale of predication and conceptual circumscription. The experiencing subject stands before the Gift on the Gift’s own terms. In terms of signifier and signified, the two are one. The signifier is that which it signifies. And the same instance of self-referentiality takes place again in the liturgical action of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the gift is disbursed. The Eucharistic elements serve as a prism, for the refraction of the divine ενέργεια. In the sacrifice, thanksgiving (ευχαριστία) is offered to God for the sacrifice itself and for the totality of divine Grace. Bread and wine are offered as symbols of our own categorical creative initiatives, as return-gifts. The offerers of the sacrifice are themselves offered in their totality, body and soul. And most fundamentally, the Eucharistic sacrifice is the Gift of God, the divine flesh offered in virtue of the sacerdotal grace of the officiant, acting in persona Christi. Therefore, it is the same Gift as that of which it is a signifier, and that which it signifies. By being at once signifier and signified, the sacrifice manifests its power of compulsion. As referend, it is beyond the horizon of expectation, utterly mythologized; yet as the term of reference, it draws itself into the economy of the same, is thematized in the realm of the categorical and becomes itself an object of experience.

on serving at the altar

....

Having served hundreds and hundreds of low Masses, sung Masses, Solemn High Masses, etc., I can say that they have changed me as a human being. And I only learned to serve when I was twenty-one. When you serve in the old rite, you have to take on another persona. It is the most self-emptying and transformative experience you can go through, at least if you take it seriously. The way I was taught, you always have your hands folded, you always look down, each step is subtle and measured, and all movements are supposed to be slow and elegant. When you are before the throne of God, you should act like it. This act grafts you into the continuous worship of God that has gone on since before time began, as it goes on in heaven continuously, and as our ancestors prayed before us. This is the ultimate democracy of the dead (to quote Chesterton): that we should continue to worship as they did, emptying ourselves of our own modern ideas of how worship and religion should be.

Liturgy is gravely serious business, but the paradox is that this is what makes it so fun. Children will often behave like angels for their parents because they know that their parents like it that way. They may be little devils most of the time, but when they know they should behave, they can do it on cue and earn even more appreciation from their parents for their efforts. This is how I feel when I serve Mass. Yes, I am a dissipated, foul-mouthed, hypocritical, uncouth runaway ex-monk. But at least I can be angelic in front of God for twenty five minutes on a Wednesday evening. It is my way of trying to show God that I might not be such a terrible scoundrel after all. It is my poor attempt at the widow’s mite.

And when it is done right, when it is true rational service mixed with humility and bodily motion, a low Mass can be even more beautiful than a starry sky, a craggy sea shore, or a snow covered mountain that shoots up into the clouds. This is what we are here for, it is our eternal vocation: to serve, to dance, and to be joyful before the throne of the Lamb. Ecce Agnus Dei…..

Read it all here.

a monastery movie

I found a bunch of videos of my favorite Benedictines on Youtube. A classmate of mine from college made his Solemn Vows there last year. Here's one of the videos:

more prayers to cut out and put in your bcp

Under the heading: Devotions for the Holy Eucharist. My advice is to put these in your BCP, bring them to Mass with you, and pray them as you wait to come forward to receive the Sacrament.

Act of Faith

Of a truth I firmly believe, O good Jesu, and with lively faith confess, that thou thyself, equal to God the Father in glory and in power, true God and Man, art verily and indeed present in the Sacrament. For thou, the Very Truth Itself, hast said, This is my Body, This is my Blood. I believe whatever the Son of God hath said. Nothing can be truer than this word of him who is the Truth. Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief, increase my faith.

Act of Hope

O Christ Jesus, I am sinful dust and ashes, but thou callest to thee them that labour and are heavy laden, that thou mayest refresh them. Art not thou my Refuge? To whom else should I go? Thou alone hast the words of eternal life, thou alone canst comfort me in every trouble. Lord, I am weak and sick, but thou art my Salvation. They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. Therefore I come to thee, my Physician and my Refuge, hoping that this Communion may be to me the increase of Faith, Hope, and Charity; a firm defence againsat the snares of my enemies; a help to the removal of the fault and defect of . . . and to the bringing forth of works well-pleasing unto thee, especially . . . and a pledge of future glory. This is the hope and desire which I cherish in my heart, for thou art pitiful and of tender mercy, and in all thy promises most faithful.

Act of Love

O most sweet Saviour, Jesus Christ, how great was thy love, which drew thee from the bosom of the Father to this vale of tears, to take our flesh, and endure infinite miseries and wrongs, yea, even the death of the Cross, and that only for us miserable sinners, and for our salvation. O how great was thy love? Thou mightest have condemned us, and thou didst rather choose to save us: we were guilty, and thou, the Sinless One, didst endure our punishment to set us free.

Out of love it was that thou camest down to save our flesh; and when about to depart from this world to the Father, thou didst leave to us this Sacrament as a pledge of thy love; that after a new and wondrous manner, thou mightest abide with us for ever; thou, whose delights are to be with the sons of men.

O Lord, how worthy art thou of love, who dost so much for love of us! Wherefore I will love thee, O Lord, my Strength, my Refuge, and my Deliverer.

O God, thou art very Love! He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in thee, I desire to receive thee in this Sacrament, that I may be more firmly united with thee in the bond of love. Who shall separate me from the love of Christ my Saviour? O that neither life, nor death, nor any creature, may have power to do so.