East - West Liturgy

I did an overnight stay at a Maronite Catholic monastery in Petersham, Massachusetts just a couple of days ago. Although all of the members of this monastery, including Father Abbot, are all Roman Rite Catholics, they celebrate all of their liturgies according to the Maronite Rite, including the Divine Office and Mass. I noticed some interesting things about the Eastern liturgy that are very different from the West.

The first is that, while in the post-conciliar West we seem to have tended more toward brevity, in the East they have no fear of long, elaborate liturgies. The hours of the Divine Office last at least twenty minutes as a standard, and I can only imagine that on Holy Days they celebrations are even longer. In the novitiate, the longest we could get Vespers to last was 15 minutes and that was for Solemn Paschal Vespers on Easter Sunday, which included extra singing and a procession to the newly blessed Easter water. Daily Mass is a minimum of an hour, while in the West some priests pride themselves on the 20-minute daily liturgy.

The second is that Eastern liturgy is very supplicatory. This is really the most noticeable difference, I think. In the West, the emphasis post-Vatican II seems to be fellowship, we emphasize the Resurrection and our fraternal bond with Christ, thereby making us children of God. As a result, our prayers tend to be more prayers of praise, adoration, and communion (or unity, if you like). The East is different. While they, too, are a "people of the Resurrection," there is a deeply rooted penitential emphasis in their liturgy. They recognize their sonship with Christ, but in some ways they are still a people waiting and longing, ever conscious of their sinfulness and how that divides them from unity with God. They are at one and the same time aware of Immanuel, of God-is-with-us, and a people still longing for Immanuel, longing for his return. I found this to be subtle, but present in all of their liturgies. For example, the Trisagion (Holy God, holy Mighty One, holy Immortal One, have mercy on us), is sung at every gathering in prayer. As well, when Eucharist is distributed, it is done so with the words: "The Body (Blood) of Christ is given to you for the forgiveness of sins and for eternal life."

The third is that, in the East, there doesn't seem to be that tension between what we in the West might call "the God of the Old Testament" and "the God of the New Testament." The Eastern liturgy is very much like the Pslams, it flows in that particular way, has a lot of repetition, and recognizes this sometimes confusing dual face of God, who is both compassionate and a God of justice. The East seems to capture this duality well in its liturgy, recognizing both the fellowship of God and God's justice for the sinful.

Now if I may offer a little commentary, I would say that the liturgy in the West could learn a lot from the liturgy in the East, and vice-versa. There is really an opportunity for a great enrichment of the Catholic liturgy should the two inform one another. In the West I think sometimes the penitential aspect is under-appreciated or not even present. Sometimes we over-emphasize that we are "people of the Resurrection," forgetting that the Resurrection comes only after the Cross. We are a sinful people always in need of God's reconciling love and to petition for that forgiveness is one of the great blessings of our sonship through Christ - we need not be afraid to recognize our sinfulness and beg for forgiveness because in Christ we know that the truly contrite heart is never spurned by God, who is our Father.

As well - and this is never a popular opinion - our desire for brevity and simplicity in liturgy has in some ways demystified the liturgy. We can take it for granted when it is really one of our greatest gifts. Our liturgy, as then-Cardinal Ratzinger once said, is like a thread that unites earth and the cosmos: in it, our lowly state is exalted in the God who chose to assume our lowliness and God condescends Himself in order to be ever-present. That is where our fellowship comes from, that we share in this upward movement of humanity and this downward movement of God which serves not only to lift us up but draw us into humble adoration of the God who looses nothing in coming among us under the simple form of bread. Our liturgy, for that reason, is not something that need be rushed along or sped through because it takes away from the great dignity of meaning and purpose of liturgy. To be fair, I have always been a "smells and bells" kind of Catholic, and while we can look at such things as "add-ons" they have been a legitimate part of our celebration of Eucharist for hundreds of years. We need not assume that anything old is thus abrogated by virtue of the fact that it predates the Second Vatican Council. I'm not saying restore the old liturgy, but what I am saying is that the current liturgy necessarily needs to be celebrated with the dignity it deserves while respecting the mystery of our covenantal relationship with God. Simplicity is not always the best way to go about liturgy because in my experience simplicity has been more a matter of laziness than a desire to recapture something of ancient Christian worship.

I would say that we need to God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture and in Tradition instead of trying to make Him into what we find more acceptable or likable. The reality is that God has revealed Himself both as a God of love and a God of justice, fire and brimstone mingled with profound closeness and tenderness. I struggle with this at times, but if we only seek to encounter God in the way "we experience Him," then we only see a partial picture and do a disservice to ourselves. If we strive toward union with and in God, we must strive to know who He really is, not just who we think He ought to be. Christ revealed His meekness and humility, but he was also short with his Apostles and with those who approached Him looking for His help. I think in the West we can get too hung up on a image of God that is incomplete and we would do well to accept the fullness of what has been revealed to us through God's messengers in Scripture and let ourselves struggle with that in our prayer and recognize it in our liturgy.

Finally, I think we need to remember that, yes, we are people of the Resurrection, people who rejoice in a risen and glorified Lord, but that that is not the end of the story. We carry on the story line in our time, just as the saints and holy men and women of God carried on the story line in their times. We are people who worship a God who is present, but we also need to pray fervently that He hasten His return so that God's justice can be done and the world might bend the knee to the true master of space and time. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we pray it at every Mass and in the Divine Office and in so many devotional prayers, yet how often we overlook the words. We must seek fervently the Kingdom of God, for while it is present in Christ, the fullness of God's plan will not be revealed until His return. We need to be ever-ready for His coming so that we might not be the ones caught off guard and thereby lose our inheritance. We also need to work fervently for the conversion of souls so that all might be converted and thus be saved. Our liturgy, being the central part of our life, must necessarily reflect who we are, where we have come from, and what our mission is. We can't settle for a liturgy that is anything less than all we can offer. We must offer all that we have to God, who offered all to save us and bring us to life.