When I was a young boy, our Protestant church’s worship was marked by traditional hymns, a booming organ, and a large, fully-robed choir. The preaching was largely expositional, and the emphasis on right belief along with right action was pronounced. Enter the same church today, and the entire ethos has changed. Not only the music and design of the building, but also the message, the method of proclaiming that message, and the interests of those who have attended the same church for practically their entire lives. With each new pastor — or each new cultural shift or popular Christian trend — the atmosphere of that particular Christian community was altered in a number of different (and substantial) ways. Being an Orthodox Christian is not always easy. In fact, it is rarely easy, and occasionally tiring. The liturgy never changes, the hymns are always the same, the Saints’ days are fixed, and the Gospel readings steadfast. For many people, this makes the Church “grow old,” and they find themselves looking for something new. For us converts, the temptation is obviously there to abandon ship when the going gets tough, and the new car smell begins to wear off (after all, nothing really changes). However, these supposed vices can rightly be seen as virtues, if one has the proper state of mind. Prosper of Aquitaine (AD 390-455), a disciple of St Augustine of Hippo, once wrote: Let us consider the sacraments of priestly prayers, which having been handed down by the apostles are celebrated uniformly throughout the whole world and in every catholic Church so that the law of praying might establish the law of believing. Patrologia Latina, 51:209-210 This Latin maxim — lex orandi, lex credendi — is one that has been with the Church for a very long time. It teaches us that the way we pray speaks to our way of belief (or even determines it). This is important because it helps one to understand the way the liturgical life of the Church both speaks to and determines Her dogmatic beliefs. One of the things that many people complain about with regards to Orthodoxy is that there is no “master list” of dogmas anywhere for one to reference. We have no infallible list of Scriptural interpretations, our canon is somewhat open-ended, our list of Saints fluctuates locally, our canons are interpreted bishop-by-bishop (or synod-by-synod), and we have no dogmatic catechism or confession of faith. What we do have, however, is our eternal Divine Liturgy and other services. It is in these services — in our “law” of prayer — that one is given a true picture of Orthodox, dogmatic belief. This not only helps explain why so many outside of the Church misunderstand it, but also why those within it should do everything in their power to attend all of the major services and festal celebrations of the Church year. Our catechism is largely our worship; it is more experiential and noetic than it is rational. One of the main reasons an Orthodox Christian should remain Orthodox, therefore, is the consistent and largely changeless nature of our worship. Open your nearest copy of St Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures (ca. ~AD 348-350) and you will experience a liturgy line-by-line that is almost entirely indistinguishable from the Divine Liturgy in an Orthodox Church today. The fact that our worship is a copy of the heavenly reality ensures that it is not subject to fashions, trends, or culture (although it can be adapted to the latter quite nicely), but is rather the eternal Liturgy of the Saints and angelic hosts of heaven. If the way of prayer or worship informs one’s way of belief, what better place could one be than in the Church that continues to preserve the prayer and worship of heaven? Secondly, and closely related to my first thought, is the fact that the Orthodox Church is truly the ancient, Catholic Church one reads about in both the writings of the Fathers and in the deliberations of the Ecumenical Councils. Although half of my family is Roman Catholic — and I seriously considered her during my time of inquiry as a transitioning, post-Protestant — the greatest hindrance to the Tiber journey for me is the discontinuity between the Roman church in theory and the Roman church in reality (especially as experienced in parts of the United States). When a sanctuary has a drumset and guitar amps adjacent to the altar where the mystery of the Holy Eucharist is to be celebrated with reverence, I find it hard to take such a church seriously. This is also frustrating because so much of the Roman church’s apologetics and traditional writings paint a beautiful picture of this ancient and traditional communion of the West, but one can rarely find that same church in practice. When the rubber meets the road, the reality of the typical Roman church contradicts the distant theories of her defenders. A Church that would allow such divergence in the essentials of faith is in no way stable, and this is all in spite of having a supposed locus of unity in the Papacy (or perhaps because of it?). What’s great is that the Church of our early Fathers, the Church of the Councils, and the Church of the Ottoman occupation, is still the same Orthodox Church of today. I don’t read older Orthodox writings and find myself feeling nostalgic and wishing that the ways of the past could somehow gain a footing in the present. I don’t find myself frustrated over the constant, new dogmas of the Church, such as Papal Infallibility or the Immaculate Conception in the Roman church. I don’t have a Vatican II to make me lose sleep at night, pondering everything from a clown Eucharist to dancing down the aisles of an auditorium as the Gospel is carelessly carried about. Instead, we have a Church that has trudged through the pages of history, enduring every kind of attack or malady, only to endure and remain largely unchanged by the passage of time. Now again, one’s “state of mind” has to be attuned to such preferences — our culture is largely prone to embrace the dialectic or an evolutionary model of progress, even in matters of truth or faith — but when we see the beauty of both heavenly worship and the stability of the life of the Church, there is no better home than the Orthodox Church. If one enters into Orthodoxy looking for the one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, I personally think that they are doing well. Any other reasons, including “pretty” worship or good doctrine, will only leave one disappointed and eventually bored. There is nothing wrong with pretty worship and good doctrine, but if our main purpose is not to be united to the Body of Christ, all other reasons will be but a stumbling block. One will find themselves ever looking for the greener grass. But our true hope is in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and unto ages of ages (Heb. 13:8-9). One would imagine his Body should be the same.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:42:16 +0000
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