pat loughery

Day 9: October 28, 2008

Tuesday’s activities began with an immersive experience in liturgical worship in the Orthodox Church.

We walked from our hotel to a small church where Father Varlaam serves as the priest. Although we arrived late we were able to observe the liturgy and after a brief while were offered chairs to sit upon. The vast majority of worshipers in an Orthodox church stand during the ceremony, which usually lasts at least 2.5 hours. I was very grateful for a chair to sit upon and another to rest my foot upon.

Having grown up in the Roman Catholic church, I appreciated the beauty of this liturgy even though I couldn’t understand the words. It is a fascinating service. The entire ceremony is a dialogue between the priests and their deacons, a choir which sings the liturgy, and the worshiping community who does not simply observe but who participates individually and corporately.

I wrote in my journal that the entire thing felt unhurried, timeless and unforced. It was grand with beauty and felt deeply sacred; as somebody who tends lately to favor simple church without much structure or form, this is the extreme other end of the spectrum. However I could see myself participating in such a liturgy relatively frequently. I most appreciated seeing that the worshipers came and went, had their own rituals and participated differently from one another, some coming to the front and prostrating themselves, others doing the sign of the cross, others sitting in the back of the room and appearing to meditate. They also did not all stay for the entire liturgy with some arriving late, others arriving early. This structure placed the onus of worship on the community and not on the one leader of the church, which is the typical mode for western Protestant churches. It also allows the worshiper to commune with God responsively, not in a programmed mode. Although I don’t believe that churches I participate in or lead will have a deeply Orthodox liturgy style, this experience reminded me that giving people multiple options to express their worship to God is a wonderful style.

Rich and Rose Swetman’s church in Shoreline, WA offers worshipers several interactive worship stations around their sanctuary, and they encourage attendees to participate with those stations during the musical or sermon portions. I’d like to introduce this extension of worship to my current church community when I return home as a means of engaging the broad variety of personalities in our community.

After liturgy, we went to a large meeting hall where Father Varlaam lectured to us for a couple of hours about Romanian Orthodox history. I was impressed with his grasp of the deep history of Orthodox history and especially of that in the Muldova region of which Iasi is the capital.

I was most impacted by Father Varlaam’s discussion of the church’s survival during the Communist era. Unlike the other Communist countries, Romania retained a relatively large amount of Orthodox Church influence, though certainly much less than they had prior the rise of the communist government. But because of the cultural influence of Orthodoxy, the church survived and also remained an influence behind the scenes on the communist authorities. Even under communism, new cathedrals were built and large monasteries restored with state funds.

We heard impressive stories about the influence of Daniel, previously Metropolitan of the Moldova region, and recently elected Patriarch of Romania. A reformer and energizer, Orthodoxy has thrived in this region despite its economic poverty. His vision of having no villages without a church and no church without a priest energized the Orthodox community coming out of the Communist era and gave them successes to celebrate.

I asked Father Varlaam to describe monastic spirituality in Romania, and to tell us how monasticism has influenced the everyday people. A monk himself, Fr. Varlaam said that the peoples’ spiritual life is tied to monasticism. On the feast days in the Orthodox calendar, there are thousands to millions of people on pilgrimage from all over the country to monasteries. Pilgrims share whatever they have together, creating a sense of unity based on faith and establishing friendships that wouldn’t exist apart from meeting on pilgrimage.

Monks are seen as spiritual advisors and as counselors by the people. There are secular psychiatrists in the country who encourage their patients to seek soul care at the monasteries. Even under communism, many communist leaders sought advice in the monasteries, and Cieucescu’s daughter was known to have sought advice from one of the most famous spiritual fathers.

After communism’s fall, presidents sought counsel in monasteries. Britain’s Prince Charles quite frequently visits Mt. Athos to visit Fr. Dionysious, a Romanian monk from Moldavia, and Charles built a Byzantine chapel containing monastic literature for his own education.

During the evening we visited C? monastery. It is surrounded by a fortified wall and is placed on one of the seven hills overlooking Iasi. We toured the ancient church building and met the Father Abbot there. We were then guided to the wine cellar, where the resident monks produce both a white and a red wine from grapes that they grow on the monastery’s property. The Abbot and some of his monks gave us wines to sample. The experience was very fun for us, even if the quality of the wine wasn’t that great. It provided some entertainment and gave us a different glimpse into monastic life.

It is this deep spirituality with a cultural impact that draws me to monasticism in its many forms. I’m looking forward to doing more research for my dissertation on this topic, and the Orthodox monastic spirituality will certainly be a helpful piece of what I’m trying to write about.