Typicon

[Br Paul]

I am looking for a full English translation of the Typicon, does one exist? I hope some one out there in the Orthodox world can help me or point me in the right direction.
Thank You.
Br Paul

[Sherman Cheung]

so far no full english translation of the typicon is available.

There is the Asmatikon (Cathedral Rite)
The Sabbaitic and the Studite Typicons

it would be nice to see all three translated into english

[Archbishop Constantin]

Mr. Cheung;

The typicon (book of rubrics) is a book that I had it completely translated, but when I left the Antiochian Archdiocese, I gave it to the Chairman of the Liturgics Committee and it disappeared.

There were two typicons: the Stoudite (Constantinople) and the St Sava (Jerusalem). The St. Sava being that it was generated in a Monastery, it was more contritional and required humble chanting to the Lord. The one of the Monastery of Stoudiou in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) was more pompous because after all the Emperor attended services and it had to have a certain spectacular air in it. Now, for some reason the typicon of St Sava disappeared and never was found again; I wonder why.

When the Slavs were Christianized, they generated a "typicon" made up of the various encyclicals that the various Patriarchs issued, giving instructions about the celebration of certain feasts and mysteries. Attempts have been made to take all that information and put it in an understandable order, making it what it is supposed to be: a cook book, equivalent to the cook book of the Old Testament called Leviticus.

Since the Church is a living entity, she always makes sure that her children are well accomodated and comfortable, just as we do nowadays by making sure that the air conditioners are in a good shape, or the people will go to the beach the following Sunday. The Church is there to serve the people of God, not the other way... Over the years there were special needs, requiring to change service times due to corfews imposed by the Turks and other reasons, striving for shorter services for instance. With the advent of the automobile and later the airplane, the Fathers of the Church saw it logical to administer Holy Communion immediately after Baptism (rather than to wait for the next Sunday), since the newly Baptized Christians were exposed to more dangers, riding over a frozen highway etc. etc. So, the moment that Greece had a few short years of peace, the Constantinopolitan Typikon (of Stoudiou) was revised in 1928 by a man named Violakis. Some old diehards did not like it, others found it more practical.

I still have some of my manuscripts and, perhaps I should take up doind the translation again. I am sure the second time around it will be a little easier.

+ Arzobispo Constantino

[Richard McBride]

"The Church is there to serve the people of God, not the other way..."

Who said that? It sounds like Cyrillian Individualism.

If one thinks in terms of the Unity which we all prefer, such one-way statements (taken from either end of the tube) do not lead anywhere. This is deductive thinking, breaking it all apart. The pieces never add up to the preferred Unity.

[Archbishop Constantin]

Glory to our Lord Jesus Christ, our God

Mr. McBride, dear Brother in the Lord Jesus;

THE CHURCH IS THERE TO SERVE THE PEOPLE!

Unfortunately it is something that many clergymen forget. I will make it very short.

The Church, the Bride of Christ, IS OUR MOTHER. SHE IS A LIVING ENTITY, and, conforming to the English rules of Grammar SHE is to be referred to as SHE, not an "it". Being our Mother, she does nourish us, guide us and watches over us. She also admonishes us, when necessary.

The clergy are there exclussively to serve the Church by serving her children, but our MOTHER tenderly serves each one of us!

I am not a philosopher and I strongly feel that our estranged brethren in the West take the Philosophers, too seriously and at their word. The Fathers of our Church used the methods of the Philosophers to define and explain our faith, BUT NOT THEIR TEACHINGS. Look at what happens in their seminaries: after four years of teaching them philosophy, they become useless marxists, communists and every other kind of -ists, and incapable of accepting Christianity (with very few exceptions, of course). What you have read is true: Christianity is a way of living, not a cult; we do not submit to earthly rulers, but we follow the word of Christ, which is found in the Bible, generated by our Mother, the Church.

THE CHURCH IS THERE TO SERVE THE PEOPLE OF GOD, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! WE LOVE OUR MOTHER, BUT WE DETEST THOSE OF HER SERVANTS THAT ARE CORRUPT! LOOK AT ALL THE LOVING CARE THAT SHE GAVE US WHEN IN TOUGH TIMES AND PERSECUTIONS! THE SECRET SCHOOL FOR THE GREEKS AND THE SECRET CHURCH FOR THE RUSSIANS!

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT LOVING CARE FROM OUR MOTHER! NOT SOME UNDEFINED OPINION...

In Christ's Holy Name,

+ Arzobispo Constantino

[Richard McBride]

Monochos: Serving


Re: [Archbishop Constantin 15 Posted on Wednesday, 22 October, 2003]

Your Eminence Archbishop Constantin

It is easy to understand your concern for a Church which may have become lost in the embroilment of outside interests, losing its way and demanding to be served, rather than serving -- such as began happening soon after 800 in the Frankish dominated Church of Europe.

It is a bit more difficult to trace your concern for philosophy as a source of this sort overbearing problem in Orthodoxy. Perhaps, not being a philosopher, you have mistaken its impact a cause of the matter of "serving"?

Indeed, the philosophy problem is a red herring in this matter.

I think it is more to the point that you have a large problem with whether the clergy serve or are being served in your missions in Latin America. If this be true, it would seem a natural concern in your career of overseeing these missions. And I can also believe, given the huge problem caused by the RC Church in its Latin parishes, that you are faced with overcoming their image in your own work.

But taken as whole, your private concerns ought not be stamped upon the picture of the whole Church. When you go beyond the pale of your own missions and say that "The clergy are there exclussively to serve the Church by serving her children", you are simply stating what every seminarian knows. And even given the great latitude in each individual's response to this charge, I have never seen a true abuse of this important charge.

I may be guilty downplaying a problem of which I am unaware. But to the contrary, I am impressed that the Presbyters are faithful to their calling. (I should have to think about that a bit before making the same statement for the whole Episcopate, however.)

Therefore, your statement that, "THE CHURCH IS THERE TO SERVE THE PEOPLE OF GOD, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!", seems like a one-sided viewpoint. It seems that in your mind only the clergy serve. That may be the large part of the equation but it clearly is not the whole truth for the whole Church, and it is not a healthy attitude.

Surely, you will agree that given the Apostle's spelling out of the various talents God gave to all the children, that ALL MUST SERVE! It not only the clergy.

It is not the one-way street you make it seem. To worry only about the clergy's service is to deny the children their participation in the Church. That is why I call this one-sided viewpoint a problem with deductive reduction. It breaks down the problem into a body and a head, and takes the body away from the head. Indeed, it is either very old Catholic thinking, or it is new age heresy. Either way, it is not a problem caused by philosophy, but one caused by dividing the Church.

Every Orthodox serves. Serving in the altar may be for those with the Grace to do so, but many serve outside the altar. And were it not for the great service of the children, you would be left with an empty nave and a Catholic altar -- as in Catholic seminary, where only the server is needed.

I pray for the success of your missions, your Eminence;
Please pray for me and forgive my pompous assumptions.

richard mcb

PS
Thank you your Eminence for reminding us that the Church is She and not it. Clearly you are right to teach us in this. God bless your good teaching.

[Richard McBride]

monochos: typicon

Several unconnected issues have mingled themselves into my consciousness concerning Archbishop Constantin's directive for his missions in Latin America.

His Eminence was strongly reflecting the task before him, of trying to correct very nearly half a millennium of often misguided domination over the New World 'Indians', begun by the Spanish Jesuits immediately after the Cortez invasion c.1535. The results of this domination by the Roman Church is understandable in terms of the Spanish fiat of the day, that the souls and the gold of the New World must be given to the glory of God -- God receiving the souls, and Spain taking the gold. Hundreds of years of this one sided view has produced a Church in Latin America where the Europeans could worship pretty much as they always had, but one in which the natives were forced to participate. Native participation has always been a somewhat superficial cooperation with the Roman priests as they mixed and mingled their older primitive beliefs with Catholicism, often carrying out the indigenous rituals in private.

Gradually, as the revolutionary example of Mexico took hold, wherein the various revolutionary governments outlawed Church interference in government and even denied much public display of the Church, the people took encouragement in their new revolutionary freedoms and began conceding to the pressures of the newly arrived evangelicals from the US. Thus, over the past century a huge wave of converts to evangelical Christianity and to Islam serve to illustrate the failed message of domination, which even now, the Roman Church may be powerless to change.

It is in this setting that I take Bishop Constantin's directive of service given to his missions, of which he said to us:
"THE CHURCH IS THERE TO SERVE THE PEOPLE OF GOD, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!"
This mission statement is necessary, I should think, to make the distinction between his purpose versus the pervading Roman interpretation, which for so long had been that the natives were there to serve the Church of Rome, even as in the beginning they had been made to fill the coffers of the Spanish Empire.

Necessary as it may be for his Eminence to stress the opposite tack in his new work with the peoples of Latin America -- of which we should all pray for its success and that it be done truly to the Glory of God -- necessary as it may seem, this view too is a one-sided interpretation. Unhappily, sound bites of 'service' this way or that, do not fulfill the purpose of the Divine Liturgy -- that is, the Divine Liturgy which is at the very center of our individual relationships with God. The bishop's statement cannot be generalized and made to work as the theological purpose of the Orthodox Church -- indeed, this is precisely what the Roman Church too attempted to do, only from the other direction. But simply reversing the flow does NOT make good theology, and were the Bishop under Partriarchial rule, he might not say this.

This point is nicely made in Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann's last book, "The Eucharist". As he was emphasizing the eucharistic nature of this, the core of Orthodoxy, I again looked up eucaristia, which is always given as meaning "thanksgiving". And at its heart there is, I find, a very nice 'two way street', not the single direction of which I speak above. Under its form, eucaristew, the first meaning is 'bestow a favour upon'; then under its second meaning is to 'return thanks'. This form of the word incorporates BOTH the bestowing of a benefit and the returning of thanks. God gives, and the people give. God receives and the people receive.

While he doesn't go into this double meaning of the term 'Eucharist' itself (nearly as I recall), Father Schmemann does very carefully point out:

"Any serious study of the eucharistic ordo cannot but convince us that this ordo is entirely, from beginning to end, constructed on the principle of correlation -- the mutual dependence of the celebrant of the service and the people. One may even more precisely define this bond as a co-serving or concelebration, as it was articulated by the late Professor Nicholas Afanasiev in his splendid though not yet fully appreciated work, The Lord's Supper.
This idea, however, plays no role whatsoever in school theology [Scholasticism] and the liturgical piety engendered by it, and is for all practical purposes denied. The word "concelebration" is applied only to the clergy taking part in the service, while the participation of the laity is conceived of as entirely passive." [p.14]

Schmemann's primary point is that too much individualism has crept into Orthodox thinking. Even we have taken up the awful 'relevancy' issues, such as 'an individual's religious needs', etc. Contrasted to this 'I'm OK you're OK' new age attitude of diversity [my words here, not Schmemann's], that which is at the core of Orthodoxy is the individual serving God even as the presbyters serve God, in the Assembly, through the Eucharist, of the Church [Schmemann's words].

Thus, we ought not think of 'being served', but of our constant service to God, coming together with that of the office of the presbyter, as he mediates in that fantastic assembly of Spirit, angels and people -- wherein, only if we have done our part, are we permitted to ascend unto the height of heaven.