Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Happy late October to you, friends! It's been beautiful autumn weather in my part of the world, interspersed with some gloomy rainy days, but to be honest I love all of it! It's getting closer to cozy season, to be sure. 

In our Byzantine journey (interspersed with still quite a lot of Latin rite devotions, because that's how I roll, it appears) we're trucking contentedly along in our post-Pentecost timeline, towards...Advent? 

*checks*

Yes, Advent! I know that the traditions leading up to Christmas are somewhat different in the East, so I'm learning as I go here. :-0 There is an Advent fast in the Eastern tradition, and it begins earlier than I'm used to, so lots of details on that to come!

But in the meantime, we were back at Divine Liturgy for the Twentieth Sunday following Pentecost. The Gospel this week in the Byzantine rite was from Luke 6, the tale of the woe of the rich man. Father spoke about how we should strive to be rich in faith and in our relationship with Christ. It was wonderful to be back in that worship space and into the rhythms of the Divine Liturgy. 

Afterwards, we indeed chatted about the upcoming parish Christmas Bazaar, which will be held the Saturday before Thanksgiving. All of us are looking forward to helping out and also partaking of the delicious homemade Ukrainian food that will be for sale there! We need to come up with a basket theme idea for the raffle. 🤔

By the way, the cycle of readings is different in the Byzantine rite than it is in the Latin rite, and I've done a bit of snooping on this point. I purchased the book pictured in this post, published by SVS Press, so that I could follow along with the liturgy readings at home on weeks where we attend Mass or if I want a preview before going to Divine Liturgy. There are no Old Testament readings during the liturgy in the Byzantine rite, just New Testament epistles/letters and a Gospel reading, and the cycle of daily readings moves through all of these in a single year. Interesting, yes?

I'm VERY excited about this Advent fast coming up, which begins in mid-November in the Eastern tradition. Expect excitement to come! 🥳

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Hello all! So glad to have you with me along on this Byzantine journey. This week, I don't have a particularly Byzantine-y post, as Anne and I took a Mom & Me road trip to the NY Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY, and thus we were traveling during our usual Divine Liturgy time:

She loves car selfies, as you can tell :-0

We had a marvelous time, but it was one of those weeks that we had to hit the easy button and find a Latin rite parish where we could quickly slip in for Mass. So no specifically Byzantine content this week, but these opportunities to move back and forth between worshipping in both the Byzantine and Latin rite liturgies is informative in it's own way. I love both traditions, that is definitely becoming clearer and clearer. And I'm increasingly becoming more and more comfortable in both, without things being so lopsided as when I first started attending Divine Liturgy. It's nice to not feel like such a fish out of water over there, and the liturgy makes my heart sing, but at the same time, attending Mass is like a comfy, warm blanket. I'm used to it in the best possible way, and it fits around me so well. I'm grateful that as a Catholic, I can have both!

This Sunday, we're back to the Byzantine rite parish, and I'm certain that talk of the upcoming Christmas Bazaar will abound. I'll have updates next week! Until then, here's some of our new sheep friends from the festival:

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost...

It's nearly mid-October, friends, and I can hardly believe how time is flying! It's my son's senior year of high school 😳 and I feel like I'm desperately trying to stop up the hourglass from letting the sands of time fall through. It's a season of transition, for sure.  

In our Byzantine journey this week, Henry was actually out of town for a cross country invitational, so it was just Anne and I heading to Divine Liturgy. As we settled into our pew, I reflected again that my favorite part of this whole journey East is the language of the liturgy itself. I also love the beeswax candles, the iconography and all of the new saints and traditions I'm learning about, but the liturgy has my heart. One of my very favorite moments in the liturgy is the Prayer before Holy Communion:

I believe, O Lord, and confess that You are truly Christ, the Son of the living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. 

Accept me this day, O Son of God, as a partaker of Your mystical Supper. I will not tell Your Mystery to Your enemies, nor will I give You a kiss as did Judas, but like the thief, I confess to You: 

† Remember me, O Lord, when You come into Your kingdom. 

† Remember me, O Master, when You come into Your kingdom. 

† Remember me, O Holy One, when You come into Your kingdom. 

May the partaking of Your Holy Mysteries, O Lord, be unto me not for judgment or condemnation, but for the healing of soul and body. 

† God, be merciful to me, a sinner. 

† God, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me. 

† I have sinned without number, forgive me, O Lord.

And after we return from receiving Our Lord, the first words spoken are:

Priest: Save Your people, O God, and bless Your inheritance. 

Choir: We have seen the true light. We have received the heavenly Spirit. We have found the true faith. We worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us.

I noticed this past week that at one point, one of the pages in my little Eastern missal stuck to another one, and as I flipped to the "next" page, I immediately recognized that what I was looking at could not possibly be the words we were to speak next. We were missing important material! Then I saw that a ripped page in my missal had caused the snag, and it all made sense. I'm actually starting to memorize portions of the liturgy, and it's feeling more and more comfortable to participate in it. It's a lovely feeling. 

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Hello friends! We're steadily plugging along into the autumn, aren't we? I've noticed from the monthly bulletins we receive at our Byzantine rite parish that we're settling into this post-Pentecost period for a stretch before we get to the next Great Feast in November, so it does feel a bit like the Ordinary Time I'm used to at this time of year. 

This week, it finally wasn't raining, horray! The kids and I headed off to Divine Liturgy, and the first thing we noticed is that Father was wearing blue vestments this week rather than the gold ones he usually wears. I'm not certain of the significance...ok, quick research shows that blue is used for feasts of the Theotokos (which makes sense, blue is her color!), but I'm not sure why that was associated with this past Sunday...ok, I think I finally got it, hee hee! I see on the Byzantine calendar that Saturday October 1st is marked as Protection of the Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, so it seems likely the blue would pervade the entire weekend. 

🙌

Liturgy was lovely, as usual. We're getting more and more used to the responses and cadence of things, and picking up on when to consult the sheet with the weekly Propers on it a bit more. After liturgy, we all gathered out in the hall/entryway to talk about the parish Christmas bazaar next month. They need some help with it, and so the kids and I are happily being roped in. There will be Ukrainian food, a basket raffle, and a "trash to treasure" sale. We'll need to come up with a basket idea, but that's a wonderful project to have! Henry can get some service hours towards what he needs at his Catholic high school, and it's just nice to feel more and more acclimated to the community. 

I've noticed that being around an Eastern liturgy and congregation so much has led to me becoming fairly ambidexterous with my Signs of the Cross. I hold my thumb and first two fingers in the little triangle/Trinity shape that I learned from my Byzantine rite research, and I have to say that I absolutely love that. But I also unconsciously switch between moving my hand from left to right and right to left fairly interchangably. At first, I thought I would stick with my Roman left to right, and later that when I'm attending Divine Liturgy I would switch exclusively to right to left. Neither of those has happened, and my hand moves as inspired each time I do it. 😂 I actually kind of like it, it symbolizes this multi-ritual gal quite well right now. 

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Wow, how is it already the end of September?! That FLEW by, our first month of living Byzantinely. ;-) I have some thoughts to share on how it's going, but let's build some anticipation and leave that for the end of the post. First, let's chronicle this past Sunday!

☕

This weekend we went back to how the Eastern Church marks what we in the West would call Ordinary Time, and thus we were at the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Our Sunday once again dawned rainy (the new grass we planted is coming in great at least!) as we made our way to Divine Liturgy. Signs are up advertising the Christmas Bazaar that is to come right before Thanksgiving, and we're looking forward to it and feeling a bit more integrated into the parish now. We found our usual seats towards the back of the small worship space, and I let the opening words of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom wash over me:

"In peace, let us pray to the Lord."

"Lord have mercy."

"For the peace from above, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord."

"Lord have mercy."

The cadence and language of the Divine Liturgy really speaks to me. Obviously, there's this type of 'call and response', if you will, in all liturgies, including the post Vatican II one that most of us are used to. But there's something about the way it is arranged and verbalized in the Divine Liturgy that I find so spiritually nourishing. Add in the the scent and flicker of the real candles and the iconography covering the sanctuary, and this is why I feel called to come back to this style of worship week after week.

The Gospel this week featured the story of Jesus finding the fishermen and inviting them to become fishers of men. Father spoke about how we shouldn't be afraid to tackle the challenges that come our way in our daily lives, because God is always there, throughout, to support us and get us to where we need to be. 

After liturgy, we did our happy congregational chatting thing out in the entry area, accompanied by a nice sensation of being more settled and at home there. What I'm feeling at this point (very early on, to be sure) is that I may simply be a Roman Catholic who feels a pull to the Divine Liturgy and Eastern Christian spirituality; thus, I may never formally be a member of the Byzantine rite. Who knows, there are still 11 months to go, but as much as I love the liturgy and everything that I'm learning about the traditions, I'm still pretty attached to my Western ones. I also love daily Mass, as I discussed last week with regards to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. So while this all is definitely feeding my soul spiritually right now, I don't know that I see myself giving up my Roman Catholic roots. But hey. There is still quite a lot of the liturgical year to go, with the Catholic Nerd set loose with icon sprees and every Eastern prayer book imaginable each week. What could go wrong? 

😂

Sunday after the Exaltation of the Cross

Icon for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Welcome back everyone, hope that you are well! It's getting decidedly fall-ish in my part of the world, and I do love this time of year, although I'm mourning the end of summer, for sure. I'm trying to see the positives in cozy fall weather and fun autumn activities like apple picking and pumpkin shopping, so keeping my spirits high! 

It was an interesting week in my little Byzantine adventure over here. Settle in with your coffee or tea and let's chat!

🍵

Last Wednesday, September 14th, was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and I happened to be off from work that day. I noted in our monthly parish bulletin that there was Divine Liturgy that day at 10 am, and excitedly I set off to attend. I had never attended a weekday Divine Liturgy (is it like daily Mass?) and I was ever so curious.

Well. 😂 I had an interesting experience, to be sure! I arrived at the church, and nearly didn't even go in, because there were no other cars in the parking lot and I was sure that I had made a mistake when I consulted the bulletin. But I figured I would try the door, and curiously, it was open. As soon as I entered that informal space at the back of the building, I could hear chanting, so I knew that somehow, I had in fact been right. When I entered the sanctuary though, I quickly tuned into the fact that it was a small crew for weekday Divine Liturgy. It was me, the lovely lady who was singing, and Father. That's it. 😬 I felt a little awkward, because I'm still so new to the Divine Liturgy, and the liturgy was taking place in Ukrainian (which I knew was likely to be the case), but I figured I would get what I could from context and just being present. I set myself up in the back and just breathed in being in that space, which I absolutely love.

In the spot before the iconostasis where the current seasonal icon is usually set up, there was a display with a cross and flowers. I was curious about liturgical colors in the Byzantine rite, so I did a little research:

Sure enough, the cloth surrounding the cross display was red. I'm already mourning the loss of rose pink for Advent, but we'll talk about that in a few months. 😅 

Quickly, Father became aware of my presence, and he *came down off the altar* to hand me a sheet with the readings and Propers on it in both Ukrainian and English, and pointed out where we were, telling me that they were so happy that I was there. After he went back to the altar, they switched to English so that I could follow along with them.

🥰

I felt very welcomed and at home. Occasionally, they switched back to Ukrainian for short stretches, but I easily followed along with the English side of my sheet. What wasn't on the sheet, I found in the Divine Liturgy missal book thingy. 😎 Slowly but surely, I'm figuring things out there.

At the end of the liturgy, there was a special session of bowing and recitations in front of the cross for both Father and our tiny congregation. 

Back out in the hallway after liturgy, Father greeted me and asked if I was able to follow along. I assured him that I was, and we chatted briefly about the kids and about how weekly envelopes work in that parish, which I had been wondering about.

It was LOVELY. The richness in that tradition is still keeping me entranced and engaged. In the future, I'm not sure how I'll handle weekday Divine Liturgy opportunities. They went out of their way to make me feel at home, which I appreciate more than I can ever fully express, but the thought did cross my mind that it may be a better fit for me to go to daily Mass, especially when the feast days overlap in both traditions, like this one does. Plus, the schedule for daily Mass often works better with my work schedule, as I'm not often fully off from work during the week (though usually working from home 1-2 days). So the jury is still out on that one, but this weekday jaunt with something new was a very enjoyable adventure. 

The following Sunday was officially the Sunday after the Exaltation of the Cross on the Byzantine calendar, but at my son's Catholic high school it was the day for his class liturgy, so we went to Mass over there this week. I missed the Divine Liturgy, for sure, but it felt comfortable being back at Mass, and I was happy to be with Henry for this special event. Later the same day, we did head to our Byzantine rite parish for the big Ukrainian festival/fundraiser they were hosting, and picked up pierogies, sauerkraut and sausage for dinner. This was a collaborative effort of the three Byzantine rite parishes in our region, and the church hall was PACKED! It was nice to see.

Next week we will be back at Divine Liturgy, and our march towards Advent continues! Do they do Advent in the Byzantine rite? 🤔 We're going to be finding out soon, and I can't wait!

Sunday Before the Exaltation of the Cross

My adorable icon of the Nativity of the Theotokos      

Hello friends! Hope you're doing well this lovely        September day. This past weekend fell between two of the Great Feasts in the Eastern tradition: The Nativity of the Theotokos (Mother of God) and the Exaltation of the Cross. The Exaltation of the Cross falls on September 14th in both the East and the West, actually. But in the East, it is considered one of the twelve Great Feasts.

I am enjoying my set of small icons of the Great Feasts. I keep the current one propped up on the kitchen table, so that we can all see it, and I can pray with it there on the days when I'm working from home. This tangible reminder of the liturgical calendar is really special to me.

I have yet to catch a weekday Divine Liturgy because of my work schedule, unfortunately, but I'm hoping that will change coming up here for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. More on that next week!

But this week dawned rainy again as the kids and I made our way to Divine Liturgy. I love seeing the same Great Feast icon up near the altar as the little one we have on our kitchen table. *heart* 

In the homily, Father talked about crosses, how Christ's was literal and ours figurative in the form of challenges that we face each day. He also spoke about how Jesus lives in each of our hearts as we navigate all of this, He is always there.

It was a lovely liturgy, and afterwards during the announcements, Father reminded us that next weekend is the big Ukrainian festival in our area. The three local Byzantine rite parishes are all contributing, but our parish hall will be the venue. There will be a raffle and theme baskets, plus plenty of delicious Ukrainian food for sale, all to benefit the Ukraine. We're planning on attending, and are very excited, our first parish festival! We stayed and chatted with everyone after the liturgy, as has become our custom, and we're slowly getting to know people there. It's a nice feeling. I still don't know exactly where this is all headed, but I'm very much enjoying the journey.

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Some calendar nerdiness this week, enjoy! 😎

Happy September eveyone, and happy new liturgical year to those in the Byzantine rite! 😀 I'm used to the Latin Rite changing of the Church year being a fully new liturgical season with Advent, and that's not the case in the Eastern Church. There's a definite Happy New Year vibe, but the rotation of the liturgical weeks just chugs along as it organically does, and September 1st will fall where it may. This year, we're at the Thirteenth Week after Pentecost, horray! Most (all? still looking into this) of the Byzantine rite uses the Gregorian calendar to set the date of Easter, from which so much of the rest of the liturgical calendar ebbs and flows, and this is the same as the Western Church. Our Eastern Orthodox friends use the Julian calendar, and that's why the date for Easter is oftentimes different between their tradition and ours (but occasionally it syncs up, which is lovely!). 

I did a little research (as I am wont to do 🤓) and this being the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost syncs up with the old traditional calendar that the Western Church used to use (in the modern Latin rite this past Sunday was the Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time). There are some differences between East and West still in terms of calendar feasts (there is no Ash Wednesday in the Eastern tradition, for instance, but we'll come back to that early next year!), but those in both rites that follow the traditional calendar that is used in the Catholic Extraordinary Form count the weeks from Pentecost in this fashion. Does any of this make sense as I am hoping it does? 😂 I find calendar research so fascinating, but I may be in the minority on this one!

Our first Sunday in our Year of Byzantine rite Study dawned rainy, which we were actually glad for since we had just planted a yard full of grass seed! We had our front and back porches replaced this summer, and the construction equipment tore up both sections of the yard quite badly. So we felt blessed by the rain! 

It also dawned with quite a surprise: Mike casually mentioning to me that he would like to attend Divine Liturgy with us. So we attended Divine Liturgy as a full family together for the very first time!

*sobs*

It was very lovely. Anne and I lit a candle after liturgy for my mom, who hadn't been feeling well, and everyone congregated outside the worship space, curious about Mike. So he got some handshakes and greetings all around, and everyone chatted for a bit, including Father. Now that he's been initiated, I'm certain that Mike will be asked after each and every week. 😁 Asking about his impressions after we were back in the car, Mike reported in enjoying the liturgy, and said that he would be back. He's not a weekly church goer, but I'm very encouraged by his interest here! It was a definite blessing as we began our new year. 💗

...and where we're at now in our Byzantine adventure

Icons and beeswax...but I still pray the Latin rite Liturgy of the Hours

"So Sweetie, I've noticed that the icons about the house seem to be multiplying." 🤔😉

"Really? Are you sure?" 🤷 😳

🤣

Hello friends, and welcome back! We're nearly to the start of the Eastern liturgical year, and I'm here to finish up our family story of how we're embarking on a journey to explore the Byzantine rite for the next year. Settle in with the comforting beverage of your choice!

🥤

Once Anne and I had attended the Divine Liturgy a few times, she told me that she loved it there, and was interested in pursuing the Byzantine rite much more permanently. Anne isn't yet at the age that our diocese confers the Sacrament of Confirmation, and her growing into her faith and making it her own is something I take very seriously. I told her we could start attending sometimes, but that we were not yet in a position to fully leave our Latin rite parish. For one thing, we needed to do much more discernment, but also, our beloved pastor Fr. Joe was set to retire within the next few months, and I didn't want to miss out on the time we had remaining with him. The kids both adore him, and thus they agreed on that front. And so through Memorial Day weekend, which was Father's last before retiring, we were attending the 11 am Mass at our home parish. I was very sad as we left the church after that Mass, thinking that I felt, while very excited about the new energy in my faith life, a bit adrift spiritually. 

We started off the next week by taking Henry with us to Divine Liturgy for the first time, and I thought he would balk at the 9 am start time. Hard sell right there for a sleepy 16 year old. 😬 Well, promise of a caffeinated beverage at Dunkin' Donuts after liturgy fixed that little problem, and he willingly got up and came with us. I was anxious for his reaction afterwards, and he was pretty enthusiastic. You must understand, my son is extremely reserved and laid back, a real man of few words. His:

"Yeah, I liked it. I'm good with us coming here on Sundays."

...is pretty much a ringing endorsement of volcanic proportions. 🤣

And so followed a summer of Divine Liturgy. We attended Mass back at our Latin rite parish only twice, once when the priest was out of town and there was no English language Divine Liturgy, and once when Fr. Joe was back in our home parish to sub. On the first of those two times, it had been close to two months since we had last attended Mass, and I have to admit I was quite shocked to find that I felt...

Weird. The tide had turned. Instead of feeling out of sorts at the completely new-to-me Divine Liturgy, I now felt out of place at Mass and longed for the Byzantine rite style of worship. That definitely took me by surprise!

Since those initial weeks, the congregation at the English Divine Liturgy got curious about us, and suddenly we noticed signs in the entryway for an upcoming "koffee klutch" after liturgy. I had noticed people starting to greet us when we came and went at liturgy each week, and the congregation is so small that we were definitely noticable as newcomers! Attending the coffee hour brought everyone out of the woodwork, asking us how we liked the church and just about ourselves generally. I found out that just about all of them fell into one of two groups: (1) were raised in the Byzantine rite since childhood, or (2) were Latin rite, and rather fell into attending the Divine Liturgy and took a liking to it (these are my fellow left to right shoulder crossers). A few of them were from a Byzantine rite parish in a town about 20 miles north that had closed during the pandemic, and made the drive for a new Byzantine rite home. We were enthusiastically embraced and welcomed to the parish. 

So where am I at now? Well, I love the Divine Liturgy. I LOVE IT. I also love the Eastern style traditions and devotions that I am learning about, though I know that I still have so much to learn! I'm very much looking forward to this year of Byzantine rite exploration. I feel strange attending Mass. At the same time, I still pray the Liturgy of the Hours and the rosary, these are 2 Western devotions that I cannot see myself letting go of. There are liturgical Hours in the Byzantine tradition as well, but...I cannot for the life of me figure out how to pray them. 😂 I have countless Eastern prayer books and have watched many a YouTube video, but I'm still like a fish out of water, flopping around with ribbons and hardbound prayer books all akimbo. Maybe this will fall into place for me at some point? I don't know. I get the feeling this isn't as designed for personal devotion the way the Western style LotH is, but I'm truly coming at this from a place of ignorance, I know so little about it. For the time being, I don't think there's anything wrong with me being multi-rite and figuring out where God is leading me.

The kids are also quite content at the Byzantine rite parish, and it's so lovely to actually have them willingly talk to me about liturgical and other churchy matters. My cute husband Mike has also been quite intrigued by our adventures ("You're becoming Orthodox?" "Nope, still Catholic, just Eastern!" "Really? I've never heard of this. Tell me more!"). It feels like a real family affair with all of us growing in our respective spiritual places. 🥰

So that's where we're at. The kids and I will be at Divine Liturgy on this coming Sunday, the first of the new liturgical year,🥳 and it'll be... *consults bulletin* ...the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. That was a bit anti-climactic, wasn't it? 🤣 I believe the Extraordinary Form in the Latin rite is similar with all of this counting down from Pentecost. Your Catholic Librarian will be researching and reporting in!!! 👀 And I CAN'T.WAIT!!!!

How our Byzantine rite adventure began...

             Budding icon wall in our kitchen <3                 

 So, I have to say...it's really good to be back!! I'm feeling  so excited about this project and about journaling it with all of you. I've gotten a very warm response about the topic and about my coming back, at least temporarily, to blogging. Thank you so much!

Since we have just over a week before the September 1st start to our new liturgical year, I thought I would dedicate this week's post to my introduction to the Byzantine rite and how I got started on this spiritual journey. The spark didn't happen all that long ago, which is why I'm looking forward to settling in for lots of good Catholic Nerd learning and prayer this upcoming year, but I thought it would be fun to share how this all got started.

A year or so ago, my good friend Allison and her family became members of a Catholic church that celebrates the liturgy in the Byzantine rite. They had been attending Divine Liturgy at this Ukrainian Catholic Church near their home for some time prior, and their journey caused me to become interested in learning about Eastern liturgies and traditions. After a solid 9 months of innocently collecting icons, beeswax candles, and Eastern prayer books, I figured there was something more to all of this than a passing curiosity. I was clearly drawn to this type of spirituality, so I figured it would be interesting to actually attend a Byzantine rite Divine Liturgy.

I did a little research, and found 3 Byzantine rite parishes in our area, one of which was a 5 minute drive from our home. A peek at their website revealed that it was several years out of date, so one day Anne and I did a quick drive by: the big sign outside let us know that liturgy celebrated in English was at 9 am on Sunday mornings, Ukrainian at 10:30 am. I knew that the start time would be a hard sell for my love-to-sleep-in preteen and teenaged children 😬, but after our little field trip, Anne was curious and game to try it out. Henry was feeling under the weather the next Sunday, so Anne and I set off as a twosome for the first installment in our Byzantine adventure.

I have to admit, while I was feeling excited, I was also quite nervous! As a lifelong Catholic, I wasn't used to feeling so utterly out of my element in attending church on Sunday. But I truly knew very little on what to expect; as in, we couldn't find the sanctuary right away after we entered the building, this is the level of cluelessness we're dealing wtih here. 😂 We entered from the back parking lot, and there was a nice entry area with a few hallways leading off in different directions, and no obvious door to the worship space. After exiting back outside, thinking that perhaps we needed to enter from the front, we saw an actual person slip into the back door. I not-so-discreetly jogged over to follow and spy on them. 🤣

And thus we found the door. And once we entered, well. I was transported. The icon screen (iconostasis), the flicker and scent of candles and incense, the absolute silence prior to the start of the liturgy, the additional imagery portrayed on beautiful icons scattered around the space...it all lifts the mind and heart to the Father using all of our senses.  

I could see the priest moving around behind the iconostasis and so we quickly hurried to find a seat. This church does have pews, though this is not always the case in Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches. We genuflected and crossed ourselves in our usual Latin rite style (left shoulder to right shoulder) likely making us stick out with big WESTERN signs above our heads, but it couldn't be helped. We were clearly visitors, and just eager to observe and learn. We grabbed the books that were provided in the pew (these look like missals to me, but almost certainly are not actually called missals) and prepared to fumble along. The priest opened the center doors of the iconostasis (called the Royal Doors, I later learned) and the liturgy began.

The first thing I noticed besides the beautiful prayers and language of the liturgy, was that in the Byzantine rite, one crosses oneself A LOT. Anytime the Trinity is invoked, the congregation crosses themselves, and even sometimes when it is not, there are Signs of the Cross then, too. The Sign of the Cross in the Eastern tradition is made from right shoulder to left shoulder, and one holds their thumb and first two fingers in a little triangle as they do it, in a manner that harkens the Trinity. So beautiful! But out of familiarity I kept to my usual way of doing it as I observed my surroundings, and I noticed that we were not the only ones in the small congregation who used the Western style of crossing. I was just trying to keep up with the frequency, and anytime I missed one, Anne elbowed me to scold me. 😂 Everything felt unfamiliar yet familiar at the same time, and just utterly, off-the-charts stunning. 

It was very early April, and the priest dedicated his homily to talking about St. Mary of Egypt, since her feast is celebrated in the Byzantine rite on April 1st. I had never heard of St. Mary of Egypt, and I was practically taking notes while he spoke, wild-eyed with excited interest. We now have her icon hanging in our little icon wall in the kitchen, it's the one in farthest left in the photo up at the top of this post. We then progressed through the beautiful liturgy until we got the part I was most nervous about: Communion. 

In the East, the Eucharist is prepared with leavened bread, and it is administered, soaked in the Precious Blood, via being spooned into your mouth by the priest. I wanted to sit and observe that first week, until we felt more comfortable, but I will say that my daughter is brave and fearless. She was goin' in, and so I was, too. We did wait until we watched most of the rest of the congregation receive (they opened their mouths wide and tipped their heads back a bit) before proceeding into the line. And it was GREAT. I love receiving in the mouth, which I haven't been able to do since the pandemic started. 

After the liturgy concluded, Father had a few announcements about upcoming fundraisers and other small events, and I could feel the warmth from the small congregation. They are a small but mighty crew. 

We went back again sometime within that month (and on a week when Henry had a track event and still wasn't with us, but I'll circle back to him next week, because he comes into play shortly!) and this time, Father came up to us after the liturgy to introduce himself and welcome us. Anne immediately informed him that she would like to switch rites and become Byzantine. 😳😂 She isn't shy, that child. I was enjoying our sessions at Divine Liturgy, for sure, but I still felt solidly attached to our Latin rite parish and to my Western devotions and traditions. 

OK, this story will be continued next week! We have Henry coming down the pike further into the spring, along with our beloved pastor Fr. Joe (in our Latin rite parish) retiring over Memorial Day weekend, and a gradual shift towards our becoming summer regulars and more comfortable at Divine Liturgy, including enthusiastic invitations to something called 'Koffee Klutch.' Talk to you then!