Dear Baba

Last Sunday afternoon, my preschooler picked up the shirt he’d worn to church and said it smelled like church. The incense smell was still there. Next thing I know, he was playing church. He held his shoe by the laces and made it into a censer and he had me tie a towel around his shoulders like vestments. He wanted to kiss the icons and he walked around the living room censing the icons and singing. He wanted us all to participate. It made me think about how I participate in church. Can you give me some guidance? - Mother of an angel

Dear Mother of an Angel: What a wonderful story and what a precious child! Let’s chat a bit over this nice hot pot of tea I’ve just brewed up. I have to confess though that I can’t imagine it could warm my heart any more than this incredible story you’ve related. It seems once again the natural wisdom of children has outshone all of our book-learning. His call to have you all participate is the call of God through the church. God called us to worship Him and to commune with Him. He definitely does not want us to be a member of the audience. Imagine how frustrated and hurt your preschooler would have been had you refused to participate with him. Your son wanted your full participation. So does God.

• We worship body and soul and it involves all of our senses. Every part of us knows we are in a holy place and in a holy time. Every detail from the architecture to the icons to the incense – everything communicates this to us. It is deliberate that we experience this worship in a way that is different from our normal daily experiences. Our eyes behold the beauty of the church temple; we see the icons surrounding us reminding us that the angels and saints worship the Trinity with us. We hear the prayers chanted or sung not spoken. We smell the incense and know the place is holy. We feel the sign of the cross upon our bodies and know that nature is restored to its original purpose in our reverent kisses of the icons, the cross and the gospel book. And most of all, we taste and see that the Lord is good.

• So let’s take a look at how we can participate in worship with that understanding. Let’s start with the nave. The term reflects back to the idea that the church is the ark of salvation. It is our vessel as we chart the stormy seas of life. The nave shares the root with “naval.” And last time I checked, to be aboard a naval vessel implied all hands were on deck and no one was lounging on the deck chairs observing. We worship in the nave surrounded by a cloud of witnesses; except here we can know them individually and personally. We also see the iconostasis. More than just a convenient screen upon which we can hang a lot of icons, it represents our sin that keeps us from the holy of holies. But Christ comes to meet us. He comes through the Holy Doors – in His word when the gospel is read and in His physical presence as the chalice is carried through those doors. His blessings flow through the hand of the priest abundantly throughout all the services. It is not a matter of chance that the icon on the Holy Doors is that of the Annunciation. It was the Theotokos’ obedience to God that brought mankind to the doors. It is also quite deliberate that on Pascha night and through all of Bright Week, the Holy Doors and the Deacon’s Doors on the sides remain open. Heaven and earth are truly joined in the glorious Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior

• Everything but the sermon is chanted or sung by a choir, normally in four part harmony. I know one choir director who spoke about how moving it was to take 4 distinct parts of choral harmony and blend them into a single voice of prayer. That is the key. It is a single prayer that is being offered by all of us. Choirs work very hard to blend their voices, listening carefully to the other parts of harmony around them, adjusting and practicing some more but they are not performing for the entertainment of an “audience” on a Sunday morning. By all means blend your voice into the voice of the prayer of the body of Christ. Because this sung prayer is so important it is commemorated in the Divine Liturgy when we pray “for those who labor and those who sing.” It is a serious thing for a choir to lead us in our part of the dialog of the liturgy. If you do sing in the choir, you can see how you would have to do so with the commitment to be focused, to not drag in consistently late or to randomly pop in and out of the choir during the services and of course to attend the rehearsals. Oh, I hope I’m not preaching to the choir. So perhaps I’ll just quote Fr. David Abramtsov from The Orthodox Companion: “Music itself is, moreover, an efficacious prayer; it is a heartfelt and fervent prayer, for the feelings of the heart gain force when the voice expresses them in song. The Fathers of the Church cannot say enough in commendation of the use of vocal music in church. They say that it appeases the wrath of God, drives away the spirits of evil, attracts the Angels and leads the Holy Spirit to visit the heart of the singers. With what great seriousness will singers consider their labors when they realize that on the wings of sacred song the soul is aided to soar on high, that the voice of song awakes in the mind a longing for heavenly things, that it melts the heart and causes the sinner to shed tears of contrition and repentance. “

• But we hear more than just the choir and the clergy. We hear the bells both in the bell tower and on the censer and Bishop’s vestments. There are 12 bells on the censer representing the voices of the 12 apostles as they went forth to proclaim the Good News. We are called to do the same.

• The sense of smell evokes a response in us perhaps more than any other sense. Your sweet child immediately associated the lingering smell of incense to the liturgy and he responded. Have you ever had it where a smell has reminded you of your grandmother’s house or a special holiday? With the smell of incense we know we are in God’s presence in a holy space. God is “everywhere present and filling all things,” so it doesn’t hurt to be reminded. We sometimes need that; don’t you think?

• It has been said that we Orthodox are a demonstrative lot. We’ll kiss anything placed before us but the censer. And we’d probably kiss that if we didn’t risk burning our lips. This is one of the cultural aspects that also served as a wedge. The various principalities and tribes through Western Europe in the first millennium were not as demonstrative. They found it much more difficult to understand the way we worshipped, bowed, reverenced and kissed. It caused specific strife in understanding how we venerated icons.

I think much of America’s mindset is still a bit baffled by it. Forgiveness Vespers, where we reverently bow and embrace each person in church, most assuredly tops that list. But please don’t feel shy about your worship, or how you make the sign of the cross, how you reverence the icons, kiss the chalice, the cross, the gospel… and embrace your community of believers. It all begs a response from us. We cannot remain idle observers in church, just like you could not remain ‘on the sidelines’ of your precious son playing church.

Now have some more tea and tell me more about your precious little preschooler.

With enveloping hugs;

Baba