It’s been even busier here than normal over the last couple of weeks. Not only are we are in the midst of our Nativity Season (today is Theophany, when we celebrate the Baptism of Christ) with all the extra services, celebrations, and caroling, but I continue to teach a graduate seminar at the Naval War College and make regular trips to South Bound Brook. As a way of catching up, I’ll hit some of the high points from the last couple of weeks.
The Nativity Season
We celebrated the birth of Christ a few days ago – it was awesome. On Christmas eve, we joined a parish family at their house for a “Holy Supper”. This dinner has twelve dishes. The Nativity Fast does not end until after the Nativity Liturgy, so all of these are “fasting foods”. Although every dish is a delight, my favorites are the cloves of garlic (dipped in honey and salt), pickled herring, and baked fish. After this, everyone meets at Church to begin the liturgical celebration of the Nativity. In our parish, the tradition is to do this with the “Grand Compline” service rather than the (longer) Vespers service. One of the things I love about the Ukrainian expression of Christianity is its musical tradition; our is a Church that celebrates with hymns and carols. You can listen to excerpts of the Compline service and several hymns from that evening on the OrthoAnalytika podcast from 1/11. The next morning we reconvened for the Nativity Divine Liturgy; while our numbers were diminished by the tons of snow, we still had a very nice crowd and service.
A few days later, we celebrated the Old Calendar New Year. Liturgically, this means the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ and of St. Basil; culturally, it also means “Malanka”. I’m not sure if the Circumcision of Christ is commemorated in other Christian traditions, but it is a wonderful reminder of His humanity, His humility (kenosis), and His relationship to the Law/Judaism. Here at St. Michael’s, we sang Vespers in the rectory chapel (pictured above), then opened up the entire rectory for a Malanka (New Year’s Eve) party. About a third of the parish made it in, despite another foot of snow. Our new pool table was a big hit (this antique table was donated by a parishioner; it will soon double as a formal dining table… this was how I was able to get Pani Tina to agree to putting it in our formal dining room). The next morning, we prayed the Divine Liturgy here in the rectory chapel. Numbers were again diminished by more snow, but it was still really nice. The service was different than usual. Because it is St. Basil’s feast day, we use the liturgy he wrote rather than the one by St. John Chrysostom that we usually use. It is very similar, but has longer prayers during the anaphora. I love it because it goes even deeper into the theology and economy of salvation.
Today we continued the Holy season with the celebration of Theophany. This started yesterday afternoon with the Theophany Grand Compline service, followed by another “Holy Supper”, this time in the parish hall. It was Sunday, so we had already celebrated the Divine Liturgy: I reckon people got a pretty good dose of Church! While all these events were great (if a bit under-attended due to yet another serious dose of snow), the one that immediately preceded was really special: an adult baptism. Can you imagine anything better than combining an adult baptism with the celebration of the baptism of Christ? It was regrettable that we were not able to combine this with the chrismation of our second adult catachumen (she and her family were snowed in), but that just allows us to continue this theme next week!
Other Stuff
Last week I took our seminarian, Vasyl, back to seminary. It was a bit sad – it was really nice having him around. While at the consistory we were able to have lunch with two of our bishops (Bishop Daniel and Archbishop Antony). This past week I returned to South Bound Brook for the Jr. UOL Executive Board meeting. This was another good time as I was able to spend time with our young “executives”, our bishops, and other leaders from our Church. This made for a lot of driving, but it is an honor and blessing to so involved. Next week I will make the same drive so that I can teach a six-hour class on “Kyivan Spirituality” to our seminarians.
