11. Orthodox Worship.

1.

 The textbook cites the story of Grand Prince Vladimir's emissaries and afterwards makes a commentary on various elements of this story. Summarize this commentary, giving a brief picture of Orthodox worship.

            Prior to Russia's con to Christianity in 988, Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev (ruled 980-1015) was approached by various nationalities: the Turkic Bulgarians who were Moslems, the Khazars who professed Judaism, the Franks and Scandinavians who adhered to Latin Christianity, and the Byzantines who belonged to Eastern Orthodoxy. Each of these groups urged the prince to accept its particular faith. Realizing the need to choose a religion for his state, Vladimir summoned the boyars and elders about the matter, and it was decided to send ten wise men to various countries in order to find the true religion. In the year 987, emissaries were sent to the Moslem Bulgars of the Volga (not to be confused with the Slavic Bulgarians of the Balkans), then to Germany and Rome to view Roman Christianity, and finally to Constantinople where they attended Divine Liturgy in the great Church of the Holy Wisdom and observed Orthodox Christianity. These men reported back to Vladimir and his vassals that:

When we journeyed among the Bulgarians, we beheld how they worship in their temple, called a mosque, while they stood upright. The Bulgarian bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good. Then we went among the Germans and saw them performing many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there. Then we went on to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in Heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.

The envoys were so impressed that they wanted to move to Constantinople so they could continually enjoy the beauty they had seen. Within a year of the report they gave, Vladimir and the Russian people were baptized into Christ by Orthodox missionaries, for the prince believed that Orthodox Christianity was best suited to the temperament of the Russians and that it was indeed the true faith.

            This incident shows a number of features that characterize Orthodox Christianity. The first is the emphasis on divine beauty of worship. Among outside observers — Vladimir's emissaries among them — it is seen that a distinctive and peculiar gift of Orthodox Christianity is the power of perceiving the beauty in the spiritual world and expressing that beauty in its worship. Western European merchants, for example, when traveling through the Balkans during its long years under Turkish suzerainty, would invariably comment on the ineffable otherworldly beauty and majesty of the services at the Serbian monasteries. These qualities of unsurpassed beauty and glory in worship can be seen in all Orthodox services. Even to this day, when non-Orthodox people enter into Orthodox churches and follow the Divine Liturgy, they marvel and are moved to tears, for Orthodox Christianity is the most beautiful religion in the world. As St. Vladimir's emissaries reported: “We cannot forget that beauty.”

            In the second place, it is characteristic that the emissaries should have stated: “We knew not whether we were in Heaven or on earth.” Orthodox worship is nothing else than Heaven on earth, and the sense of God's presence among men is felt by many who have experienced Orthodox worship in much more humble surroundings than the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. A telling example is that of a letter written in 1935 by an Englishwoman, wherein she states:

The morning was so queer. A very grimy and sordid Presbyterian mission hall in a mews over a garage, where the Russians are allowed once a fortnight to have the Liturgy. A very stage property iconostasis and a few modern icons. A dirty floor to kneel on and a form along the wall.... And in this two superb old priests and a deacon, clouds of incense and, at the Anaphora, an overwhelming supernatural impression [Evenly Underhill, as quoted from Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 271].

Likewise, in 1675 Johannes Herbinius wrote that:

The Russians glorify the Lord in much more solemn manner than do the Romans. The parishioners sing together beautifully as they respond to the choir. The harmonies in their singing are beautiful.... I was so taken by their singing that I thought I stood in Jerusalem, where the spirit of the early Church was such an inspirational factor [Quoted in Olga Dolskaya, “Russian Liturgical Choral Aesthetics...,” Orthodox Life, vol. 49. no. 6, 1999, p. 16].

In the Holy Liturgy, the textbook notes, is something that embraces two worlds at once, for both in Heaven and on earth the Liturgy is one and the same: one altar, one sacrifice, one presence. In every place of worship, no matter how humble the building, as the faithful gather to perform the Eucharist, they are taken up to heavenly places. And in every church when the Holy Sacrifice is offered, not only is the local congregation present, but the Church Universal — Christ Himself, the Theotokos, the angels and saints. In the words of the Hymn of the Mystical Sacrifice sung at the Liturgy of the Presanctified: “Now the powers of Heaven do serve invisibly with us.... Lo the King of Glory enters.” St. Vladimir's envoys stated that they knew only that God dwells there among men, and inspired by the same vision of Heaven on earth, Orthodox Christians endeavor to make the Church's worship in its outward splendor and beauty an icon of the Great Liturgy in Heaven.

            A third characteristic feature that the incident shows of Orthodox Christianity is that when the Russians wanted to discover the true faith, they did not make inquiries into moral rules or demand a reasoned statement of doctrine. Instead, they watched the nations in prayer. The textbook explains that the Orthodox approach to religion is fundamentally a liturgical approach, one that understands doctrine in the context of divine worship. It is no coincidence that the word Orthodox should signify both right belief and right glory (or right worship), for the two are inseparable. Orthodoxy is nothing less than the Church of Christ on earth, the Church which guards and teaches true belief about God, and which glorifies Him with right worship. It has correctly been observed that:

Dogma with [the Orthodox] is not only an intellectual system apprehended by the clergy and expounded to the laity, but a field of vision wherein all things on earth are seen in their relation to things in Heaven, first and foremost through liturgical celebration [G. Every, The Byzantine Patriarchate, p. 9].

Those qualities that were so readily apparent to Vladimir's emissaries at the Holy Liturgy in Constantinople — its divine beauty in worship, its heavenliness, the feeling of the presence of God, its liturgical approach — all are characteristic of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In an Orthodox Liturgy, “the faithful can feel that the walls of the church open out upon eternity,” the textbook states, “and they are helped to realize that their Liturgy is one and the same with the Liturgy in Heaven.”

            One element of the story of Vladimir's choosing Orthodox Christianity for Kievan Rus' is of all possible significance (although it is not mentioned in the textbook). The Russians had the possibility of choosing any of the existing religions, including any of the various paths within Christianity. Although the Great Schism of 1054 had not yet taken place (it would occur sixty-six years ahead), the Roman Church had actually fallen away from ancient Apostolic Christianity, preserved in Orthodoxy, long before 1054. As historians note, history is basically an unbroken continuum in which any clear-cut break or division is impossible or delusive. In accordance with this principle, the estrangement of the Latin Church from Orthodoxy did not take place by proclamation in 1054, tout court. Instead, the schism came about gradually, as the result of a long and complicated process that began in the ninth century, one that separated the pope and his followers from the traditions of the early Church. The 1054 date is used simply for convenience to mark the time when Rome's severance from Orthodoxy was finalized, although the date is actually insignificant. Thus, the Russians deliberately rejected Latin Christianity.

            The same rejection is seen again when St. Alexander Nevsky was forced to fight the Swedes in 1240 and the Teutonic Knights in 1242 to prevent the forcible conversion of Russians to Roman Catholicism. After his two decisive victories over the Roman Catholics, he refused any religious compromise with the Latin Church. “Our doctrines are those preached by the Apostles,” he stated to the messengers of the pope. “The tradition of the Holy Fathers and the Seven Ecumenical Councils we scrupulously keep. As for your words, we do not listen to them and we do not want your doctrine.”

            Another important feature of Russia's conversion (again not mentioned by the textbook, but explained by a Russian hermit) is that St. Vladimir baptized his Kievan princedom and gave all of Russia the Orthodox Christian faith at the very time when Byzantium had reached its highest point in all phases of spiritual culture. By that time all the basic heresies had been identified and uprooted by the Seven Ecumenical Councils, and monasticism was in full bloom. Russia was therefore entrusted from the very start with the fullness of the pure and true faith, Holy Orthodoxy. Russia treasured this holy faith throughout the ages as the supreme heritage in its hierarchy of values, thus becoming, in the activities of its best sons and daughters, Holy Russia, the guardian of Holy Orthodoxy. Such Russia remained when it was raised upon the cross in 1917, and such Russia has continued to remain to this very day.