Ottawa Citizen
March 5, 2005 Saturday
EARLY Edition
Drawn to the East’s beauty: The 1,500-year-old liturgy of Eastern
Christianity embraces symbolism and song
by Bob Harvey, The Ottawa Citizen
The golden domes of Ottawa’s only Ukrainian Catholic church speak
loudly to those in the know as they drive south beside the Rideau
Canal. Their message: Beauty matters.
On any Sunday within Saint John the Baptist Shrine, there is the
smell of incense and a haunting musical harmony. In his golden
vestments, the Very Rev. Cyril Mykytiuk leads in prayer, and the
faithful sing the responses in practised synergy throughout the
entire liturgy. Some say the singing and the almost non-stop
participation would attract even charismatics and progressive
Christians, if they only knew.
The traditionalists might respond to the liturgy. This prescription
for worship was written 1,500 years ago by Saint John, a patriarch of
Constantinople who became known after his death as Chrysostrom, Greek
for “golden-mouthed.”
Wherever you look in the church, there are treats for the eye: icons
and other images of apostles, prophets, saints, and the church’s 12
major feast days. They are painted in glowing reds, blues and golds
on the walls, the ceiling, and the stained glass windows.
A huge image of Christ Pantocrator, the Universal Ruler, dominates
over all else as he eyes the faithful from the dome overhead.
Among the worshippers is Brian Butcher, the son of Baptist
missionaries to India, his Korean wife, Jean, and their five small
children. While studying at McGill University in Montreal, Mr.
Butcher enrolled in religious studies, and was introduced to Eastern
Christianity. “I fell in love with the beauty of the icon, in both
the Catholic and Orthodox churches,” he says. Before long, he and
Mrs. Butcher were received into the Orthodox church. And now Mr.
Butcher is in his second year of a doctoral program in Eastern
Christian theology.
He is not the only convert to Ukrainian Catholicism studying at the
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies
at Ottawa’s Saint Paul University.
Andrew Bennet, a Roman Catholic, has been working in the privy
council office since obtaining his doctorate in political science and
constitutional law. A colleague invited him to come with him to Saint
John the Baptist Shrine at a time when he was suffering
what he calls a spiritual “malaise.” The number of non-Ukrainians in
the church surprised him, his malaise disappeared, and he has now
been going there for a year. “I was drawn by the beauty of the
liturgy, and I love to sing,” he says.
Adam deVille grew up Anglican, but was at loose ends in the summer of
2002, when he was invited to a memorial service in a Ukrainian
Catholic church for a Dutch friend’s grandfather. He was surprised
that the Brampton church was not just for Ukrainians. “The singing
was lovely. I went back, and I kept on going back. This experience
was confirmed later that year when I was in Ukraine itself,
especially at St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kiev on its patronal feast
day. I saw before my eyes people who lived Dostoevsky’s dictum: ‘The
world will be saved by beauty.’ ”
By the time Mr. deVille returned home to Brantford, he had decided.
“This was something, however mysterious, that I could not bear to be
separated from.” He petitioned for a transfer from the Anglican
church, and was accepted into the Ukrainian Catholic church.
Mr. DeVille is interested in the priesthood, but is concentrating on
his dissertation for Saint Paul University, an attempt to break
through the main obstacle to unity of the Orthodox and Catholic
churches: the papacy.
The Orthodox consider every bishop a successor of St. Peter, as
opposed to the Catholic teaching that the bishop of Rome is the one
and only successor. In 1995, Pope John Paul II asked for help
overcoming the stumbling block.
“There have been almost no Orthodox responses,” says Mr. DeVille.
“The field is wide open. I am endeavouring to put something together
that would meet the concerns of both sides.”
Rev. Maxym Lysack, pastor of Christ Our Saviour Orthodox Church, one
of several Orthodox churches in Ottawa, says that “what irks the
Orthodox churches in dialogue with Catholic churches is that Rome has
never perceived Orthodox churches as equal.”
Eastern Catholics, he says, are living the Orthodox liturgy, but
there are differences. As well, Ukrainian Catholics acknowledge the
Immaculate Conception, the Catholic doctrine that Mary was without
sin from the moment she was conceived. “That is totally unknown in
the East,” says Father Lysack, the dean of the Canadian branch of the
Carpatho-Russian Diocese of U.S.A, and has taught
at the Sheptytsky Institute, which he gives credit for renewing the
eastern side of Ukrainian Catholicism.
Many Eastern Catholic churches have also adopted Roman Catholic
practices, like prayers for people in purgatory and novenas, a
nine-day series of prayers. But unlike the West’s Roman Catholic and
Protestant churches, Eastern Christianity considers beauty an
essential part of the mystical search for the divine.
Rev. Peter Galadza, a professor at the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky
Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at Ottawa’s Saint Paul
University, says the legend is that, in 988, Saint Vladimir the
Great, the ruler of Kiev in what is now Ukraine, sent emissaries to
Constantinople to investigate different religions.
When the emissaries came back, they told of the Eastern Christians’
worship and said “We knew not whether we were in heaven or earth
because on earth there is no such beauty.”
Father Galadza explains that “this has been taken as the ethos for
the Eastern church. The Greek word for good, kalos, is also the word
for beauty. You can’t be good without being ‘beautiful’ in the old
sense.”
The Ukrainian Catholic church entered into communion with Rome in
1596, and is the largest of 24 Eastern Catholic churches, including
Armenian, Melkite, Romanian and Chaldean Catholics. They are all in
communion with the Pope, and accept his authority. But, aside from
that link with Rome, the Eastern Catholic churches are little
different from the 16 Eastern Orthodox churches, with their 300
million followers.
The Eastern churches are “far more open to evocative symbolism and a
non-cerebral approach,” says Father Galadza. They were also the model
for many of the changes brought into the Roman Catholic church by the
Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
Among the innovations borrowed from the East were permanent deacons,
services in the vernacular, instead of Latin, increased participation
by laity, and the celebration of communion in wine as well as bread.
One custom that was not adopted is married priests.
The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches are still little known in
Canada, but their numbers are growing, primarily because of
immigration. The Serbian Orthodox doubled their numbers between 1991
and 2001.
The Ukrainian Catholic Church is an exception. Its numbers dropped
from 128,000 in the 1991 census to 126,000 in 2001.
Father Galadza says one reason for the decline is the shift to Roman
Catholicism by those of Ukrainian heritage who want to spend less
time in church than the 80 to 90 minutes sometimes demanded by the
Eastern liturgy, or live too far away from any of the Ukrainian
Catholic churches scattered across Canada. Others prefer to worship
in English, which, unlike Saint John the Baptist, some Ukrainian
parishes still do not offer.
However, Ukrainian Catholics now have a one-volume source for singing
their liturgy in English. For the first time, Ukrainian Catholics
have a book in English and Ukrainian that contains everything needed
for the church’s liturgy throughout the year. The Divine Liturgy: An
Anthology for Worship also comes with a two-CD set for those who have
trouble reading musical notes. It was released this month, and Father
Galadza, the chief editor of the volume, said orders are already
coming in to the Sheptytsky Institute from the United States,
Australia, and the United Kingdom.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress