42."O Lord save your people and bless Your inheritance." This line from Psalm 28 is sung by the priest and/or deacon at every liturgy.
43. Bowing and repenting like the publican. Every Divine Liturgy the people bow and repent saying "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner."
44. Simple plastic playsets in the back. As this is about the local Melkite parish, I can't help but mention that I like the little four foot playsets in the back that my daughter insists on playing on when I am ready to go home.
45. Theophany. I have nothing against Epiphany, as a matter of fact it wasn't until I went to my first Theophany liturgy that I realized that Epiphany is celebrated to affirm Christ's divinity. However, I love celebrating the revelation of the Triune God as the Father speaks, the Spirit descends as a dove and Christ is baptized.
46. Nicene Creed. I do not reject the Filioque. The reason I like that is that the surprise of it the first time and the confusion the next several times forced me to make that prayer more than just words I memorized years ago. I had to go back through and think about the words (the translation also uses slightly different wording) and ask the priest about it and do more reading and learning.
47. Icon of Saints Peter and Andrew. St Peter was of course the first Pope and St Andrew was the first bishop of Constantinople and the predecessor of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Its a great picture to symbolize the reconciliation of the Melkites and other Eastern Orthodox Churches with the Catholic Church.
48. Icons are intentionally unrealistic. The point of the icons after all is to reflect Heavenly and not Earthly realities so they remain stylized in a way that Western art moved away from in the Renaissance.
49. Named for St Ignatius of Antioch. The patron saint was named specifically to show the ancientness of the faith and our connection to the faith of the Apostles.
50. Homilies. We've been blessed with great priests and deacons. Most homilies fade into the background because you've heard the same message before, its uninspiring, etc. I can remember only a handful of homilies from the 27 years before when I went to Latin Rite parishes. There are about ten homilies just from these last three years that stand out and I remember well. I'm not saying that this shows superiority of one over the other, but rather that this parish has been blessed with great priests and deacons.
May God bless all who read my ramblings,
Adopt A Catholic Blog
5 comments:
"Sometimes the unknown should be left unknown." Yes. I like how the East refers to Sacraments as Mysteries.
It's probably a good thing for all of us to attend services at a non-Latin church every so often, just to wake up all the stuff that goes to sleep on repetition. I can definitely sympathize with un-memorable, re-warmed homilies, although I don't think that's so much a Latin-rite problem as it is about individual homilists.
My Latin-Rite pastor puts out more than you can absorb in his homilies.
I'm not trying to suggest one is better than the other, but that we are blessed with great priests and deacons. Also, I think much of it is that the different perspective stands out much more in my mind.
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