First off, I'll say that I was unable to take any pictures of any actual liturgical services that I attended last weekend. However, they were all wonderful. Friday night we had more than enough adventures for one weekend trying to get to and from Good Friday services. Saturday morning, my dad, Greg, Mark, Susanna, and I had Jerusalem Matins at home due to weather. The rest of the weekend went according to schedule.
If you are interested in seeing videos of Eastern Catholic services, check out this. It's the YouTube account for St. Elias (Elijah) Ukrainian Catholic Church in Brampton, Ontario.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
All We Like Sheep
That's always been my favorite part of The Messiah. I love the idea that if you just look at the words, it seems like we're saying that we like sheep when really Handel (and an Old Testament prophet) is comparing us to sheep that go astray only to be found by The Shepherd who will break their legs and carry them around on His Shoulders until they learn to stay close to Him.
Well, it's Holy Week. I suppose it's fitting that it would be during Holy Week that I would have to spend most of my time writing papers. Today I have a paper about the effects of divorce on children due. Tomorrow, I have a paper about "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf due. And a week from today, I have my huge child development paper due. My goal is to have it done by Thursday so I don't have it distracting me when I should be focusing on praying and church services.
This year, my brother was asked to help cantor the Thursday evening service at the church we attend in Grand Rapids. He agreed and so we will be attending the "Twelve Gospels" service at St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Grand Rapids. I've never been to this service before because most Byzantine Catholic parishes hold this service during the day on Good Friday and I'm always helping my mom with things around the house then. However, St. Mike's is holding the service on Thursday night and so Greg and I will be attending the service. Basically, it's a service that consists of reading St. Matthew's Passion, then St. Mark's Passion followed by St. Luke's Passion, and just for good measure, St. John's will conclude the evening. There are a few other prayers during the evening but the primary focus is on the Passion accounts in the Gospel.
Greg and I will be heading home after the 12 Gospels. Friday night, we will be back at our home parish, Sacred Heart Byzantine Catholic Church in Livonia. Here we will attend Good Friday Vespers with Burial Procession, an Eastern tradition. The basic idea behind this service is that it is Christ's funeral. At the end of service, we "inter" the Shroud of Christ in a "tomb" at the front of the church. The Shroud will remain there until Resurrection Matins on Sunday morning. The Shroud has an icon of the Body of Christ; around the edge of the shroud is written "The noble Joseph took down Your Most Pure Body from the Cross and wrapping it in clean linens laid it in a new tomb." The evening concludes with the veneration of the Shroud by the faithful while the cantors sing "Having suffered passions for us, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us."
After this, Greg and I along with our friends Mark, Susanna, and Charlotte will head home to explode Peeps in the microwave.
Saturday morning, my dad, Greg, Mark, Charlotte, Susanna, and I will head to St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church in Detroit for Jerusalem Matins. This is primarily a service meditating on Christ's saving act of salvation and how he is the fulfillment of countless Old Testament Prophecies.
Sunday morning, we will attend Resurrection Matins, which obviously celebrates the Resurrection of Christ. This is followed by the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is pretty much normal except for a few things. The Gospel, which is John 1:1-18, is read in English, Greek, old Church Slavonic, Arabic, and Latin as a symbol of the proclamation of the Gospel to all the nations. After the Gospel, the deacon proclaims St. John Chrysostom's famous Easter homily. After this, we all go over to the parish hall, where the priest blesses our Easter baskets filled with traditional Slovak Easter foods such as egg bread, egg cheese, sausage, and hard-boiled eggs. (Okay, so we might like eggs.)
At some point next week, I'll try to put up some pictures of what this looks like.
Well, it's Holy Week. I suppose it's fitting that it would be during Holy Week that I would have to spend most of my time writing papers. Today I have a paper about the effects of divorce on children due. Tomorrow, I have a paper about "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf due. And a week from today, I have my huge child development paper due. My goal is to have it done by Thursday so I don't have it distracting me when I should be focusing on praying and church services.
This year, my brother was asked to help cantor the Thursday evening service at the church we attend in Grand Rapids. He agreed and so we will be attending the "Twelve Gospels" service at St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Grand Rapids. I've never been to this service before because most Byzantine Catholic parishes hold this service during the day on Good Friday and I'm always helping my mom with things around the house then. However, St. Mike's is holding the service on Thursday night and so Greg and I will be attending the service. Basically, it's a service that consists of reading St. Matthew's Passion, then St. Mark's Passion followed by St. Luke's Passion, and just for good measure, St. John's will conclude the evening. There are a few other prayers during the evening but the primary focus is on the Passion accounts in the Gospel.
Greg and I will be heading home after the 12 Gospels. Friday night, we will be back at our home parish, Sacred Heart Byzantine Catholic Church in Livonia. Here we will attend Good Friday Vespers with Burial Procession, an Eastern tradition. The basic idea behind this service is that it is Christ's funeral. At the end of service, we "inter" the Shroud of Christ in a "tomb" at the front of the church. The Shroud will remain there until Resurrection Matins on Sunday morning. The Shroud has an icon of the Body of Christ; around the edge of the shroud is written "The noble Joseph took down Your Most Pure Body from the Cross and wrapping it in clean linens laid it in a new tomb." The evening concludes with the veneration of the Shroud by the faithful while the cantors sing "Having suffered passions for us, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us."
After this, Greg and I along with our friends Mark, Susanna, and Charlotte will head home to explode Peeps in the microwave.
Saturday morning, my dad, Greg, Mark, Charlotte, Susanna, and I will head to St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church in Detroit for Jerusalem Matins. This is primarily a service meditating on Christ's saving act of salvation and how he is the fulfillment of countless Old Testament Prophecies.
Sunday morning, we will attend Resurrection Matins, which obviously celebrates the Resurrection of Christ. This is followed by the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is pretty much normal except for a few things. The Gospel, which is John 1:1-18, is read in English, Greek, old Church Slavonic, Arabic, and Latin as a symbol of the proclamation of the Gospel to all the nations. After the Gospel, the deacon proclaims St. John Chrysostom's famous Easter homily. After this, we all go over to the parish hall, where the priest blesses our Easter baskets filled with traditional Slovak Easter foods such as egg bread, egg cheese, sausage, and hard-boiled eggs. (Okay, so we might like eggs.)
At some point next week, I'll try to put up some pictures of what this looks like.
Monday, March 03, 2008
When I look to the sky...
I'm home on spring break, which puts me at being about halfway through the semester. It hasn't been a hard semester academically but it has motivated some serious thoughts on a more personal level.
1) My cat was diagnosed with thigh cancer in early January. He's still alive, and thoroughly obnoxious thanks to the steroids he's taking to help with the swelling in his thigh. They make him hungrier than normal, but he isn't being fed anymore than normal. We might send him off to hang out with Barry Bonds...
2) I'm starting to deal with the more practical details of preparing for Spain and while it's not a lot of work, it does keep me reminded that in six months, I'll be living in a foreign country, far from everything I know and am used to.
3) This one is probably the biggest thing I've been dealing with of late, but it requires a bit of explanation. On Good Friday 2003, I was diagnosed with migraines. For a fourteen year old girl, this was hard. I was put on a prescription daily "preventative" called Propranolol, which was to prevent migraines. I took this medication and struggled through migraines for about two years. While on a retreat on April 2, 2005, I was prayed over for healing from migraines and they left. I lived a migraine-free life from April 2, 2005 until December 21, 2005. That day, while spending time with some friends and celebrating the start of Christmas break, I had my first migraine in eight and a half months. Since then, I've lived with migraines that can often last for days and that have become more intense and more painful and more frequent with the passing of time. I've tried to treat them without prescription medication however, of that, that has become impossible. In the month of February, which is by the way the shortest month of the year, I had five migraines.
I know my "triggers": light and sound/noise. And I know that caffeine helps me. But it's hit the point where I need more. So this morning, I saw my doctor who put me back on Propranolol and added Imitrex to my life. Now I have a more powerful resource than a cup of coffee or a couple of Excedrin migraine tablets.
I've been asked why I don't want to be prayed over for healing in this area of my life. And believe me; I've thought about doing that. But I've been praying about it and I feel that isn't what God wants to do with my life right now. At some point, He may want to work in that direction with my life, but right now, He wants to do something else with my life. I know that God uses sufferings to bring us closer to Him and to work in our lives, so I'm going to trust that there is something God wants to do in my life right now and He is working through my migraines to accomplish it.
That's my life right now. It's not exciting or dramatic, but God is working in it. And maybe someday, I'll understand it better.
1) My cat was diagnosed with thigh cancer in early January. He's still alive, and thoroughly obnoxious thanks to the steroids he's taking to help with the swelling in his thigh. They make him hungrier than normal, but he isn't being fed anymore than normal. We might send him off to hang out with Barry Bonds...
2) I'm starting to deal with the more practical details of preparing for Spain and while it's not a lot of work, it does keep me reminded that in six months, I'll be living in a foreign country, far from everything I know and am used to.
3) This one is probably the biggest thing I've been dealing with of late, but it requires a bit of explanation. On Good Friday 2003, I was diagnosed with migraines. For a fourteen year old girl, this was hard. I was put on a prescription daily "preventative" called Propranolol, which was to prevent migraines. I took this medication and struggled through migraines for about two years. While on a retreat on April 2, 2005, I was prayed over for healing from migraines and they left. I lived a migraine-free life from April 2, 2005 until December 21, 2005. That day, while spending time with some friends and celebrating the start of Christmas break, I had my first migraine in eight and a half months. Since then, I've lived with migraines that can often last for days and that have become more intense and more painful and more frequent with the passing of time. I've tried to treat them without prescription medication however, of that, that has become impossible. In the month of February, which is by the way the shortest month of the year, I had five migraines.
I know my "triggers": light and sound/noise. And I know that caffeine helps me. But it's hit the point where I need more. So this morning, I saw my doctor who put me back on Propranolol and added Imitrex to my life. Now I have a more powerful resource than a cup of coffee or a couple of Excedrin migraine tablets.
I've been asked why I don't want to be prayed over for healing in this area of my life. And believe me; I've thought about doing that. But I've been praying about it and I feel that isn't what God wants to do with my life right now. At some point, He may want to work in that direction with my life, but right now, He wants to do something else with my life. I know that God uses sufferings to bring us closer to Him and to work in our lives, so I'm going to trust that there is something God wants to do in my life right now and He is working through my migraines to accomplish it.
That's my life right now. It's not exciting or dramatic, but God is working in it. And maybe someday, I'll understand it better.
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