Welcome to Byzantium
The obvious question: what is a "rite"? Essentially, a rite is a set of traditions that spell out how the sacraments and services are to be celebrated. Historically, as the Church spread throughout the Roman Empire, different communities and cultures developed different ways of celebrating the sacraments. Currently, seven of these rites have survived, one of which is the Byzantine Rite. The rite that pretty much everyone thinks of when the word "Catholic" is used is the Latin Rite.
So, picking up the story from the previous post...
Courtesy of an assignment she received in home-ec, Terrie and I were off to St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Just walking into the church, I couldn't help but realize two things: (1) this was not like any other Catholic church I'd ever been in; and (2) God lives here. Passing through the doorway, the first thing you notice is the large "wall" that separates the people from the altar area. The wall is properly called an iconostasis and is covered with icons...sacred paintings, done in a very Byzantine, two-dimensional style, of Christ, Mary, other saints, angels, and events from the life of Christ. Also, by the time we arrived (5 minutes before liturgy), the smell of incense was already filling the air. The church in which I was raised only used incense on special days...definitely on Easter, maybe on Christmas, rarely any other time. This was a "regular" Sunday, and the incense was part of it.
Once liturgy began, I realized that what I had suspected upon entering the church was true. The set of rituals used by the Byzantine Catholics were those of the Orthodox Church. The rituals I had read about and had wanted to see for myself by visiting an Orthodox church I had unintentionally found in a Catholic church. In the short term, this was wonderful. This was not the Catholic Church as I knew it. The Divine Liturgy (the equivalent of the Mass in the Latin Rite) was scripturally rich, theologically deep, and personally meaningful. There was a sense of reverence, awe, and worship that I had never seen in a Latin-Rite church. If anything, it seemed like the people in the Latin-Rite were more interested in fulfilling an obligation rather than experiencing the presence of the Living God. There was (and still is) a parish in my home town that has Mass on Saturday afternoon at 4:30 and at 5:30 in the same "space". You can only imagine how fast the 4:30 Mass must go in order to clear the church and the parking lot to make way for the people attending at 5:30. We often used to joke that they should consider putting in a drive-thru, with the people receiving communion and a small card with the readings for the day in a ziplock bag from the window. Regardless of the parish, you would be hard-pressed to find a Mass that takes more that 50 minutes on any given Sunday morning. By contrast, the Divine Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite takes at least 75 minutes, and usually takes closer to 90. The more relaxed pace of the Liturgy (due mainly to the fact that the entire Liturgy is chanted a capella) and the solemnity of the prayers (a solemnity enhanced by their length) made it obvious that these people were here because they wanted to be here. There was a sense of "we know this isn't easy, and we don't care, because this is the correct way to worship God". The emptiness I had known as Catholicism was not true of this kind of Catholicism, and I wanted more of it.
After that one visit, I did not want to go back to any Latin-Rite church, and for the most part I didn't. There were occasional Sundays when I went to church with my mom and dad, or when Terrie and I went to church with her parents, but when we went to church ourselves, we went to St. John Chrysostom.
However, there were still the theological issues: the filioque, original sin, and the Pope. You see, even though the rituals are different among the different rites, the beliefs are the same. So, as much as the Byzantine Rite was clearly a step in the correct direction, I felt there was still more to be found, that somehow "the truth" was still just beyond the horizon. After a lot of discussion, I convinced Terrie that we should visit an Orthodox church. This was a hard sell, given the stance of her mom toward any church that was not Catholic, and truth be told we did not tell her mom where we went to church that morning in 1987. Going to a wonderful Greek Orthodox church turned out to be a huge mistake. I know now that getting to the church at 8am for Orthros (which I didn't realize was matins) meant that we were a full 90 minutes early for the Divine Liturgy. At 8 am, the church was empty, save us near the back, an elderly woman in the front, the cantor, and the priest. And since everything was chanted in Greek, we were truly lost. As 9:30 drew closer, a few more people entered the church, but even so most of the people did not arrive until well after the Liturgy had started. It was the same rituals, but these people did not have the same seriousness of purpose as the parishioners at St. John Chrysostom. Despite this, I saw this as a reason to learn more. Obviously I had missed something in my reading, and rather than pass it off as the fault of the people at the Orthodox church, I took it as my fault for thinking I could "get it" just by reading about "it". Terrie did not. She was not interested in the theological aspects of the faith at that time. She was, however, interested in the seriousness of purpose we had found at St. John Chrysostom, and as such did not want to return to any Orthodox church ever again. With some reservation, I agreed, and St. John Chrysostom became our home. We did not step foot into another Orthodox church for a full 15 years. For the most part, however, it was a wonderful 15 years.
To be continued...
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