May 11, 2012, Dallas Ground has been broken at St. Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas to build the mausoleum to be the final resting place for the corpus of Archbishop Dmitri. Metropolitan Jonah, Subdeacon Jeff Wynn, Milos Konjevich, diocesan treasurer, and Subdeacon Vladimir Gregorenko have met with the architect Nick Unich and his associate to design the new chapel.
According to Michael Smith, task force member and parish council member, “We couldn’t be more excited. This is a positive uplifting experience for the entire Diocese of the South to have Vladyka back with us.”
With the foundation scheduled to be poured the week of May 14th, Archbishop Dmitri could arrive back at the cathedral as early as July 1. The chapel construction should start shortly thereafter and take nine to 12 months. There is approximately 40% of the funds available to complete construction of the chapel.
A new website at AbpDmitri.org (under construction) has been established to follow the progress of construction.
Your generous donation will make a difference to help bring Vladyka back to the cathedral. If you can make a
donation, please click on the button below.
Contact:
Murray Michael Smith
murray@mainlandchinatrading.com
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[ED. This is exciting! We will keep everybody posted on the progress of the construction at St Seraphim’s. If you are so inclined, please feel free to make a contribution. It will be a blessing to you as well as to our venerable Vladyka.]
Is that the baptistry opposite the chapel? Letters kinda hard to read.
Yup. The thing in the middle is a font in the shape of a cross.
What? No more horse trough?
Lola, Helga is correct. I should have been more explicit that in order to “balance” the existing foor plan, the mausoleum would be to the right and a baptistry would be to the left. Anyway, it’s exciting.
It’s not clear from the architect’s drawing just where Abp Dmitri’s corpse will be placed.
In accordance with our tradition, I hope that he will be buried underground, as was the case with the odd monument constructed over the grave of St Alexis Toth at St Tikhon Monastery.
But — considering our tradition once again — why is AbpD’s corpse being entombed next to the narthex rather than behind the altar, his feet to the east, as is usual?
Why not behind the Altar?
1) I watched that structure go up. The foundation rests on many wide massive pillars of reinforced concrete that go all the way to bedrock. It may not be possible to dig a hole there.
2) The Altar Table would have to be moved, and therefore reconsecrated. As it stands, it is an Altar consecrated by Vladyka himself.
3) Besides, a nice spot next to the Narthex is in keeping with Vladyka’s unassuming humility.
4) Vladyka’s relics will be buried underground, feet to the east.
By ‘behind the altar’, I mean outdoors, not within the apse.
That (outside) site was considered and rejected for many reasons. The current site allows easy access to the interior of the Cathedral as mandated by the city. Poking a hole through the Apse for a doorway was both unsightly and structurally very difficult and expensive. Clergy approval of the current location goes back to the period when the original task force began its work under the spiritual guidance of Father Joseph Fester who was then our rector. Archbishop Dmitri was aware of all that transpired. The current location was overwhelmingly the best for many many reasons I wont elaborate here. (Would you really want jackhammers breaking up the cathedral floor? under the altar?)
Folks who have speculated on the hows and whys certain decisions were made need to remember that the Cathedral is a microcosm of devout orthodox within a society of “less than orthodox” folk. The rest of society generally frowns on burying dead bodies, no matter how blessed they may be, in your front lawn. The Cathedral is located within a five mile radius of downtown Dallas, so state, county and city officials get a significant say in what happens. Just so we are clear, the city has the right to forcibly dis-interre, autopsy, and cremate should their requirements be flaunted.
Everything that is happening, every detail of the original chapel design is in accordance with a detailed plan worked out with city, state, and county health departments, legal representatives and building code departments to allow the Cathedral to use the one tiny loophole that permits Vladyka’s remains to be returned, without cremation, to the Cathedral grounds.
Let me set one other piece of wishful thinking to rest. Vladyka can not be returned when the foundation is complete. The chapel must be completed in accordance with the original design before the city will allow a permit to be issued for disinterment of the remains. The city, state, and county health departments will all need to sign off on it before the remains can be returned without fear of forcible disinterment at a later date.
As long as I have broken my silence on the issue let me also point out that the original web site did have many “500 style” errors .. It was thrown up in haste with the promise of much additional content to follow from this person or that. Room was made to accept that content when it might arrive. Alas orthodox being orthodox, most time frames oozed out to eternity and the webmaster was left with the precious few who actually delivered on their commitments. While it may seem crass and commercial to some, I am proud to present the only first hand account of Vladyka’s passing by James Gaspard (former parish council member) who was present at Vladyka’s passing and the exquisite photography of Vladimir Grigorenko (another former member of the parish council) who recorded the event for all to see. There is no content from clergy who where there as Fr. Seraphim has chosen to continue in his spirit of humility and love, caring for Vladyka’s grave site and celebrating services at the grave site. Fr. Michael who was an active adviser for us during our labor of love, and who was also there, has chosen to keep his reflections on the joy of hand making Vladyka’s casket private for the moment. It is something I deeply understand from both of them. It was Fr. Michael who shared with us Deacon Mark’s blessed little book on an orthodox death which became the blueprint for all that was done. So yes, reliable Clergy guidance was omnipresent during the entire event. Thank God for Fr. Michael and Deacon Mark, without them the funeral might have been a very different experience.
One final thought, there is a ticking clock on the crass commercial web site. It is there to remind folks that although the orthodox live in an eternal time frame, the city and county of Dallas does not. I for one would not want to delay the building plans for additional clergy “oversight and approval” and find out later that the chapel structure will serve no purpose other than to kick off phase two of the building program. The longer the remains remain where they are, the less likely the regulatory bodies are to issue such a permit to remove them. Vladyka’s remains are not on “will call” waiting to be fetched back to the Cathedral. There is much to be done before that occurs.
Hugh (Seraphim) Cole
Former President of St. Seraphim Parish Council
Job well done so far, Hugh. Keep up the good work.
St. John Maximovitch rests in the church itself. I rather miss the separate chapel (underground) where he lay at first; however, the faithful can venerate him where he is now, also.
Antonia
(who has not yet been informed of why she is in “on moderation” status)
Everyone is “on moderation” – it’s not you, personally.
If someone can get to the webmaster at the site (I’ve sent message already through “Contact Milos”), be aware that there are quite a few 500 errors when one tries to click on Stories, Project News, etc. links. Yeah, I know it’s under construction, but its best not to make these section open to public view until the links actually lead to what has been promised to display. It’s possible to do this in Joomla (which is what this site is using).
Lola, these errors have now been corrected.
Another reminder of the very large shoes still to be filled.
I find it quite curious that, with all of the names mentioned in the press release or notice above, that the Rector of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Archpriest John Anderson, is not mentioned at all… I believe this oversight should be corrected. Just saying…
Matushka, good point. This is the same press release that is on the arbpdmitri.org website. I merely reposted it.
Matushka Elizabeth,
I believe that Fr Anderson was not mentioned because he is not a member of the stand alone Building Committee that has and is now implementing the Memorial Chapel Project. This was a decision of the Parish Council, with Fr. Anderson present and approving. It is a technical matter and in no way should be seen as an intentional oversight or even a slight.
Although a “technical matter”, I will observe that in thirty-six years within the Church, and time spent in four major jurisdictions, I never have seen a major parish project (even a minor activity) promoted without the name of the parish priest included. Call it basic good manners, if one prefers.
Well having been in the Church nearly 6 decades I can say I have for various reasons and none because of bad manners. It looks like we have walked in different circles.
“It’s Time to Bring Vladyka Dmitri Home?”
I think that if Vladyka Dmitri heard someone say that about another saintly departed hierarch he would probably say, wryly, ‘Vladyka IS home! Why would he want to leave Heaven for Dallas? Isn’t he always with us anyhow? Just say something like, we want to erect a mausoleum appropriate to our veneration of Vladyka.
That is a better title, isn’t it Your Grace?
Anonymous for this posting. I am holding back on contributing to this project, because I am not confident that St. Seraphim’s will continue to be a viable parish if Bishop Mark is imposed on the congregation. I expect a significant exodus of parishioners if that happens.
Don’t hold back. +Mark will not be imposed on the DOS. I promise.
Even a “Stand Alone Building Committee” must be under some sort of accountability and clerical authority. If the creation of this Task Force in fact took place within the SSOC Parish Council and its membership was in fact appointed by the Parish Council as you claim, then the committee would be in fact accountable both to the Parish Council as a whole, and to Fr. John Anderson in particular as the Cathedral Rector and as the one who is over and above any Parish Council in his role as the Cathedral’s Parish Priest. As I said previously, I believe this oversight should be corrected.
As far as I understand our life in Christ within the Church, there is nothing “Stand Alone” about anything. It is all about relationship and those relationships also contain protocols. For example, from our own DOS:
From UNIFORM PARISH BY-LAWS THE DIOCESE OF THE SOUTH – ORTHODOX CHURCH IN AMERICA
Accepted – May, 1981 -With the blessing of His Grace, Dmitri Bishop of Dallas and the South
Revised – July 23, 2009 – Promulgated October 22, 2009
With the blessing of His Beatitude, Jonah Archbishop of Washington – Metropolitan of All America and Canada
Among the Priest’s Responsibilities: Since the priest must answer to God for the lives and the salvation of those who are entrusted to his
pastoral care (Hebrews 13:17), nothing in the Parish can be initiated without his approval and blessing, neither
must he do anything pertaining to the life of the parish without the knowledge of the Parish Council and the
parishioners, so that always there may be unity, mutual trust, cooperation, and love. In the event of serious
disagreement between the priest and the parishioners or the Parish Council, the matter shall be referred to the
district dean.
Among the Parish Council Admonitions: Any Council member who, during his tenure of office, engages in divisive or rebellious activities, who
endeavors to create factions, or brings disharmony to or disturbs the peace of the Parish is subject to dismissal.
Parish Council Meetings: The Parish Council shall establish a regular time for its meetings,
which must be held at least once each month. All meetings shall be held on Parish premises.
The presiding officer of the Council is the rector or the priest-in-charge, but another member of the
council, usually the warden, may chair sections of a given meeting.
If the rector or the priest-in-charge is not present at a meeting, all decisions taken at that meeting must
be submitted to him for confirmation before they become effective.
The minutes of the Parish Council meetings shall be signed by the rector or the priest-in-charge and the
secretary or the warden. Original copies of the minutes are the property of the [entire] Parish and shall be filed by the
rector or the priest-in-charge in the Parish archives.
Parish Council meetings are open to all voting members of the Parish. Only members of the Council
may vote, but any voting member of the Parish may speak on an issue, if he is recognized by the chair. At its
discretion and [only] in extraordinary circumstances, the Parish Council may hold a closed meeting, that is, one
restricted to Council members.
Signatures & Legal Accountability:
Section 1. All official documents for the Orthodox Church in America and the Diocese, and the “metrical
records” of the Parish shall be signed by the rector or the priest-in-charge. In cases in which additional
signatures are required, the warden, the recording secretary, or the treasurer may sign the document in
question.
Section 2. All civil or legal documents shall be signed by the rector or the priest-in-charge and such other
officers as may be designated by the membership of the Parish or required by law.
Section 3. All expenditures made by check shall be signed by the rector or the priest-in-charge and either the
warden or the treasurer. In case there is no assigned priest, the signatures of the warden and the treasurer shall be required.
Excerpts From: http://www.dosoca.org/files/DOCUMENTS/RevisedDOSUPB2009.pdf
Found Online At: http://www.dosoca.org/parishresources.html
Matushka,
Are you making this an issue because Fr. Anderson is upset about it? Does he feel he is being slighted? If this arrangement was blessed by the bishop (given that St Seraphim’s is a Cathedral) then the clergy at the Cathedral fulfill the directive of the bishop (even if the bishop is the locum tenens.)
Let it go. You are just causing a distraction away from what we should all be focused on, the construction of a proper resting place for our beloved Archpastor.
I’ll make my guess that you know Fr. John well enough to know he neither takes offense nor evinces such feelings.
There is — or purportedly is — room at this website for varying, even incompatible, opinions. She posted hers, you posted yours. Both ok moves.
If the person in question, Fr John, is not making it an issue, why should anyone else? He is setting the better example I would conclude.
Right on Antonia! I don’t think there’s an issue here. If Father cared about having his name out there (which is not like him) he would have asked the committee or PC and they would have changed it.
This is about Vladyka Dmitri after all…
Jesse, I agree with you. I hold, however, that proper manners would insist on including his name as the acting rector of the parish on both the sales flyer and the fund-raising website. It is not a question of whether or not a man feels offended, but one of respect for the priest of the parish involved in a worthy project and [respect] for his leadership role. Same reasons for including Met. Jonah’s name.
How can a priest be the (acting) Rector of a Cathedral? Only a bishop can be the rector of a Cathedral. Protocol which is born from manners would insist on this being corrected.
You could take up the matter with the layperson who maintains the parish website and/or whoever selected the wording in the first place. He or she would appreciate your concern.
Amos, are you sure? I thought the bishop was the pastor of the cathedral, and therefore, the parish priest, who acted as the pastor, was called a rector.
In the OCA, the bishop is the Rector of his Cathedral. He may have a dean of the Cathedral, and other priests in various capacities, but the bishop is the rector. The bishop is also the Archpastor to his clergy in his diocese.
A small alteration to what Amos wrote.
None of the bishops in the Metropolia was “rector” of a parish until the mission was cut off from financial support from Russia. Then, since the source of bishops’ compensation was totally history, they began assuming the position of “rectors” of their cathedrals in order to avoid penury or starvation. Of course, not only in the OCA but everywhere, the de facto rector of every parish in his diocese is the bishop, and the presbyters are but his vicars/substitutes.
Normally, of course, Bishops are “paid” by their dioceses or by the Holy Synod’s administration.
Amos, you may be correct but if you check the Miami Cathedral, the OCA website lists Fr. Reese as Rector (on the parish website he is titled Pastor). When I checked the OCA website for the Cathedrals in the Diocese of the West, once again the official OCA website listed the parish priest as rector, not dean. Oca.org seems to be following a different rule.
Further to Amos’ comment, Matushka, this is not the place to seek rectification. You should instead talk to the people behind the Archbishop Dmitri website, since they are the ones who compiled the information to begin with.
What a bunch of B.S! Just leave the venerable Bishop Dmitri where he is planted. Give the money being collected for the mausoleum to the poor who are in need of it. Go back and read the Gospels our Lord left us.
Sure thing, “Fr.” Blues. But wouldn’t you know it, my finger slipped on that passage about the woman breaking a jar of spikenard over Jesus’ feet and Judas complaining that the money should have been given to the poor.
Obviously, Helga, that Gospel story reveals to the Faithful that Judas Iscariot is the Patron of Accountability and Transparency. Good thing he caught that sinful, chancellor-like woman in the act of spending spikenard!!!!!
Being both ill and jobless, and therefore one of those poor you mention, I look forward to seeing that mausoleum built. We the poor will always be with you. But true Saints of God are rarely encountered. Honoring them feeds our souls more than bread feeds our bodies.
Those who have been the beneficiaries of miracles wrought through prayers for Vladyka Dmitri’s intercessions should perhaps post their histories here?
And everywhere! And send copies to your bishops and to the Canonization Commission.
These people want to elevate + Dimitri to saint status. God will reveal if this is in His plan or not.
In Orthodoxy, God begins that revelation among the people who are closest to the candidate and who know him best. In this case those are the members of his Cathedral parish, his friends, those of us who saw him often and spent much time with him.
Or would you prefer that the process started with strangers? And, if so, where would these objective strangers get the evidence for their deliberations if not from the members of his Cathedral parish, his friends, those of us who saw him often and spent much time with him?
It should be people in syossett who decide who become a saint.
It was my understanding that the path to sainthood begins from bottom up. Local people exchange stories about the person’s life. They recognize the saintly qualities in the person’s life, and take care to preserve stories, writings, whatever that could be relics (sometimes, not much). Word spreads about the person’s life beyond the immediate regions. The clergy makes note. The bishop approves veneration as a saint. Ultimately, there may be a commission formed to examine the person’s life, and may conclude that the person is worthy enough to be put on the local calendar of saints. Occasionally, the newly-declared saint may become so well-known that veneration may spread to other areas that are under those listed on the Diptych.
I wasn’t aware that the people in Syossett could pick and chose who could become a saint. Often, it seems to me that we’re waiting on Syossett to recognize certain people, like the holy, pious woman from Alaska.
The problem with starting the canonization process for Mtka Olga Michael is that there isn’t a groundswell of local veneration, or so I’m told.
If by local you mean Alaska, I would not know about that. However, here in the Deep South, there are folks (cradle and convert alike) who hope and pray that the canonization process would proceed without further ado.
Indeed!
Just so people don’t start voting on who should be a saint. Then the U.S.A. Orthodox would have committed an almost ultimate degradation of the Tradition.
No one needed to take a poll or adopt him as a “cause” to ensure the glorification of our Father among the Saints, John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, the Wonderworker. By the time he fell asleep there was already a book full of miracles recorded entirely separate from any “drive” to have him canonized. It was a case of overwhelming evidence from France, China, the Phillipines, Australia, the U.S.A. and from lands which the saint had never visited. Same thing with Saint Herman of Alaska.
Father Seraphim (Rose), although not yet glorified everywhere as a Saint, is venerated as such in parts of Greece, Serbia, Russia, etc., and his icons are not infrequently to be found in many temples. On the other hand, one priest who has adopted the unlikely cause of glorification of ever-memorable Fr. Alexander Schmeman had an icon of him put up in his church, but had to hide it every time his bishop from farther west came to town, because, far from being an object of popular veneration, he was an object of popular controversy amongst the Faithful.
Yes. We, The Church, must be very circumspect about acknowedging people as saints. Premature or (Heaven forfend!) mistaken canonizations do serious harm to the credibility of the local churches, diminish them in the estimation of the other churches, and make them appear vainglorious.
Still, in a humble accommodation of reality, it should be possible for the local churches to admit that they made a mistake in such matters when they’ve actually done so.
It’s better for us to take our lumps and correct our mistakes now than pridefully let them ride and be condemned at The Judgement of Christ.
Documentation! Documentation! Reliable, incontrovertible documentation!
And fervent prayers for Abp Dmitri’s intercession in documented circumstances.
Good belly laugh with that one Roddy.
God decides who His Saints are.
We merely recognize those He chooses to reveal for our edification and encouragement.
Based on their performance, Syosset couldn’t make a sandwich, much less a Saint.
Now that is hilarious!!!!!
You are joking, aren’t you Roddy?
The OCA’s Canonization Commission (on which I served for several years and hope to again) is tasked by the Holy Synod to research the lives and work of people who were locally regarded as holy while they lived, and whose intercession is asked after they die. This is especially true of people whose intercession is very strongly felt to have helped those who ask it.
Such studies usually take several years to complete. When all (or as many of) the facts are assembled and analyzed, the CC makes a report to the bishops, recommending (or not) that the individual beng studied be recognized as a saint. The bishops make a synodal decision which may or may not follow the recommendation of the CC.
I hope the Canonical Commission and the Holy Synod will be more thorough in the future than they have been in the past. I’m thinking of the process by which Saint Jacob Netsvetov was canonized. There was not existing record of his veneration until the well-known, scholarly, and formerly Lutheran, Archpriest Michael Oleksa (sp?) discovered him in a library. He proceeded to publish what he had learned as a cause for canonization. It was only AFTER Oleksa discovered him in his library researches, that efforts were made to find native Alaskans or ANYONE who remembered him. After several persons were informed BY Oleksa of the life and deeds of the newly discovered Netsvetov, that one was able to ask if he was venerated. Some said yes, AFTER that. By the time of his glorification, even Bishop Gregory Afonsky couldn’t say where he was buried: there was no place in the whole state where anyone was found to be praying at or near a grave purporting to be the saint’s grave. Possibly now, after Bishop Gregory has fallen asleep and a lot of water has ‘gone under the bridge” there is a site which is “probably” the site of his burial and “for sure” pointed out now as the very place of his burial? I have no ideas how the Canonization Commission was constituted or is constituted today, although I often (you know me, the unhappy fault-finder and daft bishop) asked that the OCA STOP trying to find saints to glorify. It’s one thing for the Russian Church, after perestroika, to appoint a commission to search out and confirm the identities of New Martyrs previously suppressed, but for the OCA or ANY Local Church to establish a permanent commission to seek out anyone who COULD possibly be a saint (after perhaps publicizing WHOSE names were under consideration), seemed to me to bode ill for the future. Right now, many in the OCA seem to be almost DESPERATE to canonize someone. For some (but, thank God not all) the canonization of someone considered to be a Saint and miracle-worker before his repose, our Father among the Saints, John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, Wonderworker, and his almost universal (outside ROCOR even) veneration, just sticks in the craw and eats away inside. Someone recently claimed they had actually seen ever-memorable Metropolitan Leonty praying in the air at Syosset when he was still around! He just levitated out in the garden by the chapel! Of course, this would cause everyone to think twice or a hundred times about shedding the former Griswold Estate, which was bequeathed to the Metropolia in Leonty’s day!
Yes. Even so, there’s more documentation re: St Jacob Netsvetov than re: St Peter the Aleut, doubts of whose very existence were expressed to me by some of the bishops beginning around 1985 or so. BTW: I was not involved in the research for either of these saints.
More recently, in investigating the life of Abp Arseniy Chahovtsev, we were unable to resolve a couple of important concerns. I submitted my findings which were adopted by the Commission, and the bishops agreed that it would be premature to recognize him as a saint before those concerns could be satisfactorily explained and put to rest.
That’s right! There’s even less documentation for Saint Peter the Aleut than was discovered about Saint Jacob Netsvetov t in the library. However, the veneration of Saint Peter the Aleut did not originate in a library, but was, even if legendary, was well established without reference to anybody’s library research.
I glad to learn from Monk James that the “cause” of ever-memorable Archbishop Arseny (Chegovtsev) is on hold. I know that Archbishop Seraphim was very enthusiastic about that one; however, I also know that ever-memorable Archpriest Victor Sokolov who made himself almost a living archive of the history of the Metropolia/OCA, especially in the West, and the entire Russian hierarchy (continuing, informally, the monumental work of ever-memorable Bishop Manuil Lemeshevsky), expressed amazement that there was any movement to canonize Archbishop Arseny, based on reminiscences of the latter he had come across in his studies
No need to canonize anyone until God tells to!
Dio, while some seem worried about whether or not they will be compelled to revere a man in death whom they did not revere in life that is quite tangential to the construction of a mausoleum. The surest way to get a campaign for his canonization is to start one against it.
People want to bring him home because they love him.
It seems self-evident to anyone who spent a length of time at the cathedral that it’s where he belongs.
I repeat my statement of conviction that he is already HOME in heaven!
(sigh….) Could you please, just for a moment, assume that we are not a mob of godless idiots?
City regulations just barely allow a burial within city limits – outside of a licensed cemetery – under very limited conditions. Among those conditions is that the grave must be located under the foundation of an existing structure. Therefore the chapel. The question is then this: Where shall we build that chapel? The areas immediately behind and to either side of the apse have no room. The best location that a small (aprox 18′x18′) chapel can be built is right next to the Narthex. We’ve looked. We’ve measured. We’ve scratched our heads. We’ve thought about it. And we have decided.
I thank ‘Sasha’ for providing details previously unknown here.
I remember that ever-memorable Olga Day-Hanna’s remains (maybe ashes) were interred in the border around the outside of part of the old St. Seraphim temple. Did His Eminence ever have them dug up and/or re-sited?
I remember seeing the urn containing her ashes under the Altar Table of the old Cathedral. Now I understand that she is a pillar of the new Cathedral. You may interpret that as figuratively or as literally as you wish.
Is the new Cathedral built on the same ground as the old one?
just about 50 feet to the south & east of it. I’d say about 10 o’clock if you’re in the old cathedral and facing east.
It’s more like 50 yards. Past the playground on your right, the mulberry tree on your left, through the small rock garden with the concrete benches, and across the new parking lot. And becareful crossing the alley. The concrete is in sad shape and a couple pieces of rebar poke up enough to catch the inattentive toe.
Sasha, I stand corrected. Back in Feb of 2011, a friend (Taras) and I were each holding an arm of Vladyka, steadying him as we walked from the hall to the Cathedral. If memory serves, it seems like it took us about 20 paces to walk from the Parish Hall to the little bench in the parking lot and then another 20 steps from there to the entrance of the Cathedral. Ordinarly, a man of average height walking has a gait of about 1 yard. (I’m 5’11”, Taras is 6’1″.) But we were taking slow, incremental steps because Vladyka was winded and very frail. I guess I was being too conservative.
Anyway, sorry for the tedious anecdote, but it caused me to have a fond memory. I agree with His Grace that any stories people have of Vladyka would be most welcome.
Thanks, Sasha!
Olga Day-Hanna was often referred to, correctly or not, who knows, as “the Duchess” or even the Grand Duchess, which was impossible. She had the grandest of manners, though: Tennessee Williams would have loved her. I remember one Sunday after Liturgy, sitting around in Father Dmitri’s office with George Allman and a couple others: possibly Rex Wagner or Bill Zebrun or Abe… Someone was examining a 10-inch LP of Father Hilko’s church choir singing the entire Liturgy in “Uhorsky” chant. I think it must have been Rex who asked, ‘What is ‘Uhorsky?” The Duchess sniffed and said, “My dear, those are the people of the shvamp!”
Your Grace, I pray that the new, improved title is the correct one. Forgive me for taking so long. Also, thank you for pointing out that Vladyka was not only chrismated in a church of Constantinople, but ordained in one as well.
My brain takes a while to get going. Today I remember that it was Father Elias Armstead, who was in the process of fleeing the Antiochenes and Metropolitan Philip, who asked what “Uhorsky” meant. I think, too, that Norman (Michael) Dunbar was there, as well, on leave from Fort Sill.OK.
A new announcement just went up at abpdmitri.org
Thank you
Michael Smith
St Seraphim’s Cathedral
Here is a correction to the article about ever-memorable Archbishop Dmitri which is at abpdmitri.org:
“In 1954, he was ordained to the priesthood within the Metropolia.”
No. He was ordained a Priest in the Ukrainian Orthodox Diocese of Bishop Bohdan Shpilka. Bishop Bohdan is the hierarch who ordained him. I believe the parish/mission, too, was founded as a mission of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Bishop Bohdan. Once, when I asked then Father Dimitri why he had left the canonical diocese of Bishop Bohdan (that is the Ukrainian diocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate), he said that there were rumors about the Bishop’s canonicity “at the time.”
Incidentally, Saint Innocent (OCA) Church of Tarzana, California, likewise was originally founded as a Ukrainian Orthodox mission, and was originally called “Saint Demetrius Ukrainian Orthodox Church/Mission.”
Archimandrite John Bressingham, who ended up in the Moscow exarchate, was one of the first pastors of that mission.
Archbishop Dmitri’s interest, as a young Baptist, in the Orthodox Church was piqued by a visit by him and his sister to the Dallas Greek Orthodox Church, about which they both were curious. One day, on a walk, a man on the property, maybe the Priest, invited them in to take a look. They asked him what the large sunken tank-like area was for. When the Priest told them it was for baptisms and, further, that the Greek Church baptized by immersion, they were both surprised. They realized that those who had told them that the only denomination which baptized by immersion was the Baptist one, were mistaken. So they made further inquiries to learn what else might have been ‘not quite SO,’ in their training. And so it went, and so they became, finally, Orthodox, baptized in the font of the Greek Church.
Archimandrite Hilary Madison, friend and collaborator with Abp Dmitri, were both ordained by Abp Bohdan Shpilka with the mandate to establish a Spanish-speaking parish at the Throckmorton St address, which they did, under the patronage of St Seraphim of Sarov. Fr Dmitri produced reams of liturgical translations in Spanish and Fr Hilary painted the ikons for the small church’s ikonostasis.
Since Fr Hilary was the hegoumen of my monastery and tonsured me in 1978 at the direction of Abp John Garklavs (OCA Chicago/Midwest), I had ample opportunity to learn about the founding of St Seraphim.
According to FrH, Abp Bohdan took the initiative to direct Frs D & H to apply to the ‘Metropolia’ for themselves and for the parish to be received, with his blessing and release. I know this is true because I’ve seen copies of the correspondence. There was not an issue of canonical status at the time. It’s just that AbpD thought that the mission (and the two priests) had a more realistic chance of survival if they joined an american jurisdiction.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
I don’t doubt what monk James wrote: after all, he quotes Father Hilary, whom I first contacted in 1962 when he got transferred away from Dallas, effectively ending his monastery there, to Los Angeles where he was the first Priest assigned there to serve the Sunday English Divine Liturgy, until he got transferred out of Los Angeles to go to the Midwest. I merely reported what Archbishop Dmitri told me personally at a Holy Synod meeting when i asked him how he happened to leave his bishop, Bohdan. He told me, I repeat, Monk James, that there were some rumors about Bishop Bohdan’s canonicity. Perhaps, as Monk James seems to be saying, Archbishop Dmitri didn’t realize that there was no issue of canonical status at the time, and the Greek Archdiocese was not “double-checking” Bishop Bohdan’s history.
I’m mystified that Bishop Bohdan who was under the EP at that time would call the Russian Metropolia “an american jurisdiction!” That the Russian Metropolia was more American than his own diocese, which was the most American of all the three, four, or five Ukrainian jurisdictions of those days, is a highly problematic hypothesis. I know that when I was ordained a Deacon, my old Ukrainian DP friends in Detroit expressed their happiness, but asked why I had been ordained in the Russian Church (and this was after the Metropolia’s capture of autocephaly, which was not even a dream when Frs. Dmitri and Hilary were ordained to the priesthood_.
Your Grace:
Master,Bless! I know a bit about Archbishop Bohdan from a book written in Ukrainian by the late V.Rev.Vitaly Sahaydakisvky.The book is “Pravdy Ne Bvtopyty” roughly translated,”Truth Prevails”.Fr.Vitaly had been a Confessor for the Faith,first in Poland,at the hands of the Latins and Neo-Uniates;later in Canada at the hands of those Ukrainians who supported the “self-consecrated” church formation begun in Ukraine in 1921.
Archbishop Bohdan headed a jurisdiction which was indeed under Constantinople.He was a former Greek Catholic priest who came to Orthodoxy and was made a bishop by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 1930s.As such,he was canonical.
According to Fr.Vitaly,Archbishop Bohdan had taken it upon himself to concelebrate with various uncanonical hierarchs from time to time.Another Ukrainian bishop,Pallady,coming to these shores,approached the Exarch of the Greek Archdiocese,Archbishop Michael,at the time.Archbishop Michael had studied in Russia,knew the language and could converse with Vladyka Pallady.He urged +Pallady to work with+Bohdan,but later both Archbishop Pallady and Fr.Vitaly left and another Ukrainian jurisdiction was formed,independent of +Bohdan,but still under the Ecumenical throne.
I understand that for whatever his shortcomings,Archbishop Bohdan did engage in some missionary work.There was a Finnish Orthodox mission here in Michigan which was under his omophorion and lasted until about 1966.I have yet to come accross any more substantial information about this.
Thanks, Father Andrei! I met Father Vitaly, of whom I’d heard for a very long time, in Toronto’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral on a visit there in, I think, the early nineties, when Father Nicolas Boldireff was Rector there.Father Vitaly by then was no longer serving, but only praying in the altar by then, but he was really sharp mentally. We discussed his book. I didn’t actually see the book until years later, when Father Stefan Meholick, who considered Father Vitaly to be one of his most beloved mentors spoke lovingly of him. (Father Stefan still serves in San Anselmo, CA, if you don’t know him and would like to contact him about Father Vitaly.)
Thanks for reminding me, too, of Pallady and Ihor. My first contact with Orthodox believers, though, believers whom I still venerate greatly, was with DPs from East Ukraine adhering to the so-called “self-consecrating” group, or “samosviatsy” of Ioann Teodorovich, later Mstislav Skrypnik. Didn’t Pallady and Ihor have their Manhattan cathedral on Bathgate in NYC?
Then-Father Dmitri Royster liked to relate how Bishop Bohdan, who had big vision problems, used to lay out the pages of his Euchologion covering the Holy Altar Table in rows , like a big game of “Solitaire.” As the services would progress, he would pick up the appropriate page off the Altar and hold it right up at the end of his nose to read from it; then put it down, and pick up another one, and so on.
I’ve never been able to learn much of the Ukrainian (also self-consecrated group) Bishop Volodymyr of Detroit. He had his cathedral, St. Mary’s, out on Michigan Avenue (it moved to the suburbs much later). I visited it when I was still in the service on Theophany one year. He served very well indeed,.
Another sort of Ukrainian entirely was the famed Archbishop Vsevolod! What a character! He liked to be the sole authority on anything Ukrainian, and he himself was unique; a graduate of New York’s Yeshiva (!) University, and an Adlerian pschoanalyst! (Yes! Adlerian! How do ya like them apples?)
I knew of Bohdan’s parish in Detroit, but not that it was Finnish. Thanks again!
Father Andrei writes: “here in Michigan.”
Very interesting. The rector of the Assumption Russian Orthodox Cathedral over on Hubbel off Grand River was for many years a Father Alexeev, whom I met once or twice in the sixties. Now that parish has moved out to the near suburb of Ferndale, where I grew up from age four. Originally I lived on Ferndale’s east side, but we moved over to West Lewiston in 1952, actually in the very same block on which the church re-located. It’s on Livernois, between Lewiston and Cambridge Avenues. If I still lived there, going to Church would involve just walking down to the corner!
Any connection, Father Andrei?
Your Grace:
Master,Bless! And Christ is Risen! for the Leavetaking!ActuallyYour Grace,there is a connection.I was the Rector of Assumption Cathedral from July 1990-May 2006.When I came to Michigan in 1990,the church was still on Hubbel St.The last service there was Epiphany,1992.Then we utilised the facilities of Holy Ghost Carpathorussian Church until July 1994.The Ferndale location was aquired in 1994,blessed by Archbishops Laurus and Alypy on May 21,1995.
The rector Your Grace recalls was Fr.Vladimir Travleev,who did serve in the 60’s.He was replaced by Fr.John Sokolov who served from 1968-80.I never met these two clerics.I left the Detroit area in May 2006 to serve the ROCOR parish of St.Juliana of Lazarevo in Santa Fe,NM;where my wife,Olga,reposed just after our arrival.After eight months in Santa Fe,I returned to the Detroit area in Jan 2007.I served 4 months in Holy Trinity ROCOR parish across the river in Windsor,Ontario.Since Pentecost 2008,I have been servicing Holy Ascension Serbian Orthodox Church in the downriver suburb of Ecorse.
Your Grace mentions Fr.Stephan Meholick;I do indeed know him;we were roommates at St.Tikhon’s from 1972-74,where I heard so much about Fr.Vitaly,that when I finally met him,also in Toronto in 1991,I felt as if I already knew him.Fr.Stephan is married to the niece of my late wife.
When I mentioned the Finnish mission “here in Michigan”,I meant Upper Michigan,where 1 out of every 6 “yoopers” is supposed to be of Finnish descent.There was a Fr.John Ericson(sp?),who operated out of Lansing and serviced 4 mission stations in the UP.This info,I recall from the “American Review of Eastern Orthodoxy”,but have never been able to learn anything else about it.I did study Finnish with an elderly Michigan-born Finn who had returned to Finland with his parents and wound up in the Finnish Army during the Winter War.He recalled helping to evacuate the Valaam Monastery when the Soviets returned.
Travleev, of course! My memory’s not treating me kindly these days.
Finns….our Priest in Oxnard, Fr. Paul Waisanen is of Finnish descent; however, he’s convert from the Baptists, not Lutherans. The two main Serbian parishes back in my day were called “Gracanica’ and, I think, “Lazarica”, They’ve probably moved and mutated. There’s an interesting old booklet in the Detroit Public Library about the original Assumption Church .
It was very beautiful, but I believe the Priest left a candle or a stove burning and the whole place went up in flames. Thereafter they moved to Hubbel. Father Travleev, on my first visit, pointed out to me the relatively new iconostasis they’d bought, done by an iconographer in Chili, I believe. I hope that was moved out to Livernois. Father Stephan’s wife’s sister is also a Priest’s wife, no?
Father John Sokolov was for a time in either Ann Arbor or was it Albion? Our storozh here in L.A., Ivan Dmitrich Marinin, knew him from Russia, I believe. The latter was from Novosibirsk.
Small world, and our part of it is even smaller!
Earlier, I wrote ‘There was not an issue of canonical status at the time. It’s just that AbpD thought that the mission (and the two priests) had a more realistic chance of survival if they joined an american jurisdiction.’
Please excuse my typos — I’m still not seeing very well.
What I meant was that ‘….Abp BOHDAN thought….’ which I’m sure will make much better sense.
Sigh….
Long before + Dimitri would be glorified and recognized as a saint, Fr. Schmemann would be.
Diogenes,
I have no idea who you might be, and in all honesty, it is of no particular significance to me in saying that this is as misguided a comment as I have read in recent memory. “God is wonderful in His saints” (θαυμαστὸς ὁ Θεὸς ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις αὐτοῦ)” (Ps. 67:35). And that would be all His saints, known to us and unknown. I heartily recommend you get a head-start on the Sunday of All Saints and the Sunday of All Saint of America by singing the liturgical texts you can find at the OCA website and elsewhere.
It might be of some interest to note that this verse is consistently mistranslated. It actually says ‘Wondrous is God in His sanctuary (or holy place). (PS 67:36). This error is repeated and magnified in most english-language renderings of the Divine Liturgy, where it’s supposed to be said at the Little Entrance ‘Blessed is (our) entry into Your sanctuary (holy place).’
For some reason, the psalms — perhaps because they are the mother lode of liturgical expression — are more misrepresented in translation than any other part of the scriptures.
Two other persistent errors come to mind: ‘He makes angels His messengers and flames of fire His servants (PS 103:4). And ‘The Lord is God and He has revealed Himself to us’ (PS 117:27).
These are not ‘alternative’ renderings. They are correct.
The scriptures might mean many things, depending on our methods of interpretation, but it’s certain that they say only one thing in each location. We have to get that right before we attempt anything like exegesis.
Here’s the correct text pf PS 103:4:
‘He makes spirits His messengers and flames of fire His servants.’
Earlier I wrote: ‘Two other persistent errors come to mind: ‘He makes angels His messengers and flames of fire His servants (PS 103:4). And ‘The Lord is God and He has revealed Himself to us’ (PS 117:27).’
Since I can’t see a whole line of text at one time, just fragments, it’s very difficult for me to keep my place in the text or (especially) to edit myself. Please frogive my clumsiness and remember me in your prayers.
Fr. James, what kind of computer are you using? There may be an accessibility tool on your computer that can help you. I use Windows 7, and there’s an “Ease of Access” center under Accessories where you can have it magnify the screen or read text aloud for you.
My thanks to Helga. I’m using Windows 7, too, and I magnify the screen, but it still leaves me seeing just little bits at a time. I have to laugh at this: I printed out the accessibilty manual but it came out in regular -size type. Anyway, with a couple of magnifying glasses, I was able to make a few adjustments, such as enlarging the cursor — it was maddening to find the small one.
It might be of some interest to note that I included the original Septuagint Greek text in my original comment for a specific reason, that being accuracy.
Acts 9:13: a certain disciple in Damascus named Ananias raised the issue of the evils “Saul” had conducted against the saints [τοῖς ἁγίοις] in Jerusalem
2 Cor 1:1: Paul greets “the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints [τοῖς ἁγίοις] which are in all Achaia”
Eph 1:18: Paul wishes the Ephesians to know “the riches of the glory of his (the Lord’s) inheritance in the saints [τοῖς ἁγίοις].
Phil. 1:1: Paul greets “all the saints [τοῖς ἁγίοις] in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi”
Rev. 11:18: The nations are angered that they experience wrath and judgment, while “You reward the prophets and the saints [τοῖς ἁγίοις].”
I stopped at five simple examples – and I might add, syntactically, it is far from a complex construction – and perhaps you might have gathered there is a “mother lode” more. Perhaps this is an idiomatic or “special” expression; perhaps peculiar to the writer of this Psalm. Personally, I find no evidence.
My thought, monk James, is that if there is, in fact, a legitimate mistranslation, misinterpretation, or misrepresentation on my part, you offer nothing in the way of a corrective “teaching moment” or instruction; something positive & helpful, born outside of your own opinion. For what it’s worth, I struggle to be emphatic only when I can prove it.
It was good that M. Stankovich presented the text of the Greek 70’s psalms here. As I mentioned earlier, there is only one xorrect text and one correct translation. Once we establish that, we can go on to interpretation.
The difference is that the psalms are translated from Hebrew into Greek and only then into English, and here ‘holies’ is halfway between a calque and a translation.
Biblical Hebrew adjectives form their superlative forms in constructs, so the ‘Holy of Holies’ — a hebraism meaning ‘the holiest place’ — is what (in an apocopated form) underlies PS 67:36.
Adducing texts ‘originally’ composed in Greek is helpful only when there is no Hebrew behind them, as is the case with the citations identified by M. Stankovich. As it is, the text of the gospels is largely a greek transcription of conversations and comments originally expressed in Aramaic, so there is considerable aramaic influence except (to some extent) in Luke and Acts.
For myself as a student of language and translator of greek and church-slavonic texts (among others), it began to wonder me why the Greek of the 70 was so odd, so I went to study Hebrew and had an ‘a-HA! moment’: The 70 isn’t Greek — it’s Hebrew in Greek clothing — so it takes some facility with Hebrew to understand the Greek 70.
I hope this helps to clarify things.
Doggone, I love those “Aha!” moments too! How did you know? Unfortunately, they are all too frequently wasted on simple minds like mine. I will openly confess that I barely got through the first semester of Hebrew – a new alphabet and reading from right to left? – Yikes! I was pretty much limited to determining that the matzo box said both “pareve” and “kosher.”
Fr. Schmemann said many, many times, “If we sing it, it is our theology. And if we do not sing it, it is not our theology.” Secondly, in referring Diogenes to the text of the Feast of All Saints, I later thought he just might return (and, of course, it’s never too late) and say: “Hey, M.” “Dude, you can call me Michael.” “M., did you know that the Prokimenon at the Liturgy for the Feast of All Saints is “God is wonderful in His Saints [τοῖς ἁγίοις], the God of Israel!” (Tone 4) Aha! We, meaning you and I, could well “adduce hebraisms” over Wild Turkey – though I don’t imbibe myself – while the Church joyously “sings” its theology despite and in spite of us. Wondrous, no?
Finally, a small, but essential point, monk James: I have no need to “preen” or “show off” because I have nothing to win, nothing to gain, and the truth is never about me. I have said before, I assess my ego-strength to be adequate, and I will not decompensate because I make an error. Continue this pointlessness, if you will, but I won’t bore anyone further.
If you haven’t seen this site (I hadn’t): http://kiev-orthodox.org, I found the English section to be very interesting, including:
“5 Good Reasons NOT to Visit a Monastery” by Hieromonk Jonah (Paffhausen)
Mr. M.
Thank you for posting the web site. Interesting it was written in 2004. These reasons are good today and everyday…and not just for monastery visits.
Apparently, M. Stankovich and I are on two very different wavelngths, so our signals (or at least my signals) aren’t coming through clearly. I’m going to adjust my antennas and try again here.
I’m discussing mistranslations into English –that’s all. But MS is exercised about singing the theology of orthodoxy. It’s well done in Greek and (to a slightly lesser extent) in Church Slavonic, but our english-language liturgical texts are in such a bad state that it’s almost necessary to start over from scratch.
Yet, even in Greek, it’s not a sure thing that PS 67:36 is properly understood by people singing it in the services, whether in Greece or elsewhere. That’s because it’s a very easily misunderstood text whose grammar (as MS points out) is so simple it seems to people that it can’t mean anything but the most obvious: ‘Wondrous is God in His saints.’ But that’s wrong no matter how many people think it’s right, just as wrong as ‘Blessed is the entry of Your saints….’ at the Little Entrance.
In this psalm, as in many other places, the Greek 70’s phrase ta hagia means God’s ‘sanctuary/holy place’. This is very different from the hoi hagioi of the gospels.
Notice that ta hagia is an onomatic/aitiatic neuter plural form and cannot possibly mean ‘the saints’ But the masculine onomatic hoi hagioi can mean almost anything ‘holy’ in the plural EXCEPT ‘the sanctuary/holy place. We know that this is true because of the hebrew text underlying The 70’s rendering of PS 67:36
We’ll have another howler in a few days. The Communion Hymn for Pentecost Sunday is taken from PS 142:10b , consistently mistranslated as something like ‘Your good Spirit will lead me into the land of righteousness’ while the greek text actually says ‘Your good Spirit will lead me on level ground.’ Perhaps not as lofty an idea, but that’s what the verse really means in both Greek and Hebrew, and ‘land of righteousness’ is just plain wrong.
Sometimes it seems that inertia is stronger than truth. People have their ‘comfort zone’ and they don’t want it disturbed by anything, let alone a corrected translation of our scriptures and services. Myself, I don’t suffer from that sort of inertia, and I do my best to get other people to shake it off.
MS writes:
‘Finally, a small, but essential point, monk James: I have no need to “preen” or “show off” because I have nothing to win, nothing to gain, and the truth is never about me. I have said before, I assess my ego-strength to be adequate, and I will not decompensate because I make an error. Continue this pointlessness, if you will, but I won’t bore anyone further.
If you haven’t seen this site (I hadn’t): http://kiev-orthodox.org, I found the English section to be very interesting, including:
“5 Good Reasons NOT to Visit a Monastery” by Hieromonk Jonah (Paffhausen)’
Well. MS says that it’s NOT about himself, but then describes the strength of his ego?!
There are some people who take criticism badly and correction not at all. I hope that MS isn’t one of them.
Anyway, he then describes my contributions here as an exercise in ‘pointlessness’ yet goes on to recommend a website and Met. Jonah’s excellent article. What has all THAT pointlessness to do with rendering the psalms accurately into English?
Whatever will he make of the fact that (in English, at least) we orthodox sing a badly translated version of ‘Our Father’, whose greek Urtext in Matthew says nothing about ‘daily’ bread, nothing about ‘trespasses’ and presents a few other serious problems in English. No matter how many of us sing those words, they are wrong. We have a lot of work to do.
monk James,
Do you really want to go toe-to-toe with me on what “sustaining ego-strength” means in psychiatry? “Well. MS says that it’s NOT about himself, but then describes the strength of his ego?!” Your speech betrays you, monk James (Mt. 26:73).
I get the strong sense we are on very different wavelengths, you on something like the “let’s translate Scripture Google Fast-Track.” If you study New Testament Greek (and for that matter, Church Slavonic, which is so masterfully “Greek” it seems nearly impossible to have accomplished), you find that it is “complex,” but logical, and most importantly, discernible by the agreement of gender and parts of speech. Setting aside my perception that you are addressing me as Lennie Small from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the vast majority of what you have written directly above is of no relevance nor adds to the discussion. But let’s go here as you keep raising the issue:
“Blessed is (our) entry into Your sanctuary (holy place)”
The Greek text says:
Εὐλογημένη [blessed is] [nom singular fem]
ἡ εἴσοδος [the entrance/doorway] [nom singular fem]
τῶν ἁγίων [the holy ones/saints] [gen plural masculine]
σου, Κύριε, [of Yours, Lord] [voc singular masculine]
πάντοτε· νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.
[always now and ever…]
If this were “our” entrance into “Your” sanctuary, would you not expect to see the first article plural and the second article singular? Is this a royal “our” posing as a singular? Is the celebrant blessing “virtual” holy places?. Wait! Why not consult the Greeks, for Heaven’s sake? Well, according to monk James, they are apparently too stupid as well. You have no business pontificating about these matters.
For the life of me, I cannot fathom what compelled you to insert yourself into my very simple objection to the laying of Vegas-like “odds” on who is our next “saint.” In my estimation, you have needlessly and pointlessly managed to insult many beyond me for their ignorance, but have done nothing to further insight.
You both seem to be taking the discussion personally. I think it is unfortunate, as the substantive points (ALL of them) made by both of you are enriching.
Thanks for including the substance. As for the rest, I’m sure your discerning readers will continue to take into account who woke up on the wrong side of the bed, who needs a hug, and whether various britches are sized appropriately. Just a friendly reminder for what it is worth, since I know you both have good things to contribute on a regular basis.
Thank you, Um. Hugs all around!
Um,
I greatly appreciate your “mirror” and sincerely apologize to one and all. My original point is summed up in four words: God will reveal His saints. And there I should have left it.
Many thanks to ‘Um’ for the constructive feedback. My apologies to M. Stankovich and to all for my intemperate remarks.
Oh, I provided insights, but they were aggressively ignored.
I ‘inserted (my)self’ into this thread only because M. Stankovich tried to prove his point by adducing an incorrectly translated version of PS 67:36.
I’m not at all interested in engaging M. Stankovich on matters of psychiatry, which — especially in its freudian form of psychoanalysis — is abhorrent to me. I can respect medical/pharmacological psychotherapy, but I’m fairly certain that psychoanalysis is bunk. I say this because of long experience with victims of Freud and his devotees.
Personally, I think that client-centered (rather than method-centered), eclectic, short-term, active-directive, results-oriented psychotherapy beats the pants off psychoanalysis, and is the best way to help people with the issues they bring to treatment.
Met. Anthony Bloom once famously said that a great many mental health problems could be avoided by a sincere confession early on. I agree with him.
But then, psychotherapy isn’t my bailiwick. I’m observing it from the outside, and my opinions are just that — nothing to take to the bank. I do language, not psychotherapy. It might be good for MS to stick to his specialty and not invade mine, where his opinions are clearly not those of an expert.
Rather than attempt to belittle me personally, it might be better for MS to wonder about the psalm verses I’ve adduced, or maybe even to ask what an accurate translation of ‘Our Father’ might be.
But he chose to go on with his stuck-in-first-gear mistranslations and to avoid the issues I raised, accusing me of insults I never made at the same time as he insults me.
We have to be bigger than this, better than this, and remain open to learning the real meaning of our Tradition’s texts.
Let’s not go ‘toe to toe’. Let’s go hand in hand to reclaim the texts of the authentically orthodox catholic christian Tradition and render them into good English, and start from there to fulfil our Lord’s missionary mandate.
Actually, that is the question I want to ask: what is an adequate translation of Our Father? I am interested especially in how you would translate uperousion.
I am committing myself to reclaiming “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” again to the 7th inning stretch where it belongs: “For it’s one, two, three strikes – You’re out!” monk James. Savor your victory.
Abouna Ioannes, do you mean “epiousion” from Mt. 6:11 and Lk 11:3 that in the KJV is translated “daily?”
Monk James, I like you have long considered Freudian psychoanalysis to be nothing more than a false religion. And a destructive one at that.
Mr. Michalopulos,
As I sit her (nearly 5:00 am PT), hoping the cops have delivered everyone they have to deliver this night, I am assured we have come a long, long way since Freud. Nevertheless, he articulated foundational theories that we cannot deny are true. Selectively, they are essential to our understanding and provision of treatment, recovery, healing, and health. “Psychoanalysis,” however you perceive it, is merely one aspect of Freud, and it hardly speaks to the body of his research findings, or the later findings he inspired, as a whole. We are bio-psycho-social-spiritual beings, created symphonic and synthetic, and attempts to “disrupt” this symphony proves to be disastrous. Personally, I rarely see benefit to generalizations, especially when referring to the elevation of human suffering.
Fr. Hans Jacobse says (May 24, 2012 at 8:38 pm):
‘Actually, that is the question I want to ask: what is an adequate translation of Our Father? I am interested especially in how you would translate uperousion.’
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We first must note that ‘daily’ came into the latin LITURGICAL form of ‘Our Father’ to replace the largely unintelligble word ‘supersubstantialem’ with Luke’s ‘quotidianum’. Otherwise, the latin text from Matthew remains intact. It’s that little bit of linguistic legerdemain which started all this trouble in English. I don’t know how the Church of Rome can justify this manipulation of the gospel text.
Anyway….
The greek word here is epiousion, a unique word which was found in only one other (so far) location, a hellenistic shopping list in Egypt. It has the sense of ‘necessary/essential ingredients’.
The word comprises two units of meaning: the preposition ‘on, upon, atop, over, more than’ and a form of the verb ‘be’. Some people think that the verb is ‘come’, but they are mistaken.
In the latin Vulgate, this word is calqued as supersubstantialem. A calque is a linguistic bunt. It’s what we translators do when we have no idea what a word means, and so we translate its particles into something redolent of meaning in the receptor language, but which still needs a secondary translation or at least a gloss. So St Jerome & Co. came up with what we in English would call ‘superessential’.
Because this is a hapax legomenon, we have nothing in the scriptures to which it might be compared, and we have no access to its underlying aramaic expression. And it’s of no help to consult the Peshitto, since its syriac/aramaic gospels were translated from Greek, which is as close as we can get — as of now — to the ipsissima verba.
So we must content ourselves with ‘superessential’, and try to wring some meaning out of that. I think we all get the ‘super-‘ part, so let’s think about ‘essential’.
Here we have two basic semantic fields: first,’essential’ is an adjective formed on ‘essence’ — a quality which makes something what it is, without which it could not be what it is, and might not exist at all.
Then we have the adjective itself. Something ‘essential’ is necessary for the proper composition of something well defined. So, e.g., some sort of flour and some sort of moisture are essential for bread. Raisins aren’t essential except for raisin bread.
We’re then left with two semantic fields: existence and necessity.
With a few notable exceptions (St John Chrysostom and St Symeon the New Theologian are two of them; maybe they were having a bad day when they wrote about this), the Tradition understands the arton of MT 6:11 not as table bread, but as the Bread of Life, the eucharistic Bread we receive as the Body of Christ. This is more than amply corroborated by our Lord’s instruction quoted in the 5th and 6th chapters of John’s gospel, yet there are millions of Christians who don’t believe that, either.
It would take several pages to attest each of the subtle (and some not so subtle) corrections in this version of ‘Our Father’, including capitalizations, but this is really not a good place to go into such lengthy disquisitions.
So, here it is. Please think about it kindly and forgive our ancestors for bungling it.
Our Father in Heaven,
may Your Name be kept holy.
May Your reign begin.
May Your will be done:
as in the heavens, so also on Earth.
Give us today the Bread we need,
and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And, rather than let us be put to the test,
rescue us from the Evil One.
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Thanks Monk James. Sorry for slip, I meant epiousion (writing too fast). I know some Greek but am not an expert of the language by any means but this seems to fit. Second, question, “debt” to the English ear means money you owe. Give us a paragraph of what you think it means in the context of this prayer.
I’m trying to remember when “epiousion” first raised its head in my life. Was it the recent graduate of Capital Lutheran Seminary in Columbus who discussed it ‘expertly’ in a sermon when I was in high school in the forties? Perhaps it was Dr. Harold Dittmanson at Saint Olaf Lutheran College, in the fifties? Was it on the radio, on “ABCDeep South,” on the program emanating from the “First Christian Jew Church of Gulfport in the sixties? I’m sure that at least four faculty members at SVS discussed it, and it probably was on a blue book (“Discuss the meaning of the Greek word “epiousion”, including its significance and that of the Our Father in the Eucharist”) or two, maybe in NT Greek by Doumouras or Kesich. It’s one of those de rigueur words, an absolute essential item in the attache case of anyone professing credentials in New Testament, or in Greek, or in prayers. I’m also trying to remember which edition of our old hymnals raised the most fuss by using “trespass” and “trespasses” rather than “debts” and “debtors.” (or was it the other way around?
I know there was an AWFUL outcry when someone suggested we should pronounce the “Amen” which was sung at the end of almost every chorale, with a long or a broad “A”.
I think it’s almost 50 years, half a century, since I decided that “Give us this day our daily bread” could not possibly be referring to ANYTHING BUT “the bread we need today,’ and therefore was not only esthetically more pleasing but very good at conveying the “first” stab at rendering the Aramaic, which was made by those speaking Pidgin Greek, or “koine” and what the Lord was teaching.
As well,I have yet to see a version, rendition, re-translation, whatever, of the Scriptures which does more justice to the English language than the KJV. T. S. Eliot was right on the mark when he said, “The King James Version” was composed at a time when even a COMMITTEE could produce good English!”
Somehow, in this thread, there’s also some stuff relative to the Mental, like psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology, and so on. It’s too bad none of us seems to have asked ever-memorable Archbishop Vsevolod, who was a practicing Adlerian Pschoanalyst-therapist, how he reconciled the bases of that practice with the Tradition!
No one would want to read Homer using an English version made by compiling the English text from an “interlinear” or “pony” guide; likewise, I find Monk James’s no doubt accurate and literal translation of the Greek translation to be spectacularly ugly and “off-putting.” I’m trying to imagine our Lord coming out with “And, rather than let us be put to the test, rescue us from the Evil One.” It’s not just ‘un-euphonious”…it reminds me a tone-deaf person making a stab (literally) at singing a Bach aria!
Among many other things, Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says (May 25, 2012 at 11:51 am):
Well. ‘De gustibus non est disputandum.’
I consider myself a sort of nuts-and-bolts guy when it comes to scriptural and liturgical translation. After wrestling with the text long enough and hard enough to be certain of its meaning and rendering it into English, I leave it to the poets to make the meaning sing.
In our Lord’s defense, though, I’d like to say that (at least as far as we can tell from the gospels in Greek) He spoke in very plain and straightforward words, much to the frustration of the religious establishment of His day, even if He did occasionally use metaphors and parables which weren’t immediately understood by even His closest disciples.
And — never having been a Protestant — I have no investment, emotional or esthetic or otherwise, in the Authorised (‘King James’) Version. It is what it is — a monument of literature. But if 21st-century british royalty were to commission a new translation of the Bible, I doubt that it would resemble the AV very much.
The AV was a product of its time and place, and that’s to be acknowledged. We live in a different time, and the number of places where English is spoken now far exceeds the limits of England. Now we need a translation which is contemporary with us just as much as the AV was contemporary with the British four centuries ago.
Thank you Monk James for this translation. I’ve often wondered myself what epiousion meant.
A general question: in the DOS we say (chant actually) “…and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…and deliver us from the evil one.”
Is this standard in the other dioceses of the OCA? ROCOR? AOCNA.
Although I grew up with “trespasses,” and “deliver us from evil” which is elegant when spoken, the OCA/DOS version when sung is very powerful.
“And — never having been a Protestant — I have no investment, emotional or esthetic or otherwise, in the Authorised (‘King James’) Version. It is what it is — a monument of literature.”
Why, Monk James! It’s a lot more than “a monument of literature,” and you surely know that! It has been the beloved companion and guide of AMERICAN believers since before the Revolution. In fact, as Monk James, who has concentrated so much of his life on language as such, surely knows, the overwhelming popularity of the KJV/AV in American life from the beginning, a popularity much greater than it ever achieved in England (and still maintains) is one of the bases of the development of a separate American as opposed to British English! One might call it a “foundation” of American English as such.
As never having been Protestant and therefore having “no investment, emotional or esthetic or otherwise,” in the KJV, that’s beside the point. I was raised in the German Lutheran Church and attended a Norwegian Lutheran College. That didn’t give me any particular “investment as a Protestant,” but it gave me insight into the problems of introducing AMERICAN English into ethnic congregations and the problems associated with that. The only reason I brought that experience up was to discuss the never-ending and most tiresome perorations on the Greek word “epiousion.” What in the world did idle minds busy themselves with before “epiousion” came along? Is that word the ultimate key to sanctity and discernment of the Spirit perhaps? Nowadays, though, in many places, especially among converts from western Christian faith communities, holding forth on “nous” and “phronema” seems to have put the parading of “epiousion” almost into the shade.
It’s just too bad that there are no aggressive and nationalistic speakers of Aramaic to complain about this or that expression in the Received Greek text that doesn’t really convey the richness and right doctrine embedded in “The Original.”
No one can doubt the “Americanness” of Rev. Billy Graham, and even more so his ability to communicate on a real “gut” level with Americans of all classes and stations. I remember being almost mesmerized by his extemporaneous prayer at Richard Nixon’s graveside, which was televised. How those “thees” and “thous” and “hasts” and “doths” and even “vouchsafes” rolled off his eloquent, expressive and most effective tongue!
And, if he’s too much of a specialist case, let’s turn to George W. Bush, whom no one cites as a dilettante on or connoisseur of the English language (what an idea!). He’s no stranger to “vouchsafe’ at all in his speeches. Yet some learned types like to state that the “average American” (how condescending can you get?) is “mystified” by “archaisms” and Elizabethan expressions like “vouchsafe,” etc.!
The Australian Clive James, in an essay on Czeslaw Milosz, writes, “The modern versions, done in the name of comprehension, add up to an assault on readability. Eliot said the Revised Standard Version was the work of men who did not realize they were atheists The New English Bible was worse than that: Dwight MacDonald (his hilarious review is collected in his fine book, ‘Against the American Grain”) had to give up looking for traces of majesty and and started looking for traces of literacy. Those responsible for the NEB probably did not realize they were atheists: otherwise, they could scarcely have been so determined to leave not one stone standing upon another.”
Before going on with other examples,
Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) quotes me and then says
(May 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm):
‘ “And — never having been a Protestant — I have no investment, emotional or esthetic or otherwise, in the Authorised (‘King James’) Version. It is what it is — a monument of literature.”
Why, Monk James! It’s a lot more than “a monument of literature,” and you surely know that! It has been the beloved companion and guide of AMERICAN believers since before the Revolution. In fact, as Monk James, who has concentrated so much of his life on language as such, surely knows, the overwhelming popularity of the KJV/AV in American life from the beginning, a popularity much greater than it ever achieved in England (and still maintains) is one of the bases of the development of a separate American as opposed to British English! One might call it a “foundation” of American English as such.
As never having been Protestant and therefore having “no investment, emotional or esthetic or otherwise,” in the KJV, that’s beside the point.’
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Actually, it wasn’t at all beside the point I was making. It IS the point, and Bp Tikhon more than corroborates my point, citing examples of the ‘Authorised (‘King James’) Version’s influence on English, especially protestant american English — an experience I don’t share because I’ve never used the AV for anything except in comparison with other translations.
My father sent my many siblings and me to a catholic parochial school where he thought we woiuld get a better education than in the city schools, and he was right, at least in the 1950s. I remember being taught in very early grades that the only bible we were allowed to read in English was the Douay-Rheims/Challoner translation. English-speaking Catholics were altogether forbidden to read the AV because of its errors and differences from the latin Vulgate, which was largely based on the Greek 70.
Protestants, on the other hand, used the AV almost exclusively until the ‘Revised Standard Version’ started chipping away at the AV’s predominance around 1970 — nearly a century after its first publication. Perhaps this was in reaction to concerns about understandable language raised by the abrupt shift from Latin to contemporary English in the RC liturgy beginning in the 1960s.
Since then, the RSV has been superseded in turn by the ‘New RSV’, which is far more accurate to both the hebrew and greek texts which it translates. Of course, since its ‘Old Testament’ is translated from Hebrew rather than from the Greek 70, we can most productively use only its ‘New Testament’.
The NRSV’s ‘inclusive language’ style, though, can cause exegetic problems for us Orthodox, so readers really must have some access to the original languages to be able to understand these sometimes misleading changes of grammatic gender and number. Because it can be so confusing, the OCA’s bishops will not allow the NRSV to be read publicly during the services, but it’s still a vast improvement over its predecessors, both of which made the very same sort of errors but in the opposite direction; the NRSV overcompensated for those.
In any event, I’m going to reiterate that — never having been a Protestant — I remain completely uninvested in the AV.
By the way: ‘vouchsafe’ (just like ‘ascribe’) inaccurately translates the Greek in every single one of its appearances in the OCA’s service books. Every time those words appear, they are wrong. Oh, they sound ‘biblical’ alright, but they’re wrong.
And I suppose we have the AV and Miss Hapgood to thank for all that. We don’t need that kind of help anymore, God bless us. We just have to relinquish our precious but inaccurate familiarities, shake off our inertia, and break out of our comfort zones to learn what’s actually being said in the scriptures and services, and produce corrected texts.
OK. Insofar as Monk James speaks American, as opposed to British, English, he is willy-nilly invested in the KJV.
He wrote:
“By the way: ‘vouchsafe’ (just like ‘ascribe’) inaccurately translates the Greek in every single one of its appearances in the OCA’s service books. Every time those words appear, they are wrong. Oh, they sound ‘biblical’ alright, but they’re wrong.”
I wonder if Monk James ever ran that dogmatic declaration past Vladyka Dimitri, and, if so, how Vladyka reacted to that declaration. I know Vladyka Dmitri despised the use of “ascribe” in so many exclamations popular in the OCA, but I believe he was a stout and knowledgeable defender of the use of “Vouchsafe” in his translation of the Service Book an of various services.
Otherwise, I’m all right with Monk James’s holding on to the prejudices against the KJV on which he was nurtured. If he’s “invested” in Douay, so be it!
One of the most appalling features of the RSV was its invention of a new convention into English, one which appears in no place else in the Christian tradition or in any religion whatsover: namely, the reservation of the singular second person pronoun, “thou”, and the forms that go with it, to the Divinity, to God. This was clearly an out-and-out creation of the RSV committee. Not only must they have been atheists, as T.S. Eliot deduced, but they must not have believed in Christ’s two natures, human and divine. If “thou” is to be used for God and “you” for humans, then what is one to use for Christ? Must one choose between Nestorianism and radical Monophysitism?
The abolition of “thou,” etc., was always hidden behind a squid’s ink-like defense based on the distinctions between ‘familiar” and “formal”
The very idea of special pronouns for a deity of any kind is repulsive and fantastic.
There are also those who complain that this or that expression in the KJV is obsolete and not understandable. It only takes a minute to explain what a “Talent’ or a “Cubit” or a hand’s breadth is: to point out that “meat” formerly meant just “food,” and means food in the Scriptures, while “flesh-meat” and “flesh-meats” refers to what we call meat today.
Christ Himself said, “eli, eli, lama sabachthani” which was so unintelligible to everyone that the Evangelist who recorded it had to translate it for others (and himself?).
As for the ugly “may thy reign begin”….that shows an incredibly heavy investment in the latinate language of the Norman conquerors, and a scorn for the very English “kingdom.”
Just as “house” and “home” ” and “hearth” are more close to our hearts than “domicile’ or “residence,” and “tatherly” and “motherly” are more close to our hearts that “maternal” and “paternal”, so, too, “Remember me in Thy Kingdom” hits closer to home than “remember me during your reign.”
The Priest, blessing the hot water being added to the Chalice before Communion, says,
“Blessed be the warmth of Thy saints….” and the Deacon elucidates that with “The warmth of Faith, full of the Holy Spirit.”
And at the Little Entrance, the Deacon asks the hierarch to bless the holy entrance, and the Hierarch, blessing directly toward the East and not toward any person at all, Exclaims, ‘”Blessed is the Entrance of Thy Saints…..”
Fr. Hans Jacobse says:
May 25, 2012 at 10:27 am
Thanks Monk James. Sorry for slip, I meant epiousion (writing too fast). I know some Greek but am not an expert of the language by any means but this seems to fit. Second, question, “debt” to the English ear means money you owe. Give us a paragraph of what you think it means in the context of this prayer.
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The greek word opheilEmata at MT 6:12 is properly translated ‘debts’. According to Chantraine’s ‘Etymological Dictionary of the Greek Language’ (in French) — my best source for such things — the word has a fairly transparent history of meaning.
Its main semantic fields are ‘obligation, owing, indebtedness, acknowledgement of largesse’ and so on.
Even in English, we speak of moral and ethical indebtedness, a ‘debt of gratitude; and ‘owing you one’, etc. The fact that we also speak of financial debts with the same vocabulary in no way limits the word to money.
This is especially clear in the ‘Our Father’, since it’s obvious that we can’t owe God money or any other tangible thing. We owe God our love and obedience and our very existence, a proper acknowledgement of which debt permits (in our terms) Him to promise us even more, the reward of everlasting life with Him.
Geo Michalopulos says:
May 26, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Thank you Monk James for this translation. I’ve often wondered myself what epiousion meant.
A general question: in the DOS we say (chant actually) “…and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…and deliver us from the evil one.”
Is this standard in the other dioceses of the OCA? ROCOR? AOCNA.
Although I grew up with “trespasses,” and “deliver us from evil” which is elegant when spoken, the OCA/DOS version when sung is very powerful.
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Our english-language versions are all over the map. The worst seem to emerge from Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston, whose ‘Our father’ has been uncritically accepted as normative by people who don’t see the theological problem with saying ‘Our Father in the heavens.’ It’s apparently escaped their notice that God isn’t in the sky or in space, but in everything in His omnipresent eternity.
During a conference in 2001, a small group of us went out to eat with Met. Kallistos Ware. The very question of ‘Evil One’ came up. He acknowledged that it was more correct than just ‘evil’, and humorously related that it was always obvious that some of the orthodox were present at any sort of gathering where people recited ‘Our Father’ together, since our contingent always took a couple of additional words to get to the end.
The version I provided here earlier is — meaning for meaning — accurate. I welcome any respectfully helpful suggestions for improving its diction.
George Michalopulos says:
May 25, 2012 at 6:37 am
Monk James, I like you have long considered Freudian psychoanalysis to be nothing more than a false religion. And a destructive one at that.
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I like George, too. [[;-D33
Dear Monk James,
I too grew up with the RC allergy to the KJV. I got over it. At some point I realized there were no clothes on the Emperor of the English usage I was getting in Church as a late 20th C Roman Catholic: the New American Bible and the old ICEL translation of the new Mass. Eventually I came to realize that I needn’t ever be Protestant/Anglican to “be invested” in the language of the KJV. I am invested in it simply by having English as my mother tongue. I just came across a good bit of (mostly) contemporary prose written by a man who achieved some note for his abilities in modern English, a letter to his vicar on this subject:
“Nov. 26th [1967?)
Dear Father Allen:
Have you gone stark raving mad? Aside from its introduction of a lesson and psalm from the O.T., which seem to me admirable since few people go anymore to Mattins or Evensong, the new ‘liturgy’ is appalling.
Our Church has had the singular good-fortune of having its Prayer-Book composed and its Bible translated at exactly right time, ie, late enough for the language to be intelligible to any English-speaking person of this century (any child of six can be told what ‘the quick and the dead’ means) and early enough, ie, when people still had an instinctive feeling for the formal and the ceremonious which is essential in liturgical language. This feeling has been, alas, as we all know, almost totally lost. (To identify the ceremonious with ‘the undemocratic’ is sheer contemporary cant.) The poor Roman Catholics, obliged to start from scratch, have produced an English Mass which is a cacophonous monstrosity (the German version is quite good, but German has a certain natural sonority): But why should we imitate them?
I implore you by the bowels of Christ to stick to Cranmer and King James. Preaching, of course, is another matter: there the language must be contemporary. But one of the great functions of the liturgy is to keep us in touch to the past and the dead.
And what, by the way, has happened to the altar cloths? If they have been sold to give money to the poor, I will gladly accept their disappearance: I will not accept it on any liturgical or doctrinal grounds.
With best wishes,
(signed) Wystan Auden
W. H. Auden”
Fr. Yousuf Rassam says (May 28, 2012 at 2:17 pm):
‘I too grew up with the RC allergy to the KJV. I got over it. At some point I realized there were no clothes on the Emperor of the English usage I was getting in Church as a late 20th C Roman Catholic: the New American Bible and the old ICEL translation of the new Mass. Eventually I came to realize that I needn’t ever be Protestant/Anglican to “be invested” in the language of the KJV. I am invested in it simply by having English as my mother tongue.’
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I did NOT ‘grow up with the RC allergy to the KJV’. I related only what I was told as a boy. My father sent me to a school which he thought provided a better education (and it did), but nobody was surprised that I didn’t go along with their religious views.
The fact is that we never read The Bible in class. We had age-appropriate ‘bible history’ books in each grade, but no bible, which was thought to be beyond our young comprehension.
I had NO EXPERIENCE ‘as a late 20th C Roman Catholic: the New American Bible and the old ICEL translation of the new Mass.’ I graduated high school in 1965 from a Christian Brothers academy, but I still wasn’t ‘Roman Catholic’, I learned their stuff and rejected it. I’m sorry to have disappointed the Brothers then and to disappoint Fr Yousuf now, but he and I didn’t have the same experience.
My objections to both the AV and the D-R/C versions is that their language is opaque to ordinary speakers of our contemporary English, and Auden is just one voice among many.
His opinion — and Fr Yousuf’s and Bp Tikhon’s — are esthetic and highly personal. As I mentioned earlier when I quoted the old latin proverb: ‘De gustibus non est disputandum.’
Most of our contemporary 21st-century native speakers of English feel otherwise, and prefer to hear the scriptures and the services in much more easily understood forms. No less solemn and reverent, just not out of their range.
Especially concerning accuracy in translation, in which the more antique translations of our services exhibit severe deficits, we need to be more pastorally sensitive and at the same time more aggressive in making those holy words make sense.
Many thanks to Father Yousuf for the Auden letter.
Auden is a true expert in the English language!
M onk James would have Auden’s critique of the language of the RSV to be “esthetic and highly personal.’ That is probably true, but it does not diminish from the expertise of Auden’s critique.
Monk James himself wrote this: “My objections to both the AV and the D-R/C versions is (sic) that their language is opaque to ordinary speakers of our contemporary English, and Auden is just one voice among many.”
That is a highly personal and uninformed declaration. No one can show or demonstrate [and no “expert” (self-anointed or not as such) has shown or demonstrated] that the language of the KJV and the Douay Rheims (sp?) is opaque to ordinary speakers (where are these “ordinary speakers” and who are they?) of our contemporary English?
I feel that Monk James may have become a subscriber to “the wisdom of the day” in that area. It’s merely an assumption of some types.
Auden is, indeed, though, I agree, but one voice among MANY holding to the same standards as he.
Fr Yousef, thank you for this inspiring (and not a little acid) letter from Auden! Nothing like a little Cantabrigian reproach to put the moderninsts in their place!
Geo Michalopulos says (May 29, 2012 at 7:20 pm):
‘Fr Yousef, thank you for this inspiring (and not a little acid) letter from Auden! Nothing like a little Cantabrigian reproach to put the moderninsts in their place!’
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It would be helpful to our conversation for George Michalopulos to define what he means by ‘modernists’, and to explain why he thinks that it would be good ‘to put the moderninsts in their place’.
Monk James says:
Monk James is correct. I also wanted to let him and everybody know that the American Bible Association is currently working on an English Version of the Holy Bible for Orthodox Christians using the Septuagint (LXX) and the Church’s Official Greek New testament (Patriarchal Text of 1912). However, I do not currently know the status or duration of time on its completion, but I will endeavor to find out and report back.
Peter
I’d like to be in touch with these people!
I have it on good authority that the RSV would be used as the base translation, just like the NKJV was used for the OSB and the NRSV was used for NETS. Being that I greatly enjoy the RSV w/Expanded Apocrypha, but have had to correct it from time to time, I would love to see this Modified and Orthodox RSV come to be. One can only hope and pray.
Peter Papoutsis mentions an “American Bible Association.” What is it? Is it something like the American Bible Society?
Yes. My mistake.
Good one, Diogenes! Sometimes the days are just too short! Thanks! I’ll be able to dine out on that one for a long time!
Maybe you’d like: “Long before + Dimitri would be glorified and recognized as a saint, BT would be?”
At the bowing of heads at Vespers, the Priest prays God to keep us from evil imaginations.
I have never pretended to sanctity. What an idea! Why in the world might I, as Diogenes so thoughtfully states, ever aspire to glorification or recognition as a saint at all, let alone “long before” to my former Spiritual Father and mentor, Archbishop Dmitri of blessed memory? I just Diogenes’s dogmatic pronouncement that ever-memorable Servant of God, Alexander Schmeman, a priest, would be glorified as a Saint long before Archbishop Dmitri to be hilarious, and I’m still enjoying it. I’ve found, as I previously hinted, that during a lull in any conversation, I can report what Diogenes said, and get some chuckles and even a belly-laugh or two out of my interlocutors!
Hallo You are doing good job writing this posts. I am reading Your posts for some time and i can’t wait for next. Your blog represents Your opinions, that’s what i like .
Fr. Hans Jacobse says:
May 24, 2012 at 8:38 pm
I’m wondering how it was translated into the first Slavonic bible by/under St.s Cyril and Methodius back in the 9th century? What might a ‘proper’ english translation of the Our Father from it be? Why is the first Slavonic bible so ignored when bible translations are made and discussed? After all, I think that St.s Cyril and Methodius were probably much more literate in NT Greek than anyone alive now or since the ‘Reformation’ (and probably more so than St. Jerome since he was not translating from his native language). That also makes me wonder why the Patriarchal Text of 1912 would take precedent over it for translation purposes?
Because its the Official translation of the Greek New Testament as promugated by the Ecumenical Patriarch receiving the blessing or approval of the various Orthodox hierarchs at the time. Further this Greek NT text was preserved in various Greek NT texts housed at Mt. Athos and diligently compared to all Orthodox Service Books. The Greek is the Original Language and the Slavonic is its translation. However, the Slavonic is slavishly faithful to the Greek NT text as found in our Lectionaries. Therefore, what you find in the Slavonic you will also find in the Greek Lectionaries of that given Greek NT reading.
However, as a singular biblical codex only the Official Greek NT Text of 1912 exists that takes into account the Greek NT readings as found in our Church. The Textus Receptus comes from this “Byzantine” text type family and is also a part of the “Majority” of Greek NT text readings found in all Byzantine Greek NT text-types.
What I want to make clear is that only our Lectionary readings of the Greek Old testament and Greek New Testament are the Official rendering of the Orthodox Church and NOT a given bibical codex in either the NT or OT LXX. Both the Greek NT of 1912 approved by Constandinople and the OTLXX approved by the Church of Greece had to look at various biblical codices and compare them with the preserved readings of the Church. Once the biblical codex corrisponded as much as it could, and it was not always perfect, the single Biblical codex (Both OT LXX and Greek NT of 1912) received approval.
Its our Lectionary that controls. Even when we know that the readings in the Lectionary may not be correct in rendering something in the plural that should be singular or female when it should be male, the Lectionary controls. (BTW those differences are so small and rare and well known that they are not a problem). In fact, the Apostoliki Diakonia is currently in the process of producing “Critical” editions of various service books just to clean up the few mistakes that have crept in over time.
Being that our Church has an over abundance of liturgical books and readings, especially in the Psalms (LXX), this will take and is taking time. I do not know if the Russian Orthodox Church has made any in roads in producing “critical” editions of its service books. However, I would not be surprised if it did as the Russians were much better in Biblical Studies than the Greeks.
If I have made an error or did not fully expounded on this subject I apologize.
Finally, when it comes to the Septuagint (LXX) the Church of Greece via The Zoe Brotherhood and the Apostoliki Diakonia have produced a LXX for use by the Church, and that takes into consideration many of the Church’s readings, but not all. The readings in the Lectionary for the LXX still control not in any LXX codex.
So we have Alfed Rahlf’s Septuaginta, we have Swete’s Cambridge Septuagint, which is primarily Codex Vaticanus, and we have the Church of Greece’s Ecclesiatical LXX Text. In addition, we have the various LXX codices of Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus, Theodotion, etc., etc.,
In regards to the Book of Daniel we don’t even use the LXX version of Daniel, but Theodotion’s Daniel because the Church liked Theo’s verison better.
So as you can see when it comes to the LXX it gets a little messy. Not so much with the Greek NT text of 1912, but there are small differences there as well. Quick examples: Matthee 5:47 reads: “Friends” in the Patriarchal Text instaed of “Bretheren” in the Textus Receptus. Mark 14:46(?) reads “Hail, Master (Rabbi) in the Patriarchal Text instead of “Rabbi, Rabbi” in the Textus Receptus or simply “Rabbi” in the Critical Greek NT text.
Does any of these variations affect our faith? NO! but if you want the correct readings go back to the lectionary and check it out.
Mr. Papoutsis,
I have taken a liking to the Septuagint found here, which claims to be of “the Church of Greece.” The history is written by Demetrios Constantelos and has several excellent cross-references, etc. Any thoughts?
Hello Mr. Stankovich:
I am very familiar with this site, and it is an excellent site for the Septuagint. The Text that it uses is that of the Septuagint as formulated by the Church of Greece. It was originally published by the Zoe Brotherhood, and then later published by The Apostoliki Diakonia. You can find the very same Septuagint Text here from the AD website: http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/bible/bible.asp?contents=old_testament/contents.asp&main=OldTes
Personally, I love this text of the Septuagint for two reasons: 1.) The Base Text is Alfred Rahlfs’ Septuagina, which is an excellent critical edition of the Septuagint put together by a very eminent and competent Septuagint scholar. In Fact, if you compare Rahlfs LXX text with that of the most current critical LXX texts that we have they agree almost 100% of the time. Not completely, but are very, very, very VERY close. Rahlfs’ Septuagint was also used for several portions and books of the current “New English Translation of the Septuagint” edited by Professor Albert Pietersma. See here:http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/ 2.) The Church of Greece’s LXX text really attempted to take into account all of the Church’s Lectionary readings of the LXX in our Lental Readings of the Books of Genesis, Esaias and Proverbs, as well as Exodus, The Books of Kings, etc.
Now there are some LXX Lectionary readings that suffered a little bit in transmission. The Biblical LXX text has one reading, and our lectionary another reading. for an in depth discusson of this see Archimandrite Ephrem Lash’s page here http://www.anastasis.org.uk/readLent.htm.
However, by in large, the Church of Greece’s LXX text attempted as best as it could to take our LXX lectionary readings into consideration, and to reflect them. Now, this does not mean that our Lectionary readings and the Biblical LXX readings were vastly different – Where were not! However, minor differences are noted, but are not that significant.
So I personally like this LXX text from the Church of Greece.
However…This is NOT the Septuagint Text that the Monks of Mt. Athos personally prefer. According to the preface of The Psalms According to the Seventy by Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Yes, that Monastery) the Great Moscow Edition of 1823 is the”Received LXX Text” of the Orthodox Church. The Moscow Edition is based primary, if not wholly, on Codex Alexandrinus. I have to say its a REALLY GOOD LXX text so the Monks are not wrong in liking it.
The two LXX text do contain vast differences as far as additional text, subtracted Text, etc., in several places, but do not really affect Orthodox Theology. However, what I noticed with Codex Alexnadrinus is that its more “Hebraic” as far as agreeing more with the MT than the Church of Greece’s LXX Text.
But, that’s just my two cents.
Peter
For some reason I cannot comment on the post by Monk James but in the Diocese of Midwest we use the “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And deliver us from evil.”
For me the “and deliver us from evil” makes more sense to me as we are asking God to deliver us not only from Satan and his minions (The Evil One) but also from our own fallen inclinations (disordered Passions). Hence all of these meanings are encompassed by the word Evil. I am open for correction if any see fit (perhaps even my own parish usage is not standard for the DOMW.
I would also be interested to see how it was stated in the Aramaic original. Does anyone know the Aramaic that can shed some light on this?
Rdr. Benjamin,
I was waiting for someone else to clarify a point you made but since no one has I will.
Passions are not evil. If we consider passions evil, then we have to consider human nature evil. But human nature is not evil, it is corrupted — broken actually.
Evil enters the world only when the truth is exchanged for a lie and then only when a man puts his hands in service to the lie.
Passions just are. We don’t really choose them although it is up to us whether we cultivate (feed) the passions or transform ourselves by mastering the passions through repentance.
Here, a reader shows a little bit of the ‘inertia is sometimes stronger than truth’ syndrome which I keep identifying as one of the major reasons for our (and our bishops’) not making real progress in producing english-language scriptures and service books.
We’ve (not me alone, I assure you) already well established that ‘trespasses’ and ‘daily’ and ‘lead us not into temptation’ and ‘from evil’ cannot be correct, but people are ‘used to’ those words and they don’t want to leave their ‘comfort zone’, the facts be damned.
As I wrote here (regarding epiousion) on 25 May 2012: ‘Because this is a hapax legomenon, we have nothing in the scriptures to which it might be compared, and we have no access to its underlying aramaic expression. And it’s of no help to consult the Peshitto, since its syriac/aramaic gospels were translated from Greek, which is as close as we can get — as of now — to the ipsissima verba.’
The correct translation is “evil one.” This is also theologically correct. There can be no abstract “good” or “evil.” There is a “good person,” a “bad person” or an “evil person.” It is personal. The “evil one” directly refers to satan himself and his minions. In English we say, “Be good” or “Be bad,” which we interpret as a state of being.
Mr. Michalopulos,
I was reminiscing of Vladyka Dimitri and returned here to find the progress link you had initially provided to be “404.” While your original post did say the site was “under construction,” I seem to recall something there. Is it gone gone? Likewise, your kind offer to “keep everybody posted on the progress of the construction at St Seraphim’s” seems to have gone – how shall we say – unfulfilled amidst bigger fish to fry… Does anyone have any progress updates?
Specifically – and who can account for the flow of memories – I was remembering the times when, as the Bishop of New England, Vladyka Dimitri was no longer a “guest” nor a “surprise” at SVS. One day he would be singing bass with the men’s choir for liturgy at 6:30 am, another day he would be sitting in on Fr. Meyendorff’s Church History, and another, with a cup of coffee, sharing the NY Times with three students in the Music Room waiting for lunch. And of course it was inevitable: following Vigil on Saturday night, with many people waiting for Confession, the Deacon’s door opened as a sacristan carried out a reading stand, set it off to the side, as another followed and placed upon it an icon. Several minutes pass, again the door opened, and Vladyka Dimitri walked out in his cassock, belt, and epitrachilion, carrying the hand Cross, proceeded to the reading stand, faceed everyone with a smile, and waited. Perhaps it was me, but the wait seemed extended and awkward, but finally someone got up enough nerve and approached. And as Vladyka put his arm around their shoulder, everything on earth returned to normal. How could you not thank God for experiences such as these?
Bishop Basil (Rodzianko), retired as the OCA Bishop of San Francisco and the West, devoted the final years of his life to much as he began: preaching and spiritually guiding the common Orthodox faithful. With a voice reminiscent of the angels themselves, he quietly left to live with the angels thirteen years ago today.
As an historical figure, Vladyka Basil was remarkable for beginning his ministry serving small village parishes and assisting the Red Cross during WWII – in what he referred to, jokingly in retrospect, as the terrifying “Пасха под бомба.” Later he suffered arrest, the shaving of his beard, the tearing of his cassock, and two years of imprisonment for the “catechism of children,” and was released only by the direct intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury. From London he began broadcasting on the BBC back to eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, only to suffer from his “notoriety” when his nephew was assassinated in error by an attempt to kill Vladyka. And in the same year, he unexpectedly lost his beloved wife, Maria, and as he told me, he was “devastated beyond previous suffering.” That he came to the US and served as a bishop, in retrospect, is insignificant in the context of his continued ministry, and it seems prudent to leave it. In the US, however, it is not widely know that he was, for example, a delegate to Madrid Conference – from his description, for nothing more than to “debate” with the Soviet delegation; a most amusing story of their inability to shake his “angelic demeanor” or logic!
Most importantly, It is experiencing what charcterized Vladyka the man that made him so remarkable. Who could imagine his high school classmates in Serbia were Anthony Khrapovitsky (later Metropolitan and First-Hierarch of ROCOR) and John Maximovitch (later Bishop of Shanghai, Archbishop of San Francisco, and canonized as “Blessed John”)? Or that his friends were Nikolai Velimirovich and Justin Popovich both whom we now call saints? Or whose confessor was Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh? As beloved Prof. SS Verhovskoy once noted, “It is much easier to become a saint if one surrounds himself with the Saints.”
Vladyka devoted himself to producing sermons that were broadcast daily by the Voice of America into eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It was him mission and his life to simply preach the Gospel to those who heard, but could not see. And the joy this brought him is indescribable. He once described to me that he was informed that a hard rock station was donating bandwidth to broadcast his sermons, and he wanted to meet them personally to thank them. It was an hilarious story to hear him describe the group of fellows with long hair and beards matching his that greeted him at the airport! And how wonderful the stories of those who rushed to meet him when he could again freely travel in Serbia and Russia, who simply wanted to “connect” the man with the voice they knew so intimately.
If you ever have the opportunity, see the video of the day: at the invitation of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II, Vladyka Basil brought the Holy Fire from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem in procession to the Patriarch’s Cathedral in Moscow. As the Russian secular press described this as “unimagined since before the Revolution,” the streets were crowded with faithful, and finally, fully vested and walking slowly, Vladyka Basil ascended the stairs to joyful singing and a reserved smile on the face of the Patriarch who receives him. It is truly a transcendent moment.
As with all extraordinary men, the remembrance of them is everlasting. I am grateful to God for every moment spent at the feet of His chosen. In this case, I believe at the feet of one his saints.
Memory Eternal. Venerable Bishop Basil, pray to God for us!
M. Stankovich wrote (in reference to Vladyka Basil):
“He once described to me that he was informed that a hard rock station was donating bandwidth to broadcast his sermons, and he wanted to meet them personally to thank them.”
Here is a related memory that I will always treasure. As a one-time devotee of shortwave radio, somewhere back in the early 80s, I liked to go on long walks with my dog while carrying a small shortwave receiver. On one such occasion, probably a Saturday morning, I was listening to WRNO, the “Rock of New Orleans,” as they plowed through some classic rock chestnuts on 20 meters. Near the top of the hour, they were playing, and I recall this with certainty, “Brown Sugar.” Abruptly, the music was faded out. After a moment of silence, out of the receiver comes this sonorous voice proclaiming, “Slava Isusu Christu!” I remember chills going up my spine at that exclamation. That’s all I specifically remember, not to mention all I could possibly have understood given my non-knowledge of Russian. I do know, though, that what followed was preaching in earnest.
That was in all likelihood my first-ever exposure to Vladyka Basil. I was blessed, not very long after, to travel with him on pilgrimage to the Holy Land during Holy Week and Pascha of 1985. Vladyka Basil had, and still has, quite an influence on me. I could not help but be profoundly affected by him, as he was the first “real” Bishop of the Church I ever was blessed to meet and get to know. The two weeks I spent traveling with him were transforming. I’ve never met anyone quite like him again. Memory Eternal!
Metropolitan Anthony(Khrapovitsky) was ALREADY a Metropolitan and First Hierarch of ROCOR when the future Bishop Basil was a high school student.Perhaps you meant to say that Vladyka Anthony was Vladimir Rodziankos instructor.Or perhaps you are referring to one of the three Anthonys who later became ROCOR bishops?
From the biography:
В 1925 г. мальчик поступил в 1-ю классическую Русско-сербскую гимназию в Белграде; в годы учебы он познакомился с митрополитом Антонием (Храповицким)
I assumed them to be “contemporaries” without checking the dates, and you are correct, Fr. Andrei!
Bp. Basil was a holy man. I will go that far and proclaim it. I won’t get into the tall weeds of how he was disposed of by the OCA synod. History can document that point. In many ways he was ahead of his time. He was a visionary, someone who saw the bigger picture. In short, he was loved and is still loved. To be that speaks volumes about the man.
Was he a good administrator? He was a disaster, but his heart was in the right place. His focus was on the Gospel and the application of that Gospel in real time and in the life of real people. Was he perfect? None but Christ is Perfect. Did he fully understand the “politics” of those around him? He did not, not unlike others who have been bishops in the Orthodox Church through out history.
The fact that he is still revered by so many, who touched the lives of so many, one at a time, in the most personal and spiritual way, is the witness that the Church always remembers long after their repose in the Lord.
Thank you MS for writing your proper words about Bp. Basil.
As long as I have breath, I will pray for the ever-memorable Bishop Basil. May his memory be eternal!