Reflections on the Western Rite

by Diakonissa [now Presbytera] Mary Zubricky

In recent years, much has been said by proponents of the Western Rite about the advantage of such a liturgical tradition for westerners wishing to convert to the Orthodox Church. Though I am of Slavic origin (and ultimately of Greek Catholic ancestry), as is my husband, I am a convert from Roman Catholicism. As such, I would like to offer some reflections on the Western Rite from a perspective different than that of most advocates of a Western Rite Orthodoxy.

My family and I first encountered Orthodoxy at the St. Gregory Palamas Monastery [in Etna, CA], which my husband now serves as a Deacon, about fourteen years ago. I still remember vividly the first Liturgy which we attended. We were overwhelmed, as we are still today, by the beauty and profundity of Orthodox worship. After Liturgy, we invited the Abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite (now Bishop) Chrysostomos and two of the Fathers, as well as several lay people, to our home for a meal. We talked for hours, and by the end of the day I knew in my heart that we would become Orthodox.

Our conversion to Orthodoxy—let alone to the persecution and prejudice invited by a commitment to the traditionalist or Old Calendar movement—was not easy. We had to learn much and we had to endure much, both in the reactions of our families and in adjusting ourselves to a religion which demands the whole of a person in its worship and in its spiritual life generally. Yet, looking back, if I had been offered a choice between traditional Eastern Orthodox practice and the compromise of a Western Rite, I have no doubt that I would have chosen the traditional Eastern path.

Why is this so? Webster's Dictionary defines the term "convert" as follows: "To turn round, to turn toward; to change from one religion, doctrine, opinion, course or action to another." After some months of study and questioning, I became firmly convinced that the Orthodox Church was the true Church, the historical Church, knowing, too, that She had produced a huge number of Saints: holy men and women who had attained sanctity through traditional Orthodox practice. It was to that traditional practice that I was converted, turning from Latin Christianity to its source, Orthodoxy. I thus never for a moment questioned the Church's fasting rules, the efficacy of which has been demonstrated for centuries by the Church's Saints. Nor did I question the Church's Liturgies, especially the most common, that of St. John Chrysostomos, which was appointed centuries ago by the Church and which has sanctified untold millions of the Faithful. In converting to Orthodoxy, I turned to its fullness, its entirety. And in the ensuing years, I have developed a deeper love for traditional services and have learned more and have grown steadily in an understanding of the profundity of things that I once thought less significant than they actually are.

The various Western Rites, we are often told, are ancient. This is true. In the early Church, there was a diversity of services: a diversity that succumbed to the unifying force of the spiritual integrity of Orthodox tradition. The Western Rites that exist today, however, are reconstructed from remnants of ancient local Liturgies that fell into disuse in the face of the unifying Holy Tradition of universal Orthodoxy. It seems to me that the efforts of inexperienced converts to Orthodoxy to revive, from fragments of Liturgies that were for the greater part never elements of universal tradition, services that suit their particular tastes are, however well intentioned, reflective of a misunderstanding of what it means to be truly Orthodox.

In some sense, the incorporation of Western practice, even in its ancient form, into contemporary Orthodoxy as a means for converting westerners is to produce "semi-converts," indeed to impede conversion all together in some cases. If the Orthodox Church is the true Church, then we must embrace it in its fullness, accepting its living traditions and setting aside the perhaps valid, but dead, traditions of an Orthodox West that has, lamentably enough, passed away. We must embrace even that which seems foreign to Western culture, since in so doing we exercise that humility by which what is spiritually "foreign" is made familiar and natural. By adding a little of this and a little of that to Orthodoxy, we run the risk of creating something which is not organically Orthodox at all. Indeed, where is the universality of Orthodoxy if certain groups want to pick and choose what they think is preferable Orthodox practice?

I certainly do not claim that the West does not have an Orthodox past or that the now-defunct Liturgies of the Orthodox West were not valid forms of worship. This is not my point. I am simply stating, as a convert to Orthodoxy from Western Christianity, that by following the wholeness of the Church's traditions, one makes himself more open to Grace, which God, in His infinite love and mercy, will pour out in abundance upon those who make even the slightest effort. Within the spiritual wholeness of Holy Tradition that prompts Grace, there is an established form of worship which we would do well to embrace without question and with willing compliance.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. 11 (1994), No. 4, pp. 11-12.