The “holy” tablet!

 

From “Athonite Conversations”:

Geronda, is it proper for priests and chanters to use electronic devices instead of booklets during the services?

Let us be careful to remain faithful to tradition and not fall into the invention of various “clever” tricks in order to avoid holy toil, for we will suffer the same fate as Uzzah.

Who was he?

As the Old Testament mentions (1 Chronicles 13:7), he was the one who, in order to relieve himself and the other priests from the burden of carrying the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders, as the law prescribed, proposed that oxen pull it on a cart.

But very shortly afterward, he was the one who, by touching the Ark containing the commandments, died instantly and his life was cut off.

They told me that some priests, instead of booklets, have these cell phones and—what do they call them again?—tablets, and they even place them on the Holy Altar. They say it's more convenient.

But my blessed one, if during the Liturgy you accidentally press another button, do you know what will appear? All of Hades. And then, when that gadget breaks down, what will you do with it? Will you burn it in the furnace?

In a church in Northern Greece, I was told that last year during Holy Week the service was interrupted because the chanter didn’t have data on his phone and thus couldn’t see what he was to chant.

And besides, with chanters relying on such crutches, they’ll eventually forget the typikon and won’t even be able to perform a single Vespers on their own.

And what shall we say in defense, I wonder, to all those old monks who considered their sweat to be myrrh as they built stone benches in the heat of noon to subdue the inner man, and struck the stones with pickaxes, making cobbled paths so that we might have them today and walk comfortably?

Let us therefore leave behind all these “clever tricks” and let us love the blessed toil and sweat of Orthodox asceticism, for within it is found all the sweetness and paradise of Divine love.

 

Greek source:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820120250/http://yiorgosthalassis.blogspot.com/2018/08/blog-post_737.html