Several years ago, while visiting with the late Dom James Deschene of thrice-blessed memory, sometime Abbot of the Monastery of Christ the Savior (ROCOR), I was introduced to a prayer that caught my attention and which I copied down and brought back here to Ladyminster. I edited the original somewhat and added it to the intercessions that we pray after the Office of Sext on Thursdays. Recently, I edited it again to shorten and “tighten it up,” and we continue to pray it every Thursday.
Grant we beseech thee, O Lord Jesus Christ: that the witness and intercession of thy Saints Tikhon, Gorazd, and John, may inspire in thy people a renewed love for the beauty of holiness as thou hast revealed it through the ancient Latin Fathers and Saints. This we ask, O Lord, of thy generous mercy: who with the Father and the Holy Ghost, livest and reignest, one God, ever world without end. Amen.
I think it is important that we remember to ask our Lord’s blessings upon the resurgent liturgical heritage of the ancient and God-inspired liturgical tradition of Old Rome. But we should also remember that a liturgical rite is more than just its texts, ceremonies, or music. It is, in a very real sense, a way of life in which Apostolic tradition baptizes and merges with the cultural heritage of its recipients.
As Western faithful endeavor to recover and live according to the beauty of holiness as it existed before the severance of communion became complete, we bear witness to the authentic catholicity of the Church, no less than the great Eastern traditions that developed in their unique cultural environments.
Uniformity is a late development and is antithetical to the ancient tradition of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Even within our great Eastern Tradition, there is variance of customs and observances. The traditional “Rite of Saint Gregory” is not foreign to Orthodoxy, in which it developed and to which it belongs as an integral jewel in the great treasury of the Holy Church, which needed only to be dusted off by the breath of the Spirit, polished by the use of the Church, and actualized in the lives of the descendants of the spiritual disciples of Ss. Peter and Paul, and thus of our Antiochian Patriarchate.
The impulse towards recovery of our Western Orthodox Heritage, shorn of the unfortunate developments that separated the Western Patriarchate from those of the East, has been building for centuries. Its realization has not been easy, but the impulse has persisted. I dare say that this persistence in the face of misunderstanding, misguided attempts, and downright bigotry, is a sign that it is God’s will that the Church again proclaim him and witness to the Gospel as it did in ancient times, through a multiplicity of cultural, literary, and artistic expressions. For this to happen, we need to pray, sacrifice, and seek the prayers and assistance of sainted, prudent, modern Bishops who believed that Orthodoxy cannot be narrowly identified with one culture, no matter how venerable.
Abbot Theodore of Ladyminster