The Catalog of Good Deeds: Orthodoxy and Culture

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Cross processions in Russia have a vibrant history and are hugely popular. So much so that 60,000 Russians are willing to walk 100 miles to honor religious occurrences.

On holidays and special occasions, Russian believers will all suddenly empty out of the church and proceed outside, whether it’s swelteringly hot or snowing, and follow the cross and the priests... sometimes for a walk around the church, other times for hundred-mile hikes.

Cross processions are a traditional and very popular part of Russian Christianity. The tradition dates back to the Byzantine empire in 400 AD when saints organized night processions around Constantinople to help protect the city from the heretics of the day.

The clergy leads the procession with a cross, a Bible, and religious banners. Behind them, the crowd follows, singing religious hymns and sometimes carrying candles. The procession makes frequent stops to pray (and sometimes get sprayed with holy water).

Russians love the tradition. Sometimes cross processions are held to celebrate church holidays, such as Easter when the procession occurs at midnight. Everyone in the church files out and walks around the church three times, singing resurrection hymns. The empty church symbolizes the empty tomb of Christ.

Some monasteries have daily processions in the evenings. Monks walk around the perimeter of their monastery with candles. After they return to the gates of the monastery and re-enter it, the monastery is locked for the night. This procession is believed to protect the monastery from all evil and turmoil for the night.

There is another, especially popular, type of cross processions that reenacts spiritual journeys of saints or miracle-working icons. One of the most famous ones is a 92-mile walk to the place where, in 1382, the Velikoretsky miracle-working icon of St. Nicholas was found.

Though the icon itself disappeared during the 1930s and the Soviet Regime outlawed cross processions, pilgrims continued coming. Despite the danger of being harassed, arrested and some even executed, unofficially, the tradition continued throughout the entire Soviet period. In 1990, it was officially reinstated.Today, the procession mobilizes up to 60,000 people and lasts a week. Nights are spent in the fields.

Here is an excellent photo essay of one procession, captured by Russian photographer Alexei Yurenev. From the accompanying text:

“While carrying supplies to last you a week, you start walking every day at 2 or 3 a.m. and stop at 9 in the evening. Every couple hours you take short breaks with one long break in the afternoon.All you can do during those breaks is eat, sleep and change the Band-Aids on your feet. Seeing thousands of people of all ages walk beside you was empowering and an incentive to carry on.”

According to a famous Russian priest, cross processions are physical expressions of " one communal national faith and zealous prayer for help and grace.” Indeed, the immeasurable zeal of people who joyfully dedicate a week to communal, religious marches to glorify God is absolutely stunning and inspiring.

Source: http://russian-faith.com/explaining-orthodoxy/religious-marches-are-big-part-russian-christianity-n1075

In the Christian tradition of both east and west, the twelve days of Christmas refer to the period from Christmas Day to Theophany. The days leading up to Christmas were for preparation; a practice affirmed in the Orthodox tradition by the Christmas fast that runs from November 15 to Christmas day. The celebration of Christmas did not begin until the first of the twelve days.

As our culture became more commercialized, the period of celebration shifted from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. Christmas celebration increasingly conforms to the shopping cycle while the older tradition falls by the wayside. It’s an worrisome shift because as the tradition dims, the knowledge that the period of preparation imparted diminishes with it.

Our Orthodox traditions — from fasting cycles to worship –exist to teach us how to live in Christ. The traditions impart discipline. These disciplines are never an end in themselves but neither can life in Christ be sustained apart from them.

The traditions only make sense only when they have the Gospel as their reference. If we forget that these traditions are given to us to help us lay hold of Christ, then they appear to be superfluous and the disciplines they encourage us to do seem to serve no real purpose. We start to evaluate the discipline by the values of the dominant culture — by a cost-benefit calculus, rather than seeing them as ways to morally reorient ourselves towards Christ.

Instead of preparing for the birth of Christ through inward reorientation, we follow the direction of the dominant culture and skip any preparation altogether. We party instead of fast. We get caught up in the commercial energy of the season rather than wait on the Spirit of God.

It’s a dangerous path. Our culture is becoming increasingly secularized; the sacred dimension of creation is slipping from view. This loss of this sacred sensibility has grave ramifications for society that are expressed in many different ways such as the vulgarization of popular culture or the reduction of an unborn child to a commodity. If this view prevails our culture will inevitably view man as nothing more than an animal or a machine.

But man is more than an animal or a machine. The scriptures reveal man is created in the image and likeness of God, a phrase that means that man is not complete unless he partakes of God — God must be part of man’s life. This longing — this innate knowledge that man is created for God — never leaves man although a person can bury it if he so chooses.

A secularized mind is blind to the inherent holiness of life. Maintaining our traditions is one way to avoid this debilitating malady. Christmas is not just “Jesus’ birthday” (an impoverished notion heard more and more even among Orthodox faithful), but much more.

The birth of Christ and His baptism ought never to be divorced. Both events define the Christmas season. It imparts to the Christian the knowledge that Christ’s coming into the world and Christ’s sanctification of the waters makes our new life possible — a sonship by adoption accomplished through baptism.

When the link between Christmas and Theophany is broken (and by neglecting the proper preparation we break it), the cultural memory of the promise of new birth expresses itself in weakened and ultimately insufficient cultural forms. These forms function as a new tradition.

Religion is not the product of culture; religion is the source, writes philosopher Russell Kirk. “It’s from an association in a cult, abody of worshipers, that human community grows…when belief in the cult has been wretchedly enfeebled, the culture will decay swiftly. The material order restson the spiritual order.”*

Orthodox Christianity can contribute to the recovery of the moral foundation of American culture by imparting knowledge that can strengthen and deepen that foundation. It won’t happen however, if the Orthodox faithful adopt the practices of the dominant culture in place of their own tradition.

by Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse –

*Russell Kirk “Civilization with Religion” The Heritage Foundation Report (July 24, 1992).

Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2013/12/the-twelve-days-of-christmas-in-the-orthodox-tradition/

One of the things I hate about going shopping during the season of the Christmas rush is the music that is piped in over the mall sound system. I would happy with traditional renderings of the old carols, but instead, my ears are assaulted with the latest auditory atrocity, celebrating Christmas as a time of consumerism, indulgence, and fun in the snow. And often, to make matters worse, we have St. Nicholas forced to preside over all this—or, as he is described by these contemporary songs, “jolly old St. Nick”.

Some of the transformation of St. Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, into jolly ol’ St. Nick (aka “Santa Claus”) can be laid at the door of the old 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” attributed to Clement Clark Moore. It is more popularly known as the poem “Twas the Night before Christmas”. Many details from the poem have become part of the popular mythology of Santa Claus and his secret gift-giving on Christmas eve. Stockings were hung by the chimney with care, and the children were nestled all snug in their beds. St. Nicholas appeared on his miniature sleigh full of toys, pulled by his eight tiny reindeer. This St. Nick came down the chimney with a bound, the stump of a pipe held tight in his teeth, his little round belly shaking when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. Not a lot of holy reverence here; he was a right jolly old elf, and the householder laughed when he saw him, in spite of himself.

I think it is worth comparing this St. Nicholas, who lives at the North Pole, with the real one, who lives in heaven. The main contrasts are three in number.

First, the real St. Nicholas, as found in his icons, is a lot thinner. That is, he points us toward asceticism and self-denial as the prescribed path to fulfillment. The real St. Nicholas is not portrayed iconographically as having a “little round belly,” nor does he appear as “a right jolly old elf” who provokes involuntary laughter. He appears as a man of God, a hierarch in the holy Church, someone of a serene countenance who comes from much prayer and fasting. Jolly ol’ St. Nick calls his followers to eating and spending sprees, to buying more and more, even if they go into debt to pay for it, and his pre-Christmas feast day is known as “Black Friday.” St. Nicholas the wonderworker of Myra in Lycia calls his followers to take up their cross and follow Christ, and his pre-Christmas feast day is marked on December 6, in the middle of a fast. It is not characterized by a mad scramble to buy, but by worship of the living God. But some festivity is allowed at a feast: we love St. Nicholas so much that even on this fast day we are allowed fish, oil, and wine.

Secondly, the real St. Nicholas carries a Gospel, not a bag full of toys which seem to be liberally distributed whether or not one is naughty or nice. Santa Claus is rarely without his sack of loot; St. Nicholas is never without the Gospel. As a bishop, his main task was preaching and rightly defining the Word of Truth, so of course he carries that holy Book. It contains the words which are the most precious to him, and which he constantly preached to his flock in Asia Minor. As his icon shows, it is his message to us today as well. And this message of St. Nicholas is identical with that of his Lord: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Finally, the real St. Nicholas knows that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), whereas Santa Claus would have us believe that it is more blessed to receive than to give. Santa is about receiving—that is why young children do not traditionally ask each other, “What did you give others for Christmas?” but rather, “What did you get for Christmas?” Santa is the patron saint of consumerism. The authentic St. Nicholas knows that while it is important to receive graciously, almsgiving still results in receiving more grace. Obviously Christmas morning knows both giving and receiving, and parents will attest that the real fun is watching their children receive. There is good in both giving and receiving. St. Nicholas knows this and can keep the two in balance; Santa tends to forget and focus mostly on receiving.

None of the above meditations are offered in a Scrooge-like spirit. Contrasting the true St. Nicholas with the false one does not imply that “Christmas is a humbug,” as the pre-conversion Ebenezer thought. I like Christmas: the tree-decorating, hearing from long-absent friends through Christmas cards, the Christmas day turkey. I even like the gift-giving. I am not much threatened by Santa Claus; I simply don’t mistake him for St. Nicholas. That is, I think that however much (or little) we enjoy the pre-Christmas season, we must discern that there are in fact two kinds of Christmas celebrated concurrently in our culture. One is about consumerism and over-indulgence, pure and simple. Jesus has little to do with it, which is why in some places the public display of a crèche or saying “Merry Christmas” provokes opposition. The other Christmas is our own Christian feast, the commemoration (as the service book says) of “The Nativity according to the Flesh of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ.” We can partake of both, so long as we remember which one has priority. The contrast between jolly old St. Nick and the true St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia reminds us of the differences between the two Christmases.

Source: https://oca.org/reflections/fr.-lawrence-farley/the-real-st.-nicholas

The Pilgrims who came to America in 1620, brave as they were, were Christian sectarians who wanted nothing to do with the Papal Church or the Church of England. They arrived in what they considered the "Promised Land" for the sake of their free religious expression where they could live the Gospel in what they considered to be its purest form. Stripped from all the traditions of Christian Europe, they abandoned even celebrations such as Christmas, since the date of Christ's birth was not in the Bible. Unbeknownst to them, however, a feast between them and Native American tribes, whom they relied on for survival, has come down as probably America's most popular tradition.

Of course, Thanksgiving as we know it today did not originate with the Pilgrims as many suppose, though their feast is the model for it. This is one of the myths circulated about Thanksgiving that even most Americans were taught in school. Another myth of Thanksgiving is that it is traditional for Americans in the United States to have a feast on days proclaimed by U.S. Presidents as days of Thanksgiving. In fact, days of Thanksgiving in early America called for a national day of prayer and fasting, due to a lack of ecclesiastical feasts by Protestants, and not family gathering, football watching and turkey feasting and all the other good stuff associated with the holiday. (Read more here, here and here.)

Orthodox Christians in the United States are in a unique position regarding the celebration of Thanksgiving, which is our patriotic duty. Thanksgiving is no longer a time of fasting in our culture, but of feasting with family and friends, something which began to take shape after the Civil War in the 19th century and the Lincoln proclamation. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln called on all Americans to observe on the last Thursday of November a day of Thanksgiving and Praise for all the good things God has bestowed on us as individuals and as a country, and since that time every American President has followed his example to make a similar proclamation.

For those who follow the New Calendar (Revised Julian Calendar), the giant feast associated with Thanksgiving coincides with a period of 40-day fasting prior to Christmas, though it sometimes falls within the Old Calendar fasting period as well (when the fast begins on a Thursday that falls on November 28th). Generally, however, a pastoral dispensation, which was initially granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, is given by local Metropolitans and parish priests to allow the Orthodox faithful to participate in this traditional American holiday as a harvest festival, a time for families to come together and celebrate, and to offer thanks to God for all He grants to us individually, as a family and as a country. The Nativity season is usually a fairly lenient fasting time as well, especially before December 18th, so such "economia" should not be looked upon as a major violation of any canonical rule (see here). Also, as Christians, the Apostle Paul advises us to not give offense either by our fasting or our feasting, and certainly it would be odd for Orthodox Christian citizens in America to not join the rest of the country in commonly celebrating a Thanksgiving feast to the glory of God, whether it be with the traditional meats or not, after all, even many atheists celebrate some sort of Thanks on this day as well. "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). Ideally it is recommended for Orthodox to participate in the Divine Liturgy on Thanksgiving morning prior to feasting, since the Divine Eucharist is the ultimate offering of thanksgiving to God. An Akathist of Thanksgiving is also available, which can be read privately.

By John Sanidopoulos

Source: johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/11/orthodox-christians-and-thanksgiving.html

In 1932, the year of Andrei Tarkovsky's birth, Stalin declared that the Russian Orthodox Church would be wiped out within five years. Through forced closure of churches, seizure of Church property, imprisonment and execution of bishops, priests, and lay people coupled with anti-religious propaganda, the Soviet regime, since the revolution, had expended vast amounts of energy combating the “opiate of the masses”. Despite a 1927 decree in which the acting head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Sergius, declared the Church's allegiance to the Soviet Regime in an effort to mitigate persecutions, the Orthodox Church remained one of communism's main ideological adversaries. Spiritual life was seen as antithetical to materialistic communist dogma.

By 1966, the year in which Tarkovsky's epic Andrei Rublev was released, the Soviet regime had somewhat altered its position towards the Church. In 1943, after a Russian victory at Stalingrad, Stalin sanctioned the recreation of the Moscow Patriarchate, utilizing the Church as a unifying agent to bolster patriotism and national identity after a devastating war. Although persecution of the Church waxed and waned over the course of the next two decades, at the time of the release of Andrei Rublev, the Soviet regime was still willing to accept some aspects of religious life which could be used to build nationalist sentiment.

The Soviet position on art was likewise utilitarian, being summed up in this Communist Party declaration which came less than a decade after the revolution: "Cinema can and must occupy an important place in the process of cultural revolution as a medium for broad educational work and communist propaganda, the organization and education of the masses around the slogans and tasks of the Party." With the death of Stalin in 1953 came the Khrushchev “thaw”. Artists began to stray somewhat from the parameters of Socialist Realism and art created for party purposes. Still, art which did not conform to Soviet standards was not sanctioned by the state sponsored Artist's Union. Even as late as 1974 non-conformist artists faced harassment by the authorities when they had their exhibit bulldozed by the KGB for not conforming to Socialist Realism's norms. This is the climate in which Andrei Rublev was produced. A film about an Orthodox Christian saint considered the greatest of Russian iconographers for the glimpses which his artwork provides into spiritual realities.

Andrei Tarkovsky was born in Yurievets on the Volga April 4, 1932 and died in Paris on December 8, 1986. Born to the poet Arseni Tarkovsky and actress Maria Tarkovskaya. From 1951 to 1954 Tarkovsky studied Arabic at the Moscow's Institute of Oriental Languages, after which he studied geology in Siberia for a short period. In 1956 Tarkovsky entered the Soviet State Film School where he studied under director Mikhail Romm. Romm became famous for his depictions of Lenin in a three part series entitled Leniniana. For this and his other works, Romm had been awarded a total of five Stalin Prizes. Although a concept running entirely contrary to the style of Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky's teacher believed that cinema should be a “direct observation of life”.

Not much is known about the specifics of Tarkovsky's religious life. However, Tarkovsky's friend Michal Leszczylowski has said that, “Religion played an important part in Tarkovsky's life and he was always eager to meet religious people, to discuss with them problems of faith.” It is through Tarkovsky's art that we come to understand the nature of his faith more fully.

Tarkovsky understood there to be a bond between art and spirituality. "Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual." This bond between art and spirituality is typified in Tarkovsy's depiction of Andrei Rublev. Completed in 1966 yet not released in the Soviet Union until 1971 due to censorship, Andrei Rublev won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes in 1970. It is hailed by film critics as one of, if not the, greatest films of all time. Just six years before the completion of the film, the 600th birthday of Andrei Rublev was celebrated in the Soviet Union with the official backing of the authorities. Included in the celebrations was the opening of the Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Art. The widespread attention given to the memory of Rublev at this time provided an opportunity for Tarkovsky to, “engage spiritual concerns under the guise of patriotic myth-making”. Despite what seemed a ripe time, religious persecution continued, still making the production of Andrei Rublev something of a risk. The year 1962 saw the reiteration of a law denying parents the right to raise their children as believers, backed up by ideological justification. Between 1958 and 1966, the number of registered Orthodox communities in the Vladimir diocese, where much of the film was shot, decreased by 17 percent, leaving only 54 churches and monasteries. Moscow saw a decline of 19 percent during these years. Still, Tarkovsky pushed on with production.

Andrei Rublev, simply speaking, is the biographical account of the renowned iconographer of the same name. Rublev was a monk of the Trinity St. Sergius Lavra and a disciple of the monastery's founder, St. Sergius of Radonezh. Rublev is accredited with, amongst other works, the iconography of the Annunciation Cathedral in Moscow and the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir, and most famously the icon of the Holy Trinity. Rublev's style of icon painting is a departure from the more angular Byzantine style. Forms with less sharpness are used to create a softer image. The icon of the Holy Trinity is highly praised for its pure representation of Orthodox trinitarian theology. Rublev's genius comes in his presentation of the one Christian God in three hypostases, or persons. The three hypostases of the Holy Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - are depicted as equal, yet unique. Rublev's perfect placement of the three persons allows for a feeling of union between the three, all acknowledging each other, while a symbol of the eucharist, the life they have given the world, rests on a table between them. Between them also exists space in which the viewer of the icon almost seems called to enter by the position of the three persons. This space can be understood as the creative energies and love which flows between the three. It is here, in this seemingly blank yet utterly full and unified space that we can begin to penetrate the meaning of Andrei Rublev.

Robert Bird points out that the Trinity icon inspired Tarkovsky “in the film's thematic structure, in its visual composition, and also in his aspiration to give voice to a silenced culture”. It is through this inspiration of the icon that Tarkovsky comes to present the story of Andrei Rublev, living under the oppressive Mongol yoke of the first quarter of the fifteenth century. A yoke, of course, in many respects not much different from the Soviet one under which Tarkovsky lived. In this respect the film draws a parallel between Tarkovsky and Rublev in its treatment of the adversity an artist must endure while at the same time maintaining artistic integrity and producing quality art.

Tarkovsky's film lacks “clear linear narrative”, and is presented primarily through means of aesthetic impressions which the viewer must take and interpret to gain a sense of the film's overarching meaning. Tarkovsky utilizes these impressions, or images, as if they were pieces of a mosaic. When one stands too close to a mosaic the entire piece cannot be properly understood. One must stand back and view the mosaic in its entirety to see its true beauty and give it meaning. Tarkovsky's scenes present an aesthetic or feeling, not strict storyline or narrative. It is this style which enables the absence of Rublev, the protagonist, for large segments of the film. Through his impressions Tarkovsky thought it possible to capture the essence of Rublev's character and life even without his presence, just as the “emptiness” between the three persons in Rublev's Trinity icon is able to capture the essence of the Trinity.

This lack of participation from Rublev in the film is best seen in the episode entitled "The Raid". Here Tarkovsky places Rublev as, “a spectator alongside us”. It is in this segment of the film that Rublev meets with the spirit of the reposed Theophanes after the destruction of a church by the Tatars in which Rublev had completed an iconostasis. Theophanes, now dwelling with God, has no need for physical forms to lift his mind to the divine. Theophanes explains that images and words fall short of the glory of the truth and direct experience of God. These images exist to imprint men with godly impressions as a means of contact with the divine, yet they never fully succeed. It is at this point that Rublev, shaken by Theophanes' words, renounces both speech and icon painting as essentially futile endeavors.

The next episode, "Love", lacks any speech from Rublev as Tarkovsky presents us with dry, mundane, and sometimes incomprehensible characters such as the Mongols who do not speak Russian. "Love" is followed by "The Bell" in which Rublev regains his will to speak and create. The seemingly hopeless endeavor of the casting of a bell under the leadership of Boriska, a young man with little skill, comes to represent the hopes of an entire village. The bell, in fact, is cast and rings. At the ringing of the bell Rublev is found comforting Boriska who feared the bell would not ring. Boriska here serves as a representation of Rublev coming to terms with his own God-inspired talents. Boriska was fearful that his bell would not ring in the same manner Rublev feared for his failure in his depiction of divine things. We see Rublev holding Boriska near the same spot where the crucifixion scene was shot in episode two. Only now, the cross has been replaced by the resurrection which the bell serves to represent.

Andrei Rublev's lack of clear linear motion unbound by time and space can create a dizzying effect for a viewer. Yet it is the aesthetic impressions which Tarkovsky creates that bind the seemingly disjointed parts to create a truth more mysterious, and existing deeper than the parts themselves. It is this focus on beauty rather than a clear philosophical and ordered construct which I consider to be the films defining characteristic. A characteristic which, in my view, is decidedly Russian. It is a love for beauty which surpasses understanding that helped Rublev create his icon of the Holy Trinity, a true “window into heaven”, at a time when Tatar domination would seem to hinder such creativity. It is this same understanding and love of beauty which allowed Tarkovsky to create Andrei Rublev, in a period of Russian history which was dominated by those who sought to eradicate this love and replace it with cold realism and materialism. In this film Tarkovsky joins these two worlds together to present the timelessness of the creative impulse and man's yearning for truth. By not confining Rublev to iconic historical status, which linear narrative and archaic speech would have helped to do, Tarkovsky is able to create a more universal Rublev. Tarkovsky wanted, “The viewer to see Rublev with 'today's eyes',” in order to show that the human spirit can triumph under the most trying circumstances.

Source: johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/01/tarkovskys-andrei-rublev.html

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