Happy Olive Sunday
- olive branches
I saw an interesting post today at U.S.Catholic's blog and thought I'd paste part of it ....
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"Olive Sunday" in Damascus
Sunday, April 5, 2009
By Bryan Cones
Now for something completely different from the TEL blog: Instead of the usual contrarian Cones on the church in the world, a bit of travel. Good luck has brought me to Damascus, Syria for a bit more than a week: Holy Week, if you can believe it. And I'm staying on Straight Street, the very one where the Apostle Paul got his sight back thanks to Ananias. Good old Paul was also, according to Acts, dropped from the top of Damascus Roman wall in a basket to save him from people he had disturbed by his preaching. A nice way to end the year of Paul.
For the Christians of Damascus, today is a big day: Olive Sunday! ("Palm" Sunday is of course the Roman celebration, though all the old Roman liturgical texts, for you Latin lovers, refer to olive branches, not palms. Some clever palm dealer must have got in there somehow.) ......
And now for the commentary: All those churches are fully Catholic, in full communion with Rome, though with their own (really long!) liturgies (with participation that would make choir directors green with envy), their own disciplines around the marriage of clergy (priests yes, bishops no). And I haven't even mentioned them all. In Damascus alone there are six different Eastern Catholic churches (add Syrian, Greek, and Maronite), all as ancient as the Roman (Latin) church. It's a real study in the diversity of the church--and a good corrective to our Latin focus on some externals--how we translate texts, whether our clergy are married, whether we kneel during the eucharistic prayer (they don't). Puts it all in perspective .....
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posted by crystal | 12:36 PM
8 Comments:
I have found American Catholics to be surprisingly ignorant of our Eastern brothers, often confusing them with the Eastern Orthodox Church. And they have a horrible time believing that some other liturgies can be legitimate. Perhaps this will wake a few up.
Given a not so great liturgical history at our local parish, Susannah and I are thinking of joining an Eastern Rite Church for Easter. It has been a long time since I have been to one, and I think we would enjoy it.
The information on the palm/olive difference is interesting, never heard of that before, but doesn't surprise me.
Hugs,
Mike L
Hi Mike,
I never thought of going to an Eastern Rite Church - thanks for bringing that up. I hope all is well with you and Susannah :)
There are some here in New York - maybe I'll visit them sometime over the next year. I have gone to Coptic Orthodox and an Ethiopian Orthodox service.
I certainly feel close to the Eastern Rite Catholics, as I do to the Orthodox as well.
We were fortunate enough to have an Eastern Rite priest living at our parish for a couple of years while 'his' church was built. We went to the 'dedication' of his church. Jack
Hi Liam. I've never been to any other church except Presbyterian. I'll have to look and see if any Eastern Rite Churches are here.
Jack - that sounds like a good way to get introduced to the Eastern Rite Church :)
I don't know about Eastern Rite liturgies, but Orthodox liturgies are very cool, if long and hard to understand. Lots of cool vestments and chanting and incense and processing, if you're in to that (you know I am).
I've been in a Greek Orthodox church once just to look around, not during a service - neat tesserai :)
One of my most vivid memories of the Easter Vigil service when I became a Catholic is of how beautiful the priests' vestments looked in the candlelight.
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