Mulling over the August feasts

  • pennlanding_sm.jpgThe August heat is still bear­ing down heav­ily on us here in Mis­souri. But it’s pleas­ant enough in small doses, and I’ve suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion a cou­ple times to read or just sit on the porch steps, lis­ten­ing to the cicadas’ ris­ing and falling waves of metallic-sounding chat­ter. Most of the flow­ers and plants in the yard are look­ing fatigued, and some, like the exu­ber­ant Shasta daisy that springs up hope­fully every year, are burnt beyond recog­ni­tion. Even the hardy black-eyed Susans whose sunny faces I wait for every year aren’t look­ing quite as happy as they did last week. Bees and other friends have stopped vis­it­ing them now, and all the green things seem to be just doggedly going about the busi­ness of get­ting by until it’s time to close up shop.

    Because, of course, for the flora and fauna, that’s what hap­pens next. In our infi­nite wis­dom, we’ve declared Decem­ber to be the end of the year and Jan­u­ary the start of the next. But, more attuned to more ancient rhythms, the Church, in her infi­nite wis­dom, has declared August to be the end of the year and Sep­tem­ber the start of the new one. And so one fast and var­i­ous feasts pre­side over another lit­tle Lent, of sorts. And per­son­ally, it feels entirely appro­pri­ate this sum­mer.

    Lis­ten­ing to THIS pod­cast from Fr. Thomas Hopko put me wise that there is more going on in August than Trans­fig­u­ra­tion and Dor­mi­tion. There is a sort of pack­age deal of the Feasts of the Sav­ior. The month starts with another Feast of the Cross, the lengthily-titled Pro­ces­sion of the Pre­cious Wood of the Life-giving Cross of the Lord. Ortho­doxWiki explains the ori­gin of the feast:

    It became a tra­di­tion to carry the wood of the Ven­er­a­ble Cross through the streets of Con­stan­tino­ple for the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the city start­ing in the begin­ning of August. This was done because ill­nesses were more com­mon in August at that time. On the eve of the feast, it was taken out of the impe­r­ial trea­sury, and laid upon the altar of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. From this Feast until the Feast of the Dor­mi­tion of the Most Holy Theotokos, they car­ried the relic of the Cross, through­out the city in pro­ces­sion, offer­ing it to the peo­ple to venerate.

    A few days after that begin­ning comes the Feast of Trans­fig­u­ra­tion, with its bril­liance, its glory, and the bless­ing of the grapes to remind us of bet­ter times when the vint­ners would bring the first fruits of the har­vest into the church. So a por­tion of the fruit of their labor would be offered back to God, and the har­vest sea­son would begin in earnest. And the Church would look to the last great feast of the year — the Dor­mi­tion of the Theotokos.

    In the Parakl­y­sis ser­vice of chanted hymnody to the Theotokos, we sing:

    Attacks of the pas­sions dis­quiet me;
    My soul to reple­tion hath been filled with despon­dency;
    Bestill them, O Maiden, with the calm­ness
    Of thine own Son and thy God, O all-blameless one.

    Dis­eased is my body and my soul,
    Do thou make me wor­thy of divine guid­ance and thy care,
    O thou who alone art God’s Mother,
    For thou art good and the birth-giver of the Good.

    The ser­vice is full of ref­er­ences like this to sick­ness and afflic­tion of body and soul. And there is a lot of ref­er­ence, also, to the many times when appeal­ing to the Theotokos or pro­cess­ing with an icon of her over­threw the ene­mies of a city in time of attack:

    O Theotokos, we shall not cease from speak­ing of all thy mighty acts,
    All we the unwor­thy ones.
    For if thou hadst not stood to inter­cede for us,
    Who would have deliv­ered us from such numer­ous dan­gers?
    Who would have pre­served us all until now in true free­dom?
    O Lady, we shall not turn away from thee,
    For thou dost always save thy ser­vants from all man­ner of grief.

    It’s been a lit­tle hard for me to chant the ser­vice this year. I don’t know why, but I’ve got­ten very light-headed a time or two. It is a bit of a work­out to do, but I find myself want­ing to stop and won­der a lit­tle bit (which of course I don’t get to do). Or maybe I just feel like pass­ing out and falling down (which I really, really don’t get to do).

    And then at the end of the ser­vice comes a poignant song while all the peo­ple ven­er­ate the icon:

    “O ye apos­tles from afar,
    Being now gath­ered together
    Here in the vale of Geth­samane,
    Give bur­ial to my body;
    And Thou my Son and my God,
    Receive Thou my spirit.”

    It has sapped what­ever was left of my strength to sing this. And in fact, I caught a fast-moving sum­mer cold and couldn’t chant the ser­vice last Wednes­day. To be the voice of the one the Akathist calls ‘the Lady of us all’ is a lot when I feel my own lim­i­ta­tions every day.

    What a hard year it has been! Every day, fresh bad news shows up, for our house­hold, for friends and fam­ily, for oth­ers at large. Like the grow­ing things in my gar­den, there’s such a heav­i­ness on us right now, and we’re fatigued so much with it. The lit­tle Lent is almost over; the feast is in just two days. In just a month, we’ll be singing the hymns of the Feast of the Nativ­ity of the Theotokos, and that cycle of death to life that echoes through­out the Church year will begin.

    But before then, there’s one final book­end to the August feasts — the Feast of the Image Not Made By Human Hands. This unique icon — the first icon, really — was offered for view­ing on August 16. The story I’ve heard of the icon most often is HERE, but Fr. Thomas men­tions that there’s a school of thought that this icon was actu­ally what is now called the Shroud of Turin, and that only the face was shown to peo­ple, so that when the relic was stolen dur­ing the Cru­sades, no one remem­bered that the cloth showed the entire body. In any case, it was prob­a­bly another oppor­tu­nity to see some­thing that helped you get across the fin­ish line.

    That’s a good thing. It’s a good fin­ish line to cross; I hope to see bet­ter days that these ones. So best to feed my eyes and ears and soul on what the Church has to offer. Because whether the year really ends in August or Decem­ber, har­vest time is here and fall is coming.

    (Photo of Penn Land­ing, thanks to Greg and Philadelphia)

    pennlanding.jpg

    Related posts:

    1. Do you know your Ado­ra­tion from your Exaltation?
    2. The sash of the Theotokos
    3. Flow­ers for Maiden Mary
    4. Holy Mon­day
    5. Prayer request

    August 13th, 2010 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 08.13.2010

    It’s so inter­est­ing, after hav­ing grown up with the saw that there are no hol­i­days in August, that as Ortho­dox, we have such an event­ful and Holy August.
    Thank you, great thoughts on the August feasts. May they be blessed!

  • Grace

    Busy August: I know! Last year, I even cut back on choir prac­tice dur­ing the sum­mer because “there wasn’t much going on.” Hah! I won’t be doing that again.

  • C. Suzie B.

    Yowz­ers. I feel like an infant Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian when I read your entry. I hardly even know what I’m doing, it seems. I need to pay more atten­tion. Thanks for the reminder, Grace.

  • Grace

    C. Sue:
    Noooo. I’m learn­ing as I go (and fly­ing by the seat of my pants) more often than not. The pod­cast from Fr. Thomas that I men­tioned above is the first time I had heard any­thing about these August feasts being linked together, and so I passed it along. But you’re def­i­nitely an old timer, like me. Or else, we’re both young’ns in the Church, which I think I like bet­ter. :-)

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