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First Steps into Orthodoxy
- Thread starter Teedub
- Start date
The liturgy is a supernatural, mysterious event that transcends language. We don't need to try to understand everything, which is impossible anyway. The point is for us to be there, repent, humble ourselves, point toward God together as the priest leads us in prayer, and to commune with God through the Holy Sacrement. We are there to worship God and the whole act is beyond words yet we can fully participate and glimpse the purpose of it all.
I go to a Greek church. Parts of the liturgy are done in a more ancient form of Greek and even some of the Greek people don't always grasp the words/meaning completely. I have a book that has the English phonetics for the liturgy and I've made sure to memorize some of the chants in Greek. I like this because it feels like a 'secret' and it puts my mind in a lofty state.
Sometimes I just put the book down and soak everything in. It's not hard to intuitively understand what's happening especially after going over and over. And the beauty is, I could step into a liturgy anywhere on earth now and know what's going on.
I don't see why you can't do the same with church Slavonic.
As an ancecdotal testament to this, there's a deaf guy that comes to every liturgy at our church. Think about that.
He hardly ever knows what the priest is saying, what the choir is chanting, or where we are in the liturgy, yet he is still able to participate.
All of us can do this. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
He also sits with us at every coffee hour, yet he is unable to hear us. He can still commune with the parishioners. Just being there and paying respects is enough.
Even if you cannot speak their language, your presence among the people regularly will still grant you acceptance. I'm sure some of them speak a little English anyway.
I pray this will encourage you on your journey to the Truth. God bless.
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I'm going back to England for Christmas and have managed to find a good orthodox church near my hometown. I've spoken to the Father there and explained my situation re: where I live and the language difficulties - but that I may want to become a catechumen - and he said he might have some ideas. First steps first, the day after I land I'll be going to the liturgy - in English 
Attended the English litugy yesterday as discussed above, was great! Very friendly congregation and very full house. The priest mentioned that they've been seeing a lot of growth in the past year or so mainly made up of young men. We pontificated on the possible reasons, but I played semi-dumb in regards to the overlap with the online dissident right (as in, I didn't mention it). Now it's up to me to decide whether to become a catechumen under his guidance, in coordination with the church where I live in Europe. I'm very happy with the path discussed, and excited about what lies ahead. 
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Please if you can, find a prayer book or pamphlet that has the text of the Divine Liturgy in English. Even better if you can get a version that has "local language" and "English" side by side. I've attended quite a few Slavonic liturgies and having the prayer book with the English words helped tremendously.
The "Jordanville prayer book" is a good all-around prayer book and it has the English divine liturgy text.
I'm getting enrolled as a catechumen tomorrow into the Antiochian Orthodox church. I'm very excited about the journey to come.Attended the English litugy yesterday as discussed above, was great! Very friendly congregation and very full house. The priest mentioned that they've been seeing a lot of growth in the past year or so mainly made up of young men. We pontificated on the possible reasons, but I played semi-dumb in regards to the overlap with the online dissident right (as in, I didn't mention it). Now it's up to me to decide whether to become a catechumen under his guidance, in coordination with the church where I live in Europe. I'm very happy with the path discussed, and excited about what lies ahead.
Glory to God!
Very happy to hear it brother, welcome home.
It can be hard to follow if you don't understand the Liturgy. But it is also important to know that the grace present is not dependent on your understanding the words. Its a great idea to find the text of the Liturgy to follow along with. Also if not, or if reading along doesn't do it. Just pray internally "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me" and you might find that God will grant you a glimpse at what is really happening during the Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is the deepest and most profound thing we have. Its entirely plausible to understand the words completely and not get this, whilst conversely it is entirely plausible to not understand and to immerse oneself in this.
I have this book. It's Chuch Slavonic - English. It contains not just verbal translations, but descriptions of what's physically going on in front so that you don't get lost.
I found it at the Jordanville bookstore here: https://bookstore.jordanville.org/9780884654841, but it doesn't have any photos inside the book. Can you post some photos of the inside, so we get an idea, please? I've been looking for one with Slavonic-English instead of the just Slavonic or with the local language where I live, but English would be more meaningful to me.
I have the same book as well as the "Prayer Book" (by ROCOR Jordanville).
As a suggestion, there is an old "The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom" (aka "Service Book") in PDF format. Even though the cover is different - book was published in 1900 - the "Service Book" is almost exactly like the same today when viewing the English-Slavonic parallel text book (i.e., same font type, colors, etc.).
Edit. This one is an example of English-Russian parallel text.
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Is the Slavonic inside printed in the old style like on the cover, or in modern Russian Cyrillic characters? Because the former is a slog to read unless you're clergy.
I have this book. It's Chuch Slavonic - English. It contains not just verbal translations, but descriptions of what's physically going on in front so that you don't get lost.
Heh, that's a really good point. I've been struggling with Slavonic for a long time simply because of the font differences. Simply taking a look at the Slavonic <-> modern Cyrillic chart on websites like Wikipedia helps a lot.