GREAT WEDNESDAY - GATHERING THE SCATTERED

It is usual to want to return to one’s own home parish for Holy week and Easter, to spend the Holy Days in the bosom of one’s family. This is always very obvious in a place like Oxford where there is a great deal of movement in both directions within Orthodox parishes during Holy Week; those who study and work in Oxford depart for home, while others who had once found their church home in Oxford return here once again.

There was an element of this migration within the St Nicholas Parish, but in our case it affected not just the worshippers but the church requisites too. Without a permanent home of our own and with only limited storage space at St Giles’ Hall where we hold our weekend services, many church furnishings have been ‘scattered abroad’: to attics, garages and garden sheds of many willing parishioners. Now all of these disparate articles needed to be brought together and installed in our parish’s temporary Holy Week base; the Roman Catholic Church of Holy Rood in Abingdon Road.

Which is why for us the end of Lent on Great Wednesday was marked not only by the last recitation of the Prayer of St Ephraim, but also by the arrival of the hired transit van at Fr Stephen’s home ready to be loaded with much of that home’s contents. We knew then that Holy Week had begun in earnest.

It was, at first, daunting to arrive at Holy Rood and see the task at hand. The church’s architecture is creative, the space is airy and the acoustics are excellent (more of that later), but there was no escaping from the fact that the place lacked intimacy. We set about creating intimacy in the way the Orthodox do best, by erecting screens and barriers and thus delineating and defining our worship space. The effect was strikingly pleasing, though I could not help noticing that Holy Rood’s priest-in-charge who had wandered in to look what we were doing to his church seemed more struck than pleased. No matter...

As darkness fell, and the Sacrament of Anointing started, our initial misgivings disappeared. We no longer saw the pews pushed to the sides, the cumbersome organ on the north side and the somewhat startling (and enormous) bronze image of Christ on the eastern wall. I looked at the icon of the Mother of God on the iconostasis, and found myself saying the verse from matins in Lent, Standing in the temple of thy glory, we think ourselves in heaven, O Mother of God. And so we did.

GREAT THURSDAY - ‘REMOVE THE OBSTACLES'

The vesperal Liturgy on Great Thursday began at 9.30 am. The weather had turned and it was both cold and raining. Our adopted church was normally heated by hot air blowers which, although a speedy and effective method of heating up a large space had a number of drawbacks. In the first place, the initial launch of the blowers produced a sudden and noisy ‘gush’ which both drowned out the four paramias which were being read and blew out all the lamps and candles. Secondly, when the circulating hot air quickly made the church unbearably stifling and the heating was turned off just before the Gospel, the church cooled down all too rapidly. Indeed, it is a testimony to the general ineffectiveness of this type of heating system that I was unable to feel my feet and left hand (the right one was being exercised by making the sign of the cross) by the time the first ‘At Thy Mystical Supper’ was being sung.

After the Liturgy, Fr Stephen preached a short homily, calling all to remember the source of our unity as Orthodox which is found in the One Cup and the One Bread of the Holy Eucharist. It was particularly fitting then, continued Fr Stephen, that representatives of different Orthodox jurisdictions should affirm their unity in this way today. He then greeted Metropolitan Kallistos on behalf of the parish and invited him to offer the cross for veneration to the congregation so that they too could greet him face to face.

When the service was over, the most active members of the parish divided themselves into two working parties. The first party busied itself in the back room, trying to work out a way of plugging no fewer than two electrical appliances (a coffee percolator and a kettle) in a room clearly designed to preclude such extravagances. In particular, the single remote socket was strategically positioned in such a way as to render it inaccessible to any electrical appliance with a flex shorter than three metres when such an appliance is placed on any of the four tables in the room. I can be exact about the length, because the situation was only resolved on the production of a three-metre extension lead with a multi-plug.

The second group’s work was confined to the church and concerned itself with tasks which could be easily interrupted in the event that the first group was suddenly successful in producing a quantity of hot drinks.

While these were still forthcoming, we moved the crucifix into the middle of the church, placing it on a home-made amvon for greater visibility and arranged the candle-stands on either side. Then, as there was still no sign of either tea or coffee, we had a fruitful discussion about the best place to position the choir.

The aforementioned and much-praised acoustics at Holy Rood had an unexpected quirk; whilst the sound of singing rose up spectacularly and resounded brightly throughout the church; the sound of reading or chanting seemed to disappear into a notional black hole and was never heard again. As there was to be plenty of both reading and chanting in the next couple of days, it was imperative to find a right place for the choir and the clergy.

In the end, just moving the choir away from the lower-ceilinged Blessed Sacrament Chapel on the south side made all the difference, with the added benefit of allowing any of those at the back who needed to come forward in order to read, to do so without having to scale two rows of pews. I suddenly recalled the reading from Isaiah earlier in the week, ‘Remove the obstacles out of the way of My people’. I privately wished we could remove some more...

In the evening, we all gathered around the Cross of Christ to hear the twelve passion gospels. It was my first experience of attending this service with a just a single priest reading all of the Gospels, and I wondered how easy it would be to maintain concentration in the face of possible monotony of voice and manner. In fact the reverse was true; I found that ― for me at least — there were fewer distractions in following a single reader, fewer idle thoughts about the perceived differences in tempo and style, and this concentrated the mind on the content more immediately than ever before. In any case, there was some variety in the language, inasmuch as three of the Gospels were read in languages other than English; two in Church Slavonic and one in Greek.

Also, although this is not a custom of the Russian Church, our parish had a particular reason to follow the so-called ‘Patmos tradition’ which prescribes the deacon to read the twelfth Passion Gospel. As a deacon, Fr Stephen invariably fulfilled this tradition himself at the insistence of Bishop Kallistos (once described light-heartedly as ‘the most famous export from Patmos since St John the Theologian’) and it was significant for us to hear Deacon Matthew continue this custom in our own parish.

GREAT AND HOLY FRIDAY — LIFE IS LAID IN THE TOMB

The day began prosaically at the florist shop in Headington where the order for our Holy Week and Easter flowers had been placed. As I collected our box, I could see that our £130 bought a smaller quantity of flowers compared to last year, and that we would have to employ a degree of ingenuity to ensure these flowers would be sufficient for our needs both on Good Friday and Easter. Fortunately we were able to do so. Earlier in the year some friends donated a large icon of the resurrection to our parish which, on closer examination, turned out to be almost exactly the same size as the parish platschanitsa (the Winding Sheet). It occurred to us then, that the floral frame (ingeniously constructed out of cable trucking and filled with florist oasis) which is placed atop the Tomb could also be used to decorate the resurrection icon.

Anticipating myself, I have to say that this proved to so effective that we nearly became victims of our own success. Fr Stephen, summoned to admire our beautifully adorned resurrection icon which we had carefully placed on a large and sturdy analoy (in fact a temporarily-requisitioned choir desk), exclaimed, 'This is lovely! We must have this icon in the Paschal procession!’

Then he went back into the sanctuary. As for us, we spent the rest of the Great Saturday afternoon devising a fool-proof way whereby a heavy frame, already slightly buckling under the weight of wet oasis and £100-worth of flowers could somehow remain attached to an equally heavy (and slippery) icon while being carried by two tired men in the middle of the night. By trial and error, a solution was found. A large quantity of chicken wire literally underpinned our engineering efforts and provided the necessary grip when flowers and fingers became dangerously slippery.

All this, of course, came much later. For now, we sat quietly in the back room of Holy Rood, listening to the whirring of the heaters and prepared the flowers and the crown for the platschanitsa and the wreath for the cross.

As it was a normal working day, very few people were around until the beginning of the service at 2.30. Individual people were arriving for confessions in the church, but there was no pre-service ’working party’, no ‘helping’ children (most were kept in school until lunchtime) and no food. This was in contrast to last year’s Good Friday, for example, which was a bank holiday. Although the fellowship between busy parishioners preparing for services can produce a wonderfully special atmosphere in Holy Week, in my opinion, this can all too frequently, turn into a generalised parish party, which is not really conducive to concentrating on the Passion services that follow on.

Still, it was heartening to see the congregation arrive in time for the service, everyone making a special effort to be there in good time; young and old – children in school uniform and people in business suits, some coming from a considerable distance away to spend Good Friday with us. Surveying the scene with me, two small children were conferring in stage whisper:
‘Why do they call it Good Friday?’ the little girl asked.
‘Because we don’t have to go to school’, her brother replied.

I thought then that, mutatis mutandis, this was not that dissimilar from the idea expressed in the words, ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence... and let it take no thought for any earthly thing’ sung on Holy Saturday.

The Good Friday services, the vespers and the matins proceeded in the accustomed manner. In vespers, we listened to the Gospel account of the taking down of the Lord’s body from the Cross, and we watched Deacon Matthew remove the Corpus from our Golgotha, cover it with a cloth and carry it into the sanctuary. The empty Cross formed a stark backdrop to the still-empty tomb in front of it. In a few minutes, the beautiful icon of the Winding Sheet of Christ would be carried out from the sanctuary, and, accompanied by some of the most hauntingly poignant hymns of Church’s year, laid upon the prepared tomb with all solemnity. Until then, the bereft Cross and the expectant Tomb stood as a striking illustration of the cost behind these solemnities, - the life of Him who was taken down from the one and laid in the other. On our knees and with lighted candles in our hands, we were once again witnessing the three deceptively simple acts, performed by St Joseph of Arimathea who in the words of the hymn continuously sung by the choir,

‘took the most pure Body from the tree, wrapped it in clean linen.[...] and laid it in a new tomb’.

We re-entered the Church in a different spirit, morally prepared — indeed expecting — to hear something new and different from what we had been hearing for the last few days. And then, immediately, like a torrent that could no longer be contained, all the hymns, verses and readings began to proclaim one relentless message, the message of arising. This message fluttered brightly and boldly through the prokimena, the Old and the New Testament Lessons. Then the pace slowed down, and the Gospel Lesson, with its unmistakable but as yet unrealised promise of the resurrection was read out. But the word was out, now we knew for sure.

The night passed quickly. Some of us went to venerate the Epitaphion at the Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation, to listen and to read the Gospels there or elsewhere. These were the last few hours of the old order.

HOLY SATURDAY AND PASCHA — 'WHAT SONG AT THY DEPARTURE SHALL I SING?'

In the morning of Great Saturday, the pace quickened again. I have always thought C.S. Lewis illustrated this perfectly by his depiction of the relentless spring, bursting forth and systematically enveloping the winter-bound Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The resurrection message was now unstoppable.

The vesperal Liturgy was preceded by the reception into the Orthodox Church of Mark Walker, husband of Natalia and a much-valued helper in the parish, whose catechumenate was of a decidedly practical nature and routinely included such tasks as the assembly of a complete iconostasis.

The vespers and the Divine Liturgy followed on, and with them, the change of the liturgical colours from black to white. This customary change seemed to give the large, but somewhat tired congregation an injection of strength, and even the children, some of whom had been asleep on pews since the reading of the first prophecy suddenly awoke.

'Is it Easter now, Mummy?', a child was heard asking.

The answer was all around us.

And then, all to quickly, the Liturgy was over, and with it, the feeling of time standing still to enable us, truthfully, to identify events which occurred millennia ago as having happened 'today' Instead, Fr Stephen was making detailed announcements about arrangements beyond today. His appeal for volunteers to help with ‘the immense job’ of packing away and clearing up reminded us, that all too soon — indeed in only a few hours though it hardly seemed possible — all these precious accouterments (for want of a better word) would have to be 'packed away' and 'cleared up', in preparation to handing over this borrowed church back to its owners. Immediately, I could hear Joseph’s lament from Good Friday again, With what hands shall I touch Thy most pure body? What song at Thy departure shall I sing to Thee? It did not seem possible.

And the 'borrowed church', despite its many shortcomings: the cavernous space, the jumble of pews, the ubiquitous but aesthetically-challenging statue of Christ on the East wall (which one young parishioner seriously believed to be Darth Vader!) had become in our eyes lovelier than we had ever thought possible, simply by the virtue of being a home for us during these Holy Days.

But then I reproached myself for this sentimentality and went to find some work for idle hands and mind. And, in all truth, none of the work on Great Saturday had anything to do with 'packing up' or 'winding down'. On the contrary, there was a great deal of 'un-winding' on the forecourt of Holy Rood on that lovely sunny afternoon, both literal and metaphoric. I had already mentioned the complicated adjustments needed to be made to our floral frame in order to house the resurrection icon. Similar refinements were also needed for the four flower garlands which were to adorn the iconostasis. The garland was ingeniously composed of interconnecting blocks of florist oasis which could be clipped to any length. However ingenious, they could not defy the laws of nature, and a steady trickle of water emanated from the saturated oasis blocks. The solution was simple, as is always the case in nature; we hung the flowers on a washing line and let them drip dry. Some of Holy Rood’s own Catholic parishioners came by and could not hide their bewilderment at what was happening outside. They stood for some minutes in front of our floral washing line, before daring to ask what it was. I believe our answer confused them further, but, when we added nonchalantly that we were, of course, 'preparing for Easter', our inquirers suddenly lost all interest, got into their car and drove away. at speed.

It was just as well that they did not venture inside. There, Fr Stephen seemed to have forgotten his strict admonitions to us to bear in mind that our stay was nearing its end and to 'keep things simple', and had brought in three more boxes of Paschal requisites which he and a team of helpers were now busily cleaning, polishing and ironing. The atmosphere was joyfully industrious, but, as I watched our parishioners move purposefully around the building, I was struck by the unmistakably proprietorial air which we had managed to cultivate after only a four days' stay. The truth was, that with the iconostasis and all our 'special things' in place, it just felt like home, but I was glad that neither Fr Paul, the priest-in-charge of Holy Rood, nor his parishioners had to witness the familiar ease with which we moved around their church.

Finally, as the afternoon became early evening, the church was ready and we prepared to leave.

By ten o’clock at night, we were all back and the church was, if not exactly full, certainly very busy indeed. The Oxford Mail photographer sent to us to cover the 'Russian Easter' counted in excess of two hundred people and, yet, were we to remove all of the pews, the church could have easily accommodated the same number of people again.

But what the church lacked in intimacy it made up for in acoustics. The first, the softest of the three ‘Thy resurrection, O Christ our Saviour’ was powerfully clear and already seemed to fill this cavernous building. Further, louder repeats bounced off the walls and ceiling in a way that ‘sent shivers down your spine’, as somebody remarked later.

The Paschal procession filed out into the clear Oxford night and wound its way around the church forecourt. The last people had just managed to leave the church, before the front doors had to be shut, as, by this stage, the head of the procession had already completed the course and was 'at the door'.

Pausing before the closed doors, Fr Stephen began the first exclamation of Pascha,

‘Glory to the Holy, Consubstantial, Life-giving and Undivided Trinity, always now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen!’

Out on the Abingdon Road, even a resident’s car alarm ceased to wail for a moment, as everyone waited for what came next.

‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and to those in the tombs He has given life!’

As we replied to the first ‘Christ is risen’, many of us could scarcely believe that our parish had completed another year since the last Pascha and were once again joyfully affirming the resurrection of Christ to each other and the world.

We re-entered the church, now brightly lit by all the lights at our disposal — candle and electric — and noticed with surprise that the church looked truly beautiful. The flowers, candles, bright vestments but, most of all, the people’s genuinely happy faces, transformed the somewhat austere space around us. It did not matter that the clergy still had to squeeze through the narrow aisles between the pews, as they wound their way around the church to greet the people. In some places, the pews formed a physical barrier between the clergy and the congregation, and the priest could not come near. He simply shouted louder.

By the time the Paschal Liturgy begun, the general mood became more sedate, though by no means less joyful. The Gospel was proclaimed in four languages, English, Church Slavonic, Greek and Latin by Frs Stephen and Matthew and the full choir continued to sing with all its might.

Nevertheless, signs of tiredness were starting to be evident, particularly among the clergy and the servers. One altar boy made the mistake of sitting down for a moment and fell asleep on the spot, and it is as yet unclear whether Fr Stephen’s surprising commemoration of Deacon Matthew’s ‘episcopate’ before the Great Entrance was the result of tiredness or a prophetic gift. Time alone will tell. But, without a doubt, whatever the future holds for our parish, the Church of Holy Rood on Abingdon Road in Oxford will remain a blessed place for us all.

AP