Saint Vladimir's Students Visit New Skete

At the height of the Northeast’s fall color, ten students and two spouses arrived in the late afternoon of October 17 for an overnight visit.

They are taking Dr. Paul Meyendorff’s Liturgy class on “The Sanctification of Time” and came to participate in the monastery’s observance of Vespers and Matins. The seminarians were able to sing with the monastics for some of the short refrains, and they sang their own arrangements for a couple of hymns.

Professor Meyendorff, a long-time friend of New Skete, has brought students for such “field trips” numerous times over the past decade and a half. He is the Alexander Schmemann Professor of Liturgical Theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tuckahoe, New York, directly south of us by a little over three hours. He has also authored several books on various aspects of Byzantine and Russian liturgical history and practice, has translated additional works in the field, and has been Visiting Professor at Yale Divinity School and the Graduate Program in Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Meyendorff is Editor of St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly. He has also held various positions in the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches.

Following the evening meal, the professor, students and monks enjoyed an informal discussion, centered mostly on how New Skete came to incorporate several elements of the Constantinople cathedral (Asmatikos) office in a synthesis with a simplified received typicon to embody the desire of the monks and nuns to make their worship more Scripture oriented, to enfold elements from worship in an era of the church’s history that was more inclusive, and to make prayer more accessible. An example of this, underlined by Dr. Meyendorff, is how an accumulation of prayers in current Orthodox services forms a block taken out of earshot of the worshipers by the priest at the beginning of the office. At New Skete they are returned to their role as public prayer, lacing together the various units of psalmody and poetry. Furthermore, the monastery has, during close to half a century of study of Byzantine worship and its own creativity, provided seasonal and festal variants for these prayers.

A broader and stimulating discussion ensued on the challenges to Orthodoxy in America in this intensifying climate of contracting church culture in the United States and widespread formalism in Europe.

At Matins Saturday morning, a seminarian from the Syrian Orthodox Church sang the Trisagion and Our Father in Syriac. It was a reminder for us to remember in our prayers the many Christians who now suffer and die for the Faith in the turmoil blazing in the Middle East. The Morning Office was followed by a visit to our puppy kennel, breakfast, some final dialogue, and a brief visit to the Nuns’ monastery; then the seminarians were on their way south.