Found Objects

There were only nine people in the Liturgy of the Presanctified: the priest, his wife (choirmistress), their son (acolyte), my three daughters and I, and a couple we didn’t know, apparently a Greek or Serbian woman and her Dutch husband or fiancé. Even though it was a Friday, usually better attended than Wednesdays. Two people we had expected explictly hadn’t come after all, and none of the other regulars either; perhaps everybody thought they’d been to church enough already this week at the Vigil and Liturgy of the Annunciation on Monday and Tuesday.

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I survived the four and a half hours. The choirmistress counted prostrations and came out at 271, of which I could manage perhaps a hundred until my knees said “don’t do that to us!”

Next year I’ll follow the example of the choirmistress’ son, who came in at 9:15, just after the reading of the life of St. Mary and in good time to catch most of Matins. He doesn’t like the life of St. Mary any more than I do, and I recall a conversation with him last year in which he said “it makes me want to go out and sin!”

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Of all the services in the Church year, Matins with the life of St. Mary of Egypt, in the fifth week of Great Lent, is the one I like least. Not only the one hundred and fifty prostrations —I know my knees will protest after thirty if not sooner, and give up entirely after seventy or so— or the endless self-deprecation in the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, but especially the life of St. Mary itself. All it does to me is to make me feel guilty that I like life, including its carnal aspects.

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Our priest being away, we had a substitute, a US army chaplain stationed in Belgium. The choirmistress didn’t honour my wish to sing the responses in English, so Father David spoke (or rather sang, in a pleasant high voice, with more tune to it than we’re used to) English and we sang in Dutch. Halfway through the vigil my reflexes kicked in (“speak what’s spoken to you”) and I sang one “Lord—” before catching myself at it and going back to “ontferm U”.

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