Under the Turkish Guns, the Christians Roar

It is the peculiar genius of Byzantine history that its glory reached its apogee in the era known to the West as the Dark Ages. It has no great literary heritage – a half-millenium of Muslim domination ensured the annihilation from memory of its major works beyond the Alexiad of Anna Comnena, the anonymous epic of Digenes Akritis, and various religious texts. The latter survived because the Church survived, even as the Empire did not. Chief among them are the great liturgies, and chief among the great liturgies is the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. It is the queen of liturgies: a Greek epic of its own, also of the Western Dark Ages, emphatic and deliberate in its insistent worship of Christ. The liturgy has a heavenly glory in its song and prayer. It also has a mundane length to it. Properly done, it lasts hours. Yesterday, it lasted five hours, from 8am to 1pm. It’s a feat of endurance for the best Christian – particularly as the great majority of it has one standing. I am not among the best Christians. But yesterday, I did it.

Yesterday, I was in the Church of St George at the compound of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Fener district of Istanbul. Across from me sat the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, holder of the last office of the Eastern Empire, and spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christians of the world. Mere feet away, within arm’s reach, sat Pope Benedict XVI....

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Hat tip to Fr. Huneycutt