My Time in Byzantium..........

I have been searching for a spiritual home for the last few years. I have felt more and more that the modern Catholic mass is not fulfilling my needs. To be honest, the lack of ritual and tradition has caused me to become rather disengaged from the Church. However, I respect the throne of St. Peter and believe that the man who sits on the throne is Christs representative on earth. As my search continued I looked for a Church in the area where I live. On the website for the arch diocese I came across "Byzantine Rite" Catholics. So I called the Church to ask about them. I heard back from their priest who assured me that I was very welcome in their Church and that we are members of the same Church, but of a different rite. Therefore I attended Mass. After, getting a bit confused with crossing myself the opposite way I felt right at home. The incense, the Icons, the chanting and the community were what I was searching for.

One aspect of the Liturgy that I loved was the display of the Blessed Icons. Here is what their website says:

Icons play an important role in the spiritual life of Byzantine Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox. An icon is not merely a picture of Christ or of a saint, much less a religious decoration, but an expression of the most fundamental realities of our faith and a making present of the heavenly reality they depict.

Icons are realistic images, but they do not seek to depict the flesh of our fallen human nature, but the glorified bodies of those who are filled with the Holy Spirit of God. This is why the iconographer does not strive for the natural realism of a photograph. This would only reproduce the physical reality of this world. Rather his intention is to suggest spiritual beauty, transfiguration, deification. It also explains why the figures in icons are usually heavily draped with clothing in physical beauty. In Byzantine icons the physical presentation is meant to be colored by the spiritual reality just as the body of Christ reflects divine glory in a physical way.



The Liturgy is breathtaking. The beauty and glory was second to none.

Here is what their website says:

The Divine Liturgy expresses this life in Christ flowing from our union with God. The night before He offered Himself for our salvation, Jesus said: "I am the true vine and my father is the vine grower. He prunes away every barren branch, but the fruitful one He trims clean to increase their yield. You are clean already, thanks to the word I have spoken to you. Live on in Me, as I do in you. No more than a branch can bear fruit of itself apart from the vine, can you bear fruit from Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who lives in Me and I in him, will produce abundantly, for apart from Me you can do nothing" ( Jn 15:1-5). Our participation in the Liturgy is described as an experience of the Kingdom of God- a foretaste of heaven, because during the Liturgy we are nourished by the vine which is Christ.

Jesus gives us a strong example of the importance of prayer, of time alone spent with God, listening in the quiet of our hearts to the awesomeness of God's love. Often Jesus "prayed in a certain place, spent the night in prayer" to gain strength and power for the mission His Father entrusted to Him. The disciples, observing the power and the peace that are the fruits of prayer, asked Jesus to teach them to pray. He said to them: " When you pray, say:' Father, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins for we too forgive all who do us wrong and subject us not to the trial'"


An example of an Eastern Chant can be found here.

It is said that Russian ambassadors came to Constantinople and said upon attending the Divine Liturgy: "We did not know whether we were in heaven or earth for upon earth there is no such sight or beauty; we only know that there. God is present among men."

I agree with them.