Next month, I turn 55. I am a lifelong Michigander, was baptized Methodist and just learned my great-grandfather was a Mennonite. Which, given the “fightiness” of my family, is a stunner. Between Easter 1999 and last month, I was a Latin-rite Catholic convert.
But now I have arrived, like many of the first Christians, in Antioch. I have petitioned to become a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, whose head is Youssef II Absi, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, Alexandria and Jerusalem.
I am not doing this alone, as my wife is also becoming a Melkite. There’s a fascinating hand-of-God story there which I will tell later.
Why become a Melkite Greek Catholic? The purpose of this Substack will be to explain that in full, unpacking with clumsy but earnest hands the unknown treasures of the Christian East from the perspective of a former Latin Rite Catholic and American. Ideally, without rancor, but old blogging habits can be hard to break.
Yet, the short answer is simple: after 25 years, I have arrived home. Like the Catholic Lebanese and Syrians who fled the Ottoman Empire for America in the 19th Century, I find myself an immigrant in a strange land, that of the Melkite Church. Strange—but like the Syrians and Lebanese who arrived here were to discover, not unwelcoming:
I am something of a spiritual immigrant, one struggling with a new language and customs, but find myself welcomed like a distant cousin who finally found his way over.
The lands of origin of the Melkites include Lebanon, Syria and the Holy Lands of Israel and Palestine, and I have no ancestral connection to the region at all. Thus, the majority of the parish is of Arab origin, largely Lebanese and with third generations who were raised speaking English, but with others from the other Melkite lands, too. And then there are a small but growing number of former Latins like myself and my wife. Consequently, the language of the Divine Liturgy at our new parish is trilingual: English, Arabic and Greek are heard every Sunday.
As I said, I’m an immigrant—and I’m fresh off the boat, so to speak. Culture shock is real. It’s not just trying to follow Arabic and Greek, it’s the Eastern Christian religious vocabulary, starting with the phrase “Divine Liturgy” itself. Then there are the standard terms which are alien to the Latin experience: kontakion, troparion, menaion, archimandrite, octoechos, kathisma, patriarch—it goes on and on.
Among the Melkites, the Divine Liturgy is fundamentally Orthodox, with the de-latinization of the liturgies of St. John and St. Basil now being essentially complete. More about that later, when get to the Eastern perspective on That Council. And did you know there are 24 books used to celebrate the Byzantine Divine Liturgy? And the Latin and Eastern Catholic calendars vary far more than they agree (two Sundays ago was the Feast of the Fathers of Nicaea I)?
And—physically important—you rarely sit down during either Liturgy?
So, you’d think with all that, it would be overwhelming, with a forbidding, baffling learning curve.
It hasn’t been like that. The Divine Liturgy draws you in regardless of your familiarity. The choir’s powerful cantors help the priest and deacon propel the Liturgy forward in all three languages. [And if you haven’t heard sung Arabic in a liturgical setting, you are missing out.] The Divine Liturgy calls you to both repentance and hope. It dredges up your sinfulness and then invokes Christ God who redeems you from it. It is what I can only describe as “exuberantly penitential.” You cross yourself when the Father, Son or Holy Spirit are mentioned—which means you cross yourself a lot.
Ending from right to left, of course. You are mirroring the priest when he blesses you.
The iconography, the incense, the music and the lighting draw you from the world into a church deliberately shaped like a ship plowing its way eastward—Christ-ward. The priest steers the ship, celebrating ad orientem. And you are there for at least an hour and ten minutes—an hour and 20+ if St. Basil’s is being celebrated, and another fifteen minutes if there is a Forty Days remembrance for a recently-departed.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the far more-rigorous fasting calendar: with the exception of the forty days after Pascha and a few other places, every Wednesday and Friday is meat-and-dairy-free. And the Great Lent before Pascha is Monday and Wednesday every day for forty days. That’s before we talk about the other fasts.
Then there are the Akathist prayers in honor of the Theotokos during Lent—akathist meaning “without sitting.” For roughly an hour, at maximum length. And they get longer as Great Lent progresses and your body starts wearing down a bit on the vegetarian diet.
Asceticism is still alive and well in the East. And while it can drag on the body, it also elevates the spirit. You are a fully human being, and you can discipline yourself. And if it doesn’t always lift your soul higher, it tends to snuff out the energy to get yourself in trouble.
And yet, as our Abouna (Father) says, the church is not “checking your homework” over the fasts. But you should still do what you can, and try to go into deeper levels of fasting over time. Now might be a good time to note that I have dropped below 300 pounds for the first time in 19 years. It’s not just the fasting—not at all. But it has played a role.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not praise to the skies the hospitality of those in our parish, from Abouna on down to the folks in the pews who have made us feel more than welcome. Fellowship tends to get short shrift in the Catholic traditionalist circles I have traveled in, but it shouldn’t. It makes a world of difference, and Melkite hospitality is a wonder to behold. This introvert hopes to duplicate it.
But for all of the strangeness, the differences, the rigor (gasp!), it feels more home in a spiritual sense than any place I have ever been, like my soul was made for—and truly needs—what the Eastern tradition asks and has to offer. And I have just scratched the surface: I haven’t even begun to describe the continuing influence of the Church Fathers and the Byzantine past which continue to this day.
Home: sometimes, it looks nothing like where you’ve ever been.
Amen Brother. Thank you and God Bless