كنيسة القدِّيس جَاوَرجِيُوس الأنطاكية للرُّومِ الأُرثوذكس - جاكسنفل فلوريدا

The higher the rank of the feast, the more the liturgical services will be modified to reflect the feast. For example, a Rank 1 feast will replace almost all components of the regular services for that day. In a Rank 5 feast, perhaps only one or two hymns would change to commemorate the Saint.

Fixed Feasts 

There is a set of feasts that occur on the same date each year. This cycle repeats each year but is fixed to the calendar, that is the dates of the feasts remain constant. There are commemorations each day of the Church year based on the cycle of fixed feasts. Each commemoration will be of one of the ranks indicated above. The most popular of the fixed feasts are the ten “Major Fixed Feast Days” of the Church. The are summarized as follows:

Moveable Feasts 

There is a set of feasts that occur on a different day each year, based on the lunar cycle which influences the calculation of Pascha. This cycle repeats each year but the actual dates of the feasts will change each year. The cycle begins with Pascha and continues through the year until Holy Saturday (the day before the following Pascha). Feasts on this moveable cycle include:

In addition to these specific feasts, the movable cycle also determines the lectionaries (that is the schedule of readings) for the Epistles and Gospels read during the year.

Cycle of Life

In addition to the various liturgical cycles identified above, we can also include the cycle of the lifetime of an Orthodox Christian into the set of cycles.[vi] The cycle of life is, just as it sounds, the sequence of sacramental events that a person participates in during a lifetime. In chronological order, this cycle includes:  Baptism, Chrismation, Confession, Communion, Unction, Marriage, Ordination, Funeral, and Memorial Services. Just as the above cycles repeat over a time continuum which extends to the second coming of Christ, the cycle of our life continues throughout our lifetime.

The Significance of Liturgical Cycles on Orthodox Worship

 Interaction Over Time

Each of the liturgical cycles continues to repeat over and over again. We should not assume from this that the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church is simple repetition of the same things again and again with not purpose other than the repetition. The cycles do repeat but they are viewed as moving forward as they repeat.

If you were to draw a time line from here to the second coming of Christ and then you placed several wheels in parallel along that line and all the wheels moved up the line together, you would get an idea of the interaction of the cycles. The smaller wheels (the daily cycle, the weekly cycle, …) would have to rotate more quickly to keep up with the larger wheels (the yearly cycles, the cycle of life, …).

If you were to freeze the wheels at a specific point in time, a day, you would see the interaction of the cycles for that day. Perhaps when you froze the wheels, we were at Vespers on a Sunday, on the 8th Sunday of Matthew (lectionary), in Tone 8, in Eothina 9, on the day of a Rank 2 Feast (such as the Dormition of the Theotokos). As you can see, each of these cycles (or wheels) place an impact on the content of the Worship Services. And, because there is a mix of fixed and moveable elements that effect the calendar, the same feast may have a different Tone or Eothina defined for the day it is commemorated in a subsequent year.

Basic Effect on Hymnography 

Of all the services in the daily cycle, the two services which will be effected the most by the status of the other cycles are Vespers and Matins. The other services contain significantly fewer sung hymns and so are less effected by the changes in cycles.

The Vespers and Matins services will change literally every day. The day of the week requires certain changes (e.g., the Prokeimenon for Tuesday is different than the Prokeimenon for Friday). In addition the Otoechos prescribes hymns for each day of the week in a given tone. In addition, the two yearly cycles (fixed feasts and movable feasts) effect the hymns that are to be used. To make matters more complex, the significance of the feasts to be celebrated is the basis for how much change the feast places on the service.

In order to properly prepare a service taking into account each of these cycles, the chanter must consult the Otoechos (hymns of the eight tones for each day of the week), the Pentecostarion (hymns from Pascha to Pentecost), the Triodion (hymns of pre-lent, lent, and Holy Week), the Menaion (book of feast day hymns), Service Book (to get the basic structure of the service and the non-changing components), and possibly a Typicon (a book listing the proper order of services).

Normally, only two of the cyclical texts will be required at any given time. If we are not in the Triodion or Pentecostarion periods, only the Octoechos and Menaion will be required. During lent, the Triodion or the Pentecostarion along with the Menaion will be necessary.

Luckily, the Antiochian Archdiocese publishes a guide for all Vespers, Matins and Divine Liturgies for each Sunday of the year. This document points the chanter to all the proper hymns in the proper order. It is still necessary to understand the rules because if a service is to be performed in the middle of a week, the chanter must put it together from scratch.

Effects on Hymnography Based on Rank of Feast 

As described earlier, a service being held on a feast day will include some changes (replacement of some Resurrectional texts with texts to commemorate that feast). The more significant the feast, the more the services (primarily Vespers and Matins) will be changed to add emphasis to the feast. In addition, if a fixed feast were to fall in one of the movable feast periods (e.g., The Feast of the Three Hierarchs could occur during the Triodion period) both the fixed and movable feast would have an effect on the nature of the service. The significance of the feast will also determine if the “daily” or “festal” versions of the services are to be celebrated.

A higher ranked feast will absorb more of the changeable portions of a service than a lower ranked feast. On Feasts of the Lord (Rank 1) there are commemorations in the weeks before and after the feast. In addition, on the feast day, the entire service is supplanted by one commemorating the feast. In lower ranked feasts, less emphasis on the feast is included in the service.; Examples of where these emphases can occur in Vespers and Matins are:

Effect of Overlapping Cycles

Services for each day of the year can be described by knowing the state of each of the liturgical cycles. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the hymns prescribed for a particular feast in one year will be the same as those for the same feast in a subsequent year.

For example, the Feast of the Three Hierarchs will be celebrated every year on January 30. The hymns for this feast day Vespers and Matins will not be exactly the same from year to year. This is because in some years, the movable feast cycle of the Triodion will overlap with this feast and in other years it will not. In the years where the Triodion period has begun by January 30 (the fixed date for this feast), it is necessary to include the texts of the Triodion along with the texts associated with this feast day.

Building Services With Respect to Overlapping Cycles 

In order to build services properly, it is necessary to consult the proper guides based on the date of the service and the status of each of the liturgical cycles. For daily services, the following ground rules apply[vii]:

Proper care should be taken to read the fine print (usually in the form of a reference to the Typicon) which describes how the various references should be used, which text takes precedence over which, and how to properly integrate the various texts.

To build Sunday Vespers and Matins services, the task is much easier. By following the “Liturgical Guide for Combination of Sunday Resurrectional Texts with an X Class Feast”[viii] as a guideline, any Sunday service with a feast can be built. In addition, the “Liturgical Guide” ix] published each year by the Antiochian Archdiocese.

Summary

There are several liturgical cycles in the life of The Church. Each of these cycles continues to repeat along a continuum of time moving ever forward towards the day of the second coming of Christ. As the cycles continue they, on their own and in interaction with each other, effect the nature and content of the services that are part of the daily cycle.

By properly following the appropriate reference material, it is possible to build services that appropriately commemorate the effect of each of these cycles on every service, on every day of the year. By properly preparing and participating in these services, we become both a part of and a witness to the liturgical cycles.

As we live these cycles throughout time, we remember our Lord, His mother, and the Saints and what they did for us. By participating in these services, we also know that the miraculous events commemorated in the services are real today and continue to exist for us in concrete terms. By learning from the hymnography, we are prepared for the eventual end of this mortal timeline, at the second coming of Christ.