The Vigil Service

Jeff, with whom I used to blog sent me an email about the Vigil he went to with athanasia, the little boy, and me last saturday:

"My favorite part of the service was when the priest, or deacon stood in the middle of the sanctuary and chanted various parts of the Psalms for a long time. THat was the most worshipful time for me and I found myself whispering the ends of the verses also.

"I'm still a bit confused about why the three vigil services where all together in one. Instead of cramming three into one, why not just not do the other two services? I think your answer will be something along the lines of it being important to carry out all the services. But if this is so, does this not become merely doing a service for the sake of doing it? Granted, I'm assuming what your response may already be.

"One question...how did that little door keep opening and closing when the priest got near it? I kept waiting to hear a Star Trek-like swoosh everytime he went in."


Here are my answers to Jeff:

The Psalms that were chanted are called the Six Psalms. They were Psalms 3, 37, 62(63), 87(88), 102 (103), and 142 (143). I don't know why these six are read at this service.

Well, the services that are joined to form the Vigil service are these: Vespers, Compline, the Midnight Office, and Matins (In Greek and Arabic churches Matins is called Orthos). I think one of the Hours services might be in there, too. I'm not sure. Liturgics isn't a strength of mine.

As for the services being important, yes they are important. But they are not essential to salvation. In fact, some of them were never intended for non-monastics. (Our salvation is worked out a little but differently form that of monks and nuns.) Now, to the best of my knowledge no one outside of a monastary does all of the services. (Doing all of the services from sunset on Saturday through the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning would take between 12 and 15 hours.) And there is variation among the Orthodox Churches. For instance, the Greek, Arab, and African Churches do Vespers in the evening, and then the next morning to Matins, 3rd Hour, and then the Divine Liturgy. They totally skip Compline and the Midnight Office. And that's okay. Most (maybe all) of the other Churches, such as Japanese, Russian, and American edit out much of all of the services and join them together in the Vigil service which is used in parishes. And that's okay, too. Even in our most important service, the one we absolutely must serve or else we fail to be the Church, exists in 5 versions, (The Liturgies of St. James, St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory, and St. Tikhon). My Church, the OCA, only uses three of them (Basil, Gregory, John Chrysostom). The Church of Jerusalm uses the same three as the OCA but also uses the Liturgy of St. James. The Church of Antioch uses four too, but it uses the Liturgy of St. Tikhon, and not the Liturgy of St. James. And there used to be others (such as the Old Roman Mass, the Liturgy of the Sarum Rite, and the Liturgy of St. Mark to name three) but they have fallen out of use.
As for the Reader zooming through some of the texts, I'm not wild about it, but that's just his personal style. I've also been in services where the Reader speaks very s-l-o-w-l-y. Trust me, that's worse. I prefer medium-speed. Oh, the guy who chanted the Six Psalms is a Subdeacon. (The clergy of the Orthodox Church consists of Readers, Subdeacons, Deacons, Priests, and Bishops. Of those, only Bishops are absolutely necessary, the others flowing from and receiving their charisma from the Bishop.)

The doors open and close via gas pressure that builds up in reserve incense holders. The never go swooosh, but they do sometimes go PSSSssssss....