Great Compline and My Inability to Concentrate

Categories: orthodox-life, hymns, prayer, great-lent

Date: 13 March 2012 02:09:40

On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays during Great Lent our parish, thanks to the kindness of the parish of St Nicholas in allowing us to use their church (we are still renting a hall, though our church, thanks be to God, is being built...), holds the Great Compline service.

As with many services in Great Lent, it can be long (though it's about an hour now, after the first week of Great Lent where it is longer due to the inclusion of Great Canon of St Andrew, which admittedly is short by Orthodox standards!), rather repetitive, the chanting is slower, and going back and forth between psalms, hymns and prayers, and may seem rather sombre. I admit I get distracted, my mind wanders (easily enough anywhere, but often here as I hear and see the shadows of trains passing by the back of the church...), I look seeing we're at page 20 of 40 and wonder when it will end, I decide rather than following I will try and see if I can read and translate some of the Arabic in this dual-language book to see how my Arabic is progressing, or rather being lost, and note that there are 2 pages each of the same number for English and Arabic so 40 pages is not really 20 in English and we have a way to go...: I make no pretensions to be a good Orthodox Christian!

But, as we reach page 35 or so I am thinking, "I wish I could be here a bit longer." I feel calm, at peace, and know this, worship, is where I am to be and what I am to do. As Fr Alexander Schmemann writes in his book Great Lent: Journey to Pascha, with the busyness of the world and the cares it brings:

...we begin to realize that this very length and monotony are needed if we are to experience the secret and at first unnoticeable "action" of the service in us ... It is as if we were reaching a place to which the noises and fuss of life, of the street, of all that which usually fills our days and even nights, have no access -- a place where they have no power. All that which seemed so tremendously important to us as to fill our mind, that state of anxiety which has virtually become our second nature, disappear somewhere and we begin to feel free, light and happy. It is not the noisy and superficial happiness which comes and goes twenty times a day and is so fragile and fugitive; it is a deep happiness which comes not from a single and particular reason but from our soul having, in the words of Dostoevsky, touched "another world." And that which it has touched is made up of light and peace and joy of an inexpressible trust. We understand then why the services had to be long and seemingly monotonous. We understand that it is simply impossible to pass from our normal state of mind made up almost entirely of fuss, rush and care, into this new one without first "quietening down," without restoring in ourselves a measure of inner stability.

Great Lent, Fr Alexander Schmemann, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001, pp. 32-3

I am still learning this, and still needing to quieten down after an often frustratingly slow drive to St Nicholas, with the running around and concerns during the day, including applying for jobs, calling back, responding to questions and further preparing. But this hour I spend, truly, and deeply, gives me that sense of peace and that sense of belonging that is so fleeting at times in the world. And the knowledge and assurance that Great Lent is a journey to Pascha, the Feast of Feasts, and indeed our life here on earth is a journey to becoming more and more in the likeness of God through our struggles, our prayers, our fasting, our charity:our whole lives.

For which thanks and praise to God.