Sunday, September 02, 2007

The Ukrainian rite of the Catholic Church

Today I took up a kind invitation of my star vestment maker, William Lawrence to learn how to serve the divine liturgy of st John chrysostom
The Ukrainian rite is the second largest rite of the church and has even earn t the title of church of the martyrs, due to a large number of Ukrainian catholics being martyred for the faith during soviet times. The liturgy was very interesting a quite a change from both forms of the roman rite that I attend. The prayers were sung in Ukrainian (being polish i understood some of it) and from the English translations that i have read were quite beautiful. Down in Melbourne I had a discuss with JP about noise and the thurible, quite right the censing in the divine liturgy is very noise and very obvious. Another interesting part was the offertory at the start of mass, that allowed me as one assisting at the liturgy to offer some bread for specific intentions. Finally consecration was very diffrent for a Roman, the servers sign them selves and then touch the ground once the consecration is complete. Looking forward to more liturgies in the future.

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