The Greek Orthodox Church

It’s Sunday Morning and we can hear the Church Bells, and the Priests singing, like they were in the same building with us. On my morning walk, I noticed that someone (the Baker?) had left several bags of bread on a table at the side door to the Church. They use leaven bread for Communion here. I went to church the first Sunday I was here. I’d never been to a Greek Orthodox Service before, so I was totally unfamiliar with the Ritual. My plan was to get there early, to be quiet, polite, and to follow the example of others, so as not to advertise my ignorance. That plan crashed and burned when the Priest, who speaks no English, noticed my reticence, and escorted me to this narrow little, high backed wooden, bench seat, way down in front of the congregation, and off to the side. The seat was about 18 inches wide, and hinged at the back for standing. The arm rests were also very narrow, about shoulder high, and very hard to get into, and out of. It looked like a VIP penance chair.

 

photos by Newell

 The service lasted for two hours, all sung by the Priest, with a lot of standing up and sitting down. I was always out of step with the rest of the congregation because I couldn’t see what they were doing without craning my neck, or twisting in my chair. They don’t do the Call to Worship, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Doxology or sing the Old Rugged Cross; and they didn’t pass the plate. It’s all conduced in Greek, I think, it didn’t sound like Latin.

The Iconography and decorations inside all of the churches and chapels is beautiful, just like the stuff you see in Art History books; very ornate, intricately carved wood and metalwork that contrasts with the two dimensional, but equally ornate paintings, lots of gold gilding. It’s astonishing when you consider how poor these people are, then you weigh the time, effort, and resources that have gone into creating and maintaining all of their religious gear. The insides of Greek Orthodox Churches are all like museums, and there seems to be a church, chapel, shrine, or monastery on every hill or knoll on the island. They can be from the size of a lawn storage shed, up to the size of a full military compound, with the largest number of them being about the size as big as a one car garage. We’ve visited some of the monasteries, but more on that later. Kathy’s organizing most of it at wwwmysamoshome.com with pigeonholes for pictures, movies, blogs, etc. She should have it out by tonight.