Offering hymns and prayers from the gulag
There was no way Thanksgiving could be “normal” this year.
This was certainly true wherever Orthodox Christians gathered for what is becoming a Thanksgiving tradition in America: sharing a litany of poetic Russian prayers created during hellish persecution by the Bolsheviks.
Under coronavirus protocols, many sang the “Glory to God in All Things” prayers in outdoor services or in candle-lit sanctuaries containing fewer worshipers than usual. There was no way to ignore the pain of 2020.
Early in the service, a priest chants from the English translation: “Thou hast brought me into life as into an enchanted paradise. We have seen the sky like a chalice of deepest blue, wherein the azure heights the birds are singing. We have listened to the soothing murmur of the forest and the melodious music of the streams. We have tasted fruit of fine flavor and the sweet-scented honey. We can live very well on Thine earth. It is a pleasure to be Thy guest.”
Worshipers respond: “Glory to Thee for the new life each day brings.”
Imagine chanting those words in Soviet gulag cells.
Only 25 people could attend the Thanksgiving service at St. Anne Orthodox Church in Corvallis, Oregon, but others watched online. It was held in the morning, before whatever feasts participants could have this year.
“I love this service, particularly for its depth of thanksgiving in the midst of extreme suffering,” said Laura Fear Archer in an Orthodox Facebook group. “In the midst of our far lesser but still painful suffering this pandemic year, it is a good reminder to give thanks always.”
In Russia, some believers connect these prayers with birthdays. But in America, the Orthodox know this service as “The Akathist of Thanksgiving” since its themes mesh with this uniquely American holiday. An “akathist” is a service honoring a saint, a holy season or the Holy Trinity.
Many trace this akathist to the scholarly Metropolitan Tryphon, a well-known spiritual father at the height of the persecution. The version of the service used today was found in the personal effects of Father Gregory Petrov, who died in 1940 in a concentration camp.
It is also important that “Glory to God in all things” were the last words spoken by St. John Chrysostom, the famous preacher and archbishop of Constantinople who died in 407 after being forced into imprisonment and exile by his critics.
“The theme that runs through all his works is that Christians must learn to bear suffering nobly,” said historian David Ford of Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox Seminary in eastern Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Women and Men in the Early Church: The Vision of Saint John Chrysostom” and is creating an anthology of the saint’s writings.
“It is especially fitting to use this great Akathist of Thanksgiving during a time of national crisis,” he said, reached by telephone. “We are getting a taste of what this is all about.”
A commentary on this text, posted by Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery, noted its use of intense personal images and allegory, adding: “Lyricism as … a mood, in which emotional elements prevail over rational ones, is characteristic of poetic works, but not in the genre of Orthodox church hymnography.”
“Glory to God in All Things,” wrote Deacon Feodosiy Kudryashov, “is a notable exception,” and is recognized as a “literary masterpiece that combines deep faith and the poetic gift of divine inspiration.”
The service offers thanksgiving for many kinds of gifts and events in life, from the moonlight in which “nightingales sing” to valleys and hills that “lieth like wedding garments, white as snow.” Worshipers offer thanksgiving for the “humbleness of the animals which serve me,” as well as “artists, poets and scientists,” because the “power of Thy supreme knowledge maketh them prophets and interpreters of Thy laws.”
But near the end, a priest chants the crucial theme: “How near Thou art in the day of sickness. Thou Thyself visitest the sick; Thou Thyself bendest over the sufferer’s bed. His heart speaks to Thee. In the throes of sorrow and suffering Thou bringest peace and unexpected consolation.”
The congregation response includes: “Glory to Thee, curing affliction and emptiness with the healing flow of time. … Glory to Thee, promising us the longed-for meeting with our loved ones who have died. Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age!”