Forgetting the Liturgy

One time, while I was serving Liturgy, I turned around to say a prayer, but I couldn’t remember what to say for the life of me! How could this happen?

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A while back, I went to a continuing ed conference at our metropolis camp, the St. Iakovos Retreat Center.

This conference was a gathering of our metropolis clergy, so, of course, we put several services on the schedule, including a Divine Liturgy.

To my surprise, I was asked to serve the Liturgy. It’s a humbling experience to serve in front of all one’s brother priests, especially when most of them are senior priests.

The experience became even more humbling when, after communion, I couldn’t remember the ekphrasis, “O God, save your people and bless your inheritance.”

I just stood there, frozen. I clung to the chalice hoping my memory would bring the right words to my lips, but nothing came.

As my embarrassment grew, a kind priest quietly spoke the words for me. Ah, yes, I thought to myself, those are the words I’m looking for. I quickly repeated them and moved on, hoping the incident would soon be forgotten.

But why did such an incident occur?

After all, by this point, I’d been serving the Divine Liturgy for over 6 years as a priest–almost 8 years, if you could the time I spent as a deacon.

Didn’t I have the whole thing memorized without fail by now?

It wasn’t until months later that I finally figured out what had happened.

It was so simple. But, the frightening thing is, it could happen to any of us at any time!

The answer came to me as I was reading a blog post by Blair Warren. In his post, he claims to have a great memory. But then, one day, he forgot to take out the garbage.

But it didn’t end there.

He forgot the next time too, and the time after that one as well. In all, he writes that he forgot to take out the garbage for 4 collections in a row.

So much for memory!

Then he realized: those weeks he forgot, his neighbor was on vacation. The only reason he had ever “remembered” to take out the garbage was that he would see his neighbor’s bins sitting at the curb when he came home from work.

In other words, his memory was being driven by visual cues in his life.

At the end of his post, he wondered, “In how many other areas of my life am I equally unaware of the cues that are driving my behavior?”

For, me, my forgetfulness was probably caused by the change in location. I’m used to serving at St. Elias. I could probably do it in my sleep, but change the setting–the visual cues I’m used to–and it’s a different story.

If you think about it, our entire relationship with God is driven by cues in our life.

We like to say that Christianity is about a relationship with God. But, if we don’t have the visual cues to nurture that relationship, it won’t happen.

We’re cued to remember God when

• We wake and saying our morning prayers
• We stop to pray before eating our meals.
• We cross ourselves and kiss the icons in our prayer corner
• We light a candle before entering the church
• We cross ourselves before putting the car in drive
• We read the daily scripture lessons
• We pray before bed

The structure of an Orthodox Christian’s daily life is far from legalistic or rigid.

The cues draw us into God’s story.

Through prayer, icons, and scripture, we are reminded of how God loved us so much that he sent his son to die on the cross for our sins.

We’re reminded of Christ’s victory over death, which sets us free.

We’re reminded that God heals our brokenness with our tears of repentance.

We’re reminded of how we become children of God.

In short, the daily “ritual” of an Orthodox Christian serves as cues that nurture and deepen our relationship with God.

If we ignore our daily ritual, then our cues disappear–we’ll simply stand humbled and speechless wondering how we’ve forgotten what we once knew.

P.S. Be “cued” this Sunday at St. Elias

St. Elias the Prophet (419 N. Grandview Ave., Dubuque)
Saturdays: Great Vespers, 4 pm
Sundays: Divine Liturgy, 10 am (our main service)

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