Fr. Whiteford on the 2008 Orthodox Conference

Fr. Whiteford from St. Jonah Orthodox Church in Spring, TX wrote the first in what looks to be a string of posts on the 2008 Orthodox Conference held in Pennsylvania earlier this month. You may remember my linking to his earlier string of posts on his visit to Moscow during the historic ROCOR / ROC settlement. Here is the link to his post and below is a snipped I found to be the most intriguing.

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As I said, I had never seen the Old Rite in actual practice, and was struck by the way the people were censed. When the deacon would cense them, they would face the deacon with both arms raised in an orans, and then would bow towards the deacon, and then turn, and make the sign of the Cross towards the altar. The scriptural basis for this practice is "Let my prayer be set forth as incense before Thee, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice" (Psalm 141:2, in the KJV). This is in fact my favorite Lenten song by far. Below is a clip that the people from Ancient Faith Radio gave me from an ACROD service.


This was particularly striking when the choir was censed. I was generally standing behind the male choir, and so could not see their faces when they were censed, but when the women's choir was sensed I could... and it is something you would have to see. They would be standing in a semi-circle around the music stand singing, all nearly uniformly attired, and then as a group, they would all turn at the same time to face the deacon with their hands raised, then do the bows as I described, all the while never missing a beat with what they were singing... despite the fact that they all had their eyes off the music book while doing so.

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Complete post here.