"I am the door. By me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture." - John 10:9 At every parish where I have had the pleasure of attending services, there is always a small group of people who find their way all the way up to the church building but don't actually attend services. At one parish it was a group of male gypsies who talked on cellphones or smoked cigarettes. At another it was a few Protestant husbands who, though they never attended services, opened the parish doors for people as they filed in. At yet another parish the men stood in the narthex and chatted until it was time to receive and then got in line. Latin or Greek Catholic, Eastern or Oriental Orthodox I see the same small throng of men standing next to the front door, but not standing, sitting, or kneeling amongst the people. If it were me (and I can only speak for myself here) this option would be an unsavory one. The boredom would be immediate. The anxiety of som...
I haven't watched the whole thing (so I could be wrong), but I suspect that what you're identifying as Greek is really just liturgical Coptic, which includes a significant amount of Greek (indeed, even the Coptic alphabet is almost entirely based on the Greek alphabet).
ReplyDeleteI remember the first time I picked up a Coptic liturgy book at one of their churches how surprised I was at how much I could make out, based on my (meager) knowledge of Greek.
There's a lot of kyrie eleison, Agios o Theos, etc. in there.
ReplyDeleteYep -- liturgical Coptic (e.g., see p. 55).
ReplyDeleteIt's actually Coptic, I've asked the same questions.
ReplyDelete