The Office Today and Assessment

The final section turns from what the office is to how it is actually kept, and offers a sober assessment. The first file treats the abbreviation of the office in parish practice and its long history, the full all-night vigil (agrypnia) as preserved on Mount Athos, and the fuller usage kept by the Old Rite. The second treats the office in English, the twentieth-century movements to recover it as living parish prayer, and a measured judgment of its condition and its future.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Overview

The office described in this collection is served in full in few places on earth. Between the monastic rule the books prescribe and the reality of parish life stands a long history of abbreviation, and between the abbreviated parish office and the unabridged vigils of Athos lies the whole spectrum of contemporary Orthodox practice. This section faces that reality honestly. It treats where and how the office is kept — abbreviated in parishes, entire on the Holy Mountain, in older forms among the Old Rite — and where it is going, as the office is Englished and as movements arise to recover it as the prayer of the whole people. It closes with a sober assessment, in the spirit of the repository methodology: without triumphalism, and honest about a tension the tradition has not resolved.

Files

File Description
abbreviation-the-vigil-and-the-old-rite.md Parish abbreviation and its history; the all-night vigil (agrypnia) on Mount Athos; the fuller usage of the Old Rite, noted factually
the-office-in-english-and-a-sober-assessment.md Translating the office into English; the twentieth-century recovery movements; a measured assessment of the office today and its future

See Also