It seems almost by accident that I became a composer of Orthodox liturgical music. As a music student at Oxford in the early 1970s, I had written some rather complex modernistic pieces, some of which were performed at various concerts. While staying in Siena, Italy, in the summer of 1974, I had the audacity to show them to the famed Italian composer, Luigi Dallapiccola, who was presenting talks about his music at the Accademia Chigiana. (I vividly recall him pausing to catch his breath at the tops of hills as we walked about the city; his health was already failing, and he died early the following year.) For my postgraduate studies I had to decide between composition and musicology. After receiving no particular encouragement to pursue composition, I chose musicology, and around 1976 I stopped composing altogether, never expecting to return.

That was until the early 1990s. By then I was living in Amsterdam, had converted to Christianity and was moving in British Anglican and Dutch Protestant circles. Through them I got to know the music of Taizé: short, chant-like pieces and canons that were dignified and easy to sing. The canons especially reawakened the dormant composer inside me. I thought it would be good to try composing something similar, so I wrote a series of them, most based on Scripture. I went on to set several sections of one of the innumerable Anglican Communion rites: series III, as it was known. Read More

(Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC) Patriarch Bartholomew at World Children’s Day

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

World Children’s Day Celebratory Event

(Geneva, Ecumenical Center, November 21, 2018)

It is with great joy that this year, we once again visit the headquarters of the World Council of Churches during the festive celebrations of its 70th anniversary. At this moment, our eyes are turned not to our common past, but toward our common future: our children. It is important to bear in mind that children do not only represent our future, but that they are in fact the present upon which the future is being built. It is not by chance that in the Gospel, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ presents children and childhood as an existence open to God—the key to enter His Kingdom. Jesus Christ said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14) Elsewhere, He even stated, “Truly I say to you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

It is extremely sad to see that in today’s world, children are being abused or threatened—sometimes even in our own Church communities. Protecting children from any kind of violence has always been and should remain an essential message of Christianity. Therefore, Christians are called to protect children both in society and within their own communities. This is why the Ecumenical Patriarchate is particularly pleased with the collaboration established between UNICEF and the WCC on the Churches’ Commitments to Children. In fact, just before this program of the WCC was launched, we called upon our spiritual children and people of goodwill in our Christmas encyclical in December 2016 to respect the identity and sacredness of childhood. We encouraged Churches to protect children from the plague of mortality, hunger and enforced labor; abuse and psychological violence; as well as the dangers of uncontrolled exposure to contemporary electronic means of communication, which can negatively affect their souls and their behavior. Read More

The following brief reflection was written in October 2013 for a course on iconography at Regis College in Toronto. In sharing it with our readers we greet you in the blessed joy of the feast.

Today is the prelude of the good will of God, 

of the preaching of the salvation of mankind.

The Virgin appears in the temple of God, 

in anticipation proclaiming Christ to all.

(Festal Troparion)

In this brief study I intend to show two things: first, how the symbolic language of a festal icon cannot be “read” apart from the liturgical and scriptural texts of the feast; and second, how ingeniously the Church’s iconography and hymnography have wrought, from the naïvely legendary material of the Protoevangelion of James, a celebration of astonishing christological and soteriological depth.

According to the Protoevangelion, the elderly Joachim and Anna pray to the Lord to remove from them the reproach of childlessness. At the visit of an angel announcing that their prayer has been heard, Anna makes a solemn vow:

As the Lord my God lives, if I bear a child, whether male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God, and it shall serve Him all the days of its life.  Read More

Grant rest eternal in blessed repose, O Lord, to the souls of Thy servants who have fallen asleep,
and may their memory be eternal.

Memory eternal. Memory eternal. Memory eternal.

Read More