Orthodoxy (7) – Tradition & Family Life
11 August 2000 17:13
This is the concluding item of this series of mailings on Orthodoxy, written by an Orthodox for religious education purposes. The purpose of the series has been to encourage an awareness of Orthodox tradition and practice.
TRADITION
Anyone lucky enough to have an heirloom in the family knows how carefully it is cherished and handed down from one generation to the next.
The Orthodox Church has its own heirloom which it hands down through the generations. It is called TRADITION. In fact the word ”tradition” means exactly a ”handing down”.
Orthodox Tradition includes everything which makes up an ESSENTIAL part of its life:-
The Bible
The writings of the Church Fathers
The Creed
The Correct understanding of the written material
The services
The laws (called canons) and other teaching of the Church
The rules of fasting
Hymns and prayers
Gestures and ritual
Icons
Oral (non-written) teaching
In fact, it is a ”total package” of faith and its practice. Tradition is the common life of the Church, sharing the same breath of the Holy Spirit. It is vertical and horizontal Christianity – sharing faith both with Christians past and in the future, and among Christians nowadays.
The Bible is part of Tradition. However, Orthodoxy does not reckon the Bible as the ONLY vehicle of the Holy Spirit, and sees divine revelation as the ultimate source of authority – remembering that in the earliest times of both the Old Testament and the New, before the books of Moses or the Gospels were written, people had to rely solely on the oral tradition. So handing non-written facts down by word of mouth is also part of Tradition.
When a family has a precious heirloom, great care is taken to see that it
is passed on exactly as it was inherited. For instance, an old
coronation mug would not be the same if the handle were broken off and a
new one stuck on. It is the same with Tradition. The story of a
saint’s life needs to be told with all the right details, without any
being missed out or new ones invented! When a bishop is consecrated, he
promises to hand on the faith, Tradition, adding nothing and taking away nothing.
Of course, that does not mean that no changes ever occur. Sometimes, without altering the fundamentals, certain things need to be updated. For instance, there is a prayer in the services for ”all those who travel by land, sea or air” which has obviously been updated since the coming of the aeroplane!
There are plenty of very common things conncected with merely customs. For instance, different countries have different special foods at Christmas, Easter, Name Days, etc. It is part of Tradition to FEAST at these times, but the individual kinds of food are customary – which does not stop them, of course, from being delicious!
By contrast, the FASTING DIET was specially devised for spiritual reasons, and the categories of food eaten have a definite purpose. So the fasting diet is part of Tradition.
Whereas it does not really matter which recipe you follow to make a cake for a Name Day, it DOES matter whether or not you eat meat on Good Friday.
Handing on a family heirloom is always done with feelings of pride and
love. It is the same with Tradition. It is not something dead that is
a burden, but a source of joy, which Orthodox people are anxious to hand
on to their descendants as a great treasure.
FAMILY LIFE
The first thing you would notice if you went into an Orthodox home would be the icons – in corners, over the doors, above the beds. At certain times, for instance on Saturday evenings or on feast days, lamps or candles might be burning in front of the icons, and you might smell incense.
All that might remind you of being in a church – and that is not surprising, because an Orthodox home is thought of as a ”mini church”. The mother is the person who is in charge of all the rituals of home life such as lighting the lamps and censing the icons.
BLESSING THE HOUSE
When a family moves into a new home they ask the priest to come and bless the house. He goes round, sprinkling every room – even perhaps the garage and garden. – with holy water. The family goes with him, singing hymns. A house is also blessed in the same way every year at Epiphany, either by a priest or by the parents, who bring back a bottle of holy water from the Epiphany service, where water is blessed in memory of Christ’s baptism in the Jordan.
OTHER HOME RITUALS
On Palm Sunday, branches of ”palm” – often pussy willow or branches of box – are brought home from church and placed round the icons, and at the Transfiguration, on August 6/19, blessed fruit is brought home and eaten (this is the nearest that Orthodoxy comes to a harvest festival).
Home life is also governed by the pattern of fasting and feasting. Wednesday and Friday meals are very plain – vegetarian or vegan food. During Lent every day is a fast day, and on some days such as Good Friday there may be no meals at all. Of course, small children, as well as sick or old people, are allowed to eat normally. In homes that keep the fast very strictly there may be no music or television allowed!
On feast days houses are decorated with flowers and foliage, and the icons may be in special embroidered cloths. The icon of the particular feast will be put on a table or shelf in a place of honour. Great care will be taken to prepare festive food, often traditional national dishes.
Saturday evenings are a special time. Sunday begins at sunset (early evening) on Saturday, and the family may go to church then. Saturday Vespers is a preparation service for the Sunday Liturgy. At home, the icon lamps are lit and the icons censed. There is an atmosphere of serious expectation. (For anyone intending to receive Communion on Sunday morning there are long prayers to be read, at least for older children and adults). So Saturday evening is not meant to be a time for going out, having parties or watching videos, but a time of quiet.
A very exciting time in family life is when a new baby is born. A priest comes to pray over the newborn child and the mother. Later the baby will be ”churched” – brought into the church for the first time. The baby will also be baptised during the first few months of its life. Baby boys are carried by the priest into the sanctuary, right round the altar.
Some families say the set prayers together, morning and evening, in front
of the icons. Then there are prayers before and after meals. There was
an old Russian custom of setting a spare place at table for Christ. If a
beggar or wandering pilgrim knocked at the door, he would be brought into the house, sat in Christ’s place and given a meal with the family.
Members of a family make the Sign of the Cross over each other in blessing when they are going out, or going to bed. A mother will bless her children like that when they go to school. Before Russians start out on a journey, they like to sit in silence for a few minutes before blessing each other.
