Remembering Fr. Alexander Schmemann. Liturgical Renewal A Matter Of Ecclesiology, Not Rite
An All-Russian conference with international participation took place last year at Saint Filaret Institute, in memory of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, dedicated to the centenary of his birth (December 13) with the title “Witness of Faith”. Sofia Androsenko presented a report of it, in Russian using as title «Литургическое обновление – вопрос экклезиологии, а не обряда», one of my main points “Liturgical renewal is a matter of ecclesiology, not rite”.(https://sfi.ru/sfi-today/news/liturgicheskoe-obnovlenie-bez-peremeny-ekkleziologii-nevozmozhno.html?
“The personality of Father Alexander Schmemann will never be somewhere on the periphery, if people remember what the Lord gave us in the second half of the 20th century in the Orthodox Church, and in fact throughout world Christianity,” said Father Georgy Kochetkov, the Founder of the SFI, welcoming the conference participants. “Father Alexander was one of the last Mohicans among the great figures of the Russian religious and philosophical revival, which began at the end of the 19th century and lasted, despite all the vicissitudes of history, for a whole century,” This movement, this revelation is still completely underestimated in Church life and in the minds of Christians, including Orthodox Christians, both in the Russian Church and in the American Church, and it’s probably even more difficult to talk about others. Father Alexander, however, was not only a man in a row, even an outstanding one; he was a very original thinker and Church figure.
Anyone who has read even Fr. Alexander’s “Diaries” will say that there is a lot of that which no one has expressed before and that is important for the Christian Church life. Its originality can please some, irritate others, and we remember what controversy was during the life of Father Alexander and is still preserved among Christians. And it is worth thinking about what caused such a reaction.”
Father Alexander’s son, writer and journalist Sergei Schmemann, joined the conference participants from Washington. “When I think about my father’s short life, and remember our family life with him, when I talk to him, which happens very often, sometimes in dreams, I imagine his life as a unique journey that paradoxically begins and ends in Russia,” And he himself has never been there. As you know, he started life in poverty as a Russian refugee in Estonia, Belgrade, Paris. His parents and grandfathers themselves lived in anticipation of returning to the lost Russia and so raised their children.” “But the day came when my father realized that you can’t live in the past,” said Sergei Aleksandrovich. He himself moved to the French Lyceum, and since that time his horizons and understanding of Christianity has expanded, thanks, on the one hand, to French education, and on the other, to the wonderful professors of the St. Serge’ compound. And then, at the age of thirty, he moved to America with his family and three small children, and a whole new world opens up for them. He finds confirmation of the universality of the Orthodox faith in which he was brought up and takes on the mission of spreading and deepening faith in this world, building the Orthodox Church in America. I very often traveled with my father,” said Sergei Schmemann. He met with America, with parishioners of different parishes, with Americans and found inspiration and mission in this. But at the same time, he never renounced Russia, which was still his country, his nationality, in general, his soul. In America, practically from the first year of his stay, he began broadcasting to Russia on Radio Liberty; these were not sermons, but conversations, not only with Russia, but also with himself about Russia, about its spiritual destiny. For many years he did not know for sure whether they were hearing him or not, but he always considered it his duty to keep in touch with his suffering compatriots. Thank God, he lived to see the time when it became clear that he was being listened to and heard.”
“My wife and I, who are here beside me listening and looking at all of you, will never forget our communication with you, Father Georgy, and with your community and the Transfiguration Brotherhood, when we lived in Moscow,” said S. Schmemann especially remember ing the solemn funeral service on the anniversary of the death of his father, as well as the Easter Matins in their Church, at which his late mother was still with us. Thank you for all these fond memories….Your meetings and your reports confirm that Father Alexander really was a witness to the faith,” added Sergei, addressing the conference participants. “Through you, his work has been completed and continues. For this, I personally want to thank you, brothers and sisters, a deep bow to you, Father Georgy, and to everyone who has gathered here today. Thank you for the opportunity to share my memory with you.”
My presentation was entitled “Father Alexander Schmemann and Liturgical Renewal”. And reminded how the renowned specialist in the worship of the Eastern Church, Father Hugh Wybrew, described the gradual transformation of the Eucharist from an ordinary common meal into a ritual practice. Initially conditioned by the domestic context, the Eucharist, becoming a public action, with changes beyond recognition: there was a transition from simple food and drink to a sacrament that requires an awe, from clarity, when everyone hears everything, to intimate action, where concealment and silence prevailed. “It is impossible,” I concluded, following Father Hugh Wybrew, “that the practice of the Eucharist, which has undergone such strong metamorphoses over the past centuries, remains unchanged in the future. At the same time, there are only two places known to me inside the canonical Orthodox Church where one can speak of a radical liturgical renewal. New Skete Monastery in the OCA, and the Transfiguration Brotherhood within the ROC.” “The liturgical renewal concerns first of all the issues of ecclesiology, not ritual,” I stressed… After all, “liturgy” in its original sense is completely alien to any religious (cultic) and ceremonial (ritual) categories. Since Christianity in its original sense is the “end” of religion (in the same sense in which Christ is the “end” of the Law, cf. Rom. 10:4), insofar as “liturgy” is the end of worship in its generally accepted conventional form, then there are worship services as a simple ritual ceremony. “Liturgical theology” is the main theology of the Church; it is a ‘theologia prima‘, not ‘theologia secunda’, as
scholastic theology used to believe. And the pioneer in establishing liturgical theology as the main theological discipline was Father Alexander Schmemann.”
The conference was attended by the Dean of the Theological Faculty of the SFI, a member of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church, David Gzgzyan (Moscow), a senior lecturer at the SFI, a member of the Society of Eastern Liturgy Zoya Dashevskaya (Moscow), a leading researcher at the House of Russian Diaspora Alexander Solzhenitsyn Natalia Likvintseva (Moscow), Scientific Secretary of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Associate Professor of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen, Julia Balakshina (St. Petersburg), Rev. Dr. of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitanate of Germany, Archpriest Georgios Basioudis (Germany, Mannheim), the First Vice-Rector of the Siberian Federal District, Dmitriy Gasak (Moscow), Victoria de Hahn (Great Britain, Oxford) and other researchers and clergy from Russia, Germany, USA, Greece and Great Britain.
The conference ended on December 14 with a panel discussion on “The legacy of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann in modern liturgical and pastoral practice.”
