Praying in Time: The Hours & Days in Step with Orthodox Christian Tradition

By Vassa Larin

It has been said that a major problem of our twenty-four-seven internet age is that people increasingly lack "purpose" and "meaning" in their lives. And the most influential people of our day, the tech geniuses and self-help gurus, seem convinced that "we" are the ones who are to create this purpose or meaning for ourselves, just as we invent new technologies and self-help programs. In this context, Sister Vassa Larin invites the Christian reader to rediscover a handy instrument from the toolbox of ancient Christian tradition, which can fill our every hour and every day with faith-based meaning and purpose: the practice of praying and "commemorating" every weekday and every time of day, according to the traditioned, liturgical meaning of each day and hour. Combining engaging theological explanations with practical prayer tips, Sister Vassa offers a simple and flexible way of living this prayer tradition, so it is sustainable even amidst a busy schedule.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Mar 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666759839

Vassa Larin

Vassa Larin, an Orthodox Christian nun and liturgical scholar, is host of the online catechetical programs “Coffee with Sister Vassa.” She is the author of Reflections with Morning Coffee: 365 Daily Devotions for Busy People (2016).

Book preview

Preface

This book grew out of my experience of trying to pray the prayer-tradition in which I was raised, that of the Orthodox Church, in the different places and circumstances I have found myself in the thirty-two years that I have been a nun. Throughout the last thirty-two years, I went from prayer-life in a monastic community in a convent, to prayer-life on my own in an apartment in the center of a city, and from prayer-life without a constant Internet connection and a mobile phone, to prayer-life in our twenty-four-seven Internet age. The latter transition, from an offline life to one with a constant Internet connection, has radically changed all of our lives, whether we had a prayer-life or not. In my case, these transitions changed me profoundly; they have changed the way I perceive time, the way I pray, and the way I perceive the church and what it means to be church.

A few more words about the twists and turns of my rather unconventional monastic journey, as it unfolded since I entered a convent at age nineteen, and until I began working on an online ministry in the center of Vienna, Austria. In September 1990, I entered the Russian Orthodox Lesna Convent in Provémont, France. I lived there for five years, from age nineteen to twenty-four, conducting the choir and also working as the gardener and as the prosphornitsa (or baker of the prosphora that are the eucharistic breads). At age twenty-four, I was transferred to Munich, Germany, by the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Berlin and Germany. In Munich I lived for almost twelve years in a small monastic community of only two or (at times) three nuns, in an apartment that was attached to the Archbishop’s Munich-cathedral, where we nuns chanted the daily services of the Hours in our apartment, and also attended the vigils and Divine Liturgy at the cathedral. I conducted the small choir of the cathedral at weekday-services, and also organized the diocesan church-singing conferences in Munich and Köln, where I taught church-singing and Ustav (the order of church-services) together with others. In the late 1990s and early 2000’s, the archbishop sent me to the Convent of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where I lived for two years, conducting the convent-choir, teaching novices catechetical courses, and working in one of the guesthouses.

After I returned to Munich from Jerusalem, the Archbishop sent me and one other sister to study Orthodox theology at the Orthodox Institute of the University of Munich. Here I completed my undergraduate and Master’s degrees, and then went on to my doctoral studies at the Oriental Pontifical Institute in Rome, where my doctoral dissertation, which focused on the Byzantine Hierarchal Liturgy, was directed by the famous Jesuit scholar of Byzantine Liturgy, Prof. Fr. Robert Taft, SJ.

Here I would like to say a bit more about Fr. Taft, who was not only my academic mentor, but also a formative influence on my prayer-journey. He was an inspiring example of Jesuit spirituality, combining work (in his case, academic work) with a life of prayer. His early-morning prayer rule, which rather perplexed me at the time, consisted not of reading the Morning Prayers of the Prayer Book, but of reading the First Hour. In the early morning, Fr. Taft read the First Hour in Slavonic from his Chasoslov or Horologion, before celebrating the Byzantine Divine Liturgy at the Byzantine chapel of the Russicum, the college attached to the Oriental Institute. At that time, I was not a big fan of the First Hour, because in my church-tradition, the First Hour is a service chanted at the end of vigils, where it makes little sense. This is why I found Taft’s morning pray rule perplexing. After Divine Liturgy, Fr. Taft had breakfast and read The New York Times, and then went to work in the library until noon. At noon, he attended Sext, the Roman Catholic service of the Sixth Hour, together with the Jesuit-community of the Oriental Institute, after which he ate lunch and took a forty-minute nap. Then he would return to the library and worked there until suppertime. As far as I know, he had no evening prayer rule. He read detective-novels before going to bed at 9 pm, calling this his junk reading. So, Fr. Taft’s daily schedule involved the two prayer-traditions that were part of his life, the Byzantine one that he had learned as the focus of his academic career, and the Roman one in which he was born and raised; and his daily reading included secular sources like the newspaper and detective-novels. For me, Fr. Taft remains an inspiring example of living Tradition in this world, according to one’s own background, character, circumstances, and vocation.

I completed my doctorate in 2008, when I was invited to teach liturgical studies at the University of Vienna in Austria. I moved to Vienna, where there was no monastic community, so I began to live in solitude, outside of a monastic community, which was something new for me. While teaching at the University of Vienna, I began to make YouTube videos about the Lives of the Saints of the church-calendar, on a YouTube channel called Coffee with Sister Vassa.

This YouTube channel, initially a hobby alongside my academic job, developed into the online ministry and corporation that I manage today full-time, Coffee with Sister Vassa Inc. I left my position at the University of Vienna in 2016 and began to work independently online. Why? For several reasons. First of all, my academic work, e.g., teaching at university, speaking at academic conferences, and publishing in academic periodicals, reached only a small circle of liturgical scholars and the (mostly Roman Catholic) students that attended my lectures and seminars at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna. I wanted to share what I had been studying, the Byzantine liturgical tradition, not only with scholars and students but with the many laypeople who actually lived this tradition, but never had the opportunity to learn its meaning and history. By 2016, with the help of an assistant, I had figured out how to become financially self-supporting through crowd-funding on patreon.com and by selling Coffee with Sister Vassa merchandise (coffee mugs, calendars, a self-published book) from our website. So, when my contract ended with the University of Vienna in 2016, instead of applying for another academic position, I began to work full-time and independently, online. Working online and independently, without any institutional backing, has proven to be both gratifying and enormously difficult on many levels. I would not recommend it to anyone, although I believe it is my vocation and the strange place to which God has led me, for reasons known only to him. But let me turn to the topic of my Internet activity and its effects on my prayer-life.

Among all the twists and turns of my monastic life, as described above, the most drastic change was the transition from an offline-life to an online-life, with constant Internet connectivity, along with the challenges this brings to my prayer-life. Initially it swept me up before I realized what was happening, and I found myself checking my phone throughout much of my days, and eventually even once or twice at night. I could not escape the Internet altogether, and indeed embraced it as a new element of my vocation. By this time, my daily work and vocation were centered in the online ministry of Coffee with Sister Vassa, which involves producing various catechetical videos, programs, reflections, and other Orthodox Christian content on various Internet platforms, and also interacting with those who comment or ask questions about it on social media.

So, escape was not an option. But the burdensome chaos of twenty-four-seven Internet time compelled me to seek a better way to manage this chaotic time, in a way that fostered, not destroyed, my vocation. I eventually found this better way within my own church-tradition, being as I am a product of a specific church-tradition, the Byzantine Orthodox Christian one. This ancient church tradition has at its disposal a now-broken and mostly neglected practice of ordering our hours and days by hallowing each day and hour with specific prayers and/or sacred memories. I discovered this tradition anew, in the chaotic context of the Internet Age, and the way in which I am learning to utilize it in this context is what I will be sharing in the following pages.

Now, for the acknowledgments to those who helped me along the journey of conceiving and writing this book. First of all, I am grateful to God for the disorienting experience of being swept away by twenty-four-seven Internet time. Without that experience, I could not have related to the laypeople to whom I minister, and with whom I walk through the church-year in our online-community that is Coffee with Sister Vassa with its online platforms.

I am most grateful to my subscribers on patreon.com/sistervassa, where I have posted a five-day-a-week audio-podcast, each weekday, for over three years. I reduced the podcast to one day a week six months ago, so that I could find the time to write this book. In the podcast, called Morning Coffee, I have talked mainly about the liturgical meanings of each weekday, according to Byzantine liturgical tradition. These meanings include the liturgical commemorations of each weekday (from the weekly liturgical cycle of the Oktoechos), along with the saint or saints celebrated in the annual liturgical cycle (from the liturgical Menaion), and a Scripture-reading relevant to the day or season. The purpose of the podcast is to help myself and the podcast-subscribers to stay in touch with the Church’s liturgical tradition between weekends, on those days when most people do not go to church. The podcast became especially important to me and my listeners during the lockdowns throughout the COVID pandemic, when many of us could not go to church at all. Our online-community, focused on walking through the church-calendar together, was an important way of fostering our sense of church-belonging at a difficult time. I am grateful for the feedback of the listeners, for the insightful and inspiring comments that they have posted under the podcast throughout the years. These comments, along with the subject-matter of the podcast that is church time and the church calendar, have also inspired and informed the content of this book. I also thank my subscribers for their financial support in the last six months, during which I provided them with only one podcast a week, as mentioned above, so that I could have the time to write this book. I thank you, my beloved subscribers, for staying subscribed throughout this time.

Finally, I want to thank Stephen Keeler for editing the initial manuscript. I am also grateful to several wise friends, who took the time to read the chapters of this book as I was writing them, and offered me their theological insights. For this I thank first and foremost Fr. Prof. John Behr, Lynette and Brandon Hull, Lisa Priebe, and last but not least, Fr. Prof. Cyril Hovorun.

Introduction

The Problem: Time with Neither Rhyme nor Reason

It has been said that a major problem of our times is that people increasingly lack purpose and meaning in their lives. Another problem, to this author’s mind, is that the most influential people of our day, the tech geniuses and self-help gurus, seem convinced that we are the ones who are to create this purpose or meaning for ourselves, just as we invent new technologies, self-help programs, and guidebooks.

Elon Musk talked about this in October 2020, when he identified meaning with the work (in the sense of employment in the job market) for which human beings are needed less and less, because of automation or robots. How do people then have meaning? Musk asks.