[Oe List ...] Archive Note - European Trip, Fall 1968

[Rod Rippel via OE]

Itinerary:   Gt. Britain, West Europe, East Europe, (Greece, Italy), Iberian Peninsula
Team:  Frank Hilliard, George West, Rose West, Rod Rippel, part time-Katrin Ogilvy-                Australia, Bud Tillinghast-England) 
Purpose: Courses in GB, West Eur. and Portugal; Research in East Europe.
Amplified Note:  From Rippel’s Trip Journal

A Vivid Memory - (EI European Team, Fall 1968) 



I remember being so overwhelmed  when I heard a quartet of mature (older men) priests singing The Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral in Bucharest, Romania!  In bitterly cold November!  After the Liturgy one of the priests  surprised us by saying, “Stay around we are going to baptize two infant twins in the huge cauldron in the Apse? (or Nave?).  It will be sung by a half dozen men!”  It was ethereal.!  One of the priests who spoke broken English acted as a running commentator on what was going on.  Punctuated by the screams of the naked babies who were being held upside down by their heels and being plunged under the near freezing water, not once, but three times in the name of the Father ,  and of the Son,  and of the holy Ghost!! 



Add to it that the chanters who were circling the huge cauldron, singing and waving huge golden censures creating a cloud of incense thick enough to slice and the soto-voiced priest whispering roughly to us wide-eyed Westerners in a very off-hand, practical manner; “Now he (one of the priests) is going to cast out the Demons in the water before he shaves the babies heads (to symbolize their monk-hood) and then he is going to put a drop oil in each armpit pre-figuring their Last Rites, for Holy Orders, etc., etc.”  As if they were only doing their Routine Job (i.e., The Work of the People = Liturgy).  It didn’t take much imagination to believe we were back in the third century  Church.



I can’t remember when I’ve been gripped by anything so powerful!  And the priests : it was just Ho-Hum. Stepping over prostrate bodies as they held up Icons for others to kiss as they moved in circles between the mundane and the profane separated by a Reredos Screen.  This was all in the Fall of 1968 behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe.  What a memorable experience.



Afterward we had an audience with his Holiness, the Patriarch of Romania's Secretary, who was himself a Bishop.  In the Orthodox communions only the monastic orders are celibate and eligible for the episcopacy and higher offices.  Ordinary priests are allowed to marry.  The Secretary Bishop gave each of us a small 4" x 6" icon which had been blessed by the Patriarch himself!  The Secretary spoke excellent English.  When we asked him about the relationship of Romania, and specifically the Church, with the dominating presence of Russia in their situation, the Secretary was very diplomatic in his response:  "Oh, we love the Russian Bear!  As you know, He loves to hug us, and the bear's hugs are very warm and strong.  But, of course, when He hugs so tightly we smell his armpits!"  

Rod Rippel (from my trip Journal,  East Europe Ecumenical Institute Research Team,  November 1968).
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