28 September 2014

It is almost two weeks that I have been in Durrës, Albania. Last Sunday (21 September 2014), Pope Francis was visiting Tiranë, Albania and I went with some colleagues to catch a glimpse of the only pontiff who, during my life so far, has inspired any confidence across the world.

I knew I needed a place to worship at while I am here. After unsuccessfully asking some of my Albanian colleagues the whereabouts of a church, Google Maps came to my aid a couple of days back. Now my apartment is located here and the church is here.

As you can see, my apartment is less than half a kilometer from the church! How is it that people here did not know where it was? This is what happens in a communist state that aspires to be more communist than others, to the extent that Albania was declared the first ‘atheist state’ in 1967. Following this many churches and mosques were destroyed or converted to cultural centers.

The Orthodox church is named after Saint Paul and Saint Astius. The latter was the bishop of Dyrrachium (now Durrës), during the reign of Trajan. He was tortured and crucified for refusing to worship Dionysus. We are talking here about a city that saw a vibrant group of Christians in the latter part of the first century itself, vibrant enough that the emperor was threatened. And today they cannot even give directions to a church less than 500 meters away!

I had to double check on Google though! So yesterday (Saturday, 27 September 2014) I went for a walk in the evening and located the church.

All the notices were in Albanian, which I do not yet know. But I gathered that worship today would be at 7:45 AM. I found that an odd time. Why not 7:00 AM? Or 8:00 AM?

The answer to that dawned on me today. There are two mosques nearby and their calls to worship happen at specific times. The morning call gets over around 7:00 AM and the noon call starts around 11:30 AM. Unlike in India, where Muslims and Christians have clashing timings, here, after decades of oppressive communism that shattered their holy buildings, these people have decided it is better not to be a nuisance to each other. Not once during the service were we disrupted by a call to worship from either mosque. Frankly, I find this better than shouting across each other.

Now, as I said, I do not yet know Albanian. So I went a little early today, just to ensure I did not miss the service. I reached around 7:15 AM and went in. There was just another man there.

A priest entered around 7:20 AM, wished me good morning and went into the sacristy. But there were no people yet! At 7:45 AM a deacon and his wife came rushing in and started the service. I found this odd. But odder still was that there were still no others apart from me and the other man.

A few minutes later a group of about 30-40 young men came in with a couple more deacons. The men were between the ages of 18 and 25 from the looks of it. They huddled around the podium where the liturgy was being read by the deacons. I still do not know what they were doing. Were they initiates, preparing for priesthood/deaconhood? Were they just enthusiastic worshipers? Whatever they were there for, the oddest thing was that, apart from the one deacon’s wife, there were no other women in the church! Normally, there are more women than men in most places of worship.

That oddity was resolved over the next minutes as more and more people trickled in and the congregation started looking like a good healthy Christian congregation, with people above 80 worshiping with boys and girls less than 5 years old and people of all ages in the middle.

The service was strangely casual and formal at the same time. People felt free to walk around greeting each other. But they also were very particular about making the sign of the cross and bowing and other practices associated with Orthodox Christianity.

The entire service was in Albanian. As I said earlier, I do not know the language. In fact, I know only a few words associated with Mathematics and those were of no use during the service. Fortunately, my Mar Thoma upbringing helped as I could sort of follow the main parts of the service.

Yet, there I was, among fellow believers, not following a word of what they said. Well, I did recognize the names for Peter, Paul, Luke (the Gospel reading was from Luke 5.1-11) and, of course, Jesus. And I understood the word for resurrection and church. But apart from that and the words ‘amen’, ‘hosanna’ and ‘hallelujah’, I had no clue of what was being said.

Now, I am a very cerebral person, as most of you know. Perhaps too much, at times. And here I was, unable to use the brain to worship. I was getting quite irritated about 20 minutes into the service and was about to leave, when an old lady, perhaps about 85 years old, came and placed her bag on the chair next to me. And she just threw herself on her knees and began praying with arms raised up. And something in me said that I must stay, if only to be near this woman who was so uninhibited about her worship. Reminded me of my maternal grandmother. I stayed.

And it was good that I stayed. I still did not understand a word, of course. But there came a time when the priest brought forward the bible. And people went forward to kiss it. And I thought to myself, “What orthodox rot is this? Kissing a book?” When the woman who sat next to me returned, she indicated to me that I should also go forward. She did not have to take notice of me. But she did. And her smile was warm and genuine and I did not want to disappoint her.

So I went. And learnt why God has commanded, “Love the LORD with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind.” Here I was, a person normally used to worshiping with my mind, rendered unable to do so because I could not understand the language. But I had my body, fully functional. And I went forward. And when I kissed the book, I realized how arrogant I have been with my knowledge and intellect. Just months back, I was threatened with not having that intellect. And God healed me. To what purpose did he heal me?

Today I realized that he healed me so that I could understand that most people worship him not in the intellectual way that I have grown accustomed to, but with their bodies. The little rituals that I often look down upon can have so much meaning when one is vulnerable. Today, without the mind being able to worship I was naked. And the small act of going forward, waiting in line, and then kissing the bible overwhelmed me. God was not able to touch me today through the words. But he touched me in that small act.

And then the service came alive to me. It became truly a gut wrenching time. I realized that the liturgical churches offer a worship experience that involves all the senses. In the churches I have worshiped in during the past couple of decades we have had great music of the modern kind. And we have communion to involve our taste buds. But touch, sight and smell are often missing. Today, the burning incense drew me in without words at a time when words could not. The various icons gripped my vision and became so meaningful as I contemplated what they depicted – fellow believers who have gone before us, who provide models to emulate. And the act of touching the scriptures with such a sensitive part of the body as the lips also was a worshipful experience.

I realized what Dr. James Bradley, my Church History professor at Fuller, a Baptist himself, tried, in vain I think, to teach me. The early church was composed mostly of people who had no education, who were poor, who were illiterate. And the liturgy (from the Greek words ‘leit’, meaning people and ‘ourgia’ meaning work), the work of the people, allowed these people a way of worshiping God by using their bodies. No long confusing sermons that wrench the mind, but simple acts that allow the body to adore the God who is love. For the first time, rather than worshiping from the mind to the body, I was worshiping from the body to the mind. It was remarkable!

So remarkable that, when the bishop (he was in the sacristy unbeknownst to me) came forward to pronounce a blessing, just the recognition of Jesus’ name was enough to make a wreck of me. Was it his intonation? Or his chant? Or his posture? Who knows and who cares? When I heard Jesus’ name, the first thought in my mind was, “He loves me.” And that is worship enough!