The Longer Liturgies Are Coming!

Note: When I say "older generation" in here, I don't necessarily mean every old person. I know plenty of people belonging to generations before mine who probably helped kick start the liturgical revolution in this post (thanks folks)!

When the so-called reformers took the Church ad swept it with the "spirit of Vatican II," they made one crucial mistake (and, given the divine power working against them to preserve the Church, I'm not sure how much they can be blamed): they didn't deal the coup-de-grâce. Sure, they delivered a blow. Sure, the Church was sent reeling into all sorts of dissent, liturgical abuse, and so on.

But they didn't finish the job (though as I said, the divine power operating against them might excuse them in this). Instead of delivering the death blow, the reformers somehow gave the Church time to regain her feet. And now, having been led by true re-formers (meaning they wanted to make the Church form back up for battle, not cast her into some other form in their own image) such as Bl. John Paul the Great and Pope Benedict XVI, the Church is, perhaps slowly, but steadily gonna knock them out. This is particularly evident among my generation.

Let's look at Liturgy. Because bad Liturgies are one of my personal pet peeves. Now, who's got shorter Liturgies: old people or young'uns? That's right! Old people! With the young people, we have longer Liturgies (Angel of Peace Litany, ya know?). And you know what? We STAND (except the Epistle and homily). And we do services that aren't the Divine Liturgy! Especially compline. Compline, I think, just might be the defining service of the youth.

So we have longer services among the younger generation. And don't you dare claim we need to shorten them as mental disability rates go up. My sister has autism and loves vespers as celebrated at Parma ByzanTeen stuff (which means it's a long service).

Instead of the shortened Liturgies with lots of sitting of the older generation, we will soon see the younger generation's Liturgy spread as we become priests, marrieds, religious, singles. Resistance is futile, short of an order from a bishop. And somehow I doubt that it'll happen.

So, since the young Liturgy is going to take precedence, here are a few things you can do to prepare:

1. Come to church dressed comfortably. This ain't thirty minutes of worship and then you're outta there. Wear something nice, but comfortable. You're probably gonna be there at least one and a half hours.
2. Be prepared to stand. Which means good shoes. You'll get maybe twenty minutes of sitting in the aforementioned one and a half hours. If the homily's long. You might even want to practice beforehand! :)
3. Participate. If you're going to stand there and glare at everyone and everything. that'll just make time go slower. Quite possibly bad for your soul too. Praying is good!
4. Be prepared to follow the rubrics. We will be taking all the prescribed stuff. Prayers directed to be taken aloud will be taken aloud. It's referred to at least among the Latins as saying the black and doing the red. This will lengthen the Liturgy. But again, why did you come to the Liturgy in uncomfortable footwear?
5. Don't expect to skip parts. We skipped some litija hymns at Vespers once, but we also had to do Matins (the long way, naturally) right afterwards and some other stuff and theoretically get to sleep before the sun came up, so that's excusable, I think.
6. Be happy that the young folk are taking over and making the Liturgies longer! It means we care :)