Stefanos ALEXOPOULOS and Maxwell E. JOHNSON. Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2022. Pp. 472. $59.95 pb. ISBN: 978-0-8146-6355-4. Reviewed by Ryan MARR, Mercy College of Health Sciences, Des Moines, IA 50309.

            Students of theology who want to deepen their knowledge of the Eastern Christian liturgical tradition should plan to study this recently published work by Alexopoulos and Johnson. The authors do an excellent job of balancing comprehensiveness with accessibility. Their study is organized topically, covering eleven major liturgical subjects: baptism, chrismation, Eucharist, reconciliation, anointing, marriage, holy orders, burial, Liturgy of the Hours, the liturgical year, and liturgical spirituality. On the surface, a study with this range might seem to demand an encyclopedic treatment. The beauty of Alexopoulos and Johnson’s effort is that they provide a wide-ranging orientation to the liturgical life of the Eastern Christian Churches in a monograph that’s reasonably priced and around 420 total pages in length. By book’s end, the reader has a strong sense of the unifying characteristics of the seven distinct Eastern rites as well as what makes each ritual family unique. Commendably, the authors do not settle into descriptive work alone, but conclude by identifying three significant challenges that the Eastern Christian churches urgently need to face. This concluding section deftly synthesizes the insights of the preceding chapters in order to cast a vision of what faithfulness to the Gospel should look like in today’s world. Even though the message is delivered specifically to members of these liturgical families, Roman Catholics will find a great deal in that final section to consider and pray over.

In fact, reading the book from a Roman Catholic perspective, there are several points scattered throughout the study that I found challenging. One cannot help but be struck, for instance, by the extreme care with which Eastern Christians approach their liturgical heritage. Over the past several decades, the rich treasury of proper chants composed for the Roman Rite has all but disappeared from the celebration of Mass in parish churches. Other notable traditions, such as Ember days and certain Octaves (e.g., for Epiphany, Ascension, Corpus Christi, etc.,), have similarly been abandoned. While the liturgy should not be viewed as something frozen in time, the Latin Church as a whole would be well served to imitate the conservative disposition that Eastern Christians bring to the task of preserving their liturgical tradition. Relatedly, there are certain elements of Eastern Christian spirituality that used to be characteristic of Roman Catholicism as well and that the latter would benefit from recovering. On page 175, for example, Alexopoulos and Johnson note that, across the Eastern Christian communities “the Psalter permeates the liturgical and spiritual life of all faithful, whether in urban centers or the countryside or the desert, whether in churches or monasteries or secluded areas of asceticism.” Even though a responsorial psalm is still said or sung in celebrations of the Roman Rite, with the suppression of the prayers at the foot of the altar and trimming down of other prayers for Mass, the Psalter figures far less prominently in the liturgical ecosystem of the Latin Church. A simple step that Roman Catholic priests could take to help restore rootedness in the Psalter would be to make public recitation of the liturgy of the hours a more regular part of the parish schedule.   

The comments above inevitably call to mind the sad reality of persistent Christian division. Certainly, this topic calls for nuance, as twenty-three Eastern Christian particular churches are presently in communion with the pope. Nevertheless, that leaves upwards of two hundred million Eastern Orthodox Christians separated from the Catholic Church. Besides recognizing the shared liturgical patrimony that has been passed down to us from the apostolic age, we should also call to mind the sobering reality of recent and ongoing persecution. At one place, the authors quote Lawrence Cunningham who has pointed out that, “more Christians died because they were Christians in the twentieth century than all those who died over the course of the three centuries of Roman persecution” (quoted on p. 165). Significantly, “one of the characteristics of Christian martyrdom today,” Alexopoulos and Johnson add, “is its ecumenical nature” (ibid.). This “ecumenism of blood,” Pope Francis has remarked, “is a powerful call to journey along the road of reconciliation among the Churches, with decision and with trusting abandonment to the action of the Spirit” (quoted on pp. 165-66). The shared experience of suffering at the hands of persecutors does not mean, of course, that we should downplay or ignore substantive doctrinal disagreements between different Christian communions. Unity at the expense of truth is not true unity at all. Nevertheless, it does help put things in perspective, by reminding us that our commitment to the Truth is always ultimately oriented to self-sacrificial love. We ought to continue to pray for the restoration of table fellowship among Orthodox and Catholic Christians, because in the figures of our martyrs we glimpse the reality that we have been called by the same Eucharistic Lord. For all of the rich descriptions of Eastern Christian rites that Alexopoulos and Johnson provide, this reminder from the book is the one point that has lingered with me the longest.