"Stop the water!"-- Friday morning meeting with the architect

This last Friday morning (8 April) I met again with the architect to discuss the proposal, which we asked him to put together before the rainy season comes again to Miami.  About a month ago, he had warned us that it would be structurally detrimental for us to allow another rainy season to pass without stopping the water intrusion into the temple.  So, we asked him to put together a proposal with only that it view-- stopping the water, and shoring up the damaged structure.  The first phase of this work will be to remove the church's copper domes, so that the roof can be repaired, rebuilt and sealed under them.  The large central dome will be salvaged.  The two smaller domes will be stored for the day when we can build a little дзвіниця (bell tower) in the garden area behind the church. Although all three domes leak like sieves, as the ceiling above the choir loft bears witness, it will be sad to see them go.  God grant that we will live to see the day that the new domes take their places. 
     The architect had to visit this last Friday, together with a roofing crew, in order to ascertain how the domes (especially the central one) is anchored to the church.  He discovered a very hearty system of interior and exterior anchors, which have ably kept the domes in place through even hurricane-force winds.  Access to the underside of the central dome is through a trap door that opens upward above the choir area.  A ladder is needed to get up through this opening, then the ladder must be pulled up into the area next to the air handler, to allow the crew to ascend another twelve feet to the base of the dome. (Looking at it from the outside, it doesn't look that high.) The crew discovered that the frame of the trap door was badly damaged from the former termite infestation, and that it had begun to fail.  This is important, because the frame is actually the only thing that keeps the very heavy door from falling.  Therefore, the roofing crew spent forty-five minutes repairing what was left of the frame, so that it would bear the weight of the door.
     After the roofing crew was finished reconnoitering the interior of the dome, I had the opportunity to speak to the architect further about the salvage of the dome, and about the scope of work.  As it turns out, the proposal he has been working on to this point would not stop the water intrusion completely, since it does not address the windows on the East wall.  I instructed him to put the windows on that wall into the scope of work, for I myself have seen the water pool on the surface of the window sills of those windows, especially during a driving rain.   

My Afternoon with the former pastors-- in the cemetery

Today, Tuesday, 15 March, I finally had an opportunity to get over to Flagler Memorial Park and see the resting places of Father Danilovich and Father Oleksiw.  Since there is no Divine Liturgy on the weekdays of Great Lent, and Typika (the service that takes its place) only takes about fifteen minutes, I was able to start making my way over there at about half after noon.  I went to the office and spoke to the receptionist, and she immediately directed me to the office of a memorial counselour by the name of Mr. Alfredo Stolk.  Mr. Stolk began searching the computerized records of the cemetery for the names of our former pastors, and immediately found Father Danilovich.  However, he was not able to find Father Oleksiw.  Every which way he tried, the computer search proved fruitless.  He asked me, "they would be buried close to one another?" I replied, "I doubt it-- they died more than twenty years apart" (Father Danilovich in 1952 and Father Oleksiw in 1976).  Finally, he Mr. Stolk said, "Well, I will go to the card record and search for him." He left the office for a few minutes, and returned with an old green card, which had been imprinted by a typewriter (by someone who was not very skilled with a typewriter since there were many strikeovers).  Mr. Stolk proclaimed triumphantly, "I found him. They had filed him under R., because of the Rev. before his name." Mr. Stolk then got out the various maps of the cemetery and began to show me the locations of the graves that I was seeking.  Father Danilovich was in a very old part of the cemetery called St. Joseph's Garden, while Father Oleksiw was further away from Flagler in an area with only the very unattractive name of "Section 10." Mr. Stolk began to describe the way that I would have to drive my car to the various gravesites, and where I could leave the car, but I explained that I was on foot.  "It's a long walk!" he said with surprise.  I replied that this was the only exercise that I was likely to get today, and that I was grateful for it, but, in the end, he insisted on putting me in a golf cart and taking up as far a St. Joseph's Garden himself. 
     One of the things that I love about being an amateur historian (both for my parish and my family) is that it always involves the adventure of learning the unexpected.  My arrival in St. Joseph's Garden was no exception to this general rule, as I immediately learned something about the founding pastor I didn't know before.  Perhaps many in our parish community knew and remembered, but it was a complete surprise to me to learn that he was married.  His yimost', Irene, lies next to him under a common stone.  As the stone bears witness, she didn't pass away until 24 April 1960, and Father Milanych buried her on 27 April.  I consulted the record (just in case she was an unmarried sister-- instead of a wife), but, as I expected, her status was listed as "widow." Naturally, this knowledge raises all kinds of intriguing questions.  For example, between his passing in 1952, and her death in 1960, she would have witnessed the building of the church and the hall.  What was her role in these formative years?  What was her relationship like with the subsequent pastors.  Is she one of the ladies, who appear in the pictures of the parish's first canonical visitation in November 1954, when Bishop Amvrosij Senyshyn came and celebrated Liturgy outside in the area in front of the residence? Did she have a hand, or input, in the founding of the choir in 1959? It is frustrating to think that the answers to some of these questions we will never know (that is, until the Heavenly Kingdom). 

After a few moments of prayer in St. Joseph's Garden, it was time to head across the road, and further into the cemetery, into the vast, wide open plains of "Section 10."  Using a crumbling red brick retaining wall as a guide and landmark, I found Father Oleksiw's grave in the shade of a tree.  The inscription on the bronze monument reads "Rev. Peter Oleksiw-- born in Ukraine."  Reading that inscription, it was impossible not to think of "Zapovit'." Perhaps that was the intention.

Something you may not know about our chalice

In the course of doing the church inventory, during the fall of 2008, I weighed and photographed all of the liturgical vessels, which the church has acquired over the years.  One of the vessels was the chalice that we ordinarily use for the Sunday Divine Liturgy. 

It is a simple chalice that bears only a raised leaf (acanthus) pattern on the cup and the base, but it also has an inscription on its bottom that sheds light on it origin, as well as the reason why it continues to be used for the most important events in the liturgical life of the church.  The inscription reads: "Presented to Rev. Myron Danilovich on the occasion of 10 years of service at St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church, Newark, N.J." Well, anyone who is familiar with the early history of the Miami parish knows that this very Father Myron was the founder of the parish in 1950.  The history of the parish published in 1983 tells us that he came to Miami in 1949.  He was sent here to convalesce from some sort of lung ailment, but he used his time here to organize a new community.  That community had its first organizational meeting in Father Myron's living room in January of 1950.  But, of course, a short time later, he had died. According to the published history, he made the community, gathered around his deathbed, vow that they would build a church as quickly as possible. The members of the community buried him in Flagler Memorial Cemetery, but they made good on their vow, and built a church just seven years after his death.

     Here is a photo of Fr. Danilovich and his chalice.

     And a closeup view of our chalice, along with an image of the inscription.

We usually refer to Father Myron as "the founding pastor," but in actuality he was not a pastor at all.  He had no obligation to be doing any work whatsoever during his time in Miami.  He was only acting as a good father, teacher and a true priest.

Watch for future posts, as I mean to hike over to Flagler Memorial and find Father Myron (and Father Petro Oleksiw, who is there as well).

Father Oleksiw's Sluzhebnyk

Naturally, an institution that is sixty years in existence has a great many treasures, which, with the passage of years, have been little mentioned, and perhaps all but forgotten.  Our parish is no exception.  The task of cleaning the Old Parish House has led me to the discovery of some of these treasures.

    One such item that is rich in meaning for us is a hand-written Liturgikon (what we call in Old Slavonic Sluzhebnyk), which was meticulously written and adorned by Father Petro Oleksiw, who was pastor of the church here in Miami for most of the 1960s.

     The manuscript was written in a pre-bound journal of some kind, which Father Oleksiw must have bought, but the text is written entirely in an elaborate calligraphic style that is usually referred to as Copperplate.  The text is entirely in Old Slavonic, so Father Oleksiw adapted Cyrillic Copperplate for the exigencies of the Old Slavonic language. For example, the Old Slavonic letter yat’, is written as a cursive Cyrillic “в” impaled with a horizontal line.

     The entirety of the text is written in black, so Father Oleksiw devised strategies to make certain kinds of text stand out.  The priest’s parts, which were to be said aloud, were written in a very large hand, while the prayers that the priest offers quietly can be seen to be underlined.  The people’s or choir’s part is everywhere written in a small hand.

     The rubrics (instructions to the priest and the deacon on the various liturgical actions) are completely left out of Father Oleksiw’s manuscript.  This perhaps suggests that this book was meant only for his use. After all, for him the instructions on the various actions of the Liturgy would have been superfluous, since, as a priest for many decades, the celebration of the Liturgy was completely second nature to him.
     However, there is one interesting exception to the general absence of rubrics (instructions) in the manuscript.  Father Oleksiw adapted a convention that was common in earlier Greek-Catholic books, but was last seen in the 1905 Liturgikon.  This convention involves a tiny pictograph of two hands, either joined or raised, which are placed in the margin of the book in order to indicate the position of the priest's hands at various moments during the Divine Liturgy.  Father Oleksiw has eliminated the pictograph for joined hands, but retains the pictograph that indicates that the hands should be raised aloft.  The 1905 liturgical books prescribed many such moments during the liturgy, when the priest was to raise his hands (this was probably an imitation of the Latin liturgy).  The majority of these instances were removed from the 1944 Roman edition of the Liturgikon, which was created to conform to Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky's Ordo Celebrationis. The use of the "hands raised" position becomes very restricted after 1944, in order to conform to the customs observed in the Orthodox Church.  It is interested to note that Father Oleksiw accepted the 1944 usage in the Liturgy of the Catechumens, and, in fact, up to Горі иміим серца, but then reverts to the 1905 customs for the whole of the anaphora.  He returns to the 1944 usage after the conclusion of the anaphora, for the litany before communion, and for the rite of communion.  The other peculiarities of the 1905 liturgical books (ending the Liturgy with the longer dismissal, including Чеснішую, for example) are absent from Father Oleksiw's sluzhebnyk. 

     Without doubt, Father Oleksiw was trained using the 1905 books.  What his own personal sluzhebnyk shows us is that he had accepted the inevitable triumph of the Roman editions, but still cherished a certain nostalgia for the liturgical customs of his childhood and the early years of his priesthood. One's faith is very personal. There can be nothing more personal than an individual's religion. Any change at all (even change that is ultimately for good) in this deepest and most intimate part of our soul is traumatic and painful.
     The lesson, I think, for us in Father Oleksiw's sluzhebnyk is the importance of our liturgical life together as a community.  Father Oleksiw loved the Liturgy and valued the Liturgy so much that he laboriously and carefully copied the whole service by hand in a calligraphy that is not easy to execute.  This was clearly a man who knew the centrality of the Liturgy in his life. He knew that Christ had established the Mysteries for our salvation, and the extent to which we are saved is the extent to which we conform our hearts and minds to this Mysteries.  Our sanctification is in proportion to the extent to which we have lived the Liturgy.