Vespers

By Volodymyr Kish

Outside, the winter sky has already turned dark, and the ever present cloud cover means there is little chance we will see any stars on this cold and dreary evening. Along Oshawa’s Bloor St. in front of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a steady stream of cars whiz by with shoppers hurrying to complete their Saturday shopping or heading to the Tim Horton’s down the street to get a caffeine fix and a hit of sugared decadence in the form of their favourite doughnut.

I hurry up the stairs to the church, turning my face away from the biting wind, pry open the large and solid wooden doors, and slip inside with a pleasant sense of anticipation for what is to come.  The interior of the church shimmers with the light of dozens of candles, the only illumination in this colourful, Byzantine interior.  No incandescent, artificial light will grace this evening prayer service of vespers.  The light cast by the flickering candles seems to be alive, creating subtly moving shadows and eternally changing illumination of the numerous icons, ornate carvings, embroidery and other religious decorations that surround the altar, the iconostasis and the whole front of the church.

There is but a handful of people in the church, discouraging perhaps to Father Hladio who leads the vesper service, but I suppose in a selfish way, I like this relative solitude where I can enjoy my brief moments of spiritual solitude without the distractions of the crowds that attend regular Sunday Divine Liturgy.

The service is simple and consists of a series of various prayers, hymns, psalms, litanies and canticles all sung or chanted by the priest and however many choristers are in attendance, usually, in the times I have been there, no more than three or four.  Pani Dobrodiyka Tanya (the priest’s wife) fortunately, is almost always there lending her fine voice to the task at hand.

The service and the chanting begin and in no time at all my state of mind begins to change, with all awareness of the demanding world outside the doors disappearing from my immediate consciousness.  I try and let go of any prevailing thoughts and worries and allow my mind to simply indulge in the surrounding sights, smells and sounds of this special little space inside the church.

Soon, the smell of incense pervades the air and the repetitive chants cast a spiritually hypnotic trance on me, inducing a state of peace and tranquillity that is rare in my life.  My eyes wander from icon to icon and from candle flame to candle flame. I imagine in my mind how countless generations of my ancestors have stood and immersed themselves in this same feeling over the many centuries since Christianity was first introduced to Ukraine.  Our lives might be very different in almost all other aspects, but somehow I am sure that what I am feeling now is what they felt when they stood in front of their icons and heard the same chants and smelled the same incense in their time.  My stresses are undoubtedly very different from their stresses, but I am convinced that for those brief periods of time that we now share separated by time and space, they felt the same respite and moments of peace as I do.

Philosophy, theology and the intricacies of religious thought and practice are often not easy for the ordinary person to understand or come to terms with, but at Vespers, I am never troubled by such dilemmas.  For the forty five minutes or so that the vesper service takes, I allow myself not to think, but simply to feel and experience the moment.  This particular confluence of the environment, the light, the music, the art, the smells – all combine to create a special, spiritually healing and revitalizing experience.

The busier and more complicated that life gets, the more I think we need such little retreats from our turbulent world. We need to let go, even if but for a short space of time, of the constant chaotic bombardment of our consciousness with thoughts, stimulations, worries and temptations.  We need to give our minds and our souls a little room to rest and recover.  I have found that Vespers are a particularly effective way to do just that.