It began with profound silence. Then smoking incense, and then the din of a distant bell.
It was a moment inside Westville’s domed Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church’s. The moment marked the time before creation. It also marked the beginning of the daily evening “Great Vespers service” — and the beginning of the church’s second hundred years.
A small but reverent group of worshippers arrived for the afternoon service to join Father Michael Westerberg and his wife, chorus director Lydia Westerberg, who together have been shepherding this congregation for 35 years.
They bowed on entering the beautifully lit sanctuary decorated from nearly floor to ceiling with vividly shining golden icons of saints and religious figures of the Orthodox rite and tradition in North America. They inhaled the already scented air, and then kissed the image of the veiled Virgin Mary that had been set up on a lectern in the middle of the main aisle of the sanctuary.
The regular evening service, or vespers, was called “great” on Wednesday evening because it preceded a feast day, commencing on Thursday morning, celebrating the Protection of the Theotokos.
“Theotokos” is the Greek term for the Virgin Mary, or “god-bearer.” The holiday marks her intercession, and miraculous appearance with a protective veil, back in the ninth century.
That eleventh-hour appearance more than a thousand years ago helped Orthodox Christians in Constantinople emerge victorious from what appeared to be certain death as they were besieged by the then-unconverted Russian Slavs, explained Father Westerberg.
Gall and his new wife, Yale religious studies grad student Mary Farag-Gall.
The holiday is celebrated every Oct. 1. But this particular Oct. 1 was a little different for the congregation, which was established originally on Dixwell Avenue by Russian immigrants to New Haven in 1915. It is now located on Alden Avenue at the corner of Burton Street.
The previous weekend the congregation had marked its centennial with services, a banquet in North Haven, all accompanied by the attendance of distinguished Orthodox clergy from distant places, and the ordaining of one of their own, Joseph Gall, as a deacon.
Click here to see a report and photos from the centennial weekend.Click here for a story on the repainting of icons at the church; and here for previous story about the restoration of the church’s massive, five-tone onion dome.
Westerberg and Gall led their congregants through the half-hour service Wednesday afternoon with sustained antiphonal chanting between the higher, more angelic voices of the four-member female choir and the two male officiants.
The candles glowed. So did the icons in the flames’ reflected light. There was much bell ringing, bowing, shaking of the censer, kissing of the icon and the cross, and many circumlocutions of the sanctuary with the censer by priest and deacon both wearing flowing azure vestments with golden threads.
Choir Director Westerberg with her tuning fork; only the glory of the human voice, no other instrument, is permitted.
To a first-time observer of an Orthodox service, the appeal to the senses seemed central and powerful.
“The church engages all of our senses. We smell [the incense], we see the icons and imagery, we hear, we touch, it’s embracing, we hold, we kiss,” explained Gall.
But there was far more going on in the service than the evocation of spirituality through sense-uality.
Only the central part of the service featured hymns and textual material referencing the specific historical events that anchor the particular feast day.
The larger structural frame of the service and all services, along with their ritual details, Westerberg said afterwards, was, as he put it, a reprise of salvational history as understood by the Orthodox church.
That’s why, at the beginning of the service, the door of the iconostasis, the screen or wall of icons separating the central room of the church from the altar, was opened. It’s symbolic of the world being perfect before creation, with no separation between creation, no wall or screen, between us humans and God.
The door closed during sections of the liturgy describing humankind’s sinning. It reopened with the salvation offered by Jesus. “It’s a response to the texts, the background story, the salvational history that’s always playing during the service,” Westerberg said.
The opening, so that everyone had access to the high altar, derives from the way the architecture of the church derives from that of the temple as described in the Hebrew Bible.
The ancient Jerusalem temple had an outer court, an inner area for most of the population, and a holy of holies that only the high priest could enter — on the Jewish Days of Awe — said Westerberg.
An Orthodox church in Westville must know its Hebrew roots, and Westerberg certainly does. Because of the centennial celebrations, Westerberg said, he had expected only the modest crowd at Great Vespers, but it was OK.
“We don’t need a minyan” [ten adults], he said.
In Jewish tradition, he went on, only the high priest would enter the holy of holies in the ancient temple. There was a rope attached to his ankle in case something bad happened.
In what Westerberg called the “fulfillment” of Israel, the central Orthodox concept is that the holy of holies, represented by the altar perceived through the opening door of the iconostasis, is now available to everyone, not only the priests, through Jesus’s blood sacrifice.
One parishoner — he did not want to give his name out of fear his employer might think him too religious — was asked afterwards if he had a favorite part of the service.
“It’s like asking about Thanksgiving dinner what you like. It’s the whole thing. The service reflects the church. The Orthodox service is not decoration; it is what we believe,” he said.
The Orthodox church’s survival under Ottoman and Communist rule, through the service, is a testimony to its power, he added.
Westerberg recalled the immigrants, mainly families from Belarus and Greece, who founded the New Haven parish a century ago.
“They couldn’t imagine a life without their Orthodox faith,” he said. “Our chiefest goal [in the next century] is to be faithful to that vision, by teaching and education.
As he looks forward to the next hundred years, Father Westerberg said he is “absolutely optimistic” about the future of his increasingly diverse 150-member church.
About half those are converts, with Asian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, and African-Americans represented, he added.