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Imagine my surprise when I went to find a precise answer to Annie's question and encountered no results found. Neither dictionary.com nor merriam-webster.com has an entry for the word metany. It's an ecclesiastical term meaning prostration. I could have simply answered Annie's question in the comment section, but this is Great Lent, and I feel compelled to give a more complete reply.
In Eastern Christianity, there are two metanies, the Great Prostration and the Little Prostration.
Great Lent is the season of the great prostration, which is made three times during the prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, which is itself read twice at the end of each weekday service during Great Lent:
O Lord and Master of my life!
Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. (metany)
But give to thy servant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love. (metany)
Yes, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother or sister. (metany)
For thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.
The great metany consists of dropping to your knees, touching the floor with your forehead, standing, and making the sign of the cross.
The little metany knows no season. The little prostration consists of bowing from the waist, touching the floor with your fingertips, straightening, and making the sign of the cross. We make little metanies when we enter the nave of the church, when we venerate the icons, when we approach the Holy Place, when we sing Blessed art thou, o Lord, teach me your statutes.
But WHYYY, Mommy? WHY do we make these prostrations? WHY can't we just bend our knees (the literal meaning of genuflect) a bit the way the Catholics do when they enter the pew? (and WHY don't we have pews?) WHY do we have to hold our fingers just so when we make the sign of the cross? WHY? WHY? WHY?
Hmmmmmm... where to start...
The word metany comes from the Greek word metanoia, which means conversion, which comes from the Latin word conversus, which means turning around. Conversion is turning away from sin, from that which would turn us away from God. In a metany, our body guides the mind and spirit in an attitude of repentance and turning toward God.
It's important to understand that Eastern Christianity has never seen a dichotomy between the human body and the human spirit, has never seen the two as warring with each other. (The West can thank St. Augustine for the prevalence of the idea that the spirit has to subdue the body.) We don't need to sit perfectly still so that our minds can relax and our spirits pray. Rather, we understand that engaging the body in worship and prayer makes it easier for the mind and spirit to do likewise.
We stand throughout the liturgy. We turn to follow the Gospel in procession. We move to the front of the church to be as close to the proclamation of Word of God as possible. During certain services of Great Lent, we prostrate ourselves for long(ish) periods of time. (You can't do that in a church with pews!) We move through and around the church, the body helping the mind and spirit to leave the current place and time and enter the Eternal Now.
Alexander Schmemann explains it this way:
In the long and difficult effort of spiritual recovery, the Church does not separate the soul from the body. The whole man has fallen away from God; the whole man is to be restored, the whole man is to return. The catastrophe of sin lies precisely in the victory of the flesh -- the animal, the irrational, the lust in us -- over the spiritual and the divine. But the body is glorious; the body is holy, so holy that God Himself "became flesh." Salvation and repentance then are not contempt for the body or neglect of it, but restoration of the body to its real function as the expression and the life of spirit, as the temple of the priceless human soul. Christian asceticism is a fight, not against but for the body. For this reason, the whole man - soul and body - repents. The body participates in the prayer of the soul just as the soul prays through and in the body. Prostrations, the "psycho-somatic" sign of repentance and humility, of adoration and obedience, are thus the lenten rite par excellence.
Source: The Missionary,
The Internet Edition of St. Luke's Mission Periodical
The Internet Edition of St. Luke's Mission Periodical
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4 comments:
Alicia, thank you I learned a lot from this post. I want to learn more about your faith. Be well and blessings.
Thank you, Suzann. It's hard for me to write this kind of "educational" post about my church/faith, because I know that most of the people who read my blog don't come here to read about that stuff. But my faith is a big part of me and informs my journey profoundly, so I need to write about it... I'm just not usually so "informative."
I totally know what you mean, and you did a great job.
We say metania instead of metany. I found this article on OrthodoxWiki
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Worship
Judy asked about how old people handle the physical demands of eastern liturgies. Do they have to stand for the whole service? Do they have to do the metany?
The simple answers are no and no. The very old, the very young, those who are ill, and those who are with child (either in the womb or in their arms) have always been exempt from the "rules" of standing, prostrating, etc.
I put rules in quotation marks because there are really very few hard and fast rules about such things. It is always appropriate to stand during Divine Liturgy, but there are some portions when it is acceptable to sit. I think that since there is a marked lack of legalism, it is actually EASIER to follow the traditional practices. The only rule is that you do the best you physically can, taking the posture of prayer that will bring you closest to the heart of prayer.
As a young(ish) person, however, I don't care how much my feet hurt: I find it very hard to sit when I see the 80- and 90-year-old members of my parish standing. And if "Uncle Ted" can do a great metany at the age of 87, then so can I! There have been times when my knees (pre-arthritic with two torn ACLs) have made it too hard. So I follow the practice of the oldest parishioners: I go down on my knees for the first metany, then STAY on my knees rather than standing in between the next two.
Overall, standing the whole time frees your mind from thinking about whether or not this is one of those times when you should not be sitting. It's actually easier on my knees to stand the whole time than it is to be sitting and standing and sitting and standing. (I learned early on to wear comfortable shoes.)
I hope this helps, Judy. Any other questions? :-P
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