Our next icon encounter is by Nicole M. Roccas:
“Nicole, could you read the Post-Communion Prayers this week?” Fr. Yuri asked me after Liturgy last week. Fellow congregants were already filing towards him to venerate the cross.
Nodding, I opened to the back section of a small, leather-bound prayer book containing a cycle of prayers attributed to various saints, each giving thanks to God for the Liturgy, the Eucharist, the gracious mystery of Christ deigning to dwell within us. At our parish, a reader chants these prayers—they last about seven minutes—while people venerate the cross. Many amble past on their way to coffee hour, some stay, but all hear at least the first few lines. I cross myself and begin.
“I thank You, O Lord my God, that You have not rejected me, a sinner, but have made me worthy to partake…”
It has taken me years to learn to love these prayers, to learn slowness from them, to let them help me linger long enough after Liturgy so as to “not let this miracle pass by unnoticed” (from The Life of St. Macrina). And I am still learning.
The hardest part about Orthodoxy for me has never been the praying or fasting, hierarchies or histories, but the sheer slowness. The barely moving plod of Liturgies, Lents, and, I suppose, theosis itself. The halting pace, the attentiveness it asks of me, the constant need to downshift into a kind of sacred slowness that even on my better days feels vaguely panic-inducing. By nature, I am more inclined to scramble through my days with the urgency of a fugitive, always on the run from boredom, dullness, and meaninglessness.
Once, not too long ago, I would have chafed at being asked to stay and chant these prayers or do anything delaying coffee hour (which I worry I’d trade my birthright for) any longer than necessary. What began to change me was a saint, an icon, and an experience of strangeness that continues to do its work in me.
“Cleanse me, purify, and put me in order…”
It was spring, about nine years ago. I was in the States for meetings with my doctoral advisor, which meant for the first time in ages I could attend Liturgy at the parish where I’d been chrismated.
That Sunday, church felt even slower than usual, not just because of the longer Liturgy of Lent, but also because of my impatience to catch up with people afterwards—my spiritual father, godparents, and my dear friend Emily.
Immediately following the dismissal, I rushed to the choir alcove to find Emily. We hugged and laughed our way past the chanter, barely hearing his recitation of the Post-Communion Prayers, and slipped into the throng waiting to venerate the cross. Distracted by our own conversation, we stalled the line several times, eliciting polite nudges from the poor souls stuck behind us.
But then, crossing into the transept, a chill stopped me. Someone was watching me—not just idly staring, but boring into me with the silent disapproval of a vexed teacher. Scanning the room, I expected to find a familiar glare, but no one met my eyes, not even Fr. Steven, who rarely missed the chance to sigh at my post-Liturgy rowdiness.
With each step toward the front, my unease grew. We passed a broad, wooden icon stand. I hesitated, half-expecting someone—a mischievous child, possibly—to leap out from behind it. But the only eyes watching me were those of St. Innocent the Wonderworker, whose feast it was that day and whose icon graced the stand. His face angled slightly away, his gaze fixed back at me—the side-eye was unmistakable. My silent watcher had been found.
Bewildered, I bent to kiss his icon.
“I offer Thee as intercessors all the saints.”
For a moment or two, despite my usual skepticism, I was certain St. Innocent was somehow standing “right there,” invisibly, behind (within?) his icon. His presence seemed as real to me as anyone else’s, like I would step on his feet if I got any closer.
Still, it wasn’t an entirely friendly encounter. The space between us was tense, as though he were annoyed, even angry, with me. It wasn’t the facial expression in his icon so much as the tone of his invisible presence, which spoke to me beyond words. And what it told me was that I was talking in church, and others were trying to pray, and that wasn’t kind, or reverent, or particularly good for my soul, and I should know better.
And I did know better, but that didn’t stop a wave of defensiveness from welling up in my chest. Surely a saint has better things to do with his time/eternity than to show up in an ordinary church on an ordinary Sunday just to shush me, right?
In hindsight, though, I see something in that saintly side-eye I couldn’t then. What in my earthly vocabulary I understood as a kind of petty irritation on St. Innocent’s part, I would now describe as a beckoning, an invitation into mystery—the mystery of encountering a saint, yes, but on a deeper level, the mystery of encountering myself, with all its feeble, impatient undercurrents. It revealed to me not just how restless I was after Liturgy, but how restless I am in life, and how painful it is to be constantly bargaining with my boredom. The effect this all had on me, eventually, was to summon the more resolute parts of my being, teaching them that—even when the waters are choppy—I am capable, in Christ, of holding this wind-tossed ship of a soul steady through the storms of my inner restlessness.
Emphasis on “eventually.” I wish I could say this all crystallized at once, that I was transformed in the twinkling of an eye in front of that icon. But that morning was only a beginning. Before I could take it all in, time, like the faltering veneration line, shepherded me forward.
It would take years for that strange experience to really take root. Years of absence and upheaval, of pandemic closures that revealed the gift of the Eucharist in a new way. It would take becoming a chanter myself, tasting the beauty of those prayers in my own mouth, chanting them above the thrum of others’ conversations, even having to shush others—not (just) out of human annoyance, but also out of love. For the prayers, for people who might be nourished by them, and for the slowly blooming steadiness that comes when we attempt to rest in those quiet, liminal moments after any Liturgy.
“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word! For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation…”
Finishing anything well—a race, a life, a Liturgy—takes an expansiveness that does not come easily.
In high school, I used to exasperate my track coach. As soon as the tiniest tip of my toe touched the finish line, I’d stop running and abruptly rush off the track. It was how I coped with the physical and psychological intensity of racing (and, worse, having people watch me while I raced). Unfortunately, not only was this tendency just awkward, it also cost me my place on several occasions when I neglected to fully step over the finish line.
“From now on, you ignore the actual finish line,” my coach told me after one such instance. “Pretend it’s not even there. Instead, imagine a different one ten yards farther. That’s the one you aim for.”
I never came up short in a race again.
Over the years, the Post-Communion Prayers have become a little like that imaginary finish line for me. An unseen, inner boundary for the Liturgy that lies just a bit beyond the dismissal. Like the effort of a hard race, Liturgy calls for a presence of mind and body that is uniquely painful for those of us who are basically hyperactive squirrels trapped in human bodies. Rather than scurrying off in search of coffee, I can choose to stay a little longer. For some reason, that micro-choice is what helps me actually cross the finish line of Liturgy. Instead of cutting loose from what I’ve received at the first opportunity, I can—for five to seven minutes (you can bet I’ve timed it)—reflect and respond with whatever gratitude I may be capable of, carrying the Liturgy forward with me in a spirit of purpose and love.
After Fr. Yuri’s final benediction, I return the prayer book to the stand. The church is nearly empty aside from a peaceful silence, and I am filled with gratitude—and not just because I am finally free to head to coffee hour.
*****
Nicole M. Roccas is a writer and trauma-informed writing coach based in Southern Ontario. She is the author of several books, including Time and Despondency: Regaining the Present in Faith and Life. Find her on Substack, Instagram, or her website (www.nicoleroccas.com).
