Cântarea liturgică în lumina Sfintei Tradiţii – contribuţia Sfântului Andrei Criteanul

Abstract

In the year 2023, proclaimed by the Romanian Patriarchate as the “Commemorative Year of hymnographers and church singers (psalts)“, we proposed to bring back into discussion the very important contribution of Saint Andrew of Crete (660-740), in the context of understanding the meaning of liturgical singing in the Light of the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church. Saint Andrew the Cretan left a rich homiletic, hymnographic and melodic work, his hymns being used in today’s liturgical practice, throughout the year, especially at the great Feasts (dedicated to the Mother of God, the Saints, as well as those from the Triod cycle and Pentecost). We focused on the Great Canon, trying to understand the life of the Hymnographer, who acquired holiness thanks to both the fruit of ascetic effort, the crown of which is spiritual purity, and the gift of Christ through the Holy Spirit, the two criteria working together as an expression of a synergy dynamics. Divine holiness has the attribute of transcendence as a person, so it potentiates our consciousness, making us think of our sinfulness, and in this context also appears deep repentance, equal in depth to the levels of consciousness.