Ya know, there is this one lady in our parish who came from the Greek parish five-ten miles away. I believe she had a dispute with the new priest or something and jumped ship to us. Anyway, we had a banquet last month for one of our priests who has been in the priesthood for 25 years. Obviously this mean Bishop BENJAMIN (OCA) was in town. The banquet was on a Saturday and His Grace stayed with us for a Hierarchical Liturgy the next day.
During that Coffee Hour, I overheard this Greek lady speaking with the bishop. Apparently when she was growing up she was taught that one does not eat meat on Saturday as a way to prepare for Communion. She noticed at the banquet the day before that a number of people, most, were eating meat and still received Communion the next day (A witch! A witch! Burn her! Burn her!) and wondered "hey, what's up?" His Grace explained that the different cultures have different customs that they do. The Greeks abstain from meat the day before receiving Communion and the Serbs, "who receive Communion mostly only on Christmas and Pascha", will typically abstain from meat for a whole week if they receive Communion at any other time of year. And apparently American Orthodoxy tends to A) receive Communion frequently and B) not abstain from meat the day before, but abstain from all food on Sunday from midnight until after Liturgy.
She then asked "well, what do I do?" He said to honor her parents and to keep abstaining from meat on Saturdays as that is how she had been doing so her whole life and it would not make sense to change that and not to worry about the rest of the parish because, well, that is a matter between them, their spiritual father and God. She received a blessing and went on her merry way.
The point of all this is that sometimes it is best for a respected authority sort of person to say something especially if they happen to know the various traditions and customs behind things. I have to give this one particular lady kudos for not making a big stink of things and some older ladies are notorious for doing at times.
If you hear something like that, just bring up Sts. Cyril and Methodios and St. Innocent who preached to the people using the native language of the area they were missionizing.
Fun fact: when rumors of selling Alaska were floating around the Russian Empire, St. Innocent wrote to the Emperor and the Holy Synod advocating that if Alaska is going to be sold to the Americans than they must recall all their clergy and send priests and others who know English so that Orthodoxy may be given to the Americans
It's sacrilegious to call a Temple of the Lord, a Ghetto.
