Sacred Mysteries: Unveiling the Evensong of Mesopotamia

Telegraph

08-03-2025

It's an intriguing title. The Book of Before & After sounds like a novel by Philip Pullman. In fact it is a translation of the liturgy of the hours of the Church of the East. The reference is to the Psalms and hymns recited day by day before and after the stable core of Psalms sung at evening and morning prayer.
The translation is by the enterprising American-born Chaldean Catholic priest working in California, Father Andrew Younan. If this rings a bell, don't stop reading on that account, because my mention of him a few weeks ago was in connection with another book: the poetic sermons of Narsai, the 5th-century saint active on the present border of Syria and Turkey.
But an obvious interest of the ancient liturgy used by the Chaldeans (who are in communion with the Pope) and by the Assyrians (who are not), and indeed by the Syro-Malabarese Catholics of Kerala, is its use of a dialect of Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. The church that grew up beyond the eastern borders of the Roman Empire was not under the thumb of the Emperor, yet supported generations of scholars who preserved and translated ancient Greek philosophy, notably that of Aristotle, much of whose works were lost to the West for centuries.
The importance of liturgy – worship by the Church – is that it expresses beliefs in a more vital way than credal formulae. It conveys things about God and his involvement with humanity that cannot be said by theology. The difference is greater than that between the rules of football and a game of football.
In translating these acts of worship, Fr Younan is anxious to help prevent the Chaldean Catholic Church in America, which is now lively and numerous, from losing its identity. There is a well-meaning tendency to make Chaldean Sunday services less demanding by adopting Westernised music and style. 'This is, in my experience, an easy way out that will be suicidal in the long run,' he told the admirable religious journalist Luke Coppen in an interview for The Pillar website. 'If the Chaldean Church ends up feeling just like a Latin Church, then why not just go to a Latin Church?'
The liturgy of the hours in the Church of the East bears similarities to Morning and Evening Prayer in the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer. More Psalms are chanted, and the numbering of them agrees in part with the Hebrew version (and the CofE) and half with the Greek version (and the Latin rite).
The oriental flavour comes mostly from the music (illustrated in an accompanying online resource), and from the earnest, elevated and repeated prayers. The day starts (as in Hebrew worship) in the evening. Evening prayer begins and ends with the Our Father, ornamented with internal doxologies ('Holy, holy, you are holy; our Father in heaven...'.) In the middle of evening prayer comes the Lakhu Mara, at the lighting of lamps, with the refrain: 'We give you thanks, O Lord of all, we glorify you, Jesus Christ; you raise our bodies into life, you are the Saviour of our souls.'
It also includes the Trisagion, borrowed from the most ancient Greek liturgy and in use in the Latin liturgy of Good Friday: 'Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One: Have mercy on us.'
Absent from the liturgy is any statement of the heresy known as Nestorianism. Indeed in Sunday Evening Prayer, Jesus, the name given to the child born of Mary, is addressed as Creator. He is both God and man, as the Catholic and Orthodox churches agree.