To the Ages of Ages ...
Worshipers at Annunciation Orthodox Church on Wednesday heard the prayer phrase over and over — sometimes in English, sometimes in Greek.

Their worship was age-old. Today, though, everything old is new again.

Orthodoxy, once an American oddity, is growing nationally because of its continuity with the past. An ancient church, ironically, has become trendy.

The trend is reflected in Lancaster County, as Annunciation sees its numbers swell — in part with new converts to the old faith.

At the 4 p.m. Holy Unction service on Wednesday of Holy Week, Annunciation was packed with generations of believers. Today's Easter, or Pascha, services are expected to be similarly full.

This year is one of the rare instances when the observance of Easter in the Eastern and Western churches coincides.

Some people are attracted by the liturgy and the icons and the practices of the Orthodox church. Frederica Mathewes-Green, an author who is among the high-profile converts to Orthodoxy, sees a deeper call.

"I think that this is the underlying thing that attracts new people to Orthodoxy: the authority of the ancient community," she wrote in an e-mail.

"New churches may borrow icons or chant, but it's like cut flowers — the flowers have no roots and they will wither. In order to find a place in the ancient community, you have to join an Orthodox church."

Preserving tradition
Kyrie eleison ... Lord, have mercy.

Holy Unction, or anointing of the sick, on Great Holy Wednesday at Annunciation is so popular that the church offers it both at 4 and 7 p.m.

The liturgy is read from a thick prayer book printed in Greek and English. Worshipers hear seven epistle readings, seven Gospel lessons, seven prayers. The congregation stands for the Gospel and for prayers.

During Holy Week, the Hershey Avenue church has services every night leading to Easter. The Orthodox also call the celebration of Christ's resurrection Pascha, from the Greek word for Passover.

Easter in the Western and Eastern churches is rarely on the same Sunday because the two branches of Christianity use different dating systems to calculate the holiday.

The Rev. Alexander Goussetis, pastor of Annunciation, pointed out that the Orthodox use the same calendar as Jewish people do to set Passover.

"Biblically, you can't have Easter without Passover," he said.

Annunciation is part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, one of the jurisdictions under the banner of the worldwide Orthodox Church.

In 1921, Greeks who had begun immigrating to Lancaster in 1902, mainly from the islands of Chios and Cos, established Annunciation on South Queen Street.

"For several generations, it was definitely the Greek immigrant story," Goussetis said.

Now, partly because so many people from outside the Greek community are members, the church also refers to itself simply as Annunciation Orthodox Church. Goussetis calls this "pan-Orthodox," a way for Annunciation to be a home for many cultures.

Among Annunciation's 1,200 to 1,400 members are believers from Romania, Russia, Albania, Eritrea and Ethiopia, among other nations. Three-quarters of the marriages at Annunciation involve a non-Orthodox partner.

While Goussetis did not have totals, he said the church also is welcoming more new members converting to Orthodoxy without a marriage tie.

"It's a much more diverse community," he said.

The Goussetis family is an example of diversity. "I'm cradle Orthodox," he said, but his wife, Lisa, is a convert.

In the United States, Orthodoxy has been a minority tradition, with about 5 million members of 300 million worldwide.

That has been changing, led by high-profile converts like Mathewes-Green and Rod Dreher, a Dallas journalist who blogs as the "Crunchy Con."

Mathewes-Green and her husband, the Rev. Gregory Mathewes-Green, formerly an Episcopal priest, now lead a church they founded in Baltimore, Holy Cross Orthodox Church. She has written influential books on Orthodoxy, including "Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy."

Orthodoxy preserves the traditions of the Eastern church, the oldest in Christianity. In A.D. 1054, the "Great Schism" split what had been one church into two: Roman Catholic and Orthodox.

The Rev. Alexander Veronis, Annunciation's assistant pastor, who headed the church for many years, writes in an online guide that Orthodoxy "continues to abide by the beliefs and teachings of the historic seven ecumenical councils of the first thousand years of Christianity."

More Christians are drawn to explore the roots that Orthodoxy taps. Ira Kurtz, pastor of Sunnyside Mennonite Church in Lancaster, is among a group of Mennonites that has been engaged in dialogue with the Orthodox for the last five years.

He said the two traditions have discovered "numerous points of contact" between Mennonite and Orthodox theology. Orthodoxy emphasizes "humility, askesis [asceticism], self-denial, which is present in our theology as well," he said. "... Both Orthodox and Mennonite tend to be countercultural and community-oriented," stressing obedience.

"We sometimes appear to be evangelical Protestants," Kurtz said, "but scratch us a bit and really find us at our roots, and you'll discover some real similarities with the Orthodox and some dissimilarities with evangelical Protestantism."

"Orthodoxy," Goussetis said, "is something universal."

Preserving authority
For Thou art the Fountain of healing, O God, our God.

At the end of the Holy Unction service, worshipers lined up to be anointed with oil.

"This healing is not only for our physical selves, for our bodies," Goussetis told the church, "but also for the healing of our souls, our minds."

On their way to the altar, some parishioners kissed an icon of Christ. Above, painted in the dome, the icon known as "Christ Pantocrator" — Ruler of All — watched over the church.

The icons, or images from Scripture and church history, are the most notable physical characteristic of an Orthodox church.

Painted in a symbolic style meant to communicate faith, icons are embraced even among non-Orthodox Christians. So are other forms of Orthodox spirituality, including the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner").

Goussetis pointed out that in the early church, a time when most people were not literate, icons were a way of teaching without written words.

"Even to this day," he said, "with children, it is great for instruction"

Icons also allow devotion to be expressed nonverbally — "a left brain-right brain experience," Goussetis said. "It brings in the whole person."

Orthodox worship does that as well. It's what Mathewes-Green calls multisensory: icons, chanting, incense. With the "smells and bells" style of worship once rejected by Protestantism now increasingly popular, these qualities are one reason for the new wave of converts.

Mathewes-Green came for a different reason, one she thinks undergirds the Orthodox revival.

"I think the thing deeper down, that underlies the attraction for everyone, is a sense that there is authority here," she said. "In our culture we are fascinated with the image of the 'rebel,' the person who mocks social mores and thinks for himself, marches to a different drummer, colors outside the lines — all that.

"But it winds up being an extremely lonely place to be."

In a rootless society, the call of community pulls people to Orthodoxy.

"What many churches try to offer is a self-consciously new community, continually being updated, timely — but why should we trust those church leaders to have any more depth or wisdom than we have? They lack authority," she said.

"Orthodoxy, on the other hand, has deep roots. ... While contemporary Christianity is aiming to be timely ... Orthodoxy is practicing timelessness."

"The shifting sands of theology are attracting people," Goussetis said.

While critics argue that "you have to change as times go by," Goussetis said, changes should only mean how the faith is applied to the times and the culture.

"But what the faith is," he said, "that doesn't change."

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Helen Colwell Adams is a staff writer for the Sunday News.  Her email address is hcolwell@lnpnews.com.