In love for Blessed Nazarius, Abbot of Valaam Monastery, I wanted to try to include some small reference to him in our Sunday services this past Sunday, since it was his day, February 23rd. However, because this was one of the Sundays of the Triodion, the Sunday of Last Judgment, as we near Great Lent, none of the material for the saint usually included.
I decided to just bring in his troparion (“dismissal hymn”), if I could find it, to add to the troparia at the beginning of Matins…a little nod to Elder Nazarius. I went to look in the volume of the Little Russian Philokalia dedicated to him, because I have seen the troparion and kontakion for the saint listed in other volumes of that series. Come to find out, his volume has the full service: Vespers and Matins for Abbot Nazarius of Valaam! And what’s more: the service was produced by Platina itself, the canon by the brotherhood as a whole, and the stichera at Vespers composed by Father Seraphim (Rose).
I must admit, I marked these stichera with a tad more fear and trembling than I would with most texts. Usually, I am dealing with words written by a translator from Slavonic to English. I feel more freedom, in such a case, to work with phrasing to not only help it fit the music more comfortably, but also to help the intended meaning come through clearly when being listened to in song.
These stichera, though, were written by Fr. Seraphim (Rose), written directly into English—there is no lost-in-translation problem here—and by someone who most certainly knows what meaning he is trying to convey and how he wants to communicate that meaning. Still, Platina is much more minded toward singing the words into the set music, instead of using the music to emphasize particular words to bring out the meaning more clearly. In the end, I still decided to change a few things in this service, but, certainly, more carefully and lightly than I normally would have.
I hope this is helpful for others out there. Of course, since he shares a day with St. Polycarp, you will have to choose Elder Nazarius over another wonderful saint of our Church, but that is a frequent problem, I guess: which of God’s beautiful saints to commemorate on this day.