Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Home for the Holidays
Parishioners of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church will celebrate Christmas in a new sanctuary

By HEATH HAUSSAMEN | The New Mexican

Father John Bethancourt of the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church on Cordova will be giving two services Wednesday; The Royal Hours at 8a.m, and The Christmas Divine Liturgy at 10:30p.m. -

The unfinished chapel outside the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church houses icons that will represent the belief of the people. - Erin Galletta | The New Mexican

Poinsettias adorned the worship hall at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church on Tuesday while construction workers outside were building a wall and doing other construction on the functional but incomplete building.

This will be a Christmas to remember for parishioners at Holy Trinity.

It's the first such celebration in the new building for the 80 members of the church. That might seem like a small group to some, but the Rev. John Bethancourt remembers when he left the Episcopal Church to start Holy Trinity in 1995. The church had 22 members -- and five of them were Bethancourt and his family.

Back then, the church met in an old house on Cordova Road. Today the new, elaborate but distinctly Santa Fe-style building stands out among the modest homes and less decorated churches along Cordova Road.

It's a work in progress that has taken a lot of time and money to build. But Bethancourt said the church is made strong by members who are "very sacrificially giving."

Some of the restrooms still need to be completed. The upstairs portion of the church has yet to be made into a library. The icon that will adorn the dome in the worship hall hasn't been created. What will be the children's room is filled with boxes.

But the building is complete enough that services are being held there. The worship hall is elaborate -- lots of arches leading up to the Byzantine-style dome, with Santa-Fe style tile floors and pine pillars supporting the structure. Metal chandeliers made in Mexico hang from the ceiling.

Bethancourt calls the building's style "Southwest Byzantine." Even the baptismal pool is lined with blue and brown tiles that look like those found in many houses in Santa Fe -- but they are centered around decorative, iconic tiles from Jerusalem.

Holding on to tradition is a main principle of the Orthodox faith, Bethancourt said. But so is adopting the good aspects of local culture. If the architecture is any indication, Holy Trinity captures both well.

Its traditions emphasize the birth of Christ more than many Western churches, Bethancourt said. Most Western churches place more emphasis on Christ's death as atonement for sin than on his birth as the intervening of God in human society.

"God becoming human is at the center of everything we do," he said. "Our whole faith is about the human being transformed into the likeness of God."

Bethancourt called it "the royal exchange."

"(God) takes on our broken humanity ... in order that we may be totally healed and like God," he said. "That's what Christmas is about."

He cautioned that Orthodoxy teaches that humans can become like God but not gods themselves.

"We become by grace what God is by nature," Bethancourt said.

Communion is a part of that transformation, especially during Christmas services. To eat and drink what Orthodoxy teaches are the body and blood of Christ is to absorb Christ's "divine energy."

For those of Orthodox faith, the celebration of Christmas actually began 40 days beforehand with fasting. For that time, they don't eat any animal products. Five days before Christmas, they partake in the first of four feasts that precede Christmas -- as another way to prepare for the celebration.

This morning, Christmas services begin at 8 a.m. with "Royal Hours." The service involves the reading of Old Testament prophecy about the coming of Christ as a way to remember history and the story of the longing of the Jewish people for their messiah.

The Vesperal service, which normally takes place at sundown, is held at 10 a.m. today. It is the service that will be most like traditional Western Christmas services -- with a liturgy about the birth of Christ and a precelebration of Christmas, Bethancourt said.

The Vesperal service is one of several aspects of Judaism the Orthodox faith has retained, though many Western Churches have not. Sundown isn't the end of the day in Orthodox faith -- it's the beginning.

Bethancourt says that is because following God is a process of going "from darkness into light, not light into darkness."

There are other Jewish aspects of Orthodoxy that are absent from most Western churches. Even a menorah decorates the altar in the worship hall.

The main service begins tonight at 10:30 p.m. with prayer. Typically this is the Christmas-morning service, sometimes even in the Orthodox Church, but Bethancourt likes celebrating it at night as a continuance of the idea of moving from darkness into light.

Sometime after midnight, when Christmas Eve leaves and Christmas arrives, the feast begins. A liturgy on Christ's birth will be preached, and parishioners will receive communion. The service will be followed by a feast in the main hall of the new building. The celebration will include eating and singing Christmas carols into the early hours of the morning.

"We prepare for (the celebration) for a long time and then we celebrate it for a long time," Bethancourt said. Anyone is invited to attend and participate, he said.