UNDERSTANDING "BADARAK "
by Nayiri Baljian

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Your eminence, Archbishop Oshagan, beloved clergy, honorable delegates, guests, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you on a topic near and dear to my heart: Understanding Badarak. During his reign as Catholicos, St. Sahag, was concerned that the fledgling tradition of Armenian Christian worship could not be captured in the Armenian language. Along with his desire to see scripture translated, he was driven by the hope that his flock might understand their worship of Christ, and that this worship might be codified and transmitted in writing. The work of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob thus produced, along with a translation of scripture, the translation of a body of liturgical texts, including Badarak. Although Badarak has evolved since the early 5th Century, we are grateful to the Holy Translators for setting a precedent for understanding the words and the meaning of the Divine Liturgy.

During my time today, I would like to focus on two things around the topic of understanding Badarak. First, the need to understand Badarak and secondly, ways that we might help our people understand Badarak, so that they can better engage in the service.

“Uztroons, uztroons, amenayn emasdootyamp yev uzkooshootyamp, ee ver undsayetsootsek uzmidus tzer, asdvadsayin yergyooghiv!” “Guard the doors, guard the doors! With all wisdom and vigilance, lift up your minds with godly awe!” So the deacon instructs the people at a climactic moment of Badarak. This instruction is actually part of a threefold directive: Lift up your minds with divine awe, give thanks to the Lord with your whole heart (yev kohatsarook uzdiarneh polorov sirdeev), and then the priest adds that we should open our mouths and sing praises to God along with the Seraphim and the Cherubim. And with that, we sing the very words with which the angels worship God in heaven: soorp, soorp, soorp Der zorootyans. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

In the 10th Century, at the time when Catholicos Khosrov Antsevatsi wrote his Commentary on the Badarak, the deacon simply instructed, “Lift up your hearts to this divine mystery.” The instruction to lift up our minds is an important addition. As I just mentioned, the instruction helps comprise a three-step process: lift up your mind to the divine sacrament, which is the representation of Christ’s sacrifice for us, give thanks wholeheartedly to the Lord for this sacrifice, and out of that thanks and with the assurance that we are God’s people on account of Jesus’ sacrifice, open up your mouths and sing praises to him just like the angels do. You can see this angelic worship described in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4.

The angelic words, “Soorp soorp soorp der zorootyants” are sung by the people three times during Part III Badarak, which get to the heart of the sacrament. Worshipping God in imitation of and along with the angels is a key concept in Badarak because part of what we do in gathering is to look forward to the time when we will worship God in heaven, as the angels already have the privilege to do. So we’re using the same words that they use in our earthly worship to imitate their heavenly worship. It is striking that the call to angelic worship is preceded in this instance by the call to lift up the mind.

Let’s look a little more closely at the role of the mind, cognition, in our Christian life and worship. As Christians, we are instructed to be innocent in our faith but not to be ignorant. On the one hand, innocence, childlikeness: In the book of Matthew, Jesus references the Psalmist, King David, who wrote, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained worship” (Ps. 8:2). Jesus encourages his hearers to be like children in their relationship to God, in other words, dependent on him for all things, including salvation. But also in Matthew, Jesus thanks his Father who has hidden his mysteries from the wise and learned, but revealed them to little children (Matt. 11:25), those same people of innocent faith. The principle of innocence, childlikeness, is important for worship, in which we celebrate the mystery of salvation by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ. But equally important, if not a little ironic, is the fact that this mystery has in part already been revealed to us. As Christians, we are tasked to wrap our minds around that mystery so that our hearts and our mouths, or hands outside the sanctuary, will follow suit. The early Christian educators, men like Athanasius and Cyril, knew this and so they required converts to devote three years to instruction, catechesis, in the Faith before allowing baptism. Only when those new faithful fully understood the meaning behind the worship, were they allowed to participate in worship. This is why the deacon commands in Badarak that the catechumens, those under instruction must not draw near to the Holy Sacrifice or partake in the Holy Supper (Mi vok herakhayeets, etc. mertsestsni Asdvadzayin khorhoortoos). This vestigial statement from an earlier time shows how the Church believed that, if as an adult, you do not understand (or acknowledge) whose table you’re feasting at during communion, then you should not feast at the table.

As Armenian Apostolic Christians, we worship God through our various liturgical services and especially through the Divine Liturgy, the Badarak. The expectation is or should be that we know what is going on Badarak and the deeper meaning behind its prayers, hymns, movements, vessels, etc. The unfortunate truth, however, is that here in the United States, many participants in Badarak do not have the knowledge or understanding necessary to engage mentally in the service. On the contrary, many become disengaged, confused, or downright bored, if they attend at all. I estimate that at least 75% of congregants are generally unaware of what is going on in during the Divine Liturgy. This is based purely on observation, and more research would need to be done to support these metrics. But if it’s true, and if it’s true that the Christian mind needs to be engaged in Christian worship, we as the church leadership must do something to help our people understand Badarak. And in doing so we call them not to understand Badarak from a scholarly perspective, but in order that they might participate in the worship of our Triune God, the God of the universe and Lord of all creation, in the rich and worthy manner that the Armenian Apostolic Church presents. Put plainly, we must enable congregants to understand what’s going on in Badarak so that they can really take part in it.

When I was newly graduated from college, it struck me one week in church that I didn’t really understand what was going on in Badarak. Sure I had been attending Badarak since infancy, week after week for 22 years at that point. Sure, I knew the Badarak by heart word for word, syllable for syllable, choir, deacon, and priest parts (What can I say? It runs in the family), but I did not understand the meaning behind it. This realization prompted me to do two things. First, I spent a summer reading along with the English text. I don’t know about your parishes, but sometimes it feels like a mark of shame to hold a translation book. What kind of an Armenian are you? You don’t know the Badarak by heart! But I swallowed my pride and admitted, no, I don’t know the Badarak by heart, not in the way that I’m supposed to. Second, as I imbedded the translation of Badarak in my mind, I began trying to make connections between the words and actions of the service and what I knew about Christ and the church from my own study of scripture and church history. Once I began to connect these three primary elements the Liturgy, its translation, and the deeper meaning or theology behind it, I could truly lift up my mind in divine awe and out of that, actively and joyfully participate in the service.

I frequently hear people complain that they do not understand what is going on in Badarak. I can barely get my Sunday School students to sit through an hour of the service with me, and even then, I know I’ve lost them. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. It has bothered me to think that there are many who cannot comply with the directive to lift up their minds in divine awe to the mystery that is revealed for us week after week and who therefore can’t take the next step of giving thanks to God wholeheartedly and singing his praises.

Often when we hear people complain that they don’t understand the Divine Liturgy, we jump directly to the language issue, and we unravel into a debate about translation. While I think our church fathers always meant for the body of liturgy to be in the spoken language of the people, it is in most cases not solely a matter of translation that hinders our understanding of Badarak. I take the Pledge of Allegiance as an example. I use the Pledge with my Sunday school students as a way to show them the ways that we can miss meaning if we don’t look closely. So here’s the text of the pledge. You can see how even those familiar with the spoken language can miss the full meaning of the text.

Even if Badarak were translated from K’rapar or if we were to teach ourselves the vocabulary to understand the Badarak, which I think we all could, it would take a deeper theological or scriptural background to intelligently decipher the meaning behind modern Armenian or English translations of the Liturgy.

Many among our parishioners may not have this understanding due to an unfortunate glitch in the system. The liturgical life of the Armenian Church, her body of hymns and prayers, her calendar of scripture readings, is designed to educate the people in Christianity from infancy. However, because of the language barrier and our current liturgical practices, this educational function is not achieved. Whereas once the people could understand Christianity by learning the church, now the people need to learn Christianity to understand the church.

But I think we can instill an understanding of both Christianity and our worship of Christ by focusing on teaching Badarak. This semester, for my thesis project I undertook to write a handbook on Badarak that a typical lay member of the Armenian Church in America would be able to learn from both about the Christian faith in general and about our unique Armenian Apostolic worship of God.

In writing, I was guided by the basic questions of Christian curriculum
1) What are we teaching and why?: The handbook will teach about the Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Apostolic Church in order to help Armenian Apostolic worshippers engage in the service.

2) What do we intend to teach?: The guidebook will attempt to provide as much background information on Badarak as possible. Some of this background will include an explanation of scriptural references found in the service and technical and historical information about the liturgy. I will also include sections that are meant to spur further reflection, prayer, or study. In this way, the guide should motivate extra-curricular self-teaching or group-learning.

3-4) Whom are we teaching? When are we engaging learners?: We are teaching Armenian-Americans who are dealing with the aftermath of dispersion and struggling with issues of national identity and assimilation, as they also struggle to engage in meaningful worship. The guidebook intends to engage worshippers who are college-aged and beyond. These are people who should have the mental capacity to think critically, to understand meaning in ritual, and to integrate spiritual truth into their lives. Most of the learners will not have a high level of theological or liturgical understanding. For this reason the text will be engaging, simple, and a bit evangelistic at places. I expect that theologians (maybe even my brother) will scoff at my guidebook, which is fine, as the intent is to educate the average layperson.

5-7) How will the teaching proceed? Where will the teaching occur? Who will do the teaching: The answer to questions 5, 6 & 7, “the guide itself.” I hope that people will use the guidebook both in the context of the liturgy and on their own. The ideal scenario would involve a graduation from the guidebook to an un-annotated translation and eventually to no translation at all.

I don’t have enough time today to do a workshop on Badarak, but I will read a few excerpts from my book and show you a bit of what I’ve done.

While I hope what I’ve produced will be considered for publication and distribution, I know it alone is not going to fix the problem of not understanding the Badarak. There are other key factors critical for success in helping people to lift up their minds (and hearts and voice) in Badarak. The first is attendance, just plain having people sit through the service. Perhaps this is a Catch 22. People don’t come because they don’t understand but they don’t understand because they don’t come. In our parishes, we have to figure out ways to get our people there and keep them there. Because we learn by doing, attendance is a critical success factor for understanding Badarak. It is also critically important that once at Badarak, members of the congregation feel like they are a part of it. This fosters curiosity and learning. There could be a variety of other critical success factors as well, many of which may be unique to your parish situation.

In the twelfth chapter of his letter to the Romans, St. Paul encouraged members of the church there to be not conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. If our body is the Lord’s temple, then our mind is the temple gate. We see the play on words often in scripture between head and gate or door. The Christian mind, or gate, is to be both guarded its enemies and lifted up for God, so that we can have a relationship with Christ Jesus. As Armenians we affirm this by repeating the beautiful psalm during Badarak: Hampartsek ishkhank uztoorns, hampartsek vor m’dsteh takavor parats. Lift up your gates, princes, lift them up so that the king of glory might enter in! It is my prayer that with any variety of tools and techniques and with proactive work on the part of our priests, deacons, trustees, and lay ministers we will help our people to understand Badarak, so that the glory of the Lord will be fully present among us. I look forward to the day when the majority of our people understand Badarak so that they might, for example, as in ancient days, they will fall to their knees in joy when the priest turns to them, holding out the chalice, and says: This is life, hope of resurrection, forgiveness and remission of sins. Let me leave you with a verse of scripture that for me summarizes the gospel and the reason why we worship Christ. Romans 5:6-8: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This is the God we worship. This is the God that the Armenian people have worshiped for more than 1700 years. Let us make sure, as leaders of the Armenian church in America, that we and the people whom we serve know enough so that they can lift up their minds, their hearts, their mouths, their lives to him in Badarak.