Im sorry I dont feel the same way as you. I cant read from my MD any more. Not only are the prayers more like reading a dissertation rather than poetic supplication, its over before I even get started. And how the Kathisma is laid out is unorganized???
Well I see you found one pre-communion prayer. Is one supposed to be impressed with that? There is a whole hour long rule for the Eastern as Im sure you know. The canon, psalms, and the prayers. If one is too lazy to do it, then perhaps they should not partake of the Eucharist in the first place.
I'm an Eastern Christian. I am at home with chant, long liturgies, poetry, fasting, etc. But if the West has a legitimate-but-different-from-us way of doing things, who are we to argue? If a particular arrangement of the psalms worked for St Benedict and other Western saints, I don't think it can harm us. Personally, I find some aspects of Western liturgy and spirituality really agree with me; I don't force it on anyone else, but I find them helpful.
"Pre-Communion" prayer rules vary across rites and even within them. One ought not to generalize too much about the form, as if all Christians from the beginning did it the way it appears in Russian prayer books. Or are we to think the apostles read three canons, an akathist, the pre-communion prayers, fasted, and went to confession at an all-night vigil before actually receiving the Eucharist from Christ, who began the meal with "Blessed is the Kingdom, etc."? The gospel accounts seem to agree that he didn't serve hierarchically, or even with a deacon! How anachronistic and ridiculous if we go down such a road...
By all means, pray, and by all means follow the discipline imposed by one's Church, one's rite, one's spiritual father. But don't generalize these things as if the West is always wrong and the East is always right. Even in the East there are differences, and I dare say that sometimes the Byzantines just seem plain lazy compared to the rest of us. It need not be wrong, just different, and anyway it's the goal that's important, not always the words. Or would you disagree with the desert fathers?
Abba Macarius was asked, 'How should one pray?' The old man said 'There is no need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out one's hands and say, "Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy." And if the conflict
grows fiercer say, "Lord, help!" He knows very well what we need and he shews us his mercy.'It doesn't get much shorter and unpoetic as "Lord, help!" You won't find it in any collection of akathists on the market. But evidently it got St Makarios where he needed to go.
Liturgies develop, and they develop in cultures, in communities, among peoples. They form us, to be sure, but they don't just fall out of heaven in book form--we also have some "say" in how they are shaped. What works for us may not work so well in the West, and vice versa, but if what we do can sanctify us, and what they do can sanctify them, what does it matter to you? Work on your own spiritual life with the resources the Church gives you. Don't think that what doesn't work for you can't possibly work for anyone else. They have a God, too.
