Posted on 08/16/2010 6:42:08 PM PDT by markomalley
Without doubt, many more people line the sidewalks to see the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan than to watch the St. Mary Malankara Indian Orthodox Church’s annual Assumption Day Parade, which began here on Sunday with the usual blowing of the kumbu horn and the dancing of the koladi by the congregation’s teenage girls, dressed in saris and banging sticks.
But the Indians’ parade has its longtime devotees: neighborhood residents, mostly, who say they look forward to the procession because it is practically the only time when the people of the congregation venture outside, not counting getting in and out of their cars.
None of St. Mary’s 100 or so parishioners live in West Sayville, a predominantly white, middle-class community on Long Island’s South Shore where in the last few decades a surfeit of empty church buildings has attracted various religious communities on wheels.
The Indian congregants drive in from Queens, Brooklyn, western Nassau County and even New Jersey and Staten Island, to worship in a former Dutch Reformed Church building they bought in 1992. Inside, they speak Malayalam, the dialect of the Indian province where most have their roots, and they worship according to an Orthodox Christian liturgy that traces its origins to the teachings of the apostle Thomas.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A monstrance among the Orthodox? That surprises me.
I'm hardly an expert, but I'd bet it was influence from the Portuguese. (And remember they are Oriental Orthodox, not Eastern Orthodox...)
True.
They could be Byzantine Catholics. The Church has about 22 rites.
Don’t they use leavened matter? Could that be a reliquary?
Okay.
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