The Peace of the Virgin Mary in an Era of Anxiety

Even an hour before service time, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted drive to church on Tuesday evening. The Paraklesis service, in its Small and Great forms, is a supplicatory canon to the blessed Virgin Mary that is chanted almost daily during the first two weeks of August. The services are beautiful, but they’re seriously inconvenient.   Around here, the Paraklesis takes place at 6:00 or 6:30, smack in the middle of…