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Bronx, N.Y. – Fordham University welcomed His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew yesterday for a moving performance of Robert Kyr’s A Time for Life: An Environmental Oratorio, presented by Cappella Romana. The event combined sacred music, ecological vision, and interfaith wisdom in honor of the Patriarch’s decades-long leadership on environmental issues.
Composed expressly for Cappella Romana, A Time for Life was created with a mission of expressing the same environmental concerns as His All-Holiness, the “Green Patriarch.” The piece was crafted by Robert Kyr, whose works often center themes of peace-making, environmental stewardship, and spirituality. With mastery and sensitivity, Kyr incorporates Biblical excerpts, Eastern Orthodox liturgical texts, and Indigenous prayers in this oratorio.
The oratorio unfolds in three parts: “Creation,” celebrating the beauty of the natural world; “Forgetting,” lamenting humanity’s exploitation and estrangement from creation; and “Remembering,” calling listeners back to reverence and renewal.
The work was performed by Cappella Romana, an acclaimed vocal ensemble founded in 1991 and based in Portland, Oregon. Known for its exploration of the sacred music of the Christian East and West, the group is especially celebrated for its commitment to mastering Byzantine and Slavic chant in their original languages.
Recognizing the group’s contributions, in 2018 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew conferred upon Cappella Romana Founder and Artistic Director Alexander Lingas the title of Archon Μουσικοδιδάσκαλος (music-teacher).
Lingas writes that A Time for Life’s texts “movingly render the loss of ancient wisdom regarding responsible stewardship of creation, its horrific consequences for our environment, and the potential offered by the recovery of spiritual tradition for re-establishing a harmonious relationship with nature.”
The oratorio echoes His All-Holiness’s teaching that humanity’s relationship with the natural world is reciprocal: just as we can destroy creation and suffer the resulting consequences, so, too, do we have the capacity to restore the earth and be restored by it.
Likewise, the piece underscores the idea that reconciliation with creation is possible only when humanity first achieves harmony within itself. One passage declares:
In all creation,
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We are divided
And must come back together again
To walk as one in wholeness.
O Creator,
O Sacred One:
Teach us love, compassion, and honor,
So we may heal the earth.
So we may heal each other.
Another passage highlighted the shared environmental attentiveness of Indigenous and Orthodox Christian worship. A Time for Life includes an excerpt from the Chinook Psalter:
O God, may my remembrance
Be as incense to thee,
As I breathe and remember
The ancient forests of earth.
These words resonate with the familiar Orthodox petition, “Let my prayer arise as incense,” revealing a shared reverence for creation expressed through prayer and the material senses.
“I believe that music and the arts have a crucial role to play in the transformation of the current energy of cynicism and destruction into the life-sustaining attitude and energy of creation,” Kyr writes, stressing the urgency of the work’s message. “Thus, my environmental oratorio traces our journey from a state of division and separation to the way of unity and wholeness.”
His All-Holiness was greeted by Masters of Ceremony Drs. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos, Co-Founding Directors of Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center.
Papanikolaou reminded the audience of the Ecumenical Patriarch’s 2009 visit to Fordham, during which he was awarded an honorary degree. On this visit, university President Tania Tetlow presented him with the President’s Medal, recognizing his global advocacy for creation care.
The event concluded with a surprise encore: a chanting of “Εἰς πολλὰ ἔτη, Δέσποτα,” a traditional acclamation wishing blessings and continued leadership. The gesture reflected both Cappella Romana’s reverence for His All-Holiness and its admiration for his work uniting faith and ecology.
Photos by Orthodox Observer/Brittainy Newman
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