Students at St. Joseph School in Fayetteville witnessed something that not many Roman Catholics get a chance to see, especially in Arkansas — a Byzantine Catholic Mass, which is called a Divine Liturgy, Oct. 18.
Since there is no formally established Byzantine Catholic community in Arkansas, Deacon Jason Pohlmeier, principal of St. Joseph School, had to prepare his teachers for the Byzantine Divine Liturgy.
Pohlmeier told the teachers in an email, “There are 24 Catholic Churches around the world that are all united as one Catholic Church under the pope. Ninety-eight percent of all Catholics are Roman Catholic, and 2 percent are spread among the remaining 23 churches, which have their origins in the Eastern world.
“These Eastern Catholic Churches are separate from Eastern Orthodox Churches, which are not in union with the pope. Eastern Catholics are just as Catholic as Roman Catholics, even though their Eastern liturgy will feel more like the Eastern Orthodox liturgy.”
Pohlmeier said when he was a student at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, the Ohio university would invite Byzantine clergy from Pittsburgh to celebrate the Divine Liturgy once a year.
“I loved getting to experience this and expand my appreciation for the universal Catholic Church,” he said. “This is something that I am very excited to offer to our students and our whole community. … I had never experienced any of the Eastern liturgies prior to then, and I am not sure if I even knew they existed. This was a wonderful experience for me to expand my understanding of the Catholic Church as truly universal, and I want to share this with others.”
Pohlmeier said a key part of Catholic education is teaching students about the faith — the whole faith.
“I’ve always had fond memories of (the Byzantine Divine Liturgy in college), and that was something that I wanted to be able to share with our students,” he said. “As Pope St. John Paul II said, he wants the Church to learn to breathe with both lungs, and we’re a Catholic school — we want to educate our kids in the Catholic faith. … Most Roman Catholics probably don’t know that there’s such a thing as the Eastern Catholic Church. We’re familiar with the Eastern Orthodox and the Schism and that they’re different from us, but we also have an Eastern Catholic Church that’s not in schism with the pope that does follow the pope and is part of our Catholic Church. …
“It is a chance for us Roman Catholics to see that the Catholic Church can look different in different places because their liturgy is very different, and there’s lots of history to it. … Two different traditions grew.”
Most Byzantine Catholics live in Eastern Europe and North America. The Byzantine Catholic Archdiocese of Pittsburgh oversees all Byzantine priests in the U.S.
As Pohlmeier began to look for a Byzantine priest to celebrate the Divine Liturgy at St. Joseph Church, the closest priest he found was Father Elias L. Rafaj.

Father Rafaj is pastor of St. Basil the Great Byzantine Catholic Church in Irving, Texas. He also serves a Byzantine community in Tulsa.
Pohlmeier knew after talking with Father Rafaj that he was the right priest to celebrate the Divine Liturgy.
“The Byzantine liturgy is full of energy with a lot of sights, sounds and smells,” he said. “It can have moments of sensory overload for anyone, and I believe it could be too overwhelming for younger students who aren’t used to it. So, K-3 attended 8:20 a.m. Mass that Friday as usual. Fourth (grade) and up attended the Byzantine Liturgy at 10 a.m. … Father Elias has done this before for people who are unfamiliar with it, and he and I will discuss various educational opportunities related to it to help the students understand better what it is all about.”
He celebrated the Byzantine Divine Liturgy at St. Joseph Church Oct. 18.
“The image of the Church is more diverse and complex than we would assume,” Father Rafaj said. “There are parts of our country where diversity is built in because of immigration, and there are parts of the country that don’t have that much access to that diversity because there hasn’t been a migration to that area from different parts of the world. The Eastern Catholic Churches are quite a sizeable group that comes from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, areas that, unfortunately, today are engulfed in war.
“So today we are currently a little more visible because of that and because of what’s going on in the Holy Land and Lebanon and in Ukraine. But that’s not our only value — being part of the current news story. We have our way of praying our liturgical services, our calendar of saints, our spirituality is completely different than the Roman Catholic liturgy and spirituality. There are theological nuances. There are many little differences, but all still form part of the one Catholic Church.”
Father Rafaj said it’s important for parochial school students to see the Church in its totality.
“I think it’s also very good for the students to have a chance to see this, because there is a complimentary relationship,” he said. “Unfortunately, very often today, we see something that is different as being somehow opposed to how we pray, and we don’t appreciate the universality of the Church. The very word ‘Catholic’ means ‘universal.’ It entails a bigger perspective that appreciates different ways of entering into that same mystery of God’s revelation into the incarnation.”
Father Rafaj said the Eastern and Western Churches shared similar iconography for a large period of their existence, and both sides share the same fathers of the Church. Many important councils in the early Church took place in the East.
“One of the things I would like to see develop is this understanding that East and West are intertwined,” he said. “That creating or seeing some arbitrary line dividing the two is really inaccurate — that there is a complementary relationship, the same way we talk about the two lungs. There are two lungs in one body, so appreciating that they both sustain the body of Christ, the Church — that helps make us more fully Catholic.”