On a Facebook group, a young woman was mocking the idea that Christians should be prepared to worship, pray, and sing while in catacomb-like conditions or even in prison.

I thought about my Siberian brethren: older folks who survived the Stalinist purges and kept the faith as best they could under harsh persecution, as well as the modern Russian Lutherans – many of whom worship in small groups, a cappella, usually without professional musicians and choirs.

Nothing is more conducive to worship under adverse conditions than the liturgy and the traditional hymns. They can be sung in a cathedral with organ and choir, or alone in a prison cell or with a small group in a GULAG camp. They can be committed to memory and sung together – as has been the case for centuries.

Here is primitive video that I shot – in the days before I had a smartphone – from 2011, with Father Vladislav and Deacon Victor and the brethren of Holy Spirit Parish in Chelyabinsk. We sang the liturgy together in a beauty salon with no organ, no choir, a simple table set up as an altar, and minimal vestments. None of those things – as much as they do enhance the dignity of worship – is a replacement for reverence. Reverent worship can be done even in solitary confinement or in a labor camp.

Many of the people in this video had family members who suffered religious persecution and repression by their own government not many years before this worship service.

Persecution can happen anywhere. And when it happens, it happens quickly. Since we are but sojourners here, we ought to be prepared for such times, even if they never happen to us in our lifetimes. They certainly may come to our children and grandchildren – and so how we worship matters.

The Best of Larry L. Beane