Worship and sacraments

The role of the liturgy

By its theological richness, spiritual significance, and variety, the worship of the Orthodox church represents one of the most significant factors in the church’s continuity and identity. It helps to account for the survival of Christianity during the many centuries of Muslim rule in the Middle East and the Balkans, when the liturgy was the only source of religious knowledge or experience. Since liturgical practice was practically the only religious expression legally authorized in the Soviet Union, the continuous existence of Orthodox communities in the region was also centred almost exclusively around the liturgy.

The concept that the church is most authentically itself when the congregation of the faithful is gathered together in worship is a basic expression of Eastern Christian experience. Without that concept it is impossible to understand the fundamentals of church structure in Orthodoxy, with the bishop functioning in his essential roles as teacher and high priest in the liturgy. Similarly, the personal experience of participation in divine life is understood in the framework of the continuous liturgical action of the community.

According to many authorities, one of the reasons why the Eastern liturgy has made a stronger impact on the Christian church than has its Western counterpart is that it has always been viewed as a total experience, appealing simultaneously to the emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic faculties of humans. The liturgy includes a variety of models, or symbols, using formal theological statements as well as bodily perceptions and gestures (e.g., music, incense, prostrations) and the visual arts. All are meant to convey the content of the Christian faith to the educated and the noneducated alike. Participation in the liturgy implies familiarity with its models, and many of them are conditioned by the historical and cultural past of the church. Thus, the use of such an elaborate and ancient liturgy presupposes catechetical preparation. It may require an updating of the liturgical forms themselves. The Orthodox church recognizes that liturgical forms are changeable and that, because the early church admitted a variety of liturgical traditions, such a variety is also possible today. Thus, Orthodox communities with Western rites now exist in western Europe and in the Americas.

The Orthodox church, however, has always been conservative in liturgical matters. This conservatism is in particular due to the absence of a central ecclesiastical authority that could enforce reforms and to the firm conviction of the church membership as a whole that the liturgy is the main vehicle and experience of true Christian beliefs. Consequently, reform of the liturgy is often considered as equivalent to a reform of the faith itself. However inconvenient this conservatism may be, the Orthodox liturgy has preserved many essential Christian values transmitted directly from the experience of the early church.

Throughout the centuries the Orthodox liturgy has been richly embellished with cycles of hymns from a wide variety of sources. Byzantium (where the present Orthodox liturgical rite took shape), while keeping many biblical and early Christian elements, used the lavish resources of patristic theology and Greek poetry, as well as some gestures of imperial court ceremonial, in order to convey the realities of God’s kingdom.

Normally, the content of the liturgy is directly accessible to the faithful, because the Byzantine tradition is committed to the use of any vernacular language in the liturgy. Translation of both Scriptures and liturgy into various languages was undertaken by the medieval Byzantines, as well as by modern Russian missionaries. Liturgical conservatism, however, leads de facto to the preservation of antiquated languages. The Byzantine Greek used in church services by the modern Greeks and the Old Church Slavonic still preserved by all the Slavs are at least as distant from the spoken languages as is the language of the King James Version of the Bible—used in many Protestant churches—from modern English.

The eucharistic liturgies

The liturgies attributed to St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great are the eucharistic liturgies most generally used in Orthodox worship. Both acquired their present shape by the 9th century, but it is generally recognized that the wording of the eucharistic “canon” of the liturgy of St. Basil goes back to the 4th century and may be the work of St. Basil himself. The liturgy of St. James—composed about the 4th century and largely similar to that of St. Basil—is used occasionally, especially in Jerusalem. During the period of Lent a service of Communion, with elements (bread and wine) reserved from those consecrated on the previous Sunday, is celebrated in connection with the evening service of vespers; it is called the “liturgy of the presanctified” and is attributed to St. Gregory the Great.

The liturgies of St. John Chrysostom and of St. Basil differ only in the text of the eucharistic canon: their overall structures, established in the High Middle Ages, are identical and begin with an elaborate rite of preparation (proskomidē). A priest on a separate “table of oblation” disposes on a paten (plate) the particles of bread that will symbolize the assembly of the saints, both living and dead, around Christ, the “Lamb of God.” Then follows the liturgy of the catechumens, which begins with a processional entrance of the priest into the sanctuary with the Gospel (“little entrance”) and which includes the traditional Christian “liturgy of the word,” the reading from the New Testament letters and the Gospels as well as a sermon. This part of the liturgy ends with the expulsion of the catechumens, who, until they are baptized, are not admitted to the sacramental part of the service. (If no catechumens are present, the expulsion is symbolic.) The Liturgy of the Faithful includes another ceremonial procession of the priest into the sanctuary. He carries the bread and wine from the table of oblations to the altar (“great entrance”). This is followed here—as in the West—with the recitation of the Nicene Creed, the eucharistic canon, and the Lord’s Prayer and Communion prayer. The bread used for the Eucharist is ordinary leavened bread; both elements (bread and wine) are distributed with a special spoon (labis).

The liturgical cycles

One of the major characteristics of the Byzantine liturgical tradition is the wealth and variety of hymnodical texts marking the various cycles of the liturgical year. A special liturgical book contains the hymns for each of the main cycles. The daily cycle includes the offices of Hesperinos (vespers), Apodeipnon (Compline), the midnight prayer, Orthros (matins), and the four canonical “hours”—offices to be said at the “first” (6:00 am), “third” (9:00 am), “sixth” (12:00 noon), and “ninth” (3:00 pm) hours. The liturgical book covering the daily cycle is called the Hōrologion (“The Book of Hours”). The Paschal (Easter) cycle is centred on the Feast of Feasts—i.e., the feast of Christ’s Resurrection. It includes the period of Great Fast (Lent), preceded by three Sundays of preparation and the period of 50 days following Easter. The hymns of the Lenten period are found in the Triōdion (“Three Odes”) and those of the Easter season in the Pentēkostarion (called the “Flowery Triodion”). The weekly cycle is the continuation of the Resurrection cycle found in the Triōdion and the Pentēkostarion; each week following the Sunday after Pentecost (50 days after Easter) possesses its own musical tone, or mode, in accordance with which all the hymns of the week are sung. As described in the Octoechos (“The Book of Eight Tones”), there are eight tones whose composition is traditionally attributed to St. John of Damascus (8th century). Each week is centred around Sunday, the day of Christ’s Resurrection.

The Easter and weekly cycles clearly dominate all offices of the entire year and illustrate the absolute centrality of the Resurrection in the Eastern understanding of the Christian message. The date of Easter, set at the Council of Nicaea (325), is the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox. Differences between the East and the West in computing the date exist because the Orthodox church uses the Julian calendar for establishing the date of the equinox (hence a delay of 13 days) and also because of the tradition that Easter must necessarily follow the Jewish Passover and must never precede it or coincide with it.

The yearly cycle includes the hymns for each of the 366 days of the calendar year, with its feasts and daily commemoration of saints. They are found in the 12 volumes of the Menaion (“Book of Months”). From the 6th to the 9th century the Byzantine church experienced its golden age of creativity in the writing of hymns by outstanding poets, such as St. John of Damascus. In more recent times, hymn writing has generally followed the accepted patterns set by those authors, but rarely has it reached the quality of its models. Since the Eastern Orthodox tradition bans instrumental music, or accompaniment, the singing is always a cappella, with only a few exceptions admitted by some parishes in the United States.