This section of our website has a collection a collection of articles about services, prayers, and worship of the Orthodox Church.
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Orthodox Church, a collection of articles about the Orthodox Church. We hope the articles in this section will be helpful to both inquires of Orthodoxy, and to those who are members of the Church.
Saints and Icons, a collection of articles about saints, their relics, or their icons. We hope to include articles, of special interest to our parish, on the saints who are depicted on our icons, or whose holy relics rest here. Articles on our feast day icons will be included here also.
Food and drink were intended for nourishment and enjoyment. Passion transforms the natural acts of eating and drinking into gluttony and dissipation.
The theme of repentance is heard so often during Great Lent because it expresses the essential conviction of our Christian faith that the human person is called by God to change. This involves above all a struggle (podvig) against what the Holy Fathers term the “passions”. These include our basic inclinations as well as thoughts and feelings which drive a wedge between ourselves and God, between ourselves and other persons. The passions are not sinful in and of themselves. They are the product of “fallen” or corrupted nature, and as such they incite to sin. Here are a few examples:
Compiled in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers and ascetics, according to the directions of the church Typicon and on the basis of the Russian Orthodox Church's centuries-old experience in the Divine services.
All of the virtues and powers of God are attained primarily by prayer. Without prayer, there is no spiritual life. As the Russian bishop, Theophan the Recluse, has said, “If you are not successful in your prayer, you will not be successful in anything, for prayer is the root of everything.” (Theophan the Recluse, 19th c., The Art of Prayer, Igumen Chariton, ed.)
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:5-6)
When the Church, which means literally the gathering or assembly of people who are called together to perform a specific task, assembles as God’s People to worship, this gathering is called the liturgy of the Church. As a word liturgymeans the common work or action of a particular group of people for the sake of all. Thus the divine liturgy of the Christian Church means the common work of God done by the people of God.
If anyone wishes to recite or to follow the public services of the Church of England, then (in theory, at any rate) two volumes will be sufficient — the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer; similarly in the Roman Catholic Church he requires only two books — the Missal and the Breviary; but in the Orthodox Church, such is the complexity of the services that he will need a small library of some nineteen or twenty substantial tomes. ‘On a moderate computation,’ remarked J. M. Neale of the Orthodox Service Books, ‘these volumes together comprise 5,000 closely printed quarto pages, in double columns' (Hymns of the Eastern Church, third edition, London, 1866, p. 52). Yet these books, at first sight so unwieldy, are one of the greatest treasures of the Orthodox Church.( Bishop Kallistos Ware)
… but into the second tent only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people (Hebrews 9:7).
At the Great Entrance of the Divine Liturgy, the bread and wine are carried to the altar table.
Thus we begin our offering of the Eucharist.
This sacrifice reaches its climax in our invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the Gifts and culminates in our partaking of them, now transfigured by the Spirit's grace and power into the crucified and risen Body and Blood our Lord Jesus Christ.
The paschal season of the Church is preceded by the season of Great Lent, which is itself preceded by its own liturgical preparation. The first sign of the approach of Great Lent comes five Sundays before its beginning. On this Sunday the Gospel reading is about Zacchaeus the tax-collector. It tells how Christ brought salvation to the sinful man and how his life was greatly changed simply because he “sought to see who Jesus was”(Lk 19:3). The desire and effort to see Jesus begins the entire movement through lent towards Easter. It is the first movement of salvation.
The key to Divine gifts is given to the heart by love of neighbor, and, in proportion to the heart's freedom from the bonds of the flesh, the door of knowledge begins to open before it. - Pearls from Saint Isaac of Syria
