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The Divine Services

A central part of Christian Life is our Liturgical Prayer. As the Psalmist says (29:2):

" Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness"

Liturgy and Worship is an existential constituent in human beings. Worship is the natural human response to any kind of encounter with the Divine encounter.

While he [the Risen Christ] was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

(Luke 24: 51-53)

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

(Hebrews 12:28-29)

The Orthodox Liturgical Tradition

In the Papal Encyclical, Orientale Lumen, the Pope proclaims:

“Liturgical prayer in the East shows a great aptitude for involving the human person in his or her totality: the mystery is sung in the loftiness of its content, but also in the warmth of the sentiments it awakens in the heart of redeemed humanity.

In the sacred act, even bodiliness is summoned to praise, and beauty, which in the East is one of the best loved names expressing the divine harmony and the model of humanity transfigured, appears everywhere: in the shape of the church, in the sounds, in the colours, in the lights, in the scents.

The lengthy duration of the celebrations, the repeated invocations everything expresses gradual identification with the mystery celebrated with one's whole person. Thus the prayer of the Church already becomes participation in the heavenly liturgy, an anticipation of the final beatitude."

(Pope J.P.II, art. 11})

Faith and Orthodox Worship

Our worship not only helps to unite us with God, but it in itself proclaims the Gospel - as the old Latin adage says: "lex orandi - lex credendi", meaning both "how we pray is how we believe", i.e. the manner of our worship shows what our Faith is.

The term "Orthodox" literally means "right - glory". This means both: correct worship and correct belief.

Indeed the very foundation and establishment of our Church, our Church's "conversion story" is based on our finding God through our experience of liturgical worship. We chose to follow the Christ because we found, as we found nowhere else, the presence of God in the Divine Services as celebrated at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. (Cf. the story of Prince Volodymyr's Conversion)

And it is from missionaries from our mother Church of Constantinople-New Rome that we have received the sacred Orthodox Tradition and spirituality.

Thus the Orthodox Tradition, in its fullness, especially the Orthodox liturgical Tradition is our patrimony and the idiom of our Faith.

This is the Tradition we have been given by God for our salvation.

This is the Tradition we have "inherited from the Apostles through the Fathers"

And this is the Tradition enjoined upon us by the highest Church authorities: our Patriarchs, Vatican II, Canon Law, and all the Popes of Rome - especially Pope John Paul II.

Orthodoxy in the Catholic Communion

The Ecumenical Council of Vatican II calls to back to our Orthodox Tradition:

The Council specifies that..in the rites and disciplines...whenever they have fallen short, they are to strive to return to their ancestral traditions.

(Canon Law, Instructions, art. 12)

The Holy Father John Paul II sees in this a "symbol of the firm attitude held by the Apostolic See, that the Council so efficiently expressed by asking the Eastern Churches in full communion with it to have the courage to rediscover the authentic traditions of their own identity, restoring the original purity where necessary."

(Pope J.P. II, August 1989, Servizio Informatzioni per le Chiese Orientali, suppl. to nn 485-556 at 5)

Thus at our parish, in obedience to the Church, we do our best to be faithful to our Orthodox Tradition, both in Liturgics and in Faith.

The Articles of Uniya between our Churches and the Church of Rome are quite explicit:

That the divine worship and all prayers and services of Orthros, Vespers, and the night services shall remain intact (without any change at all) for us according to the ancient custom of the Eastern Church...

(Brest-Litovsk, art. 2)

Canon Law makes clear the Mandate from the Apostolic See:

“The firm attitude held by the Apostolic See... asking the Eastern Churches in full communion with it to have the courage to rediscover the authentic traditions of their own identity, restoring the original purity where necessary.

...the practice of the Orthodox should be taken into account, knowing it, respecting it and distancing from it as little as possible so as not to increase the existing separation, but rather intensifying efforts in view of eventual adaptations, maturing and working together.

({Cong. for East. Churches: Instructions for the application of the Liturgical Prescriptions of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. art. 21)

Pope John Paul II decreed:

If, therefore, you must trim extraneous forms and developments, deriving from various influences that come from liturgical and paraliturgical traditions foreign to your tradition, it is possible that, so doing, you will have to also correct some popular habits.

(Pope J.P. II, August 1989, Servizio Informatzioni per le Chiese Orientali, suppl. to nn 485-556 at 42)

Our Theologians tell us that we are "Orthodox in Communion with Rome".

The Mission of the Eastern Churches

One of the most central reasons the Church commands us to be scrupulously obeservant of our Orthodox Tradition, is the Mission which the Church has entrusted to our Churches, that of reconciliation with our Orthodox Mother Churches and the re-establishment of sacred Communion with them.

Everyone should realize that it is of supereme important to...perserve and foster the rich liturgical and spiritual heritage of the Eastern Churches in order faithfully to perserve the fullness of Christian tradition, and to bring about reconciliation between Eastern and Western Christians"

(Vat.II, Unitatis Redintegratio, 15)

The Pope is insistent upon this qustion of Orthodoxy for the Eastern Churches:

"The [Vat. II] Council's Decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum reminds us that:

'the Eastern Churches in communion with the Apostolic See of Rome have a special role to play in promoting the unity of all Christians, particularly Easterners,

according to the principles of this sacred Synod's Decree on Ecumenism: first of all by prayer, then by the example of their lives, by religious fidelity to ancient Eastern traditions, by greater mutual knowledge, by collaboration, and by a brotherly regard for objects and attitudes'.

From this it follows that Eastern Catholics are to commit themselves to living profoundly what the Decree lays out."

(Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II
On the Fourth Centenary of the Treaty of Brest)

"In view of all this, the Catholic Church desires nothing less than full communion between East and West. She finds inspiration for this in the experience of the first millennium. In that period, indeed, "the development of different experiences of ecclesial life did not prevent Christians, through mutual relations, from continuing to feel certain that they were at home in any Church, because praise of the one Father, through Christ in the Holy Spirit, rose from them all, in a marvelous variety of languages and melodies.... The first Councils are an eloquent witness to this enduring unity in diversity".

(J.P.II, Ut Unum Sint, 61)

Ecumenism is not only an internal question of the Christian Communities. It is a matter of the love which God has in Jesus Christ for all humanity; to stand in the way of this love is an offense against him and against his plan to gather all people in Christ. As Pope Paul VI wrote to the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I:

"May the Holy Spirit guide us along the way of reconciliation, so that the unity of our Churches may become an ever more radiant sign of hope and consolation for all mankind".

(J.P.II, Ut Unum Sint, 99
13 January 1970: Tomos Agapis, Vatican-Phanar (1958-1970))

Through Worship & Beauty, is found the True God (the Story of the Conversion of Rus')

Volodymyr, Prince of Rus', sent out emissaries to find true religion. They went east and west, north and south and found no faith, ....until they arrived in Constantinople. They returned to Kiev and reported to the Prince what happened there in the great Cathedral of Holy Wisdom.

"They took us where they worshipped their God, and we did not know whether we were in heaven or upon earth, for there is not upon earth such sight or beauty.

This much we do know, that there, God lives among men, and we can never forget that beauty..."

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