4.

 Carefully read pages 272-80 of the textbook, and then submit an essay.

            The remainder of this chapter deals with the church building and its arrangement, and also with liturgical theology, that is, with Orthodoxy's solemn and beautiful worship, the earthly Heaven, which was handed down from the time of the Apostles and early Christians. All the aspects of worship that the textbook describes would have been familiar to the Christians of the early Church, just as these aspects are familiar to Orthodox Christians today, for the Orthodox Church today is the very continuation of the ancient Church established by Christ two thousand years ago.

            The textbook states that in Orthodoxy, man is seen above all else as “a liturgical creature who is most truly himself when he glorifies God, and who finds his perfection and self-fulfillment in worship.” Beyond this juncture, the textbook's account of the services pales in comparison to that of Archbishop Seraphim Slobodskoy. The following information is therefore drawn from the much more thorough examination of the services given in Fr. Seraphim's monumental book The Law of God.

            Fr. Seraphim mentions that those services which the Orthodox Church celebrates in the course of one day are known as the daily cycle of divine services. There are nine daily services: Vespers, Compline, Midnight Office, Matins, First Hour, Third Hour, Sixth Hour and Ninth Hour, and the Divine Liturgy.

            Fr. Seraphim explains that the new day in the Orthodox Church begins with Vespers, which is celebrated towards the end of the day. Orthodoxy follows the example of Moses in this matter, for Moses, when describing the creation of the world by God, began the “day” with evening. In this service, Christians express their gratitude to God for the day that has passed.

            Compline is the service composed of the reading of a series of prayers. In these prayers, worshipers ask the Lord God for forgiveness of sins and that He grant them, upon retiring, repose of body and soul, and that He preserve them from the wiles of the devil during their sleep.

The Midnight Office is appointed to be read at midnight in remembrance of the prayer of the Savior during the night in the Garden of Gethsemane. The service summons the faithful to be ready at all times for the Dread Judgment, which will come unexpectedly like “a bridegroom in the night,” as the parable of the ten virgins shows.

            Continuing his explanation, Fr. Seraphim states that Matins is celebrated in the morning prior to the rising of the sun. In this service, thanks is given to God for the night which has passed, and mercy is asked of Him for the approaching day.

            The First Hour corresponds to the first three hours of our day (6:00 am to 9:00 am). In the Old and New Testaments, an hour meant a watch that lasted three of our hours, and each service of the daily cycle corresponds to one of these three-hour divisions. Fr. Seraphim explains that this First Hour sanctifies the already breaking day with prayer. The Third Hour covers the time from 9:00 am to 12:00 noon, and it recalls the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. The Sixth Hour represents the period from 12:00 noon to 3:00 pm. It reminds Christians of Christ's Passion and Crucifixion, while the Ninth Hour, covering the hours from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm, reminds us of Christ's death upon the Cross.

            The Holy Liturgy is Eastern Orthodoxy's main and most important divine service because in it is accomplished the great Mystery of the Eucharist, which was instituted by the Savior Himself in the Mystical Supper. During the course of the celebration of the Liturgy, the entire earthly life of Christ, from His Nativity to His Ascension, is called to mind. The Liturgy is always celebrated on the Lord's Day and on feast days. Daily celebrations are less common, although they do occur in monasteries and cathedrals. (More will be said of the Liturgy below).

            In former times, monastics and hermits conducted all of these services separately at their appointed times. Later, to accommodate those living in the world, they were combined into three groups of services: evening (Ninth Hour, Vespers and Compline), morning (Midnight Office, Matins and First Hour), and daytime services (Third and Sixth Hours, and the Holy Liturgy).

            On the eve of major feasts and Sundays, the All-Night Vigil service is conducted, which combines Vespers, Matins and the First Hour. The All-Night Vigil received its name from the fact that among early Christians, and in some monasteries today, the service began at sunset and continued through the course of the entire night, until sunrise.

            In addition to the daily cycle of divine services, there are weekly and annual cycles. Concerning the weekly or seven-day cycle, on Sunday, the Church remembers and glorifies the Resurrection of Christ. On Monday, the holy angels, the closest servants of God, are celebrated. The Church dedicates every Tuesday to the honor of St. John the Baptist, the greatest of the prophets and righteous one of the Old Testament, and his memory is also honored on the Church calendar several times during the year. On Wednesday, Christ's betrayal by Judas is remembered, for which reason Wednesday is a fast day, and services are centered around the Cross of the Lord. On Thursday, the Holy Apostles and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker are glorified. On Friday, the Church remembers the Savior’s death on the Cross, for which reason Friday is also kept as a fast day, and services (as on Wednesday) honor the Cross of the Lord. On Saturday, the Mother of God is glorified (just as she is also glorified on every other day), along with the “forefathers, prophets, Apostles, martyrs, monastics, righteous and all the saints” who have attained salvation.  Also remembered on Saturday are all the faithful departed who reposed in the true faith and in the hope of resurrection and eternal life.

The Church year begins on the first of September, according to the Julian (Old Style) calendar that was in use at the time of Christ, and it is dominated by twelve great feasts.  These feasts do not include the radiant feast of the Resurrection of Christ, Pascha, which is placed outside them in a class by itself.  Ever since the time of the early Church, Pascha has been the Feast of Feasts and has stood alone in its magnificence.

From the first century of Christianity, the custom was established of celebrating Pascha after the Jewish Passover, according to the stipulation of the Seventh Apostolic Canon.  This practice was con­firmed at the First Ecumenical Council, which decreed that the date of Pascha must fall after the vernal equinox, on the first Sunday after the equinoxal new moon, and always after the Jewish celebra­tion of Passover.  This reckoning is based on the sequence of events in the New Testament.  The Jewish Passover took place on a Friday and a Saturday.  On Friday, Nisan 14, Christ was crucified. On Saturday He was in the tomb, and early in the morning on the first day of the week, Nisan 16, He arose.  Also, the New Testament Pascha is the replacement of the sacrifice of the lamb of the Old Testament by the redemptive sacrifice of Christ.  As a result, the latter must never precede the sacrifice of the Jewish lamb.  The Orthodox Church still adheres to all three of the requirements handed down by the First Ecumenical Council, whereas the Western Churches keep only the first two.  In the Orthodox Church, Pascha occurs no earlier than March 22 on the Julian calendar (or April 4 on the new style or civil calendar), and no later than April 25 on the Julian calendar (May 8 on the civil calendar).

Pascha was also the principal feast on the Church calendar in the pre-schism West - that is, before 1054, although in its post-schism period, the West gradually came to replace it with the feast of the Lord's Nativity.  Given the fact that this “feast” of Christmas in the West has become for the most part one of commerce and entertainment, it is blasphemous with regard to the sacred event of Christ's Nativity.

Of the twelve great feasts observed throughout the Church's calen­dar year, eight are devoted to Jesus Christ and four to the Theotokos.  There are also other feasts that honor great   Monastic Profession, Marriage, Burial of the Dead, Consecration of a Church, and Royal Coronation.  Addition­ally, there are a number of lesser blessings used by the Church.

A Russian hermit explains that it was in the catacombs of the first three centuries of Christianity that Orthodoxy's Divine Liturgy and other services were worked out in an atmosphere of constant expec­tation of death.  Orthodoxy's divine services are celebrated in a form little changed since that time.

The first Liturgy was composed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the Holy Apostle James, the Brother of the Lord, when he was the first bishop of the Church of Jerusalem.  (This Liturgy is still celebrated once a year on his feast day, and it lasts about five hours).  Later, out of condescension toward the weakness of men, Saints Basil the Great and John Chrysostom shortened this service.  Thus, there are three main Orthodox Liturgies:  St. John Chrysostom^’s (forth century), St. Basil's (third century), and that of St. James, the Brother of the Lord (first century).

The Orthodox Liturgy was never the exclusive domain of the clergy and learned, such as the Mass was in the medieval West — a drama, as it were, enacted by the priests for the people. The Liturgy was instead popular — that is, it was always the common possession of the whole Orthodox Christian people, and something which priests perform together with the laity. For this reason, among the Orthodox, one would never hear the expression so common in the West: to hear Mass. The idea of “hearing” a service came about in the medieval West, when services were performed in Latin, a language not understood by the people. Roman Catholics would attend church to adore the “host” at elevation, but they otherwise treated the church service as an occasion to recite private prayers and the rosary. This development did not take place in the East, however, for the Orthodox Liturgy never ceased to be the common act performed by the priest and people conjointly. Orthodox Christians come to church not to say private prayers (which should be done in private — cf. Mt 6:6), but to pray the public prayers of the Liturgy, and to become actual partakers of the rite of the Liturgy. As a Western observer of Orthodoxy notes in this regard:

The normal Orthodox lay worshiper, through familiarity from earliest childhood, is entirely at home in church, thoroughly conversant with the audible parts of the Holy Liturgy, and takes part with unconscious and unstudied ease in the action of the rite, to an extent only shared by the hyper-devout and ecclesiastically minded in the West [Austin Oakley, The Orthodox Liturgy, p. 12].

It should be noted that the author of the textbook occasionally uses the word Mass interchangeably with Liturgy when referring to the Orthodox Church's central worship service, something which is done on occasion by Western writers. The word Mass is derived from the dismissal rite of the Roman Catholic Mass: Ite, missa est (contio), meaning Go, (the meeting) is dismissed. Among Orthodox, one never hears this word used for the Liturgy.

            Throughout Orthodoxy's darkest days, during the long domination by the Turks and the suppression at the hands of the Mongols, during the bloodbaths from the forced propagation of Uniatism by the Vatican, and during the attempted extermination of the Church by the Communists, Orthodox Christians have always turned to the Holy Liturgy for new hope and inspiration. It is not in vain that they have turned to it.

*   *   *   *   *

Orthodoxy is well aware of the importance of music. When Christ served His last Paschal service, He gave it new meaning, that of the first Christian Eucharist, after which He and the Apostles sang a hymn (Mt 26:30). Thus singing was established in the Christian Church, its liturgical use having been blessed through the example of the Creator Himself.

            The Holy Fathers taught that music is the language closest to the soul, and that it is through music that the soul, upon departing this life, will first apprehend Heaven. There is great power in the beauty of music, in its ability to convey meaning in a way that simple speech cannot. The spiritual life of the Church is therefore very much bound up with its music as prayer.

            Just as they have been since the days of the early Church, virtually all of Orthodoxy's services employ music. From the beginning to end, no sound is heard, other than a sermon, that is not some form of music. Church singing is usually done by the celebrant and a choir, although even when a priest and a single reader are without a choir and congregation, the services are still sung and never spoken. In some places, the congregation sings as well, at least the Lord's Prayer and Creed, if not the entire service.

            When listening to music from the different Orthodox national traditions, one finds that no two sound anything alike (save in those cases in which they directly borrowed from each other), yet as in iconography, there is always a contrition-evoking sobriety and spiritual serenity which completely separates worshipers from the world. This quality is a distinguishing characteristic of Orthodox music, regardless of the nationality. Greek-speaking Orthodox employ the ancient Byzantine plain chant with its eight tones in their ecclesiastical music. The same plain-chant, introduced into the Slavic lands by Byzantine missionaries, underwent extensive modification among the Slavs throughout the centuries so that the Slavonic Churches each developed their own tradition and style of church music. Of these traditions, the Russian is particularly striking to Western ears, and many consider its music to be the finest in all Christendom.

            Orthodoxy's services are sung a cappella, without musical instruments. Although the organ has been introduced in modernist Greek parishes beginning in 1926, this practice takes place in imitation of Western Christians and at the behest of the ecumenical movement, the latter of which is forming the one-world religion of the antichrist. Church canons forbid the use of musical instruments because they introduce something theatrical into the sacred realm, and because they are a distracting element that takes away from the meditative atmosphere created by traditional Orthodox chants and thus takes away from worship. Dr. Constantine Cavarnos explains that the use of the organ constitutes an innovation which the Holy Fathers explicitly prohibited and which is contrary to the ordinances of the first Christians. He also explains that:

Attentive study of the New Testament absolutely convinces us that the Apostolic Church did not use musical instruments. The Fathers, faithful guardians and unfailing interpreters of Tradition, explicitly excluded the use of musical instruments in the execution of ecclesiastical hymns, and also the accompaniment of hymnody with instruments, as incompatible with the sober, hieratic, spiritual character of the Christian religion, because they bring to mind the fallen world and the things of the world — parties, laughter, disorderly shouting, and the like.... It is worth noting that the instrument from which the organ originated was known to the Byzantines, but they used it in the Hippodrome and the palace, never in church [Orthodox Tradition and Modernism, p. 24].

Orthodox Christians feel a need to worship God with what He has given them — their mouths and voices. It is therefore seen as inappropriate to worship God with something man-made, something outside themselves, such as musical instruments.

            Lastly, the addition of musical instruments causes worshipers to become preoccupied with the music itself. While music is important, it is of secondary importance to the words of the hymns and their meaning. Metropolitan Laurus of Jordanville addresses the matter of the great importance of the content of the Church's hymns. He states:

How many great dogmatic truths are unfolded for us with our verses and canons in lofty poetical images! Particularly the so-called Triadica (Trinitarian hymns), in a fresh and graphic way inform us about the great truth of the “Trinity in Unity” — the Three-in-One Divine Being. The Theotokia, among with the Dogmatic Theotokia especially, expound for us concerning the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God from the unwedded and most pure Virgin Mary, concerning the perpetually confessed dogma of the Church regarding the ever-virginity of the unwedded Theotokos. For one who can read and investigate thoroughly, this is a full course of dogmatic theology revealing to us all the dogmatic teaching of the Church: about God, one in essence and three in Persons; about God as the Creator of the world and mankind; about the Provider and Savior of man; about the Son of God as Redeemer; about the Holy Spirit as Sanctifier; about the Church as the storehouse of the grace of the Holy Spirit.... And finally, we have the last destiny of the world and man — the Second Coming of Christ, the Last Judgment, the eternal suffering of sinners and the eternal blessedness of the righteous.

What plentiful material our divine service books give us in the area of moral theology — the teaching concerning Christian morality! In this area we find inexhaustible examples from the lives of the God-pleasing saints. And above all, we find the teaching on prayer in the innumerable images of the most diversified prayers for all occasions of life, answering all the varied needs of the human being. We have a full picture of the war continually waged in man's soul between virtue and sin, the lofty examples of virtues, the censure of sin, the graphic examples of virtuous and depraved life gathered from Sacred Scripture, the history of the Church, and the lives of the saints. In this sphere, especially rich material is provided by the Lenten Triodion with its incomparable and exalted penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, and also by the penitential and tender verses of the Octoechos [“The Significance of the Practical Study of Liturgics,” Orthodox Life, vol. 45, no. 4, 1995, pp. 43-44].

Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky expresses the same ideas in his remarks that:

The catholic consciousness of the Church, where it concerns the teaching of faith, is also expressed in the Orthodox divine services which have been handed down to us by the Ecumenical Church. By entering deeply into the content of the divine service books we make ourselves firmer in the dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church.

The content of the Orthodox divine services is the culminating expression of the teaching of the Holy Apostles and Fathers of the Church, both in the sphere of dogma and of morals. This is splendidly expressed in the hymn (or kontakion) which is sung on the day of the commemoration of the Holy Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils: “The preaching of the Apostles and the dogmas of the Fathers have imprinted upon the Church a single faith which, bearing the garment of truth woven of the theology from above, rightly dispenseth and glorifieth the great mystery of piety.” [Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, pp. 38-39].

Orthodox Christianity accommodated itself to local cultures and allowed services in languages native to a region or country: Arabic in Damascus, Japanese in Tokyo, Finish in Helsinki, and native languages throughout Africa. Orthodox missionaries, from the time of Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century, to Saints Nicholas Kassatkin and Innocent of Alaska in the nineteenth century, have always made it one of their first tasks to translate Orthodox service books into the local language. As Archimandrite Luke of Jordanville goes on to add in this regard:

Because the Church used the vernacular and not a universal and sometimes incomprehensible language (Latin), the people found it easier to identify with Church life as something close to their daily lives. The Church took part in and guided the intellectual life of the people. The people acquired literacy through the efforts of the Church in their own language [“Nationalism, Russia, and the Restoration of the Patriarchate,” Orthodox Life, vol. 51, no. 6, p. 25].

Of course, there are partial exceptions to the use of native languages. The Slavonic Churches still employ the ninth-century translations in Old Church Slavonic, and the Greek-speaking Churches use the Greek of the New Testament and Byzantine periods. In either case, though, the similarity between the liturgical language and the spoken language allows the congregation to understand the service.

            In speaking of liturgical languages, it is of interest to pause on Slavonic, known to modern scholars as Old Church Slavonic. This language is based on an Eastern South Slavic language of which the modern South Slavic languages are recensions, and it came to be the tongue of Slavic Christianity. It was created originally about the middle of the ninth century as a literary language by two missionary brothers from Thessalonica, Saints Cyril and Methodius, for the purpose of bringing Christianity to the Slavs in a language understandable to them. In the Middle Ages, this language became, after Greek and Latin, the third international language of Europe, and it developed in the course of subsequent centuries in different parts of the Slavic world. To this day, Orthodox Churches in Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Carpatho-Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Moldavia still employ the same Slavonic vernacular of the Balkan Slavs for their Liturgies, and this language is used extensively in new world parishes as well.

            The ancient worship of the Christian Church has always involved standing as it was unthinkable to the Holy Fathers that one should sit in the presence of Christ. As it is considered impious, arrogant and improper to sit before God during divine services, a traditional Orthodox church has no pews, but only benches around the periphery of the church for the infirm and aged. A Greek hierarch points out that pews and sitting during services are a Protestant innovation, the natural consequence of services that do not entail a meeting of the heavenly with the earthly, but the recitation of a sermon accompanied by hymns. The hierarch also notes that the separation of worship from a sense of participation in the Mysteries of God, and its reduction to viewing and listening to a performance by a preacher and choir, are incompatible with an Orthodox understanding of worship. So is sitting during the services. Unfortunately, the introduction of pews in Orthodox worship, something newer than electricity, is a feature of modernistic Orthodox Churches in America and in some places in Europe. Obviously, though, pews violate the traditional architectural concepts and spiritual practices of the Orthodox Church. For this reason, in most places the Orthodox still maintain the ancient practice of standing throughout most of the services.

            Orthodox clergy have greater freedom and informality than that seen outside Orthodoxy, for ceremonial movements are much more natural and less stylized than in the West, where liturgical gestures are prescribed with extreme detail. People feel at home in an Orthodox church. They are not made to feel as troops on parade, neatly arranged in rows of pews where they cannot move about freely, but they feel as children in their Father's house. While Orthodox worship has been called otherworldly, it could also be called homelike, for it is a family affair. The textbook for this course adds: “Yet behind this homeliness and informality there lies a deep sense of mystery.” Anyone who has attended an Orthodox Liturgy would have to concur.

            Orthodox worship has an unhurried and timeless quality about it, something which is brought about in part by the repetition of ectenias (litanies), which appear several times, either in longer or shorter form, in all the services. In these, the deacon (or the priest in his absence) mentions the various needs of the Church and the world, and the choir responds to each petition with Gospodi pomilui or Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy, in Old Slavonic and Greek respectively).

            Some Westerners have the notion that an Orthodox service is of an intolerable length. Orthodox services do tend to be longer than their counterparts among Western Christians, and services among the Russians last longer than those among the Greeks. A Saturday night Vigil service at a typical Russian parish of the emigration would ordinarily last about two hours. Of course, services at monasteries are more extended, and the same Vigil service at the Holy Trinity Monastery of the Russian Church in Exile in upstate New York takes from three to four hours to celebrate, while a Sunday or feast day Liturgy may run about two-and-a-half to three hours. The services of Great Lent are considerably longer, however, and there have been services on great feast days on Mount Athos that have gone on for twelve to fifteen hours without a break.

            One characteristic apparent to any Western observer is that the Orthodox make the sign of the Cross with much greater frequency than it is done in the West. In addition to those occasions when all the faithful cross themselves, there are times when different worshipers cross themselves, each doing it when he or she is moved to do so.

            Archpriest D. Sokolof explains that in general appearance, most Orthodox churches are built in an oblong shape, in imitation of a ship, or as Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy adds, to call to mind the image of Noah's ark, which is compared to the Church. A ship under the direction of a good helmsman carries people through stormy seas into a peaceful harbor. In the same way, the Church, governed by Christ, carries Christians through the turbulent sea of life and saves them from drowning in the deep waters of sin, and it brings them into the Kingdom of Heaven, “where there is neither sorrow or sighing.” (In the writings of the Holy Fathers, one often finds the comparison of the Church in the world with a ship on the sea). Some churches are also designed in the form of a Cross to signify that they are sacred to Him Who was crucified for the human race, or else they are built more or less square in plan. Occasionally a church is built in a circle, which shows that the Church of Christ is eternal, without end, and it can even be built in the shape of an octagon, like a star, to suggest that the Church is like a guiding star which shines into the world. (As these latter two shapes are inconvenient for the inner arrangement of the church, they are not often used). Above the wide central space is a dome, which is an image of Heaven, and it is usually painted with a depiction of Christ the Pantocrator, the Ruler of the Universe. Archpriest D. Sokolov also explains that the entrance to an Orthodox church is almost always from the west, with the church itself facing east, in token that Christian worshipers enter from the darkness of impiety into the light of truth. (The east is a symbol of light, good and truth, the priest notes, whereas the West is a symbol of darkness, evil and error). Orthodox churches do not have the elongated naves and chancels of Gothic-style cathedrals and churches, nor are they built in the gymnasium-style architecture or barn-like concrete temples of modernism and emptiness that have come to dominate Western church architecture in recent decades.

In Russia, the domes of the churches came to assume a characteristic onion shape. One dome stands for the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ, while two domes symbolize His two nature: divine and human. Three domes stand for the three Hypostases of the Godhead, while five represent Christ and the four Evangelists. When seven domes are present, they represent the Seven Ecumenical Councils, while nine stand for the nine ranks of angels. Thirteen domes call to mind Christ and the twelve Apostles, and on some churches there are even more domes.

            Atop each dome is the Cross. In Russia, a three-bar Cross is generally used. The top bar bears the sign Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The lower bar, or footboard (supendaneum in Latin), was used by the Roman executioners in Christ's time in order to prolong the suffering and agony of the victim. Without this bar, the weight of the hanging body would prevent the diaphragm from working, and death from asphyxiation would result in a matter of minutes. Sacred Tradition teaches that when the Apostle Andrew preached in southern Russia, he placed a life-size three-bar Cross at his side. While explaining the Last Judgment, he tilted the footplate to signify that those on the left side of Christ will go down to hell, while those on His right side will go to Heaven. It is for this reason that the lower bar of the Russian Cross sits at an angle.

            Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy writes in The Law of God that in the Old Testament, the Lord Himself gave directions through the Prophet Moses as to how the temple should be set up for divine worship. New Testament churches were constructed on the basis of the Old Testament temple, which was separated into three portions: the holy of holies, the sanctuary, and the courts. These correspond to the three sections of an Orthodox church: the altar (or sanctuary), the nave (the middle portion), and the narthex (vestibule). Fr. Seraphim explains that:

As the holy of holies signified then, so now the altar represents the Kingdom of Heaven. No one could enter the holy of holies except for the high priest once a year, and only with the blood of a purification sacrifice. The Kingdom of Heaven, after the fall of man into sin, was closed to us. The high priest was a prototype of Christ, and his action told the people that a time would come when Christ, through the shedding of His blood and suffering on the Cross and Resurrection, would open the Kingdom of Heaven to all. Therefore, when Christ died on the Cross, the veil of the temple which closed off the holy of holies was torn in two, and from this moment Christ opened the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven to all those who with faith would come to Him [pp. 526-27].

Fr. Seraphim explains that in Old Testament times, no one but the priest had a right to enter the sanctuary (which, as noted, corresponds to the nave in an Orthodox church ). In New Testament times, however, all believing Christians are allowed to stand within Orthodox churches because the Kingdom of God is closed to none.

            While the courts in the Old Testament temple have their New Testament counterparts in the narthex, this latter division no longer has any essential significance. In early times, however, it was the place where catechumens stood — those who were preparing for the Mystery of Baptism.

            The word altar signifies an elevated place of sacrifice. In an Orthodox church, the altar (or sanctuary), which is generally built higher than the other portions of the church, is the holiest place in the church, and it faces east. It is here that the altar table (or holy table, or throne, as it is variously called), is located. Upon this altar table, the bishop or priest celebrates the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist. Except for special reasons (such as serving at the Liturgy, laymen are not allowed to go behind the iconostasis into the sanctuary.

Archpriest Alexey Young observes that Orthodox priests maintain the Church's ancient practice of facing away from the congregation and toward God. He goes on to note that in spite of many novel and innovative changes introduced by Rome since the Great Schism, some basic doctrines and practices common to the pre-schism Universal Church were preserved in the West, as well as a number of outward forms, until the early 1960s. At that time, when the Second Vatican Council made radical, de-Christianizing changes, the Latin Church's “new Mass” began to focus obsessively on the “people of God” rather than on God Himself. In the “new Mass,” Catholic priests turn their backs on God and face the congregation so as to have a “dialogue.” The reformers of the Second Vatican Council justified this innovation by claiming they were restoring the ancient practice of the early Church. However, the early Church never had such a practice. In fact, the practice originates with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.

            The altar table, usually cube-shaped, is in the center of the sanctuary and stands free from the eastern wall. Upon it are two sets of vestments: a lower one, which is of white linen, and an upper one, which is of a more expensive material, usually brocade. It is upon this table that the King and Master of the Church, Jesus Christ, is mysteriously and invisibly present in the Holy Eucharist. Only ordained clergy may touch the altar table or venerate it. Upon it are the Gospel, the Cross, the tabernacle (or ark in which the Holy Gifts are kept for the communing of the ill), the Communion set, and the antimins.

            This last article, the antimins (or antimension), is a silk cloth upon which Jesus Christ is depicted being placed in a tomb. A fragment from the relics of a saint (bone) is sewn into the reverse side, a practice that dates to the first centuries of Christianity, when the Divine Liturgy was always celebrated upon the graves of the martyrs. The word antimins means instead of an altar table, and one is not allowed to celebrate the Liturgy without an antimins consecrated by a bishop. In order to protect it, the antimins is folded into another silk cloth called the iliton.

            Behind the altar table are the altar Cross and a seven-branched candelabrum, the altar fans, and the dikiri and the trikiri. The dikiri holds two candles that represent the two natures of Christ,     while the trikiri holds three candles that represent the three Persons of the Godhead. The bishop uses the dikiri and trikiri to bless the faithful. The altar fans, metal circles upon which the Seraphim are depicted, sit atop long wooden handles. In the early Church, these fans were made of ostrich feathers or leather and were used to keep insects away from the Holy Gifts. Today they are held by the deacons over the Gospel book in procession, and also over the Holy Gifts during consecration. When the deacons wave these fans, it represents the presence of the heavenly hosts at the Liturgy. Behind these articles, against the eastern wall of the church, is the bishop's cathedra, or throne.

            The northern part of the sanctuary is the area of the Prothesis (or Preparation), and in it is the table of oblation. At the beginning of the Liturgy, the priest uses this table to prepare the bread and wine that are to be used in the Eucharist. The table is also used to store various sacred vessels, including the chalice.

Separating the sanctuary from the nave is the iconostasis, a solid wooden or marble screen supporting panel icons. One sometimes hears that an icon screen was not a feature of early Christian buildings. However, Eastern Christian worship was modeled on Jewish temple worship at the time of Christ, and it is likely that the iconostasis had its origin in the wall separating the congregation from the holy of holies in small rural temples.

            Leading into the iconostasis are three doors, the largest of which are the royal gates, so called because through them passes Jesus Christ, Who comes invisibly in the Holy Gifts. No one other than clergy is allowed to pass through these gates, and a curtain behind them is drawn and withdrawn during the course of the services. The door to the left side of the iconostasis, the northern door, leads to the area of the Prothesis, while the door on the right side, the southern door, leads to the Diakonikon, where traditionally the relics of saints and sacred books were kept, particularly the books of the Gospels. Today this area serves as a vestry.

            The arrangement of icons inside a church is far from accidental, but is done according to a definite theological system so that a church building makes up one great icon of the Kingdom of God. The numerous icons assist the faithful in that they function as a meeting point between Heaven and earth. As each local congregation of Christians prays and worships, it is surrounded by images of Christ, the angels and the saints, and these remind Christians that Christ and all the hosts of Heaven are invisibly and unceasingly present at the Liturgy.

            Usually the Annunciation and the four Evangelists are on the royal gates. Above them is an icon of the Mystical Supper since the faithful stand before them when partaking of Holy Communion. To the right of the royal gates, there is always an icon of the Saviour, and traditionally men stand on this side of the church. To the left of the same gates is an icon of the Mother of God, and traditionally this is the side of the church where women stand.

            The ancient tradition of separating men and women in public worship helps lessen distraction in prayer and serves as a hedge against temptation. The practice is almost certainly of Apostolic origin, and it derives from the separation of men and women in the Jewish temple. It is not widely known today that the practice was a universal Christian custom until the Protestant Reformation, and even afterwards it survived among some Protestant groups until the nineteenth century. The practice survives to this day among the Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians in traditionally Orthodox countries, although in other places, revolutionary ways prevailed, and the practice is not always observed today.

            The southern door, which is to the right of the icon of the Savior, and the northern door to the left of the icon of the Theotokos, generally have the Archangels Michael and Gabriel depicted on them. Occasionally, however, icons of the first deacons, Saints Philip and Stephen, are on them, or else the high priest Aaron and the Prophet Moses. Since the deacons frequently pass through these doors, they are sometimes called the deacon's doors.

            On the far ends of the deacon's doors are icons of especially revered saints. The first icon to the right is almost always the icon of the saint or feast to whom the church building is dedicated. If the iconostasis is built with more than three rows of icons, the second row usually has icons of the twelve great feasts, while the third row has the Apostles, and the forth row the prophets. On top of the iconostasis is the Cross, upon which the crucified Lord is depicted.

            In addition to the icons on the iconostasis, icons are also on the walls and in shrines, and on stands where they can be venerated. On entering the church proper, having crossed oneself when approaching the building, one normally reverences the central icon in the narthex with three bows (bending and touching the floor with the right hand), or with three prostrations (falling to the knees and bending the head almost to the ground). One makes the bows or prostrations twice before kissing the icon and lighting a candle near it, after which one makes another bow or prostration.

            Here ends the correspondence course on the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, which is the depository of Apostolic Christian Truth. As this course makes abundantly clear, this ancient Church has an uncompromising adherence to the original, unadulterated Christian faith and holds an unbroken, unchanged transmission of Christ's teaching since Apostolic times. Of this priceless treasure, Holy Orthodoxy, the great miracle-worker St. John of Kronstadt writes:

In the Church are all our sweetest hopes and expectations, our peace, our joy, together with cleansing and sanctification. It is there that the truth of the future resurrection, of the victory over death, is so often announced. Who that loves life would not love the Church with all his heart! Everything that is best, most exalted, most precious, holy and wise is found in the Church. In the Church is the ideal of mankind; the Church is Heaven upon earth [My Life in Christ].

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos goes on to state:

The greatest gift of grace which we have is that we belong to the Church. The greatest gift is that we are in this great Family. We should value this gift, and we should feel very deeply moved and struggle to remain in the Church, experiencing its sanctifying grace and showing by our lives that we are in its place of redemption and sanctification. Thus we shall also have the greatest gift of the “blessed ending,” when we are granted to lie asleep “in the midst of the Church” [The Mind of the Orthodox Church, p. 37].