The truths of faith in the Divine services.

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. (It should be noted that the composers and

compilers of the Divine services were often great theologians in their own right. For example, the Octoechos or book

of daily services in the Eight Tones, is essentially the work of St. John Damascene, the 8th century Holy Father who

summed up the Orthodox theology of the great patristic age.)

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 (the 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.”