Preliminary Ideas

The Nature of Divine Service.

By “Divine Service” the Orthodox Christian Church means a series of prayers, recited or sung in a given order, with certain ceremonies, by means of which prayers Orthodox Christians glorify God and His Saints, express their thanks and offer their petitions, and through the performance of which they receive from God mercies and the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Divine service is private or domestic when it is performed in private by one or several persons; it is public when it is performed in the name of the whole Church, or of a community of Christians, by persons authorized to do so. The prayers used in public warship are divided into two categories: those for permanent services, i.e., services performed daily for the benefit of all Christians, and those for occasional services, i.e., services which are performed only on certain occasions, according to the special needs of the faithful, and therefore called tréba, a word which, translated, means “need.”