Service
After Orthros and before the Divine Liturgy, a procession is made with icons to some destined spot (often merely around the church). Meanwhile a Canon, attributed to St. Theodore of Studium, is sung.
Once the procession arrives at the place, the Synodicon (decree of the Synod of Constantinople) is proclaimed aloud by the deacon. This Synodicon begins with the memory of certain saints, confessors and heroes of the faith, to each of whose names the people cry out: "Eternal Memory!" three times. Then follows a long list of heretics of all kinds, to each of which the answer is: "Anathema" once or thrice. These heretics comprise all the major opponents of the Orthodox Faith, Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Monothelites, Iconoclasts, and so on. Then comes again "Eternal Memory" to certain pious emperors, from Constantine the Great on.
There are inevitably differences between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic lists, as well as minor differences between the Synodika of individual national churches. The Orthodox acclaim Photius, Michael Cerularius, other anti-Roman patriarchs and many emperors. They curse Pope Honorius among the Monothelites, the opponents of Hesychasm. The Synodicon used by Greek-Catholics tends to omit a large number of these names.
The format used by the Russian Orthodox Church differs slightly from that used among the Greek Orthodox: during the monarchy, the Emperor and his family were acclaimed, and "Eternal Memory!" was proclaimed for each member of the Romanov Dynasty; all are cursed who deny the divine right of kings and all who "dare to stir up insurrection and rebellion against it". In the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia anathemas were added against modernism and ecumenism.
In Greek Orthodox churches the Creed is normally recited by the cantors in Mass, but on the Sunday of Orthodoxy especially it is often recited by a lay member of the congregation who is a secular official; it is a prerogative offered to the head of State, if present, in continuation of the same privilege held by the Emperors.
Read more about this topic: Feast Of Orthodoxy
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)