Eastern Churches
The service of Vespers on Great Friday in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine Catholic churches uses the expression "impious and transgressing people", but the strongest expressions are in the Orthros of Great Friday, which includes the same phrase, but also speaks of "the murderers of God, the lawless nation of the Jews" and referring to "the assembly of the Jews", prays: "But give them, O Lord, their reward, for they devised vain things against Thee."
This having been said, on multiple occasions at Great Friday the forgiving words of Jesus Christ to the Jews are also brought to mind: "Heaven at this was amazed and the sun hid its rays; yet thou, O Israel, was not ashamed, but hast delivered Me to death. Forgive them, Holy Father, for they do not know what they have done," and again, "How great is the Master's love for mankind! For those who crucified Him, He prays to His Father, saying: 'Forgive them this sin, for in their wickedness they know not what they do.'"
In 2007, a group of twelve Orthodox priests representing five different national churches, some in open defiance of directives from their church leadership, issued a ten-page declaration calling for the removal all liturgical passages they perceived as anti-Semitic.
Read more about this topic: Good Friday Prayer For The Jews
Famous quotes containing the words eastern and/or churches:
“The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)