Structure of Orthodox Worship Services
Orthodox worship services may vary due to the what the service may be commemorating. The services are always sung or chanted and never said, with the exception of occasional sermons. Services involve chanted or sung prayerful dialogue between the priest and the congregants. The orthodox church uses different holy languages during services. Russian, Old Slavonic, Romanian, Greek, Arabic, Serbian, and Georgian can be heard in many prayers and litanies even if services are mostly in English. The services begin and end with the sign of the cross. The most common service is the Divine Liturgy which takes place during Sunday mornings. The Divine Liturgy is the Orthodox Christian sabbath service and centers around the consecration and transubstantiation of the Eucharist. Orthodox Christians use many series of long litany praying for the intercession and peace. Worship invokes all of the seven senses; its main purpose is to bring the worshipers closer to heaven with an experience of heaven on earth through the services. During vespers and matins services, many different series of psalms and other prayers are sung in a fast, movable way while other prayers are sung in the background evoking the urge to worship. The service structures are as follow: Rite of Entrance, Rite of Proclamation, and the prescribed Liturgy. Usually there are several litany: the litany of the catachumens, litany of the faithful, litany of Supplication, Litany of the Departed, and the Great Litany. There are also special hymns that reflect on the service such as the Hymn of the Theotokos or Mother of God Mary.
Read more about this topic: Eastern Orthodox Worship
Famous quotes containing the words structure of, structure, orthodox, worship and/or services:
“Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“The structure was designed by an old sea captain who believed that the world would end in a flood. He built a home in the traditional shape of the Ark, inverted, with the roof forming the hull of the proposed vessel. The builder expected that the deluge would cause the house to topple and then reverse itself, floating away on its roof until it should land on some new Ararat.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The gloomy theology of the orthodox—the Calvinists—I do not, I cannot believe. Many of the notions—nay, most of the notions—which orthodox people have of the divinity of the Bible, I disbelieve. I am so nearly infidel in all my views, that too, in spite of my wishes, that none but the most liberal doctrines can command my assent.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A self-denial, no less austere than the saint’s, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)