Doctrine and Worship
There is a story in the Russian Primary Chronicle of
how Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, while still a pagan, desired to know which was the
true religion, and therefore sent his followers to visit the various countries
of the world in turn. They went first to the Moslem Bulgars of the Volga, but
observing that these when they prayed gazed around them like men possessed, the
Russians continued on their way dissatisfied. ‘There is no joy among them,’
they reported to Vladimir, ‘but mournfulness and a great smell; and there is
nothing good about their system.’ Traveling next to Germany and Rome, they
found the worship more satisfactory, but complained that here too it was without
beauty. Finally they journeyed to Constantinople, and here at last, as they
attended the Divine Liturgy in the great Church of the Holy Wisdom, they
discovered what they desired. ‘We knew not whether we were in heaven or on
earth, for surely there is no such splendour or beauty anywhere upon earth. We
cannot describe it to you: only this we know, that God dwells there among men,
and that their service surpasses the worship of all other places. For we cannot
forget that beauty.’
In this story can be seen several features characteristic of
Orthodox Christianity. There is first the emphasis upon divine beauty: we
cannot forget that beauty. It has seemed to many that the peculiar gift of
Orthodox peoples — and especially of Byzantium and Russia — is this power of
perceiving the beauty of the spiritual world, and expressing this celestial
beauty in their worship.
In the second place it is characteristic that the Russians
should have said, we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth.
Worship, for the Orthodox Church, is nothing else than ‘heaven on earth.’
The Holy Liturgy is something that embraces two worlds at once, for both in
heaven and on earth the Liturgy is one and the same — one altar, one
sacrifice, one presence. In every place of worship, however humble its outward
appearance, as the faithful gather to perform the Eucharist, they are taken up
into the ‘heavenly places;’ in every place of worship when the Holy
Sacrifice is offered, not merely the local congregation are present, but the
Church universal — the saints, the angels, the Mother of God, and Christ
himself. ‘Now the celestial powers are present with us, and worship invisibly’
(Words sung at the Great Entrance in the Liturgy of the
Pre-sanctified). This we know, that God dwells there among men.
Orthodox, inspired by this vision of ‘heaven on earth,’
have striven to make their worship in outward splendour and beauty an icon of
the great Liturgy in heaven. In the year 612, on the staff of the Church of the
Holy Wisdom, there were 80 priests, 150 deacons, 40 deaconesses, 70 subdeacons,
160 readers, 25 cantors, and 100 doorkeepers: this gives some faint idea of the
magnificence of the service which Vladimir’s envoys attended. But many who
have experienced Orthodox worship under very different outward surroundings have
felt, no less than those Russians from Kiev, a sense of God’s presence among
men. Turn, for example, from the Russian Primary Chronicle to the letter of an
Englishwoman, written in 1935:‘This morning was so queer. A very grimy and
sordid Presbyterian mission hall in a mews over a garage, where the Russians are
allowed once a fortnight to have the Liturgy. A very stage property iconostasis
and a few modern icons. A dirty floor to kneel on and a form along the wall ...
And in this two superb old priests and a deacon, clouds of incense and, at the
Anaphora, overwhelming supernatural impression’ (The Letters
of Evelyn Underhill, p. 2.18).
There is yet a third characteristic of Orthodoxy which the
story of Vladimir’s envoys illustrates. When they wanted to discover the true
faith, the Russians did not ask about moral rules nor demand a reasoned
statement of doctrine, but watched the different nations at prayer. The Orthodox
approach to religion is fundamentally a liturgical approach, which understands
doctrine in the context of divine worship: it is no coincidence that the word
‘Orthodoxy’ should signify alike right belief and right worship, for the two
things are inseparable. It has been truly said of the Byzantines: ‘Dogma with
them is not only an intellectual system apprehended by the clergy and expounded
to the laity, but a field of vision wherein all things on earth are seen in
their relation to things in heaven, first and foremost through liturgical
celebration’ (G. Every, The Byzantine Patriarchate,
first edition, p. 9). In the words of Georges Florovsky: ‘Christianity
is a liturgical religion. The Church is first of all a worshipping community.
Worship comes first, doctrine and discipline second’ (‘The
Elements of Liturgy in the Orthodox Catholic Church,’ in the periodical One
Church, vol. 13 (New York, 1959), nos. 1-2, p. 24). Those who wish to
know about Orthodoxy should not so much read books as follow the sample of
Vladimir’s retinue and attend the Liturgy. As Philip said to Nathanael: "Come
and see" (John 1:46).
Because they approach religion in this liturgical way,
Orthodox often attribute to minute points of ritual an importance which
astonishes western Christians. But once we have understood the central place of
worship in the life of Orthodoxy, an incident such as the schism of the Old
Believers will no longer appear entirely unintelligible: if worship is the faith
in action, then liturgical changes cannot be lightly regarded. It is typical
that a Russian writer of the fifteenth century, when attacking he Council of
Florence, should find fault with the Latins, not for any errors in doctrine, but
for their behaviour in worship: ‘What have you seen of worth among the Latins?
They do not even know how to venerate the church of God. They raise their voices
as the fools, and their singing is a discordant wail. They have no idea of
beauty and reverence in worship, for they strike trombones, blow horns, use
organs, wave their hands, trample with their feet, and do many other irreverent
and disorderly things which bring joy to the devil’ (Quoted in
N. Zernov, Moscow the Third Rome, p. 37; I cite this passage simply as an
example of the liturgical approach of Orthodoxy, without necessarily endorsing
the strictures on western worship which it contains!).
Orthodoxy sees man above all else as a liturgical creature
who is most truly himself when he glorifies God, and who finds his perfection
and self-fulfilment in worship. Into the Holy Liturgy which expresses their
faith, the Orthodox peoples have poured their whole religious experience. It is
the Liturgy which has inspired their best poetry, art, and music. Among
Orthodox, the Liturgy has never become the preserve of the learned and the
clergy, as it tended to be in the medieval west, but it has remained popular
— the common possession of the whole Christian people: ‘The normal Orthodox
lay worshipper, through familiarity from earliest childhood, is entirely at home
in church, thoroughly conversant with the audible parts of the Holy Liturgy, and
takes part with unconscious and unstudied ease in the action of the rite, to an
extent only shared in by the hyper-devout and ecclesiastically minded in the
west’ (Austin Oakley, The Orthodox Liturgy, London,
1958, p. 12).
In the dark days of their history — under the Mongols, the
Turks, or the communists — it is to the Holy Liturgy that the Orthodox peoples
have always turned for inspiration and new hope; nor have they turned in vain.
The outward setting of the services:
Priest and people
The basic pattern of services is the same in the Orthodox as
in the Roman Catholic Church: there is, first, the Holy Liturgy (the
Eucharist or Mass); secondly, the Divine Office (i.e. the two chief
offices of Matins and Vespers, together with the six ‘Lesser Hours’ of
Nocturns, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline) (In the Roman
rite Nocturns is a part of Matins, but in the Byzantine rite Nocturns is a
separate service. Byzantine Matins is equivalent to Matins and Lauds in the
Roman rite); and thirdly, the Occasional Offices — i.e. services
intended for special occasions, such as Baptism, Marriage, Monastic Profession,
Royal Coronation, Consecration of a Church, Burial of the Dead. (In addition to
these, the Orthodox Church makes use of a great variety of lesser blessings).
While in many Anglican and almost all Roman Catholic parish
churches, the Eucharist is celebrated daily, in the Orthodox Church today a
daily Liturgy is not usual except in cathedrals and large monasteries; in a
normal parish church it is celebrated only on Sundays and feasts. But in
contemporary Russia, where places of worship are few and many Christians are
obliged to work on Sundays, a daily Liturgy has become the practice in many town
parishes.
The Divine Office is recited daily in monasteries, large and
small, and in some cathedrals; also in a number of town parishes in Russia. But
in an ordinary Orthodox parish church it is sung only at week-ends and on
feasts. Greek churches hold Vespers on Saturday night, and Matins on Sunday
morning before the Liturgy; in Russian parishes Matins is usually ‘anticipated’
and sung immediately after Vespers on Saturday night, so that Vespers and
Matins, followed by Prime, together constitute what is termed the ‘Vigil
Service’ or the ‘All-Night Vigil.’ Thus while western Christians, if they
worship in the evening, tend to do so on Sundays, Orthodox Christians worship on
the evening of Saturdays.
In its services the Orthodox Church uses the language of the
people: Arabic at Antioch, Finnish at Helsinki, Japanese at Tokyo, English (when
required) at New York. One of the first tasks of Orthodox missionaries — from
Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century, to Innocent Veniaminov and Nicholas
Kassatkin in the nineteenth — has always been to translate the service books
into native tongues. In practice, however, there are partial exceptions to this
general principle of using the vernacular: the Greek-speaking Churches employ,
not modern Greek, but the Greek of New Testament and Byzantine times, while the
Russian Church still uses the ninth-century translations in Church Slavonic. Yet
in both cases the difference between the liturgical language and the
contemporary vernacular is not so great as to make the service unintelligible to
the congregation. In 1906 many Russian bishops in fact recommended that Church
Slavonic be replaced more or less generally by modern Russian, but the Bolshevik
Revolution occurred before this scheme could be carried into effect.
In the Orthodox Church today, as in the early Church, all
services are sung or chanted. There is no Orthodox equivalent to the Roman ‘Low
Mass’ or to the Anglican ‘Said Celebration.’ At every Liturgy, as at every
Matins and Vespers, incense is used and the service is sung, even though there
may be no choir or congregation, but the priest and a single reader alone. In
their Church music the Greek-speaking Orthodox continue to use the ancient
Byzantine plain-chant, with its eight ‘tones.’ This plain-chant the
Byzantine missionaries took with them into the Slavonic lands, but over the
centuries it has become extensively modified, and the various Slavonic Churches
have each developed their own style and tradition of ecclesiastical music. Of
these traditions the Russian is the best known and the most immediately
attractive to western ears; many consider Russian Church music the finest in all
Christendom, and alike in the Soviet Union and in the emigration there are
justly celebrated Russian choirs. Until very recent times all singing in
Orthodox churches was usually done by the choir; today, a small but increasing
number of parishes in Greece, Russia, Romania, and the Diaspora are beginning to
revive congregational singing — if not throughout the service, then at any
rate at special moments such as the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.
In the Orthodox Church today, as in the early Church, singing
is unaccompanied and instrumental music is not found, except among certain
Orthodox in America — particularly the Greeks — who are now showing a penchant
for the organ or the harmonium. Most Orthodox do not use hand or sanctuary bells
inside the church; but they have outside belfries, and take great delight in
ringing the bells not only before but at various moments during the service
itself. Russian bell-ringing used to be particularly famous. ‘Nothing,’
wrote Paul of Aleppo during his visit to Moscow in 1655, ‘nothing affected me
so much as the united clang of all the bells on the eves of Sundays and great
festivals, and at midnight before the festivals. The earth shook with their
vibrations, and like thunder the drone of their voices went up to the skies.’
‘They rang the brazen bells after their custom. May God not be startled at the
noisy pleasantness of their sounds’ (The Travels of Macarius,
edited Ridding, p. 27 and p. 6).
An Orthodox Church is usually more or less square in plan,
with a wide central space covered by a dome. (In Russia the Church dome has
assumed that striking onion shape which forms so characteristic a feature of
every Russian landscape). The elongated naves and chancels, common in cathedrals
and larger parish churches of the Gothic style, are not found in eastern church
architecture. There are as a rule no chairs or pews in the central part of the
church, although there may be benches or stalls along the walls. An Orthodox
normally stands during Church services (non-Orthodox visitors are often
astonished to see old women remaining on their feet for several hours without
apparent signs of fatigue); but there are moments when the congregation can sit
or kneel. Canon 20 of the first ecumenical Council forbids all kneeling on
Sundays or on any of the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost; but today this
rule is unfortunately not always strictly observed.
It is a remarkable thing how great a difference the presence
or absence of pews can make to the whole spirit of Christian worship. There is
in Orthodox worship a flexibility, an unselfconscious informality, not found
among western congregations, at any rate north of the Alps. Western worshippers,
ranged in their neat rows, each in his proper place, cannot move about during
the service without causing a disturbance; a western congregation is generally
expected to arrive at the beginning and to stay to the end. But in Orthodox
worship people can come and go far more freely, and nobody is greatly surprised
if one moves about during the service. The same informality and freedom also
characterizes the behavior of the clergy: ceremonial movements are not so
minutely prescribed as in the west, priestly gestures are less stylized and more
natural. This informality, while it can lead at times to irreverence, is in the
end a precious quality which Orthodox would be most sorry to lose. They are at
home in their church — not troops on a parade ground, but children in their
Father’s house. Orthodox worship is often termed ‘otherworldly,’ but could
more truly be described as ‘homely:’ it is a family affair. Yet
behind this homeliness and informality there lies a deep sense of mystery.
In every Orthodox Church the sanctuary is divided from the
rest of the interior by the iconostasis, a solid screen, usually of wood,
covered with panel icons. In early days the chancel was separated merely by a
low screen three or four feet high. Sometimes this screen was surmounted by an
open series of columns supporting a horizontal beam or architrave: a screen of
this kind can still be seen at Saint Mark’s, Venice. Only in comparatively
recent times — in many places not until the fifteenth or sixteenth century —
was the space between these columns filled up, and the iconostasis given its
present solid form. Many Orthodox liturgists today would be glad to follow
Father John of Kronstadt’s example, and revert to a more open type of
iconostasis; in a few places this has actually been done.
The iconostasis is pierced by three doors. The large door in
the center — the Holy Door — when opened affords a view through to
the altar. This doorway is closed by double gates, behind which hangs a curtain.
Outside service time, except during Easter week, the gates are kept closed and
the curtain drawn. During services, at particular moments the gates are
sometimes open, sometimes closed, while occasionally when the gates are closed
the curtain is drawn across as well. Many Greek parishes, however, now no longer
close the gates or draw the curtain at any point in the Liturgy; in a number of
churches the gates have been removed altogether, while other churches have
followed a course which is liturgically far more correct keeping the gates, but
removing the curtain. Of the two other doors, that on the left leads into the
‘chapel’ of the Prothesis or Preparation (here the sacred vessels are
kept, and here the priest prepares the bread and the wine at the beginning of
the Liturgy); that on the right leads into the Diakonikon (now generally
used as a vestry, but originally the place where the sacred books, particularly
the Book of the Gospels, were kept together with the relics). Laymen are not
allowed to go behind the iconostasis, except for a special reason such as
serving at the Liturgy. The altar in an Orthodox Church — the Holy Table or
Throne, as it is called — stands free of the east wall, in the center of the
sanctuary; behind the altar and against the wall is set the bishop’s throne.
Orthodox Churches are full of icons — on the screen, on the
walls, in special shrines, or on a kind of desk where they can be venerated by
the faithful. When an Orthodox enters church, his first action will be to buy a
candle, go up to an icon, cross himself, kiss the icon, and light the candle in
front of it. ‘They be great offerers of candles,’ commented the English
merchant Richard Chancellor, visiting Russia in the reign of Elizabeth I. In the
decoration of the church, the various iconographical scenes and figures are not
arranged fortuitously, but according to a definite theological scheme, so that
the whole edifice forms one great icon or image of the Kingdom of God. In
Orthodox religious art, as in the religious art of the medieval west, there is
an elaborate system of symbols, involving every part of the church building and
its decoration. Icons, frescoes, and mosaics are not mere ornaments, designed to
make the church ‘look nice,’ but have a theological and liturgical function
to fulfill.
The icons which fill the church serve as a point of meeting
between heaven and earth. As each local congregation prays Sunday by Sunday,
surrounded by the figures of Christ, the angels, and the saints, these visible
images remind the faithful unceasingly of the invisible presence of the whole
company of heaven at the Liturgy. The faithful can feel that the walls of the
church open out upon eternity, and they are helped to realize that their Liturgy
on earth is one and the same with the great Liturgy of heaven. The multitudinous
icons express visibly the sense of ‘heaven on earth.’
The worship of the Orthodox Church is communal and popular.
Any non-Orthodox who attends Orthodox services with some frequency will quickly
realize how closely the whole worshipping community, priest and people alike,
are bound together into one; among other things, the absence of pews helps to
create a sense of unity. Although most Orthodox congregations do not join in the
singing, it should not therefore be imagined that they are taking no real part
in the service; nor does the iconostasis — even in its present solid form —
make the people feel cut off from the priest in the sanctuary. In any case, many
of the ceremonies take place in front of the screen, in full view of the
congregation.
Orthodox laity do not use the phrase ‘to hear Mass,’
for in the Orthodox Church the Mass has never become something done by the
clergy for the laity, but is something which clergy and laity perform together.
In the medieval west, where the Eucharist was performed in a learned language
not understood by the people, men came to church to adore the Host at the
Elevation, but otherwise treated the Mass mainly as a convenient occasion for
saying their private prayers (All this, of course, has now been
changed in the west by the Liturgical Movement). In the Orthodox Church,
where the Liturgy has never ceased to be a common action performed by priest and
people together, the congregation do not come to church to say their private
prayers, but to pray the public prayers of the Liturgy and to take part in the
action of the rite itself. Orthodoxy has never undergone that separation between
liturgy and personal devotion from which the medieval and post-medieval west has
suffered so much.
Certainly the Orthodox Church, as well as the west, stands in
need of a Liturgical Movement; indeed, some such movement has already begun in a
small way in several parts of the Orthodox world (revival of congregational
singing; gates of the Holy Door left open in the Liturgy; more open form of
iconostasis, and so on). Yet in Orthodoxy the scope of this Liturgical Movement
will be far more restricted, since the changes required are very much less
drastic. That sense of corporate worship which it is the primary aim of
liturgical reform in the west to restore has never ceased to be a living reality
in the Orthodox Church.
There is in most Orthodox worship an unhurried and timeless
quality, an effect produced in part by the constant repetition of Litanies.
Either in a longer or a shorter form, the Litany recurs several times in every
service of the Byzantine rite. In these Litanies, the deacon (if there is no
deacon, the priest) calls the people to pray for the various needs of the Church
and the world, and to each petition the choir or the people replies Lord,
have mercy — Kyrie eleison in Greek, Gospodi pomilui in
Russian — probably the first words in an Orthodox service which the visitor
grasps. (In some Litanies the response is changed to Grant this, O Lord).
The congregation associate themselves with the different intercessions by making
the sign of the Cross and bowing. In general the sign of the Cross is employed
far more frequently by Orthodox than by western worshippers, and there is a far
greater freedom about the times when it is used: different worshippers cross
themselves at different moments, each as he wishes, although there are of course
occasions in the service when almost all sign themselves at the same time.
We have described Orthodox worship as timeless and unhurried.
Most western people have the idea that Byzantine services, even if not literally
timeless, are at any rate of an extreme and intolerable length. Certainly
Orthodox functions tend to be more prolonged than their western counterparts,
but we must not exaggerate. It is perfectly possible to celebrate the Byzantine
Liturgy, and to preach a short sermon, in an hour and a quarter; and in 1943 the
Patriarch of Constantinople laid down that in parishes under his jurisdiction
the Sunday Liturgy should not last over an hour and a half. Russians on the
whole take longer than Greeks over services, but in a normal Russian parish of
the emigration, the Vigil Service on Saturday nights lasts no more than two
hours, and often less. Monastic offices of course are more extended, and on
Mount Athos at great festivals the service sometimes goes on for twelve or even
fifteen hours without a break, but this is altogether exceptional.
Non-Orthodox may take heart from the fact that Orthodox are
often as alarmed as they by the length of services. ‘And now we are entered on
our travail and anguish,’ writes Paul of Aleppo in his diary as he enters
Russia. ‘For all their churches are empty of seats. There is not one, even for
the bishop; you see the people all through the service standing like rocks,
motionless or incessantly bending with their devotions. God help us for the
length of their prayers and chants and Masses, for we suffered great pain, so
that our very souls were tortured with fatigue and anguish.’ And in the middle
of Holy Week he exclaims: ‘God grant us His special aid to get through the
whole of this present week! As for the Muscovites, their feet must surely be of
iron’ (The Travels of Macarius, edited Ridding, p. 14
and p. 46).
