The Divine Liturgy
The central Orthodox service, sung throughout and almost entirely fixed.
The eucharistic service at the heart of Orthodox worship, in two movements: the Liturgy of the Word, with scripture readings, and the Liturgy of the Faithful, in which bread and wine are consecrated. The form attributed to St John Chrysostom is used most Sundays; the longer Liturgy of St Basil about ten times a year; the Presanctified Gifts on Lenten weekdays.
The Divine Liturgy is the principal Sunday service, most often the one attributed to St John Chrysostom. It is sung from beginning to end, usually without instruments, and there is very little in it that is spoken plainly.
The congregation stands for most of it, and in many traditional churches there are few seats. Movement in and out during the service is normal rather than rude, which surprises visitors from Western churches.
The altar sits behind an icon screen, and much of the eucharistic prayer happens out of sight. That concealment is deliberate and is part of what the service is saying.
Does it have a text?
Fully fixed text. Unusually for a liturgy, a public-domain English translation exists: Isabel Hapgood's service book of 1906, which is out of copyright and covers a great deal of the Orthodox liturgical cycle. It has not been transcribed for this site, which makes it the strongest untapped lead in the corpus rather than a closed door.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Orthodox
- The Orthodox daily cycle and prayer rule — Vespers, Matins and the hours in church, and a personal rule kept at home.
- The Jesus Prayer — A single repeated sentence at the centre of Orthodox contemplative practice.
- Prayer with icons — Prayer before images that are venerated rather than worshipped.
- Orthodox supplication and blessing services — Short services asking for help, healing or blessing outside the main liturgy.
- Orthodox prayer for the departed — Memorial services for the dead, kept at set intervals after a death.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.