This week I am on a much-needed vacation with my husband. So, in keeping with the past few months’ journey through the Divine Liturgy, I want to share with you two wonderful quotations. First, something to remember each time we enter into worship in church: Following His Ascension, the Lord sits with his Heavenly Father in the heavens and at the same time, He is present with the faithful Christians in the…
To this day Orthodox Christians continue to eat together after the service, but the ongoing liturgy involves more than a communal snack. Some have called the post-liturgy period, from coffee hour through the rest of the week, “the liturgy after the liturgy.” It encompasses our whole lives, both inside and outside the walls of the church building.
In all my years as a Christian, I never, ever experienced the amount of preparation for Communion that the Orthodox Church requires. The reason for all the prayers, praises, and pleas for forgiveness lies in the nature of the offering itself. If communion is more than the sum of its physical parts, and if Christ truly gives Himself to us in the bread and the wine, then we must adequately prepare to receive the King of kings.
