Liturgical Worship and Orthodoxy 5

The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus is a very interesting little work. Let me remind you that it dates from about 217 AD and records the practices which could be traced back at least to the end of the Apostolic Age. There are prayers in this manual for the consecration and ordination of three categories of ministry that I want to focus on in this short post. They are Bishops, Priests and Deacons. There are also instructions about other categories, but for now we will consider just these three and in this post especially turn to the first.

Liturgical Worship and Orthodoxy 4

I was celebrating the Liturgy this morning and came to a passage which reminded me of something I had been reading in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus from about 217 AD. It was the words…

Priest : Lift up your hearts!
People : We lift them up unto the Lord.
Priest : Let us give thanks unto the Lord!
People : It is meet and right so to do.

When I had some time later today I found my copy of the Apostolic Tradition, written almost 1800 years before the liturgy being offered today and found that Hippolytus instructs the bishop celebrating the liturgy in his own times to pray…

Liturgical Worship and Orthodoxy 3

Before turning to some of the other Christian references to the nature of the worship of the early Church it might be useful to place the documents that will be considered into a time frame. There are so many materials produced in a very short time scale and these reasonably allow us to conclude that what is being described is indicative of the practice of the Apostolic Church and the communities immediately following this period.

I have in front of me a work called the Apostolic Tradition. It is another of the early manuals, like the Didache of the first century, written to describe the organisation of the Church, and to allow leaders of local Churches to maintain a consistent way of life. It was written by Hippolytus, a leader of the Church in Rome during a time when there was some controversy. His aim was to ensure that the congregations under his pastoral care preserved the most conservative and ancient of practices. He was determined to reject anything that was a novelty and to conserve all those things which originated in the Apostolic Age and Tradition.

Liturgical Worship and Orthodoxy 2

We noted in Post 1 that until the most recent times all mainstream Christian worship was liturgical to a great extent. It followed a predetermined order and structure, often with well-established content that congregations would have been used to participating in. Of course the majority Anglican tradition remained manifestly liturgical. So too did the Catholic tradition. But the Methodists also had a liturgical culture, based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer which Wesley, as an Anglican, had always used. Even Baptists and Presbyterians had and have a liturgy, a structure, to their services and publish service books today to be used in their congregations.

Liturgical Worship and Orthodoxy 1

I was at a liturgical service some years ago. It began with the president or leader of the service offering a prayer, and after his prayer was completed the congregation responded with their agreement in the word, Amen. A hymn was sung by the congregation and then another man with some responsibility in the congregation came to the front and read some notices from a text. Further short prayers for the needs of the congregation and of the world were offered in a litany of short prayers with the congregation responding each time with the word, Amen. A second hymn was sung by the congregation and then the leader read from the scriptures. There was another hymn which the congregation joined in with and then another man with responsibility in the congregation spoke about the scriptures for some time. When he had concluded the congregation sang another hymn and the leader of the service closed the liturgical meeting with a prayer of blessing.

Latest Developments

It has been busy over the last few months. I have just reached the second anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood and the time which is required just to achieve a bare minimum in ministry is increasing all the time. Our little Orthodox community now enjoys a regular Bible Study, as well as our weekly Liturgies. During March we are planning to also begin a weekly Introduction to Orthodoxy evening for our catechumens and other interested people, whether Orthodox or not.

Today we held a Family and Friends liturgy. This is a regular event, just a normal Liturgy, but one to which we invite our friends and family, and the growing number of enquirers who contact us. It was a great blessing to have 8 visitors with us this morning, some of whom had never attended a liturgy before. We hope that they will want to participate in some of the activities we are organising and planning.

I am continuing to work on the Book of Saints which I have chosen to self publish. Perhaps I will post some excerpts from the book on this blog in due course.

New book being self published

I am English through and through. I can't help it. I have been tracing my ancestors for years and all of them are English, except for one distant great-great-grandfather who was French. So technically I am 3% French.

Being so rooted in one place, and one country, I have a great attachment to the history of England, and the wider British Isles. I have always wanted to know about the Christian history, which still is present in the material and cultural landscape. Just 20 miles from my home in one direction is one of the oldest Christian places of worship in the country. It is found in the well-preserved ruins of a Roman villa, in which one wing of the substantial property was converted in the 4th century into a Church with an external entrance. So it was being used by the local community.

20 miles in the other direction is the ruined Abbey where one of my patron saints, St Theodore of Tarsus, was buried, and perhaps still is, since it seems likely the 'Reformers' missed his tomb when they destroyed everything else. It is a great blessing to visit the ruins in the better weather and spend some time sitting quietly in prayer at the place where is grave is marked.

This great love for the English and British Christian heritage has caused me to spend time over the last years in compiling and writing a book of Orthodox British Saints, that is, those Christian figures who lived roughly before the Norman Conquest.

I have written other things before, and published them, but this volume will be self-published through a local company called Getting Yourself Published, so that it will be available on Amazon and other online retailers. I have decided to call it, Holy People, Holy Places, since it will also describe many of those places associated with these saints which can still be visited.

I hope that the manuscript will be completed in the new year, and then work its way through the publishing process to be ready for Pascha 2011.