The Liturgical Setting

The Divine Liturgy is served in a temple, by ministers vested for the altar, in chant and in a liturgical tongue. This section treats the setting in which the Liturgy is clothed: the church building as an icon of the Kingdom — sanctuary, nave, narthex, and the iconostasis — and the vestments, the Byzantine and Slavic traditions of chant, and the question of liturgical language.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Overview

The Liturgy is not celebrated in the abstract. It has a place — the Orthodox temple, whose architecture is itself a theology, ordering the faithful within an image of heaven and earth and screening the sanctuary with the iconostasis. It has a visible ministry — the clergy in their vestments, each garment carrying its own meaning. And it has a sound and a speech — the chant of the Byzantine and Slavic traditions, sung in the liturgical languages, with the perennial and sober question of how far the vernacular should be used. This section treats the temple and the iconostasis, and then the vestments, chant, and language of the Liturgy.

Files

File Description
the-temple-and-the-iconostasis.md The church as an icon of the Kingdom; sanctuary, nave, narthex; the iconostasis and its screen of icons
vestments-chant-and-language.md The liturgical vestments; Byzantine and Slavic chant; the liturgical languages and the vernacular question

See Also