The Eastern Orthodox Church

Who are we?

The Eastern Orthodox Church which was founded by Christ and the Apostles in Jerusalem, Antioch, Cyprus and Greece entered North America through Alaska and Florida. In 1794 Russian Orthodox missionaries established a mission on Kodiak Island off the coast of Alaska. When the United States purchased that territory from Russia, these missionaries spread their efforts south to San Francisco.

Although the first colony of Eastern Orthodox Christians settled in New Smyrna, Florida, in 1768, the continuous history of Orthodoxy in the United States stems from the Kodiac Island mission in Alaska. However, it was not until after 1900 that the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians began to emigrate to America.

What is the Church?

When God desired to work among us, He took to Himself a human body like ours. We call this the Incarnation: God taking on a body and living among us. With and through that body God acted in Christ during the 33 years that He lived in this world. He taught; He healed; He forgave; He offered Himself on the Cross for our salvation, and was resurrected. Then on Ascension Day His body left the earth, and was no longer active among us.

If God intended, after the Ascension, to do any more work among us, He must either bring that body back again (as He will do when He comes at the Last Judgement), or else He must use some other body. He has chosen to do the latter, i.e. to make use of some other body. This time it is not a physical body like the one born of the Virgin Mary. It is instead an organism which St. Paul likens to a body when he says, "You are Christ's body." All those Christians who have been baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit, who share in the life of Christ through Holy Communion, make up the Body that is to be the instrument of Christ's work on earth. In other words, Christ lives and works today through all those who make up this new Body in the world, i.e. the Church. We are the Church.

We are Apostolic

The Eastern Orthodox Church dates its existence from the time of Christ and the Apostles. It was the Apostle Paul, for example, who established the Christian Church in Greece through his early missionary journeys. His letters to the Corinthians, the Thessalonians, the Philipians were written to the churches he had established in those Greek cities. The Church he founded there has never ceased to exist. It is known today as the Greek Orthodox Church. The Apostle Peter founded the Church in Antioch which exist to this day as the Antiochian Orthodox Church. Other apostles established the church in Jerusalem, Alexandria and Cyprus. The Eastern Orthodox Church has existed in these places since the days of the apostles. From these cities and countries, missionaries brought the Gospel (Good News) of Jesus to other Orthodox countries: Russia, the Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. This self-governing family of churches is known today as the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Thus, the Orthodox Church is apostolic because she teaches what the apostles taught and can trace her existence historically through the ordination of the bishops directly back to the apostles, and through them, to Christ. We call this "Apostolic Succession." It is a guarantee that the Orthodox Church is geniune. It was founded by Christ through the apostles and can prove it historically. Not all churches are apostolic. Some were founded by men. Not so the Orthodox Church. Her bond with those first days in Nazareth and Galilee has never been severed.

Thus the Orthodox Church is the legitimate and historical continuation of the early Church. She has the same faith, the same spirit, the same ethos. "This is the Apostolic faith, this is the faith of the Fathers, this is the Orthodox faith, this faith has established the universe" (From the Sunday of Orthodoxy vespers).

We are Catholic

The Orthodox Church is Catholic, meaning whole, because she has preserved the wholeness of the faith of Christ through the centuries without adding or subtracting to that divinely revealed faith. For this reason she has come to be known as the "Orthodox" Church, i.e., the Church that has preserved the full and true faith of Christ. Orthodox Christians believe that the Church, which has Christ Himself as Head and which is the temple of the Holy Spirit cannot err. Her voice is the voice of Christ in the world today.

(Note: The word Catholic is not to be confused with Roman Catholic. The two churches separated in 1054 A.D. over the concentration of too much authority in the pope. The section below on "Our Source of Authority" explains the position of the Orthodox Church in this matter.)

We are the early Church

One of the distinguishing features of the Orthodox Church is its changelessness. The Orthodox Church baptizes by a threefold immersion as was done in the early Church. It still confirms infants at baptism bestowing upon them the "seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit." It still brings babies and small children to receive Holy Communion. In the liturgy the deacon still cries out, "The doors, the doors," recalling early days when the church doors were closed at one point and none but baptised members of the Christian family could participate in the liturgy. The Nicene Creed is still recited without the later additions. The Orhodox Church has two distinctive features: (1) its changelessness: (2) its sense of living continuity with the church of the early apostles.

We worship amid joy

The Eastern Orthodox Church has always placed great emphasis on worship. Its services are longer in duration than the worship services of Christian churches in the West. Its main worship service - the liturgy - has captured that element of sheer joy in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus that is found in the writings of the early church. It has been said that one of the main characteristics of the Eastern Church is its power to perceive the celestial beauty of the spiritual world and to express it in worship.

The central event of the liturgy is the descent, the appearance, the divine presence of the resurrected Christ. A person is frequently reminded of this presence. for example, at one point in the liturgy the priest says, "Christ is with us." And the assistant priest responds, after receiving the kiss of peace, "He is with us and will be."

Orthodox worship services appeal to the whole man through the five senses:

sight, through the visual beauty of the icons (religious paintings) and vestments;

smell, through the use of incense;

sound, through the music of the Orthodox liturgy;

taste, through the Sacrament of Holy Communion;

touch, by crossing oneself, kissing the icon and lighting candles.

We are called to be partakers of divine nature

The Eastern Church's doctrine of salvation teaches that Christ the Saviour came to save not only from but also for. He came to save us from sin for participation in the life of God. This exalted vision of the Christian life was expressed by St. Peter when he wrote that we are invited "to become partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Peter 1:4) It was also affirmed by St. Basil the Great when he described man as "the creature who has received an order to become god." The whole emphasis of the Orthodox way of life is on "putting on Christ" and receiving the Holy Spirit through prayer and the Sacraments so that we may begin to live a new life in union with Christ and in communion with the Holy Spirit.

We use icons

The Eastern Church makes extensive use of icons, i.e., religious paintings of Christ and the saints. During the early history of the church, the iconclasts (icon breakers) set out to destroy all icons. They felt that it was idolatrous to paint a picture of God who is eternal and invisible. The Orthodox Christians, on the other hand, insisted that God can be painted because He had become man in Jesus. Because of this, it was lawful to make a picture of Him.

Icons have been called prayers, hymns, sermons in form and color. They are the visual Gospel. In an Orthodox Church a person may see unfolded before him in paintings on the walls and ceiling almost all the mysteries of the Christian religion. Orthodox Christians use icons in their homes as a reminder of God's presence and for family prayer.

We are a living connection with the entire past experience of the Church

The Orthodox Church is often called the Church of the Fathers because she maintains a living connection with the early Church Fathers. We are not a Church that was instituted a few years ago, or even a few centuries ago. The early Fathers are part of our church history. In fact, our Church came to be called Orthodox, meaning true faith, because of the great emphasis the early Fathers of the Greek Church placed upon preserving the faith of Christ. As Orthodox Christians, we have inherited all the experience of 19 centuries of Christian living and thinking and believing and witnessing and dying. We have behind us millions of believing men and women of every tribe and tongue, witnessing to the truth of the Gospel, often dying for it in order to hand it down to us.

That is why when we Orthodox Christians pick up the Bible to read it, we do not act as if these 19 centuries of church history did not exist. We read the Bible and we gain a better understanding of it because we consider how the Holy Spirit has guided the Church Fathers in the past to interpret Scripture. This is what we mean by Sacred Tradition. We do not mean, as Dr. Florovsky emphasizes, the traditions of men or a slavish attachment to the past. By Sacred Tradition we mean A LIVING CONNECTION WITH THE ENTIRE PAST EXPERIENCE OF THE CHURCH, nineteen centuries of it during which the Holy Spirit has been protecting and proclaiming the truth of Christ through the Church.

Our source of authority

The highest authority of the Eastern Church is the Ecumenical Council, involving the whole church. When the bishops of the church define a matter of faith in an Ecumenical Council, their decision must be accepted by the lay people of the church as a whole. Only then can it be considered infallible, or inspired of the Holy Spirit, who resides in the whole church, consisting of clergy and laity, to guide it to all truth. This makes not one person, be he bishop, pope or patriarch, but every person within the church responsible for Christian truth. There have been instances where decisions of the bishops in Council have not been accepted by the church as a whole.

Our response in service

Eastern Orthodoxy believes that the thankful Christian is one who responds to God for what He has done in Christ. This response is diakonia - service to one's neighbor. What is faith without deeds? As a result of this awareness, the Orthodox Church teaches that personal salvation expresses itself in social concern. The grateful response of service makes faith specific in its concern and invites the Christian to be a chaplan to his neighbour.

The Christ we meet in worship is the same Christ that we meet in the person of our neighbour. As one of the greatest preachers of the Eastern Church, St. John Chrysostom, once said: "Do you wish to honor the body of Christ? Then do not look down or disdain him when you see him in rags. After having honored him in church with silken vestments do not leave him to die of cold outside for lack of clothing. For it is the same Jesus who says, 'This is my Body' and who says, 'You saw me hungry and did not give me to eat - What you have refused to the least of these my little ones, you have refused it to me!' "

Praise, thanksgiving, and service in love form the triangle of worship and life in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. These actions are united in grateful response to the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As vibrant marks of Orthodoxy, they equip the Christian for the work of reconciliation in a world of need.

Jesus

Orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is the human way God chose to get close to us, to pull us beside Him, to put His arms around us and say, "I love you." The bedrock of Orthodox Christianity is that Jesus is in a unique sense "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15).

The Holy Trinity

The Orthodox Church accepts the teaching of the Holy Trinity because it preserves God in His fullness. To Orthodox Christians "God" means the Father who loves us, the Son Who saves, the Holy Spirit who abides within us. In the words of St. Paul, the fullness of God consists of "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit" (2 Cor. 13:14). We believe that no one created by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and born again by the Holy Spirit should consider himself unimportant.

Dr. Otto Nall, former Methodist Bishop of Minnesota, said once, "Orthodoxy stresses love ... if Roman Catholic Christianity is the religion of the 'law,' and Protestant Christianity is the religion of 'faith,' then Orthodox Christianity is the religion of love. That shines through all its life."
"So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13)

- By Fr. Anthony M. Coniaris