The Nature of Divine Service
By “Divine Service” the Orthodox Christian Church means a series of prayers, recited or
sung in a given order, with certain ceremonies, by means of which prayers Orthodox Christians
glorify God and His Saints, express their thanks and offer their petitions, and through the per-formance
of which they receive from God mercies and the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Divine service is private or domestic when it is performed in private by one or several
persons; it is public when it is performed in the name of the whole Church, or of a community of
Christians, by persons authorized to do so. The prayers used in public warship are divided into
two categories: those for permanent services, i.e., services performed daily for the benefit of all
Christians, and those for occasional services, i.e., services which are performed only on certain
occasions, according to the special needs of the faithful, and therefore called tréba, a word
which, translated, means “need.”
The Origin of Divine Service.
Divine service made its appearance on earth simultaneously with man. The goodness and
almightiness of the Lord impel men to glorify and thank Him; the consciousness of their wants
prompts them to address their petitions to Him. And as man consists of both body and soul most
closely united, therefore prayer is expressed in words and accompanied by certain motions of the
body, and, vice-versa, external objects arouse a prayerful inclination in man. In this way private
worship originated and developed, varied as to prayers and rites.
But men came together and formed communities, and this gave rise to uniform prayers
for all the members of one community, and for these common prayers there were gradually
appointed: place, time, order of services and persons to perform them. In this way, as human
society became organized, public worship also developed.
In Old Testament times, previous to Moses, divine service was of the private, domestic
type. The paterfamilias — the patriarch — on behalf of his entire family or kin (tribe), selected
the place, appointed the time and laid down the order of prayer. Even then certain customs
already began to harden into rules which the patriarchs themselves observed, following their
fathers’ example. But since Moses’ time, the Israelites had a public worship, instituted by God
Himself, with temple, priests and rites. Jesus Christ, the founder and the Head of the Christian
Church, while himself complying with all the regulations of Jewish worship, did not give to His
disciples any definite ritual. But He instituted the Sacraments, commanded His disciples to
preach the Gospel, taught them how to pray, promised to be present in the gatherings of Chris-tians
assembled in His name, and thereby laid the foundation of His Church’s public worship.
Thus it was that, immediately after Christ’s ascension to Heaven, a certain order of public
worship gradually began to develop in the Christian community. In the Apostles’ lifetime
already, certain holy persons were consecrated, certain places were appointed for divine service,
and a ritual was instituted for those offices during which the Sacraments of Baptism and the
Eucharist are administered; furthermore the principal rites were devised to accompany the
celebration of the other Sacraments, even to the appointing of the times for common prayer,
certain feast-days and fasts. The persecutions which the Christians suffered during the first three
centuries hindered them from composing an entire ritual for public worship and making it
uniform for all Christians; such a ritual was fully developed and finally established only when
Christianity was proclaimed the ruling religion of the Roman Empire.
External Signs.
Several of the external signs of prayer are common to all men; such are: inclinations of
the body, as low as the waist or all the way to the ground, kneeling, bowing of the head, lifting
up of the hands. All these gestures express devotion to God, humility, repentance, supplication
for mercy, gratitude, and reverence.
But, apart from these universal expressions of prayerful feeling, Orthodox Christians,
when praying, use a sign which belongs exclusively to them: the sign of the Cross. This sign,
according to oldest custom, we make in the following manner: the thumb, the index and the
middle finger of the right hand we join together, while we bend down the third and the little
fingers till they touch the palm of the hand. Having arranged the fingers in this manner, we touch
with them first the brow, then the breast, and after that first the right shoulder and then the left,
thus making on our persons the sign of the Cross. By this sign we express our faith in the things
which Christ the Saviour taught us and did for us: by joining the three fingers, we express our
faith in the Most Holy Trinity, consubstantial and indivisible; by the two fingers bent to the palm
of the hand we express our belief in the descent to earth of the Son of God, and in His having
assumed humanity without divesting Himself of His divinity, thus uniting both natures in Him-self,
the divine and the human. By touching our brow, breast and shoulders, we express our belief that
the Triune God hath sanctified our thoughts, feelings, desires and acts; lastly, by
making on our persons the sign of the Cross, we express our belief that Christ hath sanctified our
soul and saved us by His sufferings on the Cross.
Excerpted from:
A Manual of Divine Services - Archpriest D. Sokolof
