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Orthodox Church Structure: Veneration and Worship
Take away the minarets, and put a cross on top, and you’ve got the best one of all.
“Taste and see…”
It is an evening service at the beginning of Great Lent. The lights are subdued, not completely off like they will be on Great and Holy Friday, but dimmed enough such that the candles have their say in the illumination of the small nave. This is an evening liturgy, and being Lent it is a special liturgy. The hymns and antiphons are all in a minor key, mournful and repentant. The priest is wearing darker vestments of purple. Even the censer is changed out for one with quieter bells, or perhaps no bells at all. The icons on the iconostasis glow and shimmer above their vigil candles. The icons on the walls around watch with their eternal gaze, keeping company during this holy time of year.
“Taste and see…”
The scriptures this evening were from Genesis, from the creation account. “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Gen 1:28, ESV). A reminder of our beginnings in the mists of time, a time stretching back to the beginnings of human memory and witness on Earth, far earlier than we can touch, and yet we are again in that moment in the garden, indeed somehow eternally in that moment as we gather.
There’s no place like home.
During Lent, other churches too are gathering at night, in areas rural and urban, in large and venerable churches that have withstood the centuries, or in small house and mission churches whose exteriors look nothing at all like a church. Some might even be rented storefronts, or basements, or rented halls. Yet the structure and layout are more or less the same, and always a part of the worship. Some may be grand, some may be humble, and some are even purely temporary, to be dismantled, struck down, and packed away for use at another time or place.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Where the people gather is called the Nave, a word from the same root as Navel, because the church is seen as the very Ark of Salvation, of which Noah’s Ark was but a prefiguring. As my priest is fond of saying, the Nave is like the hold of a ship, full of everything and everyone getting sloshed about, but it’s also the shelter from the raging storm outside. And we are all saved together. At the end of the nave is the Iconostasis, a screen beyond which is the Sanctuary, and the Altar Table. The church may also have a narthex, a room of entry before the Nave (and where, in older times, the catechumens and guests might have to wait past a certain point in the liturgy, not being privy to the mysteries of the Eucharist). Candles and lamps abound.
Great or small, this is the church. Whether you visit a cathedral or a chapel, this is always the structure — perhaps a narthex, certainly a nave, an iconstasis, and a sanctuary beyond. The Church is where people are saved, and where the faithful find shelter and protection, and above all where they may venerate and worship The Lord. The grander the church, of course, the more ornamentation one may find. The Iconostasis may, particularly in Russian churches, be particularly grand and with many tiers of icons. There may be a dome as well, with The Pantocrator ruling over all, and icons of the four gospel-writers on the pillars of the dome. The Sanctuary apse may be surmounted by a great icon of the Theotokos, with Christ enthroned upon her, in the Platetera form. The walls and ceilings may even be entirely covered with icons of saints and depictions of the miracles of Christ or the prophets., or there may just be a few laminated wooden ones about.
But the purpose is always the same: veneration and worship. What architectural innovation there is in Orthodox churches is purely cultural or regional. The American-Orthodox architect Andrew Gould has described, for instance, an American style of Orthodox church, with wooden clapboard siding, a sort of amalgam of traditional New England church with Orthodox rules (see here for a church he designed near me). And the worship includes not just the living congregation present, but the great cloud of witnesses, the saints who are yet alive in Christ, and even the presence of angels (there are those who have claimed to witness angels in procession with the priest and deacons during the Great Entrance). God is the God of the living and all those who have died in Christ yet live with Him. The icons present are reminders of the greater family of Christians who have gone before us and worship with us.
The Greek or Russian domes are, of course (and forgiving the pun) iconic when one thinks of Orthodox churches, but they serve a purpose where present. For one, they let in light from all directions, but they also are, in a way, a model of the heavens above. Just as Gothic or Romanesque vaulting create massive vertical space, drawing the eye ever upwards towards the heavens, so too do the domes. The domes, however, often can allow for a more free and open Nave than can the vaulting of western churches. However, you will not find steeples (but you will find lots and lots of bells).
“Taste and see that the Lord is Good”
On this Lenten evening, the Great Entrance is a somber and quiet procession. The hymn sung just prior to the procession chants a line from the Psalms: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” It is, like the church itself, an invitation to indeed taste and see (and smell the incense, and touch the icons) that the Lord is indeed good, and to stand in His presence. There is an old saying that One Christian is No Christian. We are made for communion and community with others. On this Lenten evening, and on any other times where we gather in this nave, this Ark, we are reminded that we are not ever really alone as Christians. We could argue theology till the end of times, but unless we gather together in community, in our Ark, and unless we do indeed taste, and see, and experience life in the Ark together, we cannot fully live.
The church may be grand, built in the style and ornamentation fit for a Roman or Russian emperor, or it may be a humble and very temporary structure, but its purpose is for a place for us to gather in community, to venerate and worship the Creator of all.
This essay is part of December’s Group Writing series on Veneration.
Published in General
Forgot to include this link, and if I edit the post I’ll hose the captions, so I’m putting it here:
https://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/design-for-an-orthodox-church-in-amish-country/
@skipsul I was considering a post on the layout of an Orthodox church. You beat me to it.
My parish has a virtual tour of the church on its website. One can see much of what SkipSul describes. (NB: The link will fire up some Orthodox music.)
That looks like an amazing church! Hope to visit there one day.
Ours is in a building that has housed several prior churches over the decades. It’s tiny, and a bit overcrowded at times (we’re saving up for a new one), but a lovely place to be.
There is an OCA church near the Ohio State campus that is built into what was a Cadillac dealership building from the 1920s. Looks nothing like a church from the outside, but inside is gorgeous.
We were in a building housing just the offices and social hall. The social hall doubled as the “nave” and sanctuary until the new church was built.
The Orthodox churches are growing here in the Charlotte area. There’s another parish in Mooresville (north of the city) and an OCA mission parish in Rock Hill, SC (about 25 miles south).
I’ve never attended services in an Orthodox church, Greek or Russian, even though we have one of each in Battle Creek. Your post reminded me that we have attended Lenten services at a couple of Greek Catholic churches in San Diego, where some of a cousin’s family are/have been members (though not of both of the churches simultaneously).
A couple of observations in looking them up on the web just now.
One. Google knows I’ve been there. When I search for Greek
OrthodoxCatholic San Diego, Google Maps points out that we’ve been at each of the two places.Two. When I use Firefox to look at the http://stjohnthebaptizer.org/ web site, I get a notice at the top of the page saying:
I don’t get that notice when I use Chrome to go there.
I like that notice, but wish it didn’t use the word “Liberal.”
Apparently this congregation is going to build a new church. I hadn’t realized that the current place of worship is a monastery chapel. It looked very Orthodoxy when we were there.
I’ve been ignorant of the history that led to these churches, but I’m currently reading Timothy Snyder’s 2003 book, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999 and have found that it has helpful information on the political situations under which these churches developed.
That isn’t why I got the book. We’re hoping to do some more visiting in that part of the world, and I was looking for reading material to give me more of a historical background. I had already read Snyder’s book, Bloodlands, so jumped at the chance to read this one when I saw it.
(I don’t know that we’ll ever visit Belarus. It’s very expensive to get a visa, so we wouldn’t just drop in casually.)
The interplay of politics and church authority in those regions over the centuries continues to echo today, most notably right now in Ukraine. You have there today 3 or 4 major factions, all of whom use nearly identical liturgies, all fighting (some offensively, some defensively) for ecclesial authority (or to just be left alone). And it is really all because of how often Ukraine (and by extension Poland and Belarus) have been fought over.