Byzantine Rite
The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, is a liturgical rite that is identified with the wide range of cultural, devotional, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christian church of Constantinople.[1]
The canonical hours are extended and complex, lasting about eight hours (longer during Great Lent) but are abridged outside of large monasteries.[2] An iconostasis, a partition covered with icons, separates the area around the altar from the nave. The sign of the cross, accompanied by bowing, is made very frequently, e.g., more than a hundred times during the divine liturgy, and there is prominent veneration of icons, a general acceptance of the congregants freely moving within the church and interacting with each other, and distinctive traditions of liturgical chanting.
Some traditional practices are falling out of use in modern times in sundry churches and in the diaspora, e.g., the faithful standing during services, bowing and prostrating frequently, and priests, deacons, and monastics always wearing a cassock and other clerical garb even in everyday life (monastics also sleep wearing a cassock) and not shaving or trimming their hair or beards.
In addition to numerous psalms read every day, the entire psalter is read each week, and twice each week during Great Lent, and there are daily readings of other scriptures; also many hymns have quotes from, and references to, the scriptures woven into them. On the numerous fast days there is prescribed abstention from meat and dairy products, and on many fast days also from fish, wine, and the use of oil in cooking. Four fasting seasons are prescribed: Great Lent, Nativity Fast, Apostles' Fast and Dormition Fast. In addition, throughout the year most Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as Mondays in monasteries, are fast days.
The "Holy Mysteries", or "Sacred Mysteries", or similar, refer to the elements of Holy Communion, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, in the texts of the Divine Liturgy, the prayers before and after communion, and elsewhere, as, for example, in the first petition of the ectenia after communion, "Arise! Having partaken of the divine, holy, pure, immortal, heavenly, life-creating, and awesome Mysteries of Christ, let us worthily give thanks to the Lord."[8]
Also termed the sacred mysteries is a broad theological category including the seven sacraments defined in the Western Church but differing slightly in emphasis—stressing their ineffable character and forgoing the intense theological definitions which emerged in the centuries following the Reformation.[9] Although all modern Orthodox churches customarily observe the same seven sacraments as in Catholicism, the number has no dogmatic significance and, up to the 17th century, individual authors varied greatly in the number of rites considered "mysteries".[10] Despite the historical differences, modern Orthodox and Catholic faithful are generally united in viewing the West's seven sacraments and Orthodoxy's looser number of sacred mysteries—seven only by convention—as effectively equivalent.[11] The Catholics regard the two as identical.[12]
Divine Liturgy
The divine liturgy may be celebrated on most days, the exceptions, known as aliturgical days, being in or near Great Lent. Typically, however, the liturgy is celebrated daily only in cathedrals and larger monasteries but elsewhere only on Sundays, major feast days, and some other days, especially during Great Lent.
These three forms of the eucharistic service are in use universal usage:
Local variations[edit]
Two main strata exist in the rite, those places that have inherited the traditions of the Russian Church which had been given only the monastic Sabbaite typicon which she uses to this day[note 10] in parishes and cathedrals as well as in monasteries, and everywhere else where some remnant of the cathedral rite remained in use; therefore, the rite as practiced in monasteries everywhere resembles the Russian recension, while non-Russian non-monastic customs differs significantly. For example, in the Russian tradition, the "all-night vigil" is served in every church on Saturday nights and the eves of feast days (although it may be abridged to be as short as two hours) while elsewhere, it is usual to have matins on the morning of the feast; however, in the latter instance, vespers and matins are rather less abridged but the Divine Liturgy commences at the end of matins and the hours are not read, as was the case in the extinct cathedral rite of Constantinople.
Also, as the rite evolved in sundry places, different customs arose; an essay on some of these has been written by Archbishop Basil Krivoshein and is posted on the web.[34]
Horologion (Ὡρολόγιον; Church Slavonic: Chasoslov, Часocлoвъ), or Book of Hours, provides the fixed portions of the Daily Cycle of services (Greek: ἀκολουθίαι, translit. akolouthiai) as used by the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches.
Numerous movable parts of the service are inserted into this fixed framework. These are taken from a variety of liturgical books:
Also some books for special occasions, such as the book for the great week- He Megale Ebdomas, the Dekapentaugoustarion for the 15. August, or the Eklogadion including certain excerpts. The Apostolike Diakonia of the Church of Greece and some Greek-orthodox bishops have also published certain old liturgies. Such as the Liturgy of St. James and others.
Other Eastern liturgical rites: