The Church

Not an institution we join, but the Body of Christ we are joined to, one, holy, catholic, apostolic.

The Orthodox Church, often called the Eastern Orthodox Church, is a communion of self-governing churches that share one faith and, normally, one Eucharist: among them Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Romania, and Greece. It keeps the apostles' faith as the seven Ecumenical Councils defined it. Its separation from Rome, the Great Schism, was long in the making and is usually dated to 1054.

The Creed confesses “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” For the Orthodox, the Church is not first an organisation but a living reality: the Body of Christ, the communion of all who are united to Him and to one another in the Holy Spirit. She is one, because Christ is one; holy, because He is her holiness; catholic, because she is whole and lacking nothing; apostolic, because she holds the faith of the apostles unbroken.

This is why the Church cannot be reduced to a building or a bureaucracy. She is where the faithful are gathered around the bishop and the Eucharist, where the Gospel is preached and the Mysteries are celebrated, heaven and earth meeting at the altar. To be a Christian, in the Orthodox understanding, is not a private arrangement with God but a life within this Body.

The Church is also a hospital for the soul, in the Fathers' favourite image, not a museum of the perfect but a place of healing for the sick, which is to say, for everyone. She teaches, she absolves, she feeds; and everything she does is ordered toward one end: the union of the human person with God.

Questions about the Church

What is Orthodox Christianity?

The faith and life of the Orthodox Church: the Christianity of the apostles, the Fathers, and the seven Ecumenical Councils, lived in worship, the Mysteries, prayer, and fasting.

What does autocephalous mean?

Self-headed. An autocephalous church chooses its own primate and governs itself, while sharing one faith and, normally, Communion with the other Orthodox churches.

What happened in 1054?

Mutual excommunications between the legates of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople sealed a separation long in the making, over the authority of the pope, the filioque, and other matters.

More questions about the Orthodox Church, answered ›

In Orthros

Everything in Orthros points to the Church, the calendar to the feast, the fast to the priest, the evening prayers to the parish where Vespers begins without us. The app is a companion; the Church is the destination.