Church Attendance

Don’t be tempted to indulge yourself in not coming to church at the beginning of the service or leaving before it is over. Remember, each service is a complete unit and it can provide its full benefit only in its entirety. Just as food is tasty only when it is fully seasoned, so the service can completely satisfy the spiritual taste only when it is heard in full. Thus, he who misses the beginning or does not remain until the end is laboring, but he deprives himself of the fruit of his labor; he creates with one hand and destroys with the others.

Further, one must go to church not inattentively. For, it is always possible that one may go to church not in a way worthy of praise but rather of condemnation, i.e., by going and not receiving any spiritual benefit. Approaching the church, you must leave every care and worry about your affairs at the threshold in order to enter with a serene mind. Entering the church, you must put on reverence like a garment, remembering to Whom we are coming and to Whom we intend to address our prayers.

Having taken your place in the church (best of all, the same place each time), you should gather your thoughts and mentally stand before the face of the omnipresent God, offering Him reverent worship in body and spirit, with a contrite heart and in humble reverence. After this, you must follow, without wandering thoughts, everything that is going on — what is being sung and read in the church — all the way to the end of the service.

That is all! In this way, we won’t be bored in church, looking here and there and starting conversations, and we won’t be wishing that the service be over soon. Instead, passing from one prayerful feeling to another and from one reverent thought to the next, we will be like those in a fragrant garden, moving from one group of flowers to another.

St. Theophanes The Recluse


 

THE MAGI REVERENCED HIS BODY

Mary gave birth to our Savior, the good Lover of man, in Bethlehem 

of Judea, according to the sayings of the prophets.

Nativity Doxology

Let us draw near to Him, then, with fervor and burning charity, so that we will not have to endure punishment. For in proportion to the magnitude of the benefits bestowed on us, so much more exceedingly are we punished, if we show ourselves unworthy of the bounty. The Magi reverenced this body, even as it lay in the manger, and men profane and foreign, leaving their country and their home, set out on a long journey, and when they arrived, they worshipped Him with fear and trembling. 

Let us then, who are citizens of heaven, at least imitate those foreigners.  For when they saw Him, although in a manger in a hovel, and with nothing in view such as you look upon now, they drew near with great awe. 

But you behold Him not in a manger, but on an altar, not a woman holding Him in her arms, but in priest attending, and the Spirit hovering over the offerings with surpassing bounty. You do not see merely the body itself, as they did, but you also know its power, and the entire Economy, and you are ignorant of none of the holy things accomplished by it, for you have been carefully initiated into everything. 

Let us then, rouse ourselves up and be filled with awe, and let us show reverence far beyond that of those foreigners, that we may not, by approaching thoughtlessly and carelessly heap fire upon our own heads. I say these things not to keep us from approaching, but to keep us from approaching without consideration. For as to approach carelessly is perilous, so also not to share in these mystical suppers is famine and death. For this table is the sinews of our soul, the bond of our mind, the foundation of our confidence, our hope, our salvation, our light, our life.

From the writings of

St. John Chrysostom