Divine services are performed for the faithful, and in union with them, according to the established rite. Through divine services, believers are called to express their feelings of faith in God, hope and love for Him, enter into mysterious communion with Him and receive grace-filled strength to go through the Christian life leading to salvation.

Divine services are of great importance for a person. It is an expression of the prayerful life of the Church of Christ. The Orthodox worship of ancient Byzantium struck our ancestors with its majestic beauty and led them to Christ, to the Orthodox faith.

You can show your faith by beginning with a fervent and noble prayer. But the modern Western man, who is ignorant of God and religion, and especially those who are corrupted by the propaganda of godlessness in our homeland, if they hear the word of a preacher about faith, about God, about prayer, about divine services, then they cannot immediately dispose themselves and reach for faith in God and accept everything that is told to them. They remain prejudiced, they hesitate. However, there are cases when such people, having seen the fervent rite of divine services, reverent prayer and the beauty of the Orthodox rite, are often imbued with the majestic splendor of church services, and their hearts are touched by the "divine word". This has happened before, and so it is now. An indifferent person, perhaps even an unbeliever, has entered or enters the church by chance, or enters out of curiosity, and, in the surrounding church atmosphere of the spiritual world and faith, fervent reading and singing, the sincere prayer of the faithful captures such people and they, unexpectedly for themselves, become participants in the common prayer and begin to feel a craving for faith in God, accept the teachings of the preacher and often join the Holy Church.

According to St. According to the Apostle Paul, everything among Christians should be done "in an orderly manner and according to order" (1 Corinthians 14:40). The noble rite of Orthodox worship has been formed over the centuries. Its compilers are the Holy Apostles, the Holy Hymn-Writers, the Fathers of the Church. The rite of divine services was formed by ascetics, heroes of the spirit, in the deserts and in monasteries.

Therefore, the wealth of prayers, ideas, images and thoughts accumulated over the centuries, which are found and preserved in thick church books, in leather bindings, should be reflected in the souls of modern worshippers through fervent worship. And whoever loves the prayer of the Church, having delved into its content, will also love its harmonious order.

Let us remember that the main thing in the divine service is the lively, personal participation of both the worshippers and the celebrants of the service: the servants, readers and singers. Only that reaches the hearts of the worshippers that has been experienced and felt by the celebrants of the divine services themselves.

Part 1

1. The Concept of Liturgics

Preliminary information

"Liturgics" is the name given to theological science, which has as its subject the teaching of Christian worship, in which the Divine Liturgy occupies the first place. The word "Liturgy", as a derivative of "Liturgy", comes from the Greek words: "λειτος", which means popular, social, "common"; and "εργον" "deed". Thus, the word λειτουργια among the ancient Greeks meant "common cause", common service performed for the people or with the participation of the people. This term is used in the Old and New Testaments, although not in the same sense. In the Old Testament, the word liturgy defined public service in the tabernacle in honor of God and for the benefit of the people (see 2 Chronicles 35:3). In the New Testament, this term is applied to the service of Zechariah in the temple of Jerusalem (Luke 1:23); then to the service in the Tabernacle, in which the vessels are sprinkled with the blood of Christ (see the Epistle to the Hebrews); to the service of Christ the Saviour, Who is the one who acts sacredly through all His service to His neighbor (1 Corinthians 9:1; Heb. 12:24). The word liturgy is especially clearly applied to the Eucharist in Clement of Rome (2nd century), in his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, where the ministry of the apostles, bishops and presbyters is denoted by the term προσφεριν τα δορα (to make offerings and liturgies). Hence this term was adopted to designate our Eucharistic worship, the Divine Liturgy. This name indicates the "public" nature of Christian worship as a "common cause" in which everyone should take part. In a broader sense, the word λειτουργια means any service established by the Holy Church to the glory of the Triune God.

Therefore, Liturgics is the science of Christian worship in general. The term "liturgical" means something related to worship in general, and not just to the Divine Liturgy alone.

Thus, "Liturgics, as Archimandrite Gabriel points out, considers the Christian religion precisely in the sense that it should be correctly and legitimately externally expressed in the society of many people bound together in one grace-filled kingdom of Christ, or in the Church of the Living God (2 Cor. 6, 16). And the Church, or the community of believers in Jesus Christ, maintaining the Christian faith, must, first of all, reveal in itself the inner spirit of this faith, and secondly, must edify, nourish the pious souls of believers: for this purpose it has sacred rites, and sacred rites... Thus, Liturgics should be concerned with the consideration of how the religion of Christians is expressed in the sacraments and rites of the Church as a community of believers."

"But we know that the so-called Christian churches, according to the difference in their confessions, are different; hence Liturgics must be and is the science of the Divine services of the Orthodox Church. Therefore, speaking of divine services, we must exclusively speak of the divine services of the Orthodox Church. And the latter name will be appropriate to our science only when it examines (studies) and explains the liturgical rite (ordo – order) of the Orthodox Church, when it gives a definite idea of each sacred thing and of each sacred action that is part of the divine service; in the same way about each rite of the Church, indicating, at the same time, if possible, the time of their origin, and the reason or sacred intention of introducing them into the circle of divine services, and their inner dignity, and their spiritual-mysterious meaning" (Guide to the Liturgy, Archim. Gabriel, Tver, 1886, pp. 3-4).

There can be different approaches to the science of Liturgics. Since the science of liturgics embraces a number of areas of liturgical life and everyday life, it is divided into several sections. In textbooks and manuals on Liturgics one can observe: 1. the historical-archaeological approach; 2. ritualistic or statutory; and 3. theological.