Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 5: Liturgical Vestments of the Clergy

Hierarchs and clergy wear symbolic vestments in Holy Orthodoxy, and it’s a distinguishing mark of our worship and identity as Orthodox Christians. Hierarchy is a principle that governs human relationships naturally, and it also mirrors metaphysical reality. The unity that derives from hierarchy requires that distinctions of rank and role be made between members that work toward a common end, to accomplish harmony together. Equality that protests for an obliteration of rank and a reversal of roles, sometimes the vestments and “outward rituals” specifically, is a refusal to admit distinctions. This reasoning tends toward disunity and disintegration at all levels of practical life. Resentment and egoistic orientations toward social relationships lurk behind this kind of fake “egalitarianism,” writes American thinker, Richard M. Weaver. Shakespeare wrote: O, when degree is shak’d, which is the ladder to all high designs … Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark what discord follows! Each thing meets in mere oppugnancy. The Holy Apostle Paul reminds us too: And if they were all one member, where were the body? Vestments and garments in general symbolize a spiritual reality that transcend time and space. Adam and Eve were clothed with light in the garden, though they were nude. The removal of our original garments of light was the immediate consequence, we realized our nakedness right away, of grabbing for equality with the Holy Trinity through matter without the Spirit. The Serpent’s seductive lie was aimed at perverting the holy hierarchy of creation by presenting this grasp for a higher, divine understanding as a right to some perceived inequality in the cosmos.

Symbolism is the opposite of nominalism – a rejection and skepticism of the existence of anything transcendent, like Plato’s forms, in particular words (our language) or material objects (the stuff) of the world. The principle of iconography presents an example of how symbols participate in a higher order while remaining distinct from the reality itself. The holy fathers described the type, the icon or object, as participating in the prototype, the reality. When we bow and kiss an icon of Christ or a saint, that gesture returns to Christ Himself or the saint. Whenever the laity touch the hem of the priest’s garment during the great entrance at the liturgy, it is as though we are doing it to Christ. Without the hierarchy of ideas and things, without the images relating to transcendentals and ultimately the divine source of life, humans are left only with bare objects, facts, and a material mindset that will be engulfed by an obsession with details and physicality. Nominalism rejects the foundation that a word or a thing represents what exists beyond the physical and phenomenal experiences of nature. It’s all arbitrary. It’s just a word. In Greek, symbolos meant a token or proof of identity, and it was variously used to refer to voting tokens, wax impressions, seals, contracts, and passports. It literally means something thrown or come together. The Greek verb symballo could mean: to meet, to join, to unite. Symbolic thinking works like a covenant or an icon. It is a real connection between heaven and earth. It’s like the unity between the Word and our flesh, or between a husband and wife; it’s a great mystery. The symbolic worldview, then, refers to a close joining between distinct things, not a mere masking between the representation and the supposed reality. The first “meal,” as Metropolitan Hilarion describes it, often called the Last Supper, was not a primitive, underdeveloped event, but a highly developed, fulfilling, symbolic feast that continues in Orthodox liturgies. Some vestments were inherited from Judaism, some taken from Greco-Roman styles of antiquity and the Mediterranean climate, and others adapted for later use such as headdresses and the mitre. Roman, but even more so, the Oriental Orthodox of the East have much in common with Byzantine, Antiochian, and Russian clerical vestments. The sticharion (a tunic) symbolizes purity of the clergy. Deacons wear the orarion (a long ribbon or cloth) and it symbolizes the angelic wings. The phelonion (cloak) carries with it strength and enlightenment; it’s also mentioned in scripture, 2 Timothy 4:13. The omophorion symbolizes the lost sheep, the good shepherd and it is worn by the ranks of bishops. The epimanikia, epigonation, zone, sakkos, panagia, kidarin, hieron epikalymma and mantia also have spiritual symbolisms. 

Richard Weaver wrote that, “Equality is found most often in the mouth of those engaged in artful self-promotion.” He also describes barbarians with the specific desire to seize and inspect an object “as it is.” Satan wanted to convince humanity that there was something unjustly wrong with the established order and that the tree and the fruit itself wasn’t a symbol, but a hidden raw power to take, rather than something that only God can give us in a refined form. But we learn that the connection is real and deeply symbolic. The rapacious impulse to strip forms or ladders of transcendence, to rent veils, to throw off inhibitions and clothing, and to remove all mediation that hinder one’s access to analysis, freedom, nature, or knowledge is the revolt of the main antagonist, the Devil. A refusal to pass honor from the symbol to the form, from type to prototype, tree in the garden to God, is to ignore that only God can be Bodiless, He Alone is the Formless One; it is to sacrifice symbol – holy objects, ritual, the body, vestments, icons – to grab at materiality and divinity without mediation. This ancestral sin, unoriginal in pattern and seen in many kinds of iconoclasm and revolutions, refuses to see distinction and plots to separate what God has put together in creation. Adam learned that knowledge and virtue require a divine transcendence that is based on the Holy Trinity’s hierarchical, glowing garments that were given to all of creation graciously. Vestments of the clergy work in this way in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Symbols secure the structure of higher orders “in the heavens and on earth” and it follows the patristic teaching that what happens on earth happens in the heavenly realms outside time. Without hierarchical positions and these symbolic vestments arranged through the Holy Trinity, veneration and worship become nearly impossible, and life is reduced to animalistic and appetitive instincts.  Icons, then, have a very honorable place and enlightening purpose in Orthodox temples. Next, Part 2 begins with the discussion of venerating icons in the Orthodox Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 4: Arrangement of Churches and Church Objects

This chapter covers the arrangement of churches and objects of liturgical use. Though there is variety in Orthodox churches, there is much unity across places and times. Like the Old Testament tabernacle, the Orthodox temple consists of three major areas: the sanctuary (naos), the nave (kyrios naos), and the narthex. The Greek word naos means temple and it is often translated into English with the word church, and modern Greeks still refer to “churches” as temples. The nave is a Latinate word that means ship; it is called the main temple, the kyrios naos, in Greek. Each of these three areas of the Orthodox temple has specific functions. The Eucharist and Epiclesis transforms the bread and wine at the altar in the sanctuary. Chanting, healing prayers, confession and epistle readings happen in the main temple, the nave. The catechumens were taught, and certain types of penitents worshipped from the narthex. All members of the Church (ekklesia in Greek) were expected to commune. This important connection between the arrangement of churches and communion is not mentioned by Metropolitan Hilarion. There were not two groups of Christians, communing people and non-communing people each week that can be discerned from the patristic sources. There were different categories of penitents that were defined under ecclesial canons. They were asked to demonstrate their faith and reconciliation for certain weighty or specific sins committed after baptism, apostasy, heresy, adultery, murder/killing, for example. In the narthex, all-night vigils and panikhidas, memorials for the departed were conducted, and people were made catechumens. It’s the place where catechumens wait for illumination and where penitents usually wait for confession nowadays. 

At a Sunday divine service, the liturgy of the catechumens starts first, then the liturgy of the faithful, those who are communicants of the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ. Likewise, there seems to be only two groups that the ancient Church knew of: communicants and catechumens. Christians were excommunicated, put outside of communing in the Church, with the hope that they would return, but not used as retaliation. Penitents technically were performing reconciliatory actions for certain sins committed after baptism. All Christians, in fact, must constantly reconciliate themselves to others before receiving communion, and it is one of the major criteria for communicants in Orthodoxy, since “the kiss of peace” mentioned in the Gospels precedes communion closely, a symbol or sign of unity and reconciliation. The “sign of peace” then is one of the most important outward symbolic gestures one can give during the liturgy toward your brothers in Christ and the Eucharist because it reveals the inner disposition of the heart, the nous of a person. 

Candle lighting is an important feature, often not found in Protestantism or Roman Catholicism nowadays, in the arrangement of temples. Candles represent offerings and the chandelier, the polykandelion, is sometimes lit and swung back and forth during feast days and in monasteries, as well as in icon corners of Orthodox homes. The nave (kyrios naos) is traditionally decorated with frescoes, mosaics, and icons, and it contains the iconostasis that separates it from the sanctuary, where “royal gates” are found. These doors symbolize the entrance of the King of Glory, where Christ Himself comes out to feed all the people His life-giving food. The showbread of the ancient Jews, like the Eucharist, were meant to show Israel that the One God Alone is the source of life and paradise, which no substance could replace. If material things are not the ultimate source of life, then some Christians from our own culture may argue that these sacred objects and their ritual organization for worshipping God are just unnecessary, even contrary and distracting to our experience of God. But the principle has been forgotten among some Christian groups that what happens in the heavens happens on earth. The next chapter discusses the importance of symbolism in the liturgical vestments of the Orthodox clergy and hierarchy, and it has implications too for how lay Orthodox Christians dress during or outside the liturgy. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Ch. 1

“Theology is based on liturgical experience,” writes Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev in the preface of Volume III. Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, all offered sacrifices to God and served the Father in prayer. The presence of God was once in Eden and everywhere in creation. The first parents were shut out of this paradise. The Hebrew patriarchs did not construct a building for worship in contrast to the advanced cultures around them, most notably the Egyptians, who had built extravagant and elegant temples for worshiping idols of nature and deities of power, fertility, and war. The Old Testament patriarchs did revere holy places where the presence of God visited and appeared to them, and not merely like the sacred groves of Greco-Roman mythologies, but places that became witnesses to a real manifestation of God’s power and presence. Pillars of stone were held to be sacred to the Hebrew tribes in these places and they built altars wherever they dwelt. Some of the psalms of David are called miktams, translated into Septuagint as stelographia, or pillar inscriptions, which testify to these sacred stones.

After the Hebrews were delivered from Egyptian captivity, Exodus 27 begins to lay out the plan for building a transportable tent for worshipping God called the tabernacle. It consisted of twenty posts in the north and the south sides, ten posts in the east and west sides. There was a sanctuary with seven lamps of gold, a table of showbread, an altar for incense, and the holy of holies with the art of the covenant that was separated by a veil of blue, purple, and scarlet linen. There was a tent of meeting that filled with a “cloud of smoke” in the day and at night a fire appeared, both of which were understood to be the glory of the Lord. The people followed the presence of God wherever they traveled. The nomadic Hebrew nation experienced liturgical worship in this sojourning way. Sacrifice and temple worship have been deeply connected to the problems of human nature and social behavior in general. In Psalm 50, David wrote that God does not desire, nor does He really require, the blood of animals, nor our own blood, but a hymn of praise and humility with a “broken spirit.” Some rabbis referred to the Psalter as the Tehillim, “Songs of Praise.” 

There were different kinds of sacrifices offered on the altar: burnt offerings of animals, peace offerings, and sin or guilt offerings. 2 Samuel recounts that King David wanted to build God a temple, but the Lord did not wish to have such a place to dwell. David made Jerusalem the political center of the Judean kingdom. King Solomon, David’s son, took unprecedented amounts of labor and resources to build the first temple. Animal sacrifices filled the temple yearly with immense blood and burnt flesh. It became a place of pilgrimage for pious Jews. The prophets often warned that sacrifices and rituals were pointless if the priests and the people did not throw away their idols and cease from mistreating and abusing others. The prophets warned that the Temple would be destroyed completely if they did not repent. The history of the Hebrew people is inseparably from the Temple. The Babylonian empire took it around 586 BC, as Ezekiel prophesied. The Jews returned to the Temple in 538 BC and began the period called the Second Temple in 516 BC with the help of King Cyrus of the Persian Empire. Ezra prophesied its destruction and it fell in 164 BC to Antiochus Epiphanes, the Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire. The Pharisees, the scholars and “spokesmen” for the people and the religion, approached the scriptures with hermeneutical liberty and promoted worship separate from the Temple. They viewed the nationalistic Zealots and animal sacrifices performed by priests as less important, and they invented the synagogue as the center for Jewish study and worship. Flavius Josephus, a Pharisee much in favor of Roman culture and rule, is an example of the progression of later Judaism.

But for the most part, the Temple in Jerusalem was still central for Jewish worship and identity. It once contained the Law, the Ark of the Covenant, God’s presence, the sacrifices, the offerings, and the kingdom. It stood against many empires of the world until Rome. The Temple became deeply connected to Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. He cherished it and He was often there worshipping and teaching about His Father. In the New Testament, Jesus identifies the Temple with His own body, which became the universal, “worldwide temple” of all humanity. Christ Himself became everything and He crucified all these earthly human relations to teach us to walk this path to God the Father again. The desires of mankind, the scapegoating, the violence, the powers hidden in religions and civilizations are unveiled. Christ, the King of Glory, crucified this fallen reality. Because of Christ’s resurrection, the people of God cannot ever be limited or consolidated into one locale, be it Corinth, Jerusalem, or Rome. Wherever Christians are, Christ is there too, just as the Hebrews followed the Lord in the Old Testament with the tent of the glory of the Lord. The building of a temple, then, seems to have been an inborn search to find and worship the Good Father. The religious authorities in the first century, before and after Christ, had lost sight of this sacred sojourning, and they had tragically made the physical type higher than the prototype. The Book of Acts records that the protomartyr Stephen boldly stated to the religious leaders, “the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands.” Christians and Jews soon, with the Temple having been destroyed finally in 70 A.D. by Titus, dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. The kingdom of God, however, found now in the bodies of Christians and manifested at the Eucharistic communion, entered the empires of the world with these bodily, spiritual, indestructible temples of Christ united in the Eucharist, specifically in Orthodox Christian temples. The Church relies on persuasion. It does not, like many other kingdoms, operate based on fear, an elaborate system of punishments, however necessary those may be, and bloody sacrifices. The veil of that reality has been torn. The Orthodox temple is modeled on this history and theology, and it influenced the way that the Byzantine culture traditionally built churches, especially after Constantine’s rule.