Apolytikia (Second Tone)
When You did descend unto death, O Life Immortal, then did You slay
Hades with the lightening of Your Divinity. And when You did also
raise the dead out of the nethermost depths, all the power in the
Heavens cried out: O Life-giver, Christ our God, glory be to You.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
The noble Joseph, taking Your immaculate body down from the Tree,
and having wrapped it in pure linen and spices, laid it for burial
in a new tomb. But on the third day You did arise, O Lord, granting
great mercy to the world.
Now and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Unto the myrrh-bearing women did the Angel cry out as he stood by
the grave: Myrrh-oils are meet for the dead, but Christ has proved
to be a stranger to corruption. But cry out: The Lord is risen,
granting great mercy to the world.
Kontakion (Second Tone)
When You did cry, Rejoice, unto the Myrrh-bearers, You did make the
lamentation of Eve the first mother to cease by Your Resurrection, O
Christ God. And You did bid Your Apostles to preach: The Savior is
risen from the grave. |
What Is Orthodoxy
What is the Orthodox
Church?
The Orthodox Church is the oldest Church in Christendom. It dates
its existence from the time of Christ and the Apostles. It was the
Apostle Paul, for example, who established the Christian Church in
Greece through his early missionary journeys. His letters to the
Corinthians, the Thessalonians, the Philippians were written to the
churches he had established in those Greek cities. The Church he
founded there has never ceased to exist. It is known today as the
Orthodox Church. The Apostle Peter founded the church in Antioch
which exists to this day as the Antiochian Orthodox Church. Other
apostles established the church in Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople,
Alexandria and Cyprus. The Orthodox Church has existed in these
places since the days of the apostles. Today the Orthodox Church is
the second largest body in Christendom with 225 million people
worldwide.
We are Apostolic
In order to be used as evidence in court, the bullet used in the
attempted assassination of President Reagan some years ago had to
have an unbroken connection with the bullet that was removed from
the president’s body. Accordingly, a secret service agent was
present during surgery. He witnessed the removal of the bullet. The
surgeon signed a statement upon giving the bullet to the agent. The
agent signed another statement when he delivered the bullet to the
laboratory, etc. Such evidence of an unbroken connection between a
bullet and a body is required in a court of law. Equal evidence is
required to show that a church is indeed the genuine church founded
by Jesus: the evidence of an unbroken historical connection with the
apostolic church.
A church is the true Church of Christ if it can show historically
that it was founded by Christ and has maintained a living connection
over the centuries with that early Church. We need this historical
connection in order to be assured that the deposit of the faith has
not been tampered with but has been handed down to us in its
entirety.
Why are there so many different churches today?
For the first 1000 years of her existence the Church was one. It was
in the eleventh century that a lamentable split occurred, resulting
in the Western Church, under the Pope, separating itself from the
Orthodox Church. The Papacy tried to establish itself over all of
Christendom. It succeeded in the West, but the Orthodox Church
rejected the innovation of Papal infallibility and supremacy,
acknowledging no such universal head of the Church apart from Jesus
Himself. Subsequently the Protestant reformation broke away from the
Roman Catholic Church and thus the many Protestant denominations
came into being.
We are the New Testament Church
Some years ago a group of evangelical Protestant Christians banded
together to seek to find what they felt was lacking in their
tradition: a living connection with the early apostolic church. One
of them expressed the feelings of the group: “We are, for the most
part, a people without roots. Some of us can only trace the
beginnings of our denomination or church to some time in this
century – arising over a split in this or that doctrine, or even a
personality clash between two strong leaders. Most of us have no
sense of the past, no understanding of where we came from…” Through
persistent prayer, searching and study these evangelical Christians
found the original New Testament Church and were received in the
Antiochian Orthodox Church, established in Antioch by the Apostle
Peter. Antioch was the city where the first followers of Jesus were
called “Christians.”
How is the Orthodox Church different from other churches?
Fr. Theodore Stylianopoulos, Professor of New Testament at Holy
Cross Greek Orthodox Theological Seminary, writes: “…the Orthodox
Church is the true Church of God on earth and maintains the fullness
of Christ’s truth in continuity with the Church of the apostles.
This awesome claim does not necessarily mean that Orthodox
Christians have achieved perfection: for we have many personal
shortcomings. Nor does it necessarily mean that the other Christian
Churches do not serve God’s purposes positively: for it is not up to
us to judge others but to live and proclaim the fullness of the
truth. But it does mean that if a person carefully examines the
history of Christianity he or she will soon discover that the
Orthodox Church alone is in complete sacramental, doctrinal and
canonical continuity with the ancient undivided Church as it
authoritatively expressed itself through the Great & Holy Orthodox
Church.
For further information please consider the following sites:
American
Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church
The Ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople
The
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
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