§ 134. The Sacred Acts of the Orthodox Church

The Church of Christ is a temple, in which He Himself is the eternal High Priest, who offered up to God the great sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. This same sacrifice is offered today too in the Church, and will be offered until the end of the ages. The sanctification of man, which Christ accomplished through that sacrifice, constitutes a great mystery, out of which have developed all those sacred acts which exist today in the Orthodox Church. Of these sacred acts, some were appointed by the very Founder of the Church to serve as the means of communicating God’s grace to men, while others have, in the course of time, been established by the Church, by virtue of the authority received by her, so that all in her might be holy and the blessing of God might rest upon everything. The first are called the sacraments; the others are various “prayers,” which bishops or priests read, according to established rites, over certain persons or things that are being consecrated to God and to the Church, or over designated persons, that God might bless their activity in society, and over various things, that a blessing might be obtained for their use.

The sacraments are seven in number: baptism (τὸ βάπτισμα), chrismation (τὸ μύρον τοῦ χρίσματος), the eucharist (ἡ εὐχαριστία), penance (ἡ μετάνοια), priesthood (ἡ ἱερωσύνη), marriage (ὁ γάμος), and unction (τὸ εὐχέλαιον).[1] For a sacrament to be properly performed there is required, first, suitable matter (ὕλη ἁρμόδιος); second, a lawfully ordained priest or bishop; and third, the invocation of the Holy Spirit with the appointed words, through which the priest consecrates the sacrament by the power of the Holy Spirit and with the pure intention of consecrating it.[2] All the sacraments derive from divine law, and church legislation has, as regards their essence, only formulated that law and prescribed its exact observance; while, having regard to the various exceptions in the administration of the sacraments that the circumstances of the time may occasion, that same legislation, while always preserving their essence, lays down how one is to proceed in such circumstances, and issues in general prescriptions meant to prevent any overstepping of the purpose for which the sacraments themselves were instituted.

Of the various prayers which are performed according to appointed church rites and which exist in the Church today, some are joined to the actual performance of the sacraments, while others are performed on their own. So that everything in the Church might be holy, and so that the blessing of God might be invoked, through special prayer, upon everything that Christians make use of in their life, the Church has instituted a multitude of prayers for the most varied occasions, both of church life and of human life in general. Among these prayers, some concern matters connected with the church services themselves, others concern matters independent of those services. To the former belong: the blessing of the water at Theophany, the blessing of oil, incense, candles, olive branches, bells, and so forth, as well as the consecration of churches, antimensia, cemeteries, and so forth; to the latter belong: the blessing of fields, of a newly built house, of a ship, of banners, of weapons, of the table, of fruit, and so on; here also belong: the burial of the dead, prayers in memory of them, the blessing of kollyva, the rite of appointing the lower clerical ranks, monastic tonsure, the anointing of rulers, and prayers for the averting of some misfortune, the invoking of divine help for the sick, and so forth. All these prayers are set out, with their respective rites, in the Trebnik (Book of Needs) or Euchologion. The right to perform these prayers belongs to lawfully ordained priests or bishops;[3] while the establishing of these prayers, together with the prescribing of the respective rite, belongs to the competence of the supreme central church authority, which must, in doing so, have regard both to the spirit of the Christian Church and to the preservation of the unity of rite within the Church.