Ordination

 

Ordination. We’ve been discussing a lot on this particular medium about the bishops, priests and deacons lately and I wanted to honestly answer the truth about Orthodox ordination. First Ordination is one of the mysteries of the church, a divine calling. A calling that starts at the local level and eventually must reach the diocesan level and the bishop. So what exactly is Ordination and why is it important?

            Ordination begins in the parish. Obviously, this is because at its basic function, the orders of the church are those that help the priest and assist him every day in services. The Chanter or Cantor is the lowest of these orders and are those who chant the services. The Reader is the next highest rank of the minor orders. The Reader is one who performs a variety of tasks for the services at large, of course reading the epistle is one of them. The Reader is allowed to wear an inner cassock, and must from the time of his ordination, only appear in church wearing his cassock. This is to show, as with all orders granted the right to wear a cassock, that the man who takes upon this role has denied himself his own desires and sought to please God and God alone. He is ordained during the Third Hour service by the Bishop and must refrain from all marital relations and food until after the services are complete. It is tradition that he secludes himself away from all people and take the sacrament of confession (something I would love to discuss in a future post) during this time. He is given the foreshortened version of the phelon and eventually it is removed to be replaced by a Sticharion. After this he is allowed to wear the cassock and cannot remove it while in the church. The last of the minor orders is the Subdeacon. The Subdeacon as the highest ranking of the minor orders has a variety of roles within the service beyond those of both the chanter and the Reader. They are the ones who maintain the altar and are the highest-ranking altar server. They also take upon themselves the duties of the other orders if need be.  They are the ones who vest the bishop when present and can be the catechist in their parish. The Subdeacon is the only of these minor orders that must be married before their ordination or remain celibate. The reason is because the next highest rank, the deacon, must either be married before their ordination, or remain celibate. So let’s talk major orders

            Okay, so for a non-Orthodox reader, the distinction between minor and major orders might seem a little strange. For me as a convert, the entire idea of orders within the church seemed strange, but that was quickly put aside as learned and grew in my knowledge of the church. The major orders are those that people, especially here in the west are most familiar with, deacon, priest and of course, bishop.  The Deacon in the Orthodox Church performs practically the same role as the deacons of old in the early church. Their position is to help assist the priest within the everyday parish life. They are the ones who maintain the decorum of the church and draw attention to people who are not participating in the services. The Deacon’s main function within the liturgy though is to lead the people in prayer.  They do so throughout the service as the priest is concentrating on other prayers in the altar during worship. While now it may seem that most deacons are then hereafter almost immediately ordained to the office of priesthood, some see it as permanent position and will remain in it for life, as they wish to serve the church, but do not wish to take on the responsibility of the priest. The deacon performs all tasks that are set out by the priest and cannot do anything within the church without the blessing of the priest. It is here that I must make my point. Deacons, along with all the other orders that I have named in this article are strictly male.  The Church does not, nor never has ordained women. The role of Deaconess as it was in the early church did not function in the same way as ordination does today, nor was it seen in the same vein. Women have never nor will ever be ordained in the Orthodox Church. It is against church canon, against the spirit of the church, and in violation of the roles that God has placed on each sex. Yes I said sex. There are only two genders get over it. The deacon as a member of the clergy is allowed to wear the rassa and if the tradition allows the collar. But they are still under the authority of the priest. Which leads us to the priest. The priest is the most common of the orders that people are familiar with, as they are the leaders of the parish, the spiritual fathers of the faithful, and the ones who are allowed to consecrate the gifts. Most priests will have studied at seminary, and been taught the proper etiquette in which to conduct themselves. They will be taught how to perform the services, and other duties that they will need to carry out over the course of their ministry. The priest like the subdeacon and deacon before him is allowed to marry, so long as it happens before their ordination, not after. After their ordination they traditionally take monastic vows if they are not married and are referred to as hieromonks. From the hieromonks we get our last of the major orders, the episcopacy, or bishops.

The Bishops are chosen from the monastic class for a variety of reasons. While it is traditional that some of the early church bishops were married, the church determined that for the sake of its mission on earth that bishops were to remain unmarried for life. The reason being is that bishops being the head of the local church needed to be focused solely on the task of guiding their flock. As the spiritual father for the entire diocese, the bishop would need to oversee several parishes not just one, and this would cause him to need to devote time to each. Having a family and overseeing hundreds, sometimes thousands of parishes depending on the location, would not mesh well together, and either the church would be ignored or the family. As a married man, I am definitely aware that my wife needs my undivided attention at times and I would not be able to care for the needs of the people I served if I had both my wife and them to contend with. While there are different classes of bishops, like metropolitan, archbishop, and patriarch, they are all the same. They are the college of bishops. No one bishop is higher than the other, except in the function they serve within the church. There is no supreme head of the Orthodox Church, like the Latins. We do not have a Pope.  We currently have either 16 or 17 churches that are self-governing, depending on whether you count the Orthodox Church in America and the Orthodox Church in Ukraine as self-governing.  With Macedonian recently receiving Autocephaly, that brings us to 17 churches, but again there are some issues with that as well. I do not wish to give opinions on the matter, as that would just cause hard feelings on either side, so whichever side of the fence you’re on the matter then may God have mercy on us all. However, these self-governing churches are governed by either an Archbishop or a Patriarch, and there are currently nine Patriarchs of Orthodoxy, there were ten until the Latins decided they wanted to be the supreme governors of the entire church. The patriarchs are the oldest of the bishops, including Constantinople, Moscow, Sofia, Bucharest, Jerusalem, Antioch, Belgrade/Pec, Tbilisi, and Alexandria. The others are churches that have historical ties to one of the patriarchs listed.  The others are more recent even than that, and have been granted self-governance.  The bishops in turn are in communion with each other and share in the eucharist with each other.  Of course we do not share the eucharist with the Church of Rome, which does not have an orthodox head at the present time. One is not above the other, as stated, but work collectively to push the faith forward. The only difference in their rank is the eldest church is first and the other churches as they were established. Just as the eldest child is selected higher than his younger siblings in the will of their parents.

So while I have definitely laid the ground work of Ordination here, I have also opened the door to many new topics. Not the least of these the ongoing schism of the Church of Rome with the rest of the Christian world, as they have been the source of schisms and more schisms since their fall from the communion of the Church in 1054. While this looked solely at the ranks of Ordination, I would love to do an in depth dive in the ordination of women, and explain more fully why the church condemns the ordination of women as heresy.  May God bless you all and have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

Amen.