THE LITTLE EKTENIA (Liturgy of Fervent Supplication)

"Calling to remembrance our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, with all the Saints, let us commend ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God."

This prayer, which is recited during the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church every Sunday and feast day, contains a central doctrine or teaching of the Church. Every time the Church gathers as a community for worship it focuses on the life commitment of an Orthodox Christian. We are to remember or commemorate the lives of those who went before us as true disciples of Jesus Christ; the Saints, and the foremost or prototype spiritual human being, the virgin Mary, the Theotokos (God-bearer), the mother of Jesus. As we remember, we are to emulate them and commend our lives to Christ.

Our lives are to be lived with Christ at the center. Not religion, but a relationship with God in human form.

The Divine Liturgy is not some dull Church service full of meaningless ritual and boring ceremony. It is a physical and spiritual work-out!

We mostly stand, for two hours or more, in a prayerful attitude as we participate in a dramatic transformation from being a gathering of people in a building into an earthly model of heaven. Our bodies and senses are totally involved as we bow, prostrate, make the sign of the cross, and sing and say prayers with well-constructed phrases of deep meaning. It is not a spectator's service. It must be very hard for visitors who have never been exposed to a liturgical service before. If I had not been exposed to the liturgical practices of Hinduism and Buddhism I would have been very confused at my first Eastern Orthodox Service.

I have attended about 16 Divine Liturgy services since I discovered Eastern Orthodoxy - and today was probably one of the most emotionally moving - for some reason I felt more present, more aware of all that was being said and sung. It is the eve of one of the great feasts of the Church - The Dormition (or falling asleep) of the Theotokos (God Bearer). There was a sense of expectancy in the air. The awareness of the eternal presence of the Holy. This is a good experience in the middle of a long hot summer that is otherwise dry in almost every sense.