The Typicon of the Orthodox Churchs DivineServices

INSPIRATION OF TRUE ORTHODOX PIETY

Standing in the Temple of Thy glory, we think we are standing in heaven.
VERSE OF MATINS

AT WHAT SHALL WE MARVEL the most, O Orthodox Christians, when we stand in our Orthodox temples and worship God in the way He Himself has instructed us to worship Him? – At the astounding beauty and glory of the Divine services which overwhelmed the emissaries of the holy Russian Prince Vladimir a thousand years ago, so that they did not know whether they were on earth or in heaven? At the astonishing variety and complexity of the services, which can be compared only to the abundance and diversity of nature itself, being like it a reflection of the abundance of the Divine Creator? Or at the wondrous order that prevails in the midst of all this variety, and which makes of Orthodox worship a harmonious whole capable of raising the soul into single-minded devotion to God?

How unfortunate it is, then, that so few Orthodox Christians enter fully into the meaning and spirit of the Divine services which, according to the idea of the Holy Fathers who created them under Divine inspiration, are supposed to be a daily source of inspiration for believers, preserving and fanning into a great flame of love that spark which brought them to the saving Orthodox Faith. How few know and love the Typicon which sets forth the principles of the order of the Divine services and which, if it is understood properly, is capable of helping to put our own hearts in order, of orienting them toward the Sunrise from on High Who is the object of the Church's worship!

And how doubly unfortunate it is that there are those who presume to call themselves Orthodox and yet, looking upon the sad state of Orthodox worship in many places today, find the fault for this to lie, not in the lukewarm believers who do not wish to live by the ideal of the Typicon, but rather in the Typicon itself, which must, according to them, be "revised" and brought "up-to-date." One of the most clever of these "revisionists," Father Alexander Schmemann, has recently written "A Letter to my Bishop,"1 Metropolitan Ireney of the American Metropolia, complaining that the latter wishes to return the Metropolia to the standard of the "pre-revolutionary Russian Church," to "the standard service books... of the Russian Orthodox Church." In one respect one can sympathize with Fr. Schmemann's objection: for it is evident that his bishop does not have in mind any true return to fervent and meaningful participation in Divine services, but only a very minimal preservation of the general order of services in the Slavonic service books, as an answer to the disorderly innovationism which is now apparently widely practiced in the Metropolia. Fr. Schmemann believes that the situation in the Metropolia is too desperate to be saved by a return to outward order. He finds that the Metropolia's "financial bankruptcy only reveals and reflects its spiritual state a state of apathy and demoralization,... of abysmal ignorance of the very foundations of our faith," and that "our Church is sick – liturgically and spiritually" – a shocking statement which certainly cannot be made concerning the Church of Christ, but which may indeed be applicable to an ecclesiastical body such as the Metropolia which for long has been travelling a path far from true Orthodoxy.

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1 Printed in St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, 1973, no. 3, pp. 221-238.


The plea of Metropolitan Ireney is to salvage at least some parts of the liturgical practice of the Russian Church: a few verses when the Typicon calls for a whole psalm, one canon at Sunday Matins instead of the three or four appointed, etc. To this Fr. Schmemann correctly replies that this is not the standard of the Typicon and that, in any case, the Metropolia's people do not find even this minimum meaningful. Therefore, he believes, the Typicon must be revised in the light of our knowledge of its historical development, of other traditions, and the like. In a word, the services must be made somehow palatable to spiritually bankrupt people! Fr. Schmemann takes a bad situation and makes it worse, advocating the establishment of a new typicon, a lower standard-which the next generation of the Metropolia will undoubtedly likewise find "unmeaningful" and too demanding!

Enough has been said for us to learn a lesson from the self-admitted spiritual bankruptcy of the Metropolia. It was worldliness, indifference, and abysmal ignorance that produced the Metropolia's bankruptcy; and we who would be Orthodox zealots, whether in the Russian Church Outside of Russia or in her sister zealot Churches, must realize that these same attitudes can cause us also to become lukewarm in our faith, or to lose the grace of God entirely.

Let us understand clearly, then, to begin with, that neither the people of the Metropolia nor its would-be reformer, Fr. Schmemann, understand at all what the Typicon of the Church's Divine services is and what is its function. A thorough historical investigation of the Church's Typicon will not at all lead us to become "revisionists" of it, but on the contrary, will only fill us with wonder at its coherence, profundity, and meaningfulness. Indeed, one of the chief works of scholarship on the Typicon, that of Professor Skaballanovich,1 which Fr. Schmemann himself cites as extremely valuable, comes to exactly these conclusions, and his work only convinces one of the great wisdom of the Holy Fathers who compiled the Typicon. The mistake of the people of the Metropolia lies in its ignorance of and indifference to the Church's inspiring Typicon; the mistake of Fr. Alexander Schmemann lies in his looking at the Typicon in a purely legalistic and academic manner, as though it were merely a system of arbitrary rules and prescriptions which must be blindly obeyed or cleverly avoided, rather in the spirit of a contemporary Code of Motor Vehicles.

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1 Michael Skaballanovich, Commentary on the Typicon (in Russian), Kiev, 1913, 2 vol.


Such is not the case at all! But in order to see the significance of the Typicon one must know what it is. The Typicon is, literally, a book of rubrics for the conduct of the Divine services and the harmonious joining of the different cycles which make up the Church's life: the daily cycle, the eight-week cycle of the Eight Tones, the fixed cycle of Feasts and Saints' days, the movable cycles of Great Lent and Pascha; but in its significance the Typicon is much more than this. The Typicon is, as its title might be translated, a "book of examples," and its intent is actually, as Professor Skaballanovich has well noted, "to sketch the high ideal of the Divine services, an ideal which by its beauty might evoke a constant involuntary striving to bring it into realization, something that is perhaps not always possible in full measure, as is the case also in the realization of every ideal, the following of every exalted example. In essence such is the nature of the whole law of Christ, which is unrealizable perfectly in all its heavenly exaltation, but which by its Divine grandeur inspires an irresistible attraction on the part of mankind to bring it into realization, and which thereby gives life to the world" (Commentary on the Typicon, vol. 2, p. 2).

The full title of this important book is: "The Typicon, or the Depiction of the Ecclesiastical Rite of the Holy Lavra of our Holy and God-bearing Father Sabbas in Jerusalem. The same rite is followed also in the other venerable monasteries in Jerusalem, and similarly in the other holy churches of God." The Typicon, that is to say, is the standard of the services of the Monastery of St. Sabbas in Jerusalem, which was subsequently taken as the standard of the services in other monasteries, and then in the whole Orthodox Church. It is precisely the monastic services which are taken as the standard of the Church's life of worship, because monasticism itself most clearly expresses the ideal toward which the whole believing Church strives. The condition of monasticism at any given time is ordinarily one of the best indicators of the spiritual condition of the whole Church, or of any Local Church; and similarly, the degree to which the local parishes in the world strive toward the ideal of the monastic services is the best indicator of the condition of the Divine worship which is conducted in them.

The Typicon of the Divine services is an ideal; and therefore let no pastor or believer make the mistake of thinking that he has already done "enough" if in his parish "all the people sing" (which is indeed prescribed by the Typicon, as we shall see), or there are services on the eves of Sundays and feast days. The battle being waged today by the world against the faithful is constant and relentless, and it is of an intensity unparalled in the whole history of the Church. In America it is evident that daily newspapers, radio and television, public schools, supermarkets, fashions-virtually everything that exerts any kind of influence upon the mind or taste is directly or indirectly involved in destroying the Orthodox world view, in making true Orthodoxy seem "fanatical," "out of step with the times," and in persuading Orthodox Christians to give up their high ideal of making Orthodoxy permeate the whole of their life in order to "get along" better in the world and "fit in" with other confessions and world views.

Against this unrelenting attack the Orthodox Christian must wage a constant, conscious battle, or else he simply will not remain Orthodox, and most certainly his children will be lost. The "Orthodox" jurisdictions of America (the Metropolia being actually in better condition than most of the others!) should be a sufficient lesson of what will happen to people who do not wage a constant battle to preserve their Orthodoxy, but rather accept it as a matter of course, assuming that one is somehow automatically Orthodox just because he is called by this name. How different is the judgment of Christ our Saviour! Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men (Matt. 5:13).

The Holy Fathers who compiled the Typicon had precisely in mind this battle to preserve oneself in the grace of a Christian life, and we shall see what an effective weapon for this battle is contained in the Divine services, which, contrary to popular belief, are most practical and applicable in our own situation today.

Starting in 1974 in The Orthodox Word, practical information will be given on the Church's Divine services – on the reading and singing of the Psalms of David and the singing of the traditional Russian chant in English based on the best tradition of Russian Orthodox practice.1 Leading Orthodox hierarchs of our century have called the faithful to return to the true tradition of the Orthodox services according to the Typicon, and we shall quote the inspiring words and examples of such zealots of the Divine services as the New-martyr Archbishop Arsenius of Novgorod, the Blessed Archbishop John Maximovitch, and the present Abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, New York, Archbishop Averky of Syracuse.

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1 Much work has been done on Greek Orthodox chant in English at Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston.


The words of these zealot-hierarchs, and a knowledge of the true tradition of the Divine services, will surely persuade us that we, the last Christians, are far from the normal life of Orthodox piety; how much, therefore, we must struggle in order to get back to that normal life! But how inspiring is the path to it! We shall see that the Divine services are not only a treasure-house of the Church's dogma and spiritual instruction, but even more a school of piety which teaches us not only how to think, but even how to feel about our life and the path of salvation. The full use of this basic source of piety is an essential part of the zealot movement of true Orthodoxy in our own day.

May the knowledge of the ancient tradition of the Divine services awaken Orthodox zealots today ever to strive toward the ideal which the Church's Typicon holds out to them: to stand in God's Temple, in fear and trembling and great joy, and worship Him in the way the Divinely-inspired Fathers have instructed us to do!

CHAPTER ONE

THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN AND THE CHURCH SITUATION TODAY

IN ORDER TO PRESERVE (or return to) the true spirit of the Orthodox Di vine services, it is not enough to be against the senseless reforms of the church modernists, who wish to substitute a "modern minimum" for the inspiring standard of the Church's Typicon. One must also have a clear idea of what the Holy Fathers had in mind when, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they compiled the Divine services for the benefit of us, the faithful. Mere outward knowledge of the services – their his. tory, differences between the Greek and Russian Typicons, etc. is of decidedly second. ary importance; this knowledge can make one an "expert" in the Typicon, but that is not what is needed today. The Divine services must be spiritual food from which the faithful can take real nourishment for eternal life. Everything else is secondary to this aim. The situation of Orthodox Christians in the modern world is too desperate to allow us the luxury of being merely "correct" in the performance of the Divine services. It is far better, while indeed knowing as well as possible the high standard which the Church offers us, to be "incorrect" and deficient and, reproaching ourselves for our deficiency, nevertheless singing and traying to Get with love and fervor according to our strength.

The "outward knowledge" which is offered in this series of articles is not, therefore, intended to produce "Typicon experts"; and for this reason it is not offered in sys. tematic form. Basic systematic information on the Church services is already available in standard textbooks.1 Here we shall offer rather material to inspire the fervor of believers, with emphasis both on the ideal of the Typicon and on what can be done practi cally under the conditions in which the faithful find themselves today.

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1 In English a good primer of the cycles of services, with a description of the church, vestments, accounts of feasts, fasts, sacraments, etc., is: Archpriest D. Sokolof, A Mannal of the Orthodox Church's Divine Services. This paperback book has been reprinted and is available inexpensively from Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, N.Y., 13361.


There is no need falsely to idealize the contemporary performance of the Divine services in the Russian Church Outside of Russia; our hierarchs themelves have spoken very frankly about some of the deficiencies of our ordinary services and about the need to bring them ever closer to the ideal which the Typicon holds out to us. Thus, Archbishop Averky of Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, New York, makes some sharp and appropriate remarks in a report concerning the "Internal Mission" of the Church which was approved by the whole Council of Bishops of the Russian Church Outside of Russia in 1962:1

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1 Archbishop Averkv, True Orthodoxy and the Contemporary World (in Russian), Jordanville, New York, 1971, p. 202.


"It is extremely important for the success of the Internal Mission to attract, as far as possible, all the faithful into one or another kind of active participation in the Divine services, so that they might not feel themselves merely idle spectators or auditors who come to church as to a theater 'just in order to hear the beautiful singing of the choir which performs, as often happens now, totally unchurchly, bravura, theatrical compositions. It is absolutely necessary to re-establish the ancient custom, which is indeed demanded by the Typicon itself, of the singing of the whole people at Divine services... It is a shame to the Orthodox faithful not to know its own wondrous, incomparable Orthodox Divine services, and therefore it is the duty of the pastor to make his flock acquainted with the Divine services, which may be accomplished most easily of all by way of attracting the faithful into practical participation."

Further, in the same article Archbishop Averky dispels the popular misconception that Orthodox Christians are not allowed to perform any church services without a priest, and that therefore the believing people become quite helpless and are virtually "unable to pray" when they find themselves without a priest – as happens more and more often today. He writes, on the same page of this article:

"According to our Typicon, all the Divine services of the daily cycle – apart, needless to say, from the Divine Liturgy and other Church sacraments may be performed also by persons not ordained to priestly rank. This has been widely done in their practice of prayer by all monasteries, sketes, and desert-dwellers in whose midst there are no monks clothed in the rank of priest. And up until the most recent time this was to be seen also, for example, in Carpatho-Russia, which was outstanding for the high level of the piety of its people, where in case of the illness or absence of the priest, the faithful themselves, without a priest, read and sang the Nocturnes, and Matins, and the Hours, and Vespers, and Compline, and in place of the Divine Liturgy, the Typica.

"In no way can one find anything whatever reprehensible in this, for the texts themselves of our Divine services have foreseen such a possibility, for example, in such a rubric which is often encountered in them: 'If a priest is present, he says: Blessed is our God... If not, then say with feeling: By the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.' And further there follows the whole order of the Divine services in its entirety, except, of course, for the ectenes and the priestly responses. The longer ectenes are replaced by the reading of 'Lord, have mercy' twelve times, and the Little Ectene by the reading of 'Lord, have mercy' three times.

"Public prayer, as none other, firmly unites the faithful. And so, in all those parishes where there is no permanent priest, it is absolutely necessary not merely to permit, but indeed to recommend to the faithful that they come together on Sundays and feast days in church or even in homes, where there is no church, in order to perform together such public prayer according to the established order of Divine services."

This normal church practice, which like so much else that belongs to the best Orthodox Church tradition, has become so rare today as to seem rather a novelty, is nonetheless being practiced now in several parishes of the Russian Church Outside of Russia, as well as in some private homes. This practice can and should be greatly increased among the faithful, whether it is a question of a parish that has lost its priest or is too small to support one, of a small group of believers far from the nearest church which has not yet formed a parish, or a single tamily which is unable to attend church on every Sunday and feast day.

Indeed, this practice in many places has become the only answer to the problem of keeping alive the tradition of the Church's Divine services, whether in the far-scattered flocks of the Russian Diaspora, which are often far from the nearest organized parish with its priest, or in the missionary flocks of true Orthodox Christians, both in America and abroad, which likewise are small and widely scattered and are often far from the nearest true Orthodox Church it being understood that spiritual communion is impossible with the great apostate bodies which continue to call themselves Orthodox.

The way of conducting such services should preferably be learned from those who already practice it in accordance with both the written and oral tradition of the Church. But even in the absence of such guidance, an Orthodox layman, when he is unable to attend church services, can derive much benefit from simply reading through some of the simpler services, much as he already reads Morning and Evening Prayers. Thus, he can read any of the Hours (First, Third, and Sixth Hours in the morning, Ninth Hour in the afternoon), which have no changeable parts except for the Troparion and Kontakion; he can simply read through the stichera of the great feasts on the appropriate day;1 or he can read the Psalms appointed for a given day, as indicated in the next chapter.

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1 The Hours and other services of the daily cycle are contained in the Hapgood Service Book, which also contains the sacraments and parts of the great feasts. The complete texts of the great feasts are in The Festal Menaion (Faber and Faber). These books may be purchased from Eastern Orthodox Books, P.O.Box 302, Willits, Calif., 95490.


In pre-Revolutionary Russia in parish churches Vespers and Matins, as well as Nocturnes, Compline, and the Hours, were served daily, and this is surely the norm against which the Orthodox practice of today must be measured. The Divine services of Sundays and feast days, and the eves of these days, are the very minimum of any normal church life today, without which Orthodox piety simply cannot be inculcated and preserved. And these days must be spent in a holy way. There do remain a few parishes and homes where an akathist is regularly sung on Sunday afternoons, but the former pious Russian custom of gathering in homes on Sundays and feast days to sing religious songs or "psalms" has all but been swallowed up by the tempo of modern life. And how many Orthodox Christians still keep the eves of feasts in a fitting manner, devoting them to the All-night Vigil (or Vespers) and prayer, and not to worldly entertainments? It was a strict rule of Archbishop John Maximovitch of blessed memory not to allow anyone who had attended a ball or other worldly entertainment on Saturday night (even if he had first attended the Divine service, as if to "fulfill his obligation"!) to participate in any way in the Divine services of Sunday; and how sober were those Russians made who were found by Archbishop John when he "went to the Halloween Ball" on the eve of the canonization of St. John of Kronstadt in 1964, when by his stern and wordless gaze he accused their faithlessness!

The realization of how far we fall short of the ideal (that is, normal) Orthodox life and practice should be for us the cause, not of discouragement, but rather of a great desire to know and seek this ideal, as far as we are able in the admittedly very distracting conditions of modern life. Above all we should know that this ideal is a very practical one and does not require of us either tremendous efforts which are simply beyond our strength, or the attainment of some exalted "spiritual" state without which one dare not begin to sing praise to God. In fact, one reason which has prevented the wider use of the Orthodox daily services in everyday life is the presence of a certain dualistic error which has crept into the thinking of Orthodox Christians, namely, that being an Orthodox Christian is something abstractly "spiritual," whereas in everyday life an Orthodox Christian is "just like everyone else." On the contrary, the Holy Fathers clearly teach us that a true Christian is different from everyone else both inwardly and outwardly, the one being an expression of the other. Thus, St. Macarius the Great teaches, "Christians have their own world, their own way of life, their own understanding and word and activity; for different from theirs are the way of life, and understanding, and word, and activity of the people of this world. Christians are one thing, and lovers of the world quite another; between the one and the other lies a great separation.... Inasmuch as the mind and understanding of Christians is constantly occupied with reflection on the heavenly, they behold eternal good things by communion and participation in the Holy Spirit. In very action and power they have been enabled to become children of God.... [It is chiefly by the renewal of the mind, the pacification of thoughts, by love and a heavenly devotion to the Lord that the new creature, the Christian, is distinguished from all other people in the world.... [And so also,] Christians have a different world, a different food, a different clothing, different enjoyments, a different communion, a different way of thinking – because they are better than all other men." (Homily V, 1, 4, 20.)

This is the Orthodox Christian standard against which our own lives must be measured. Do we, Orthodox Christians, really differ from everyone else by our food and dress – so important in our own days of brazen indecency and gluttony – by our words and actions, by our life and prayer? If we do not, it is fairly certain that spiritually, also. we are not different from the lovers of this world. Do our Sundays and feast days have a savor different from that of the holidays of the lovers of this world, different because we constantly devote them to remembering God and singing His praises, to reading the Lives of His Saints and the inspired writings of His Holy Fathers? Do we devote at least a portion of every day, according to our strength and time, to the labor of prayer, using the God-given means, the daily cycle of services, as a way of lifting ourselves above the heavy weight of this modern worldly life? Without such labor, how can we be saved? St. Macarius the Great teaches: "Very many people wish to earn the King'dom without labors, without asceticism, without sweat; but this is impossible." (Homily V, 13.)

For people who live in the world and are engrossed in the cares of life, great ascetic labors are almost out of the question. How important it is, then, for such people to take maximum advantage of that pleasant and inspiring labor which the Holy Church presents to their striving souls – the daily cycle of the Church's prayer. Even a small, if regular, degree of participation in this life is already capable of making an Orthodox Christian different from other people, opening up to him the special way of thinking and feeling which is the life of Christ's Church on earth.

CHAPTER TWO
THE PSALMS OF DAVID

 
THE HOLY PROPHET KING DAVID icon by Pimen M. Sofronov


Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
—Eph. 5:19

BY FAR the largest single element in the Church's Divine services is the Psalms of David. Of them St. John Chrysostom has said: "If we keep vigil in church, David comes first, last and central. If early in the morning we want songs and hymns, first, last and central is David again. If we are occupied with the funeral solemnities of those who have fallen asleep, or if virgins sit at home and spin, David is first, last and central. O amazing wonder! Many who have made little progress in literature know the Psalter by heart. Nor is it only in cities and churches that David is famous; in the village market, in the desert, and in uninhabitable land, he excites the praise of God. In monasteries, among those holy choirs of angelic armies, David is first, last and central. In the convents of virgins, where are the communities of those who imitate Mary; in the deserts where there are men crucified to the world, who live their life in heaven with God, David is first, last and central. All other men at night are overcome by sleep. David alone is active, and gathering the servants of God into seraphic bands, he turns earth into heaven, and converts men into angels."

The function of the Psalms in the Orthodox Christian spiritual life has been well set forth by St. Basil the Great: "When the Holy Spirit saw that the human race was guided only with difficulty toward virtue, and that, because of our inclination toward pleasure, we were neglectful of an upright life, what did He do? The delight of melody He mingled with the doctrines so that by the pleasantness and softness of the sound heard we might receive without perceiving it the benefit of the words, just as wise physicians who, when giving the fastidious rather bitter drugs to drink, frequently smear the cup with honey. Therefore, He devised for us these harmonious melodies of the Psalms, that they who are children in age, or even those who are youthful in disposition, might to all appearances chant but, in reality, become trained in soul. For never has any one of the many indifferent persons gone away easily holding in mind either an apostolic or prophetic message, but they do chant the words of the Psalms, even in the home, and they spread them about in the market place, and if, perchance, someone becomes exceedingly wrathful, when he begins to be soothed by a Psalm, he departs with the wrath of his soul immediately lulled to sleep by means of the melody." (Homily X, 1; On Psalm I.)

In our own times of such feeble Christian life, alas, these words of the Holy Fathers have largely lost their force. Where, even among Orthodox Christians, is the Psalter still read and sung? And yet it is a central part of the Church's Typicon, of the standard against which we must measure our own Christian worship, a central part of the normal Christian life towards which we must constantly strive. The Blessed Archbishop John Maximovitch, striving to awaken his flock to a more conscious participation in the Church's life, published the following appeal in his weekly diocesan bulletin (Shanghai, November 24, 1941, no. 503):

"Perhaps it will happen that you will die without having once in your life read in full the Psalter of David... You will die, and only then will good people read over your lifeless body this holy Psalter, which you had no time even to open while you lived on earth! Only then, at your burial, will they sing over you the wondrously instructive, sweetly-wise – but alas, to you completely unknown – words of David: Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord... Blessed are they who search His testimonies, who keep His revelations, and seek Him with their whole heart. Do you hear: Blessed are they who search His testimonies, seek out the revelations of the Lord; and you had no time even to think of them! What will your poor soul feel then, your soul to which every word of the Psalmist, repeated by a reader or singer over your coffin, will sound as a strict reproach that you never read this sacred book?... Open now, before it is too late, this wondrous book of the Prophet King. Open it and read with attention at least this 118th Psalm, and you will involuntarily feel that your heart becomes humble, soft, that in the words of David are the words of the Spirit of God, and you will repeat involuntarily, many times, with sighing of heart, the last verse of this Psalm: I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost; seek out Thy slave, O Lord!"

The Psalter, of course, may be read at any time, but it will be good here to give the indication of the Church's Typicon concerning the reading and singing of the Psalms in church, especially now when there are few places remaining where the Psalter is read at all in church, beyond a few Psalms at the Sunday Matins. Perhaps the discovery of the Church's inspiring ideal in this regard will arouse some of the faithful even now to restore in their own life of prayer something of the order which should prevail in the holy churches of God!

First of all, the entire Psalter is appointed to be read through once every week in church (twice during the weeks of Great Lent). In order to do this, the entire 150 Psalms are divided up into 20 kathismata, and each kathisma into three sections, as follows (using the numeration of the Psalms in the Septuagint or Greek Psalter):1

Kathisma 1: Psalms 1-3, 4-6, 7-8
Kathisma 2: Psalms 9-10, 11-13, 14-16
Kathisma 3: Psalms 17, 18-20, 21-23
Kathisma 4: Psalms 24-26, 27-29, 30-31
Kathisma 5: Psalms 32-33, 34-35, 36
Kathisma 6: Psalms 37-39, 40-42, 43-45
Kathisma 7: Psalms 46-48, 49-50, 51-54
Kathisma 8: Psalms 55-57, 58-60, 61-63
Kathisma 9: Psalms 64-66, 67, 68-69
Kathisma 10: Psalms 70-71, 72-73, 74-76
Kathisma 11: Psalms  77, 78-80, 81-84
Kathisma 12: Psalms 85-87, 88, 89-90
Kathisma 13: Psalms 91-93, 94-96, 97-100
Kathisma 14: Psalms 101-102, 103, 104
Kathisma 15: Psalms 106, 106, 107-108
Kathisma 16: Psalms 109-111, 112-114, 115-117
Kathisma 17: Psalms 118:1-72, 73-131, 132-176
Kathisma 18: Psalms 119-123, 124-128, 129-133
Kathisma 19: Psalms 134-136, 137-139, 140-142
Kathisma 20: Psalms 143-144, 145-147, 148-150

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1 The Latin Vulgate, upon which Roman Catholic translations into English are based, follows the Septuagint numbering. However, the Hebrew Psalms, upon which the King James Version and other Protestant translations are based, are numbered slightly differently, as follows:

Greek Psalms correspond to Hebrew Psalms
1-8 1-8
9 9-10
10-112 11-113
113 114-115
114-115 116
116-145 117-146
146-147 147
148-150 148-150


The weekly reading of the Psalter is begun with the Vespers of Saturday, when the new weekly cycle of the Octoechos is begun. At Saturday Vespers the first kathisma is sung (not read, as will be explained in a later chapter), and at Sunday Matins the second and third kathismata are read. For the rest of the week three kathismata are read daily, as follows:

Monday: Kathismata 4, 5, 6
Tuesday: Kathismata 7, 8, 9
Wednesday: Kathismata 10, 11, 12
Thursday: Kathismata 13, 14, 15
Friday: Kathismata 19, 20, 18
Saturday: Kathismata 16, 17, 1

Generally the first two kathismata appointed each day are read at Matins, and the third kathisma at Vespers.1 At the Vespers of Sundays and great feasts no kathisma is read, as the Typicon says, "due to the labor of the vigil" which has preceded.

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1 For a precise indication of the apportionment of the kathismata for all the weeks of the year, see The Festal Menaion, Faber & Faber, London, 1969, pp. 532-534.


The Psalms are read, not in a normal reading tone, but in a kind of "recitative" or monotone, which may most easily be executed by beginning as if to sing on one note which is convenient for one's voice, and then continuing to read on this same note. No particular expression should be given to any words or phrases, and the voice should not drop at the end of any phrase, but should remain always at about the same level,, yet without any attempt to pronounce every word in an artificially uniform or featureless manner. The reading should be slow enough that the words can be understood, but not so slow that an effect of "dragging" is created. This traditional church reading, which with practice comes to seem very natural, is immediately distinct from worldly reading (as of newspapers), and helps set the proper tone in which the sacred words can enter one's heart. At the end of every section of every kathisma, the following words are read in the same tone of voice, or actually sung on one note: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, glory to Thee, O God. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, glory to Thee, O God. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, glory to Thee, O God. Lord, have mercy, Lord, have mercy, Lord, have mercy. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Then the next section is begun.

Since most parish churches do not have daily services, it is obvious that most Orthodox Christians do not hear the whole Psalter every week in church. Indeed, the weekly reading of the Psalter entails considerable labor (even though it is much less than the labor of the early monks who read the Psalter daily), and it is only in a few of the larger monasteries that it is still performed in its entirety. As a concession to the weakness of contemporary Orthodox Christians, the late Archbishop John Maximovitch had as his rule to read in church the whole Psalter every two weeks, by reading the first kathisma of Matins on weeks when the Tone of the Octoechos was odd (1, 3, 5, 7), and the second kathisma when the Tone of the Octoechos was even (2, 4, 6, 8). (The Tone for the week is indicated in Orthodox calendars on the Sunday which begins the week.) The same result might be obtained by dividing each kathisma in half and reading the first half of both when the Tone is odd, the second half when the Tone is even. And indeed, any arrangement by which one reads the Psalms regularly, even if only a single Psalm or section of Psalms daily at Morning or Evening Prayers, is a good beginning. Any Orthodox Christian can read the Psalter at home according to such an arrangement and, with a little labor of prayer, enter into the Church's rhythm of psalmody, which in a short time will make the Psalms familiar to him and part of a regular rhythm of prayer.1

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1 A new edition of the Orthodox Psalter, arranged for use in church (with the Psalms arranged by kathismata and sections), is now being printed and may be ordered from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 278 Warren St., Brookline, Massachusetts, 02146. There is also an inexpensive paperback edition of the translation of Fr. Lazarus Moore, likewise arranged for church use: The Holy Psalter from the Septuagint. (Available from Eastern Orthodox Books, P.O. Box 302, Willits, Calif., 95490.)


In addition to the weekly reading of the Psalms, many of the Psalms are read again as a part of the daily services: Vespers, Matins, Nocturn, Compline, the Hours. Indeed, every one of these services, after the usual beginning (O Heavenly King, Holy God, Our Father...), commences with a Psalm or several Psalms. The God-inspired and inspiring material of the Psalms provides a most natural beginning for the Church's services, which thus proceed from the prophetic prayer of the Old Testament to the New Testament prayer in which the prophecies are realized (the troparia, stichera, etc., which follow the Psalms in all services). Thus, in every service the Orthodox Christian experiences in some degree what the soul of God's faithful people has gone through in its religious awareness, from the Old to the New Testament.

Furthermore, a few of the Psalms are singled out for special execution, being sung according to a particular tradition which is either indicated in the Typicon or contained in the Church's musical tradition; such Psalms also often have a refrain added to each verse, usually "Alleluia," the Hebrew word meaning "Praise ye the Lord." Among such Psalms are the two Psalms of the Polyeleos sung at Matins on feast days and some Sundays (Ps. 134 and 135); Psalm 118 (the 17th kathisma), which is sung in one way for requiem services, another way at the Sunday Matins of the spring and summer months in place of the Polyeleos, and yet another way at the Matins of Great Saturday; the "Lord, I have cried" (Ps. 140, 141, 129, 116) of Vespers, which is sung in the Tone of the stichera which are joined to it, as is "Let every breath praise the Lord" (Ps. 148-150) of Matins; the Prefatory Psalm of Vespers on great feasts (Ps. 103): and the first section of the first kathisma (Ps. 1-3). The singing of these Psalms, in whole or in part, is by no means difficult, even for those with very little musical knowledge. About this more will be said in later chapters, after some introductory remarks on the Russian traditional chant.