The Rhythms of the Church
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We participate in the life of the Church by living the rhythms of the Church. This is done by orienting our lives around the daily, weekly, and yearly cycles of prayer, fasting, and feasting. These cycles of the Church redeem and sanctify time, and make the past present. Music requires harmony and melody, built upon rhythm, and the Church gives us that foundational rhythm. Our modern world has lost most of its natural rhythm, but the Church has not. When our lives, our families, and our communities, live this, we are acknowledging and living reality.
For most of us, living the daily cycle consists of morning, evening, and mealtime prayers (in addition to personal prayer and the daily cycle of prayer when able), as well as reading scripture and the lives of the Saints commemorated each day. The weekly cycle consists of preparing for and participating in Divine Liturgy, attending other weekly services, and observing weekly fasts. The yearly cycle (which begins on September 1), consists of both fixed and movable feasts such as Great and Holy Pascha, the twelve great feasts in the life of Christ and his mother, as well as the four fasting seasons (Nativity Fast, Great Lent & Holy Week, Apostles' Fast, and Dormition Fast), during which we particularly focus on prayer and almsgiving along with our fasting. Note, regular confession is an important aspect of these rhythms, and varies by jurisdiction or parish (whether weekly, monthly, or seasonally)--follow the direction of your priest, and make it a priority.
As families and educators, in addition to building our academic schedule around Church Calendar, one simple way of incorporating some of these rhythms, is with the “subject" that we call Morning Time. This is the beginning and the anchor of our daily schedule, and includes:
Morning Prayer
The Church Calendar (Daily Lives of the Saints or Feast Day readings)
Scripture
This does not need a special name, entertaining activities, or any fancy lesson plans, and there are many ways you can incorporate this without purchasing anything. It is merely living the rhythms that are already there. It is in this way that we embody the words of St. John Chrysostom that “indeed the household is a little Church."
For us, this generally looks like morning prayer together, reading short lives of the saints (or about feasts) commemorated that day, and reading the scheduled Epistle and Gospel readings from the lectionary calendar. Start simple, and add things as able. We often try to listen to the troparia and kontakia of the daily saints, and we have been slowly building a perpetual calendar with mini icons of daily saints, or icons we can put out on feast days.
Outside of Morning Time, we focus on our more extensive reading and study of Scripture during our Catechesis block. We learn the hymns of the Church, read saints from the historical time period we are studying, and do icon study during our Enrichment block (more hymn resources here).
Morning Time Resources
*This is not an exhaustive list, but more a living list of resources we have used and enjoyed, or ones that are on our radar.
Prayer Resources:
Online calendar of Feasts & Saints (with their lives) from orthocal.info (you can select Gregorian or Julian calendar); Scripture readings in KJV
*Link to download ical to add saints to your digital calendar with links in notes to their lives
Online Calendar of Feasts & Saints (OCA)
Daily Lectionary Scripture Readings (NKJV) from the OCA
Daily Scripture Readings & Commemorations from the Antiochian Archdiocese
Daily Scripture Readings & Commemorations from GOARCH (& app download)
Daily Scripture Readings & Commemorations from the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese (NC=RSV/ OC=NKJV)
Lectionary: The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox (Manley): A wonderful book that includes the daily scripture readings (NKJV) from the Orthodox liturgical calendar, with commentary from the Church Fathers.
Lives of the Saints: The Prologue from Ohrid (St. Nikolai Velimirovic) (~2-4 volumes)
Lives of the Saints: A Daily Calendar of Saints (Fr. Farley) *usually 1-2 saints per day
Lives of the Saints: Orthodox Saints collections (Fr. Poulos) (4 volumes)
Feast Day Readings & Icons:The Story of Icons (Hallick)
Feast Day Readings & Icons: Heaven Meets Earth: Celebrating Pascha and the Twelve Feasts (Skinas)
The Cycles of the Church
*Read more on the liturgical cycles of Orthodox worship
Daily Cycles:
Daily Cycle of Prayer:
The Daily Cycle consists of divine services that are celebrated in order throughout the day. The complete daily cycle is generally celebrated only in monasteries. In parish life certain of the daily services are celebrated in the local church while others are read by the faithful at home, individually, or communally. Most of these services can be found in The Book of Hours.
Vespers (Evening)
Matins/ Orthros (Morning)
Hours (1st/3rd/6th/9th), Compline (“After-dinner"), and Nocturne (Midnight)
Prayer is essential to Christian life. Jesus Christ himself prayed and taught men to pray. One who does not pray to God cannot be a follower of Christ. The Orthodox Church follows the Old Testament practice of having formal prayers according to the hours of the day. Christians are urged to pray regularly in the morning, evening and at meal times, as well as to have a brief prayer which can be repeated throughout the day under any and all circumstances (e.g. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”).
*Source, and more on Prayer
Weekly Cycles:
Weekly Hymn Cycle:
“The Church is wise about how humans pray. Repetition forms us, but so does variety. If we sang identical services every week, we’d stop hearing the words. But if everything changed randomly, we’d never sink into the rhythm of the liturgical life. The eight-tone cycle gives us both. We get the stability of knowing the structure while experiencing fresh expressions of the same eternal truths.
Each tone also carries different theological emphases. Some tones feel more penitential. Others more triumphant. The Church uses this to color our worship throughout the year, layering the weekly cycle of tones over the annual cycle of feasts and fasts" (Source/ more on the hymn cycle).
The daily commemorations are expressed in the hymnography of the daily services above, and are collected in a book called the Octoechos, a word derived from the Greek word for “eight tones" (the Greek book equivalent would be the Parakletiki). This book is arranged in a cycle of eight weeks based on a musical system of eight tones or modes, each week being governed by one of the tones. Each tone has a particular melody, and the hymns of each week are sung according to the melody of the tone governing the week.
The eight-week cycle begins with Tone 1 on the second Sunday after Pentecost. Since the daily cycle of services begins with Vespers, the week governed by the particular tone begins at Saturday evening Vespers and concludes with Ninth Hour the following Saturday. This process repeats itself over the course of the eight tones, at which point it begins again. Each of the eight tones with its associated hymnography may be sung as many as six times over the course of the year.
Sundays: The Resurrection of Christ;
Mondays: The Angelic Powers;
Tuesdays: St. John the Forerunner;
Wednesdays: The Cross & Judas' betrayal (Fasting Day);
Thursdays: The Apostles & St. Nicholas of Myra;
Fridays: The Cross/the Crucifixion, & the Theotokos (Fasting Day);
Saturdays: The Saints (especially the Mother of God) & those who have fallen asleep in the Lord.
Yearly Cycles:
The Annual Cycle of Movable Feasts:
The yearly cycle of Movable Feasts is centered around Holy Pascha and is called movable because, being linked with the Feast of Feasts, it shifts from year to year as Pascha itself falls on a different date each year. The Feasts which comprise this cycle are Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Pascha), Holy Ascension (40 days after Pascha) and Holy Pentecost (the Descent of the Holy Spirit, 50 days after Pascha).
The Annual Cycle of Fixed Feasts:
Each day of the year is dedicated to the memory of particular events or Saints and these memorials always fall on the same Calendar date each year. Thus, in honor of each event or Saint(s), special hymns have been composed which are added to the usual hymns and prayers of the day.
The Great Feasts:
Among the feasts of the Church Year, a place of special honor belongs to the Feast of Feasts, Holy Pascha. Next in importance come the Twelve Great Feasts, which can be divided into two groups: Feasts of the Lord and Feasts of the Mother of God.
Great Feasts of the Lord:
1. The Exaltation (or Elevation) of the Life-creating Cross (Sept. 14)
2. The Nativity of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ (Christmas Dec. 25)
3. The Theophany (or Epiphany) of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ (Jan. 6)
4. The Entrance of Our Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday, Sunday before Pascha)
5. The Ascension of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (40 days after Pascha)
6. The Descent of the Holy Spirit (Holy Pentecost, 50 days after Pascha)
7. The Transfiguration of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ (Aug. 6)
Great Feasts of the Mother of God:
1. The Nativity of the Most-Holy Theotokos (Sept. 8)
2. The Entrance (or Presentation) of the Theotokos into the Temple (Nov. 21)
3. The Meeting of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple (Feb. 2)
4. The Annunciation to the Most-Holy Theotokos (Mar. 25)
5. The Falling-Asleep (or Dormition) of the Most-Holy Theotokos (Aug. 15)
The Fasts:
Nativity Fast (St. Philip’s Fast) - Nov. 15 through Dec. 24
Meatfast - Monday after the Sunday of Last Judgment through Cheesefare Sunday
Great Lent & Holy Week - 1st Monday of Great Lent through Great and Holy Saturday
Apostles’ (Peter & Paul) Fast - Varies by year (determined by the Paschal Cycle / Pentecostarion)
Dormition (Theotokos) Fast - Aug. 1 through Aug. 14
*Concerning Fasting (OCA)
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