Byzantine Rite

The Slovak Greek Catholic Church or Byzantine Catholic Church in Slovakia, is a sui iuris (autonomous) Eastern Catholic church based in Slovakia. As a particular church of the Catholic Church, it is in full communion with the Holy See. The church is organised as a single ecclesiastical province with one metropolitan see. Its liturgical rite is the Byzantine Rite. In 2008 in Slovakia alone, the Greek Catholic Church in Slovakia had some 350,000 faithful, 374 priests and 254 parishes. In 2017, the Catholic Church counted 207,320 Greek Catholics in Slovakia worldwide, representing roughly one percent of all Eastern Catholics.

Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembrance, supplication, or repentance. It forms a basis for establishing a relationship with God or the divine.

Technically speaking, liturgy forms a subset of ritual. The word liturgy, sometimes equated in English as "service", refers to a formal ritual enacted by those who understand themselves to be participating in an action with the divine.

The Armenian Rite (Armenian: Հայկական պատարագ) is a liturgical rite used by both the Armenian Apostolic and the Armenian Catholic churches. Isaac of Armenia, the Catholicos of All Armenians, initiated a series of reforms with help from Mesrop Mashtots in the 5th century that distinguished Armenia from its Greek and Syriac counterparts. These reforms included a retranslation of the Bible and a revised liturgy. During the Crusades and afterwards, missionary activity by the Latin Church influenced liturgical norms and induced some Armenians to join the Catholic Church. The modern Armenian Rite features elements and interpolations from the Byzantine Rite and Latin liturgical rites, with the celebration of the Eucharist emulating the Liturgy of Saint Basil.

A use, also commonly usage (Latin: usum) and recension, within Christian liturgy is a set of particular texts or customs distinct from other practitioners of a broader liturgical ritual family, typically on the basis of locality or religious order. Especially prevalent within the Latin liturgical rites of the Middle Ages, few significant uses persisted following a general suppression of these variations by Pope Pius V in the 16th century. The word "use" is most commonly applied to distinct practices branching from the Roman Rite, though it and "recension" can be applied in variations of other ritual families, such as the Ruthenian recension of the Byzantine Rite, the Maronite Use of the West Syriac Rite and the Syro-Malabar Use of the East Syriac Rite. In the historic context of the Scottish Episcopal Church, "usage" refers to certain aspects of the Eucharistic liturgy valued by some nonjurors.

A missal is a liturgical book containing instructions and texts necessary for the celebration of Mass throughout the liturgical year. Versions differ across liturgical tradition, period, and purpose, with some missals intended to enable a priest to celebrate Mass publicly and others for private and lay use. The texts of the most common Eucharistic liturgy in the world, the Catholic Church's Mass of Paul VI of the Roman Rite, are contained in the 1970 edition of the Roman Missal.

Missals have also been published for earlier forms of the Roman Rite and other Latin liturgical rites. Other liturgical books typically contain the Eucharistic liturgies of other ritual traditions, but missals exist for the Byzantine Rites, Eastern Orthodox Western Rites, Lutheran and Anglican liturgies.

The Arbëreshë (pronounced [aɾbəˈɾɛʃ]; Albanian: Arbëreshët e Italisë; Italian: Albanesi d'Italia), also known as Albanians of Italy or Italo-Albanians, are an Albanian ethnolinguistic group minority historically settled in Southern and Insular Italy (in the regions of Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Molise, but mostly concentrated in the regions of Calabria and Sicily).

They are the descendants of Albanian refugees settled in the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily who fled from Albania, Epirus, and later some from the numerous Albanian communities of Attica and Morea, between the 14th and the 18th centuries following the death of Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg and the gradual conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks. Their culture is determined by the main features that are found in language, religious rite, traditional costume, art and gastronomy, still zealously preserved, with the awareness of belonging to a specific ethnic group.

The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous (sui iuris) particular churches of the Catholic Church in full communion with the pope in Rome. Although they are distinct theologically, liturgically, and historically from the Latin Church, they are all in full communion with it and with each other. Eastern Catholics are a minority within the Catholic Church; of the 1.3 billion Catholics in communion with the pope, approximately 18 million are members of the Eastern churches. The largest numbers of Eastern Catholics are found in Eastern Europe, Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and India. As of 2022, the Syro-Malabar Church is the largest Eastern Catholic Church, followed by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

With the exception of the Maronite Church, the Eastern Catholic Churches are groups that, at different points in the past, used to belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, or the Church of the East; these churches underwent various schisms through history. Eastern Catholic Churches that were formerly part of other communions have been points of controversy in ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox and other non-Catholic churches. The five historic liturgical traditions of Eastern Christianity, namely the Alexandrian Rite, the Armenian Rite, the Byzantine Rite, the East Syriac Rite, and the West Syriac Rite, are all represented within Eastern Catholic liturgy. On occasion, this leads to a conflation of the liturgical word "rite" and the institutional word "church". Some Eastern Catholic jurisdictions admit members of churches not in communion with Rome to the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

A sticheron (Greek: στιχηρόν "set in verses"; plural: stichera; Greek: στιχηρά) is a hymn of a particular genre sung during the daily evening (Hesperinos/Vespers) and morning (Orthros) offices, and some other services, of the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches.

Stichera are usually sung in alternation with or immediately after psalm or other scriptural verses. These verses are known as stichoi (sing: stichos), but sticheraric poetry usually follows the hexameter and is collected in a book called sticherarion (Greek: στιχηράριον). A sticherarion is a book containing the stichera for the morning and evening services throughout the year, but chant compositions in the sticheraric melos can also be found in other liturgical books like the Octoechos or the Anastasimatarion, or in the Anthology for the Divine Liturgy.

Irmologion (Ancient Greek: τὸ εἱρμολόγιον heirmologion) is a liturgical book of the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches that follow the Byzantine Rite. It contains irmoi (οἱ εἱρμοί) organised in sequences of odes (αἱ ᾠδαὶ, sg. ἡ ᾠδή) and such a sequence was called canon (ὁ κανών 'law'). These canons of nine, eight, four or three odes are to be chanted during the morning service (Orthros). The name irmologion derives from heirmos (ὁ εἱρμός), which means 'link'. The irmos is a melodic model which preceded the composition of the odes. According to the etymology, the book 'collects' (λογεύω logeuō) the irmoi.