Divine Liturgy

The Mass is the central liturgical service of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, in which bread and wine are consecrated and become the body and blood of Christ. As defined by the Church at the Council of Trent, in the Mass "the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, is present and offered in an unbloody manner". The Church describes the Mass as the "source and summit of the Christian life", and teaches that the Mass is a sacrifice, in which the sacramental bread and wine, through consecration by an ordained priest, become the sacrificial body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ as the sacrifice on Calvary made truly present once again on the altar. The Catholic Church permits only baptised members in the state of grace (Catholics who are not in a state of mortal sin) to receive Christ in the Eucharist.

Many of the other sacraments of the Catholic Church, such as confirmation, holy orders, and holy matrimony, are generally administered within a celebration of Mass, but before the Second Vatican Council were often or even usually administered separately. The term Mass, also Holy Mass, is commonly used to describe the celebration of the Eucharist in the Latin Church, while the various Eastern Catholic liturgies use terms such as Divine Liturgy, Holy Qurbana, and Badarak, in accordance with each one's tradition.

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.

Mass is the main Eucharistic liturgical service in many forms of Western Christianity. The term Mass is commonly used in the Catholic Church, Western Rite Orthodoxy, Old Catholicism, and Independent Catholicism. The term is also used in many Lutheran churches, as well as in some Anglican churches, and on rare occasion by other Protestant churches.

Other Christian denominations may employ terms such as Divine Service or worship service (and often just "service"), rather than the word Mass. For the celebration of the Eucharist in Eastern Christianity, including Eastern Catholic Churches, other terms such as Divine Liturgy, Holy Qurbana, Holy Qurobo and Badarak (or Patarag) are typically used instead.

The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, is a liturgical rite that is identified with the wide range of cultural, devotional, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christian church of Constantinople.

The canonical hours are extended and complex, lasting about eight hours (longer during Great Lent) but are abridged outside of large monasteries. An iconostasis, a partition covered with icons, separates the area around the altar from the nave. The sign of the cross, accompanied by bowing, is made very frequently, e.g., more than a hundred times during the divine liturgy, and there is prominent veneration of icons, a general acceptance of the congregants freely moving within the church and interacting with each other, and distinctive traditions of liturgical chanting.

The royal doors, holy doors, or beautiful gates are the central doors of the iconostasis in an Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Catholic church. The sanctuary (sometimes called the Altar, which contains the Holy Table) is separated from the nave by a wooden screen called the iconostasis. The iconostasis represents Christian continuity from the veil of the Temple in Jerusalem which separated the people from the Holy of Holies that housed the Ark of the Covenant. Normally, the iconostasis has three doors in it. The two single doors to the right and left are called "deacons' doors" or "angel doors" and they usually have on them icons of either sainted deacons (Saint Stephen, Saint Lawrence, etc.) or the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. These are the doors that the clergy will normally use when entering the sanctuary. The central double doors are the "holy doors" (Slavonic: Svyatýa Vratá), which are considered to be most sacred, and may only be entered at certain sacred moments during the services, and only by ordained clergy (deacons, priests, bishops).

The term Royal Doors (Greek: Ωραία Πύλη: Slavonic: Tsárskiya Vratá) is commonly used to describe the Holy Doors, because Christ passes through these gates during the Great Entrance at the Divine Liturgy (and most especially during the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts). More properly, however, these doors should be called the "Beautiful Gate", and in Greek this is the only term used, although the official English sites of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Orthodox Church in America and the Antiochian Orthodox Church all use the term "Royal Doors". In Russia, they are sometimes called the "Red Gates", red being synonymous with beautiful.

The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, and also called the Greek Orthodox Church or simply the Orthodox Church, is one of the three major doctrinal and jurisdictional groups of Christianity. As of 2012, it has approximately 300 million adherents and is the third largest religious community in the world after Catholics and Sunni Muslims. The Eastern Orthodox Church operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via local synods. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the pope of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognised by them as primus inter pares ('first among equals'), a title held by the patriarch of Rome prior to 1054. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played an especially prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Since 2018, there has been an ongoing schism between Constantinople and Moscow, with the two not in full communion with each other.

Eastern Orthodox theology is based on the Scriptures and holy tradition, which incorporates the dogmatic decrees of the seven ecumenical councils, and the teaching of the Church Fathers. The church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, and that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles. It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, as passed down by holy tradition. Its patriarchates, descending from the pentarchy, and other autocephalous and autonomous churches, reflect a variety of hierarchical organisation. It recognises seven major sacraments (which are called holy mysteries), of which the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in synaxis. The church teaches that through consecration invoked by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Theotokos, which means 'God-bearer', and she is honoured in devotions.

The Hussites (Czech: Husité or Kališníci, "Chalice People"; Latin: Hussitae) were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement influenced by both the Byzantine Rite and John Wycliffe that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus (fl. 1401–1415), a part of the Bohemian Reformation.

The Czech lands had originally been Christianized by Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, who introduced the Byzantine Rite in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language and the Byzantine tradition of Communion in both kinds administered by the holy spoon. Over the centuries that followed, however, the Roman Rite in Ecclesiastical Latin, which is less easily understood than Slavonic by native speakers of Old Czech, was imposed upon the Czech people despite considerable public resistance, by German-speaking bishops, beginning with Wiching, from the Holy Roman Empire. (See also Sázava Monastery). As a cultural memory of both communion in both kinds and the Divine Liturgy in a language closer to the vernacular is believed to have survived well into the Renaissance, the ideas of Jan Hus and others like him swiftly gained a wide public following. After the trial and execution of Hus at the Council of Constance, a series of crusades, civil wars, victories and compromises between various factions with different theological agendas broke out. At the end of the Hussite Wars (1420–1434), the now Catholic-supported Utraquist side came out victorious from protracted conflict against Jan Žižka and the Taborites, who embraced the more radical theological teachings of John Wycliffe and the Lollards, and became the dominant Hussite group in Bohemia.

A homily (from Greek ὁμιλία, homilía) is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the "public explanation of a sacred doctrine" or text. The works of Origen and John Chrysostom (known as Paschal Homily) are considered exemplary forms of Christian homily.

In Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox churches, a homily is usually given during Mass (Divine Liturgy or Holy Qurbana for Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, and Divine Service for the Lutheran Church) at the end of the Liturgy of the Word. Many people consider it synonymous with a sermon.