Liturgy in the context of "Western Rite Orthodox"

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, also known as the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, is an autocephalous church within the wider communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Established in the mid-fifth century as one of the oldest patriarchates in Christendom, it is headquartered in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and led by the patriarch of Jerusalem, currently Theophilos III. The patriarchate's ecclesiastical jurisdiction includes roughly 200,000 to 500,000 Orthodox Christians across the Holy Land in Palestine, Jordan and Israel.

The church traces its foundation in Jerusalem to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, according to Christian beliefs, descended on the disciples of Jesus Christ and ushered the spread of the Gospel. The church celebrates its liturgy in the ancient Byzantine Rite – whose sacred language, Koine Greek, is the original language of the New Testament – and follows its own liturgical year under the Julian calendar.

In Christian theology, ecclesiology is the study of the Church, the origins of Christianity, its relationship to Jesus, its role in salvation, its polity, its discipline, its eschatology, and its leadership.

In its early history, one of the Church's primary ecclesiological issues had to do with the status of Gentile members in what had become the New Testament fulfilment of the essentially Jewish Old Testament church. It later contended with such questions as whether it was to be governed by a council of presbyters or a single bishop, how much authority the bishop of Rome had over other major bishops, the role of the Church in the world, whether salvation was possible outside of the institution of the Church, the relationship between the Church and the State, and questions of theology and liturgy and other issues. Ecclesiology may be used in the specific sense of a particular church or denomination's character, self-described or otherwise. This is the sense of the word in such phrases as Catholic ecclesiology, Protestant ecclesiology, and ecumenical ecclesiology.

Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the denominational hierarchy composed of other clergy) to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination may vary by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is undergoing, the process of ordination is sometimes called an ordinand. The liturgy used at an ordination is commonly found in a book known as an Ordinal which provides the ordo (ritual and rubrics) for celebrations.

Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified ancestor. More generally, prayer can also have the purpose of giving thanks or praise, and in comparative religion is closely associated with more abstract forms of meditation and with charms or spells.

Prayer can take a variety of forms: it can be part of a set liturgy or ritual, and it can be performed alone or in groups. Prayer may take the form of a hymn, incantation, formal creedal statement, or a spontaneous utterance in the praying person.

The Vedic period, or the Vedic age (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (c. 1500–900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, between the end of the urban Indus Valley Civilisation and a second urbanisation, which began in the central Indo-Gangetic Plain c. 600 BCE. The Vedas are liturgical texts which formed the basis of the influential Brahmanical ideology, which developed in the Kuru kingdom, a tribal union of several Indo-Aryan tribes. The Vedas contain details of life during this period that have been interpreted to be historical and constitute the primary sources for understanding the period. These documents, alongside the corresponding archaeological record, allow for the evolution of the Indo-Aryan and Vedic culture to be traced and inferred.

The Vedas were composed and orally transmitted with precision by speakers of an Old Indo-Aryan language who had migrated into the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent early in this period. The Vedic society was patriarchal and patrilineal. Early Indo-Aryans were a Late Bronze Age society centred in the Punjab, organised into tribes rather than kingdoms, and primarily sustained by a pastoral way of life.

A church service (or a worship service) is a formalized period of Christian communal worship, often held in a church building. Most Christian denominations hold church services on the Lord's Day (offering Sunday morning and Sunday evening services); a number of traditions have mid-week services, while some traditions worship on a Saturday. In some Christian denominations, church services are held daily, with these including those in which the seven canonical hours are prayed, as well as the offering of the Mass, among other forms of worship. In addition to this, many Christians attend services on holy days such as Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Ascension Thursday, among others depending on the Christian denomination.

The church service is the gathering together of Christians to be taught the "Word of God" (the Christian Bible) and encouraged in their faith. Technically, the church in "church service" refers to the gathering of the faithful rather than to the physical place in which it takes place. In most Christian traditions services are presided over by clergy wherever possible, but some traditions utilize lay preachers. Styles of service vary greatly, from the Catholic, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Reformed (Continental Reformed, Presbyterian and Congregationalist) and Anglican traditions of liturgical worship to informal worship characterized by certain free church traditions, common among Methodists and Baptists, that often combine worship with teaching for the believers, which may also have an evangelistic component appealing to backsliders and the non-Christians in the congregation (cf. altar call). Quakers and some other groups have no formal outline to their services, but allow the worship to develop as the participants present feel moved.

Ecclesiastical Latin, also called Church Latin or Liturgical Latin, is a form of Latin developed to discuss Christian thought in late antiquity and used in Christian liturgy, theology, and church administration to the present day, especially in the Catholic Church. It includes words from Vulgar Latin and Classical Latin (as well as Greek and Hebrew) re-purposed with Christian meaning. It is less stylized and rigid in form than Classical Latin, sharing vocabulary, forms, and syntax, while at the same time incorporating informal elements which had always been with the language but which were excluded by the literary authors of Classical Latin.

Its pronunciation was partly standardized in the late 8th century during the Carolingian Renaissance as part of Charlemagne's educational reforms, and this new letter-by-letter pronunciation, used in France and England, was adopted in Iberia and Italy a couple of centuries afterwards. As time passed, pronunciation diverged depending on the local vernacular language, giving rise to even highly divergent forms such as the traditional English pronunciation of Latin, which has now been largely abandoned for reading Latin texts. Within the Catholic Church and in certain Protestant churches, such as the Anglican Church, a pronunciation based on modern Italian phonology, known as Italianate Latin, has become common since the late 19th century.

The Christian Gospels of Mark and Matthew say that, after the Ascension of Jesus, his Apostles "went out and preached everywhere". This is described in Mark 16 verses 19 and 20, and Matthew 28 verses 19 and 20. According to a tradition mentioned by Eusebius, they dispersed to distinct parts of the world. In the Middle Ages, a liturgical feast of the Dispersion of the Apostles was celebrated to commemorate their missionary work and their founding the apostolic sees. This annual feast was held on 15 July and ranked as a major double.

The Acts of the Apostles, the canonical sequel to the Gospel of Luke, portrays the dispersal as occurring a substantial time after the ascension, with the ministry staying in Jerusalem at first and spreading from there beginning with the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch.