What Is the Orthodox Church?
The Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils, and the second-largest Christian communion in the world.
The Orthodox Church — formally the Orthodox Catholic Church — is the communion of Christian churches that trace their life in an unbroken line from the Apostles, through the age of the seven Ecumenical Councils (AD 325–787), to the present day. With roughly 220 million members, it is the world's second-largest Christian body.
What "Orthodox" means
The Greek word ὀρθόδοξος combines orthos ("right, straight") with doxa ("glory, opinion"). To be Orthodox is to hold and to worship the truth as it has been given by Christ and the Apostles and preserved in the Fathers, the Councils, and the liturgy of the Church.
The great families
The Orthodox communion is not a single centralized institution but a family of self-governing (autocephalous) churches in full communion with one another: the ancient patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem; the churches of Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and the Orthodox Church in America; together with newer autonomous churches.
Belief in brief
- One God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
- Christ is fully God and fully man, incarnate of the Virgin Mary.
- The seven Mysteries (Sacraments), of which the Eucharist is the center.
- Salvation as theosis — deification, real communion with God.
- The intercession of the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary) and the saints.
- The veneration of holy icons as windows into heaven.
Worship
The heart of Orthodox life is the Divine Liturgy, celebrated most often according to St. John Chrysostom. Around it are woven the daily services of Vespers, Matins, and the Hours, the fasting seasons, and the annual cycle of feasts that this calendar exists to help you keep.