The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is the main worship service of the Orthodox Church. It’s the Eucharistic celebration we serve most Sundays and feast days, where we offer the Holy Gifts and receive Christ’s Body and Blood.
If you’ve been to St. Michael’s on a Sunday morning, you’ve experienced this liturgy. It’s what we mean when we say “Divine Liturgy.”
The Man Behind the Name
St. John Chrysostom lived in the late 300s and early 400s. He was Archbishop of Constantinople, and “Chrysostom” means “golden-mouthed” because he preached so well. But he didn’t write this liturgy from scratch. He edited and shortened an older Antiochene form that dated back to apostolic times, refining it around 398 AD. Think of him as an editor who took something ancient and made it more accessible without losing its depth.
That matters for us at St. Michael’s. We’re an Antiochian parish, and this liturgy has roots in Antioch, where believers were first called Christians.
What Actually Happens
The service has three main parts. First, there’s the Service of Preparation, which happens before most people arrive. The priest prepares the bread and wine at a side table, cutting the central portion (we call it the Lamb) from the prosphora and arranging it with commemorations for the living and the dead.
Then comes the Liturgy of the Catechumens. This is the public part where everyone can participate. We hear the Great Litany with its repeated “Lord, have mercy.” We sing the antiphons. The priest and servers process with the Gospel Book in the Little Entrance, and we sing the Trisagion. Then we sit for the Epistle reading, stand for the Gospel, and hear the homily.
After that, the Liturgy of the Faithful begins. Historically, catechumens (those preparing for baptism) were dismissed at this point. Now most of us stay, but only those who’ve been chrismated and prepared through confession can receive communion. We sing the Cherubic Hymn while the priest prepares the Gifts at the altar. The Great Entrance processes the bread and wine from the preparation table to the altar. We recite the Creed together.
Then comes the heart of it all: the Anaphora, the great Eucharistic prayer. The priest offers thanksgiving, recites the words of institution from the Last Supper, and calls down the Holy Spirit to transform the bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood. This isn’t symbolic. We believe the change really happens through the Epiclesis, the invocation of the Spirit.
After the Lord’s Prayer, the priest elevates the Lamb and declares, “Holy things for the holy!” We line up to receive communion from a spoon, the Body and Blood together. Then there are thanksgiving prayers and the dismissal.
How It’s Different from St. Basil’s Liturgy
We also use the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, but only ten times a year, mostly during Great Lent and on the eve of Theophany. St. Basil’s liturgy has the same structure, but the prayers are longer and more elaborate. The Anaphora especially is more poetic, with expanded praises of God’s attributes. It’s more solemn. St. John’s liturgy is shorter and more frequent, which is why it became the standard Sunday service.
Why It Matters
This isn’t just a church service in the way that word gets used around here. When your Baptist coworker talks about “going to service,” he usually means hearing a sermon with some worship songs. That’s fine, but it’s not what we’re doing.
The Divine Liturgy is the work of the people (that’s what “liturgy” literally means). We’re not an audience. We’re participants in something that transcends time, the mystical re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice. The whole Church gathers, heaven and earth together, offering the Eucharist.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote a book called For the Life of the World that explains this better than I can, but here’s the basic idea: we bring bread and wine, the fruits of our labor, and offer them to God. He transforms them into His Son’s Body and Blood. We receive them back as the medicine of immortality. Then we go out to be the Body of Christ in the world.
That’s why we don’t just “attend” liturgy. We serve it, we participate in it, we’re formed by it.
If you’re new to Orthodoxy, the liturgy can feel overwhelming at first. There’s a lot of standing (we don’t have pews at St. Michael’s, though some parishes do). There’s incense. There are processions and litanies and responses you don’t know yet. You’ll get lost in the service book. That’s normal. Give it time. Let the liturgy wash over you. You’re not expected to understand everything immediately. You’re entering into something that Christians have been doing for nearly two thousand years, and it takes a while to find your place in it.
But keep coming. The liturgy will teach you the faith in ways that reading never could. You’ll learn to pray with your body, to fast before receiving communion, to anticipate the Great Entrance with that sense of awe when the King of Glory enters. You’ll discover that Sunday morning isn’t just an obligation but the center of the week, the day when everything else makes sense.
