Holy Orders is the Mystery through which Christ sets apart men to serve as deacons, priests, and bishops in His Church. It’s not just a job or a calling in the way your Baptist uncle might talk about being “called to ministry.” Something actually happens. The Holy Spirit descends, and the man becomes an icon of Christ the High Priest, able to celebrate the Mysteries and shepherd God’s people.
This is how Christ stays present with us. He promised He’d be with the Church until the end of the age, and Holy Orders is how He keeps that promise. The bishop or priest at the altar isn’t play-acting or representing an absent Jesus. Christ is there, acting through him, offering Himself in the Eucharist just as He did in the Upper Room.
Three Orders, One Priesthood
We’ve got three levels of ordained clergy, and they’re not interchangeable.
Deacons serve. That’s what the word means. During the Liturgy at St. Michael, you’ll see the deacon proclaiming the Gospel, leading the litanies, censing the church, and assisting the priest at the altar. He can’t celebrate the Eucharist on his own or hear confessions. His role goes back to Acts 6, when the Apostles ordained seven men to serve the Church’s practical needs so they could focus on prayer and teaching.
Priests (we also call them presbyters) do most of what you’d expect clergy to do. They celebrate the Divine Liturgy, hear confessions, baptize, anoint the sick, perform marriages, and shepherd parishes. But they can’t ordain anyone. They can’t consecrate the holy chrism used in chrismation. They serve under a bishop’s authority, extending his ministry into local communities.
Bishops are the successors of the Apostles. Full stop. Every bishop can trace his ordination back through an unbroken chain of hands laid on heads, all the way to the Twelve. Bishops ordain clergy, guard the faith against heresy, and unite the Church. Metropolitan Saba, our bishop here in the Antiochian Archdiocese, stands in that apostolic line. Without bishops, there’s no Church in the Orthodox sense.
These three orders aren’t competing power structures. They’re more like a symphony, each playing their part in Christ’s one priesthood.
What Happens at an Ordination
Ordinations happen during the Divine Liturgy, and they’re done by the laying on of hands. For a deacon or priest, the bishop places his hands on the man’s head and prays for the Holy Spirit to descend. The prayer starts with “Divine grace, which always heals what is infirm and supplies what is lacking, ordains this man…” It’s the Spirit doing the ordaining, not just the bishop’s personal authority.
For a bishop, you need at least two or three bishops present, all laying on hands together. This shows that bishops are equals, none above the others except in honor.
After the prayer, the newly ordained man is vested in the garments of his order. A deacon gets his orarion, that long stole worn over the left shoulder. A priest receives the epitrachelion (the stole worn around the neck) and the cuffs. A bishop gets the omophorion, that wide decorated stole representing the lost sheep Christ carries on His shoulders, plus a staff and a panagia (an icon of the Theotokos worn on the chest).
The grace given in ordination is permanent. It’s not a job you can quit. Even if a man is defrocked for serious sin, he doesn’t stop being ordained in some ontological sense. The grace is there, just forbidden to be exercised.
Why Only Men?
This trips people up, especially if you’re coming from mainline Protestant churches that ordain women. We don’t do it because the priest stands at the altar as an icon of Christ the Bridegroom offering Himself to the Church, His Bride. Christ became incarnate as a man. That matters. The priest isn’t just a worship leader or a preacher. He’s acting in the person of Christ at the altar, and that requires being male.
This isn’t about women being less valuable or less holy. The Theotokos is more holy than any apostle or bishop who ever lived. But she wasn’t ordained either. It’s about the specific iconic role of the priesthood in the divine economy.
If that’s hard to swallow right now, you’re not alone. Sit with it. Ask questions. But know that this is the unbroken teaching of the Church from the beginning.
Not Symbolic, Not Just Functional
Here’s where we part ways with most Protestants. In Baptist or non-denominational churches around Beaumont, a pastor is usually someone who felt called, went to seminary, and got hired by a congregation. He’s a teacher, a leader, maybe a gifted preacher. But there’s no sacramental change in him. He’s doing a job.
We believe ordination changes a man. The Holy Spirit gives him a grace that makes him able to do things he couldn’t do before. A priest can turn bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. He can absolve sins. Not because he’s personally holier than you, but because he’s been ordained. The grace is objective, not dependent on his feelings or yours.
Catholics believe something similar, though they frame it a bit differently with their distinction between the “ministerial priesthood” and the “common priesthood of the faithful.” We’d say all Christians share in Christ’s priesthood through baptism, but the ordained exercise it in a specific way that serves the whole body.
Apostolic Succession Matters
You can’t just decide to start ordaining people. The grace of Holy Orders comes through an unbroken line from the Apostles. When Metropolitan Saba ordained Fr. Michael, he was passing on what was given to him, which was given to the bishop who ordained him, and so on back through the centuries to the Twelve.
This isn’t about paperwork or pedigree. It’s about the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church. St. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, pointed to apostolic succession as the proof against heretics who claimed secret teachings. The bishops could show exactly who ordained them and what they’d been taught.
Break that chain, and you’ve lost the guarantee. We’re not saying God can’t work outside the Church or that non-Orthodox Christians don’t have real faith. But we are saying that the fullness of the faith, the Mysteries in their integrity, require apostolic succession.
If you’re visiting St. Michael and wondering whether what happens at the altar is real or just symbolic, know this: the priest serving there stands in a line that goes back to Pentecost. That’s why we’re confident that when he says “This is My Body,” it is.
