The diptychs are lists of names, living and departed, that we pray for during the Divine Liturgy. Simple as that.
The word comes from Greek meaning “folding boards.” In the early Church, these were literally hinged wax tablets where names got inscribed. Now they’re usually paper lists or cards that the priest keeps at the altar. You’ll find the living on one side, the departed on the other. When someone dies, their name moves from one list to the other.
When We Use Them
The priest commemorates these names at several points during the Liturgy. The most ancient moment is during the Anaphora, the Eucharistic Prayer, right after the epiclesis when the Holy Spirit has been called down upon the gifts. That’s when the priest prays for the bishop, the clergy, and all the faithful by name.
In hierarchical liturgies, when a bishop or patriarch serves, you’ll hear the deacon chant the names of other Orthodox primates during the Great Entrance. “His All-Holiness John, Patriarch of Antioch, many years!” The choir echoes it back. This happens at several other points too, sometimes up to six different places in the service. It’s not just repetition. Each commemoration weaves the whole Church together in prayer.
Your priest commemorates his bishop. The bishop commemorates his metropolitan. The metropolitan commemorates the patriarch. And the patriarch commemorates the heads of other Orthodox churches. It’s how we show we’re in communion with each other. If a bishop’s name gets removed from the diptychs, that’s serious, it means communion is broken.
What This Means
Praying these names isn’t just reading a roll call. It’s the Church expressing her unity across time and space. When we commemorate the living, we’re extending Christian love in the most powerful way we can, bringing them before God at the altar during the Eucharistic sacrifice. When we pray for the departed, we’re affirming that death doesn’t break the Church. They’re still with us. We still love them. We still pray for their salvation.
The departed list at a parish usually includes members who’ve died, clergy who served there, and sometimes Orthodox Christians who labored for the faith in North America. The OCA maintains an official list of departed servants of Orthodoxy that gets updated and distributed to parishes. Our Antiochian parishes do something similar, though each parish keeps its own local lists too.
The living list includes parishioners, family members, people who are sick or struggling, and then the hierarchs, our Metropolitan Joseph, Patriarch John of Antioch, and the other patriarchs and primates of the Orthodox world.
How You Submit Names
Just ask your priest. That’s it. You can write names down on the little slips of paper usually available in the narthex, or you can email them, or you can catch Father after Liturgy. Some parishes have online systems now where you can log in and manage your commemoration lists. But the old-fashioned way works fine, hand the priest a piece of paper with names written clearly.
For the living, include first names (baptismal names if they’re Orthodox). For the departed, same thing. If your grandmother was baptized Elizabeth but everyone called her Betty, use Elizabeth. The priest needs the Christian name.
People often submit names when they’re bringing prosphora for the Liturgy, but you don’t have to be baking bread to ask for prayers. You can submit names any week. If someone’s going through a rough patch, and plenty of folks in Southeast Texas are dealing with layoffs at the plants or recovery from the last hurricane, get their name on the list. Let the whole Church pray for them at the holiest moment of the week.
Why It Matters Here
In a place where most people grew up Baptist or Church of Christ, this practice can feel unfamiliar. You might wonder if it’s biblical. It is. St. Paul tells Timothy to make “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all people” (1 Timothy 2:1). The early Church took that seriously and made it part of the Liturgy itself.
And honestly, there’s something deeply human about it. We want to pray for the people we love. The diptychs give that impulse a home in the Church’s most central act of worship. Your mother’s name gets spoken at the altar. Your friend fighting cancer gets lifted up before God. Your grandfather who died last year isn’t forgotten, he’s still part of the family, still prayed for, still held in the Church’s memory.
That’s what “memory eternal” means when we sing it at funerals. Not just that we’ll remember them, but that God remembers them. And so does His Church, week after week, Liturgy after Liturgy, until Christ comes again.
