At St. Michael’s, we worship in English. That’s the short answer.
But it’s worth understanding why, because it tells you something important about how Orthodoxy has always worked. We don’t have a sacred language that must be used everywhere. We never did. The Orthodox Church has always believed that people should pray in the language they actually speak.
When St. Paul preached in Corinth, he used Greek. When the faith spread to Rome, Latin. When Saints Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity to the Slavs in the ninth century, they invented an alphabet so people could worship in Slavonic. The Church has been translated into hundreds of languages over two thousand years because the gospel isn’t trapped in ancient words. It’s living.
Some Orthodox parishes in America still use Greek or Slavonic or Arabic, often because they serve immigrant communities or people who grew up with those languages. That’s fine. But the Antiochian Archdiocese has embraced English as the vernacular language of North America. Most Antiochian parishes worship entirely in English, especially those with many converts.
You might hear a phrase or two in Arabic at some parishes during major feasts. A “Kyrie eleison” (Greek for “Lord, have mercy”) shows up in our music sometimes. But these are touches of heritage, not requirements. If you walk into St. Michael’s on Sunday morning, you’ll understand every word.
This isn’t a compromise or a loss of tradition. It’s actually the tradition. The Church has never said you must pray in a language you don’t understand. That would be strange, wouldn’t it? How can you say “Amen” to a prayer if you don’t know what’s being asked?
Now, people coming from Catholic backgrounds sometimes expect Latin. People from Protestant backgrounds sometimes assume ancient languages are more holy or authentic. But Orthodoxy doesn’t work that way. When Jesus prayed, he used Aramaic, the language regular people spoke in first-century Galilee. He didn’t pray in ancient Hebrew to sound more religious. He talked to his Father in the words he’d learned from his mother.
The Divine Liturgy you’ll hear at St. Michael’s is the same liturgy that’s been prayed for over sixteen hundred years. St. John Chrysostom wrote most of it in the fourth century. But you’ll hear it in English because you speak English. A Christian in Ethiopia hears it in Ge’ez. A Christian in Romania hears it in Romanian. Same prayers, different languages. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
Some people worry that English can’t carry the weight of these ancient prayers. I get that concern. But English has been doing this work for decades now, and it’s proven itself. The translations we use aren’t casual or sloppy. They’re dignified, beautiful, and theologically precise. When you hear “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us,” you’re hearing something that works in English just as it works in Greek.
If you visit on a Sunday, you won’t need a translation guide or a transliterated booklet. You can just pray. That’s the whole point. We want you to understand what’s happening, to join your voice to ours, to mean the words you’re saying. Orthodoxy isn’t a secret society with coded language. It’s the Church, and the Church speaks to her children in words they can understand.
Come hear for yourself. Sunday mornings at 10:00, we’ll be praying in English, and you’re welcome to pray with us.
