Children as Possessions Winter/Spring 1998

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The Orthodox Church in North America gazes across the threshold of the millennium into the twenty-first century with her feet firmly planted in scriptural antiquity. Though the church has always changed and adapted in order to preach the Gospel in the language and style fitting for the people who look to her for salvation at any specific moment in time, the liturgical worship of the church is absolutely scriptural. Anyone who worships in an Orthodox church hears psalms and biblical canticles, composed texts (hymns) filled with scriptural imagery, and prayers woven from the words of the Gospel, all of which call the faithful to repent and receive the immeasurable gift of God's compassionate love and mercy perfectly manifested in the broken Body and spilled Blood of Jesus Christ.

The Orthodox faithful on this continent have come to a new appreciation of this majestic scriptural worship over the last fifty years through the tireless efforts of people who brought renewed life to Orthodox liturgical worship. Of these, Fr. Alexander Schmemann stands at the forefront. Through teaching, preaching, and writing, Fr. Alexander and his colleagues and students kindled anew the understanding of the church as Eucharistic community. Books such as For the Life of the World and The Eucharist have taught clergy and laity alike that the Divine Liturgy is the temporal realization of the eternal Kingdom of God, where the perfect love of the Father, manifested in the sacrifice of his Son on the Cross is made real for the community of the faithful in the Eucharist. This understanding of the Liturgy and the Eucharist has inspired Orthodox Christians in parishes across North America to draw near to the Holy Table and receive the Body and Blood of ...

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