POINTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE

“You always list people whom you ask prayers for separately as Orthodox and non-Orthodox. Why? Do you think that there are two classes of people?” - S. E., Altrincham.

WE DO NOT THINK of people in classes at all, especially in the religious sphere, but of course we recognise that there is a difference between a baptised, chrismated and communicant Orthodox Christian and one who is not. If it were not so, we would not have become Orthodox ourselves. That distinction was foreshadowed in the Old Testament dispensation, with the distinction between the Jews, the people of Israel, and the Gentiles or nations. It exists, as the Gospels make clear (Matt. 16:13- 16, Mark 7:27, John 3:3, John4:22-24, John 15:1-9, etc.), in the New Testament dispensation in which we now live, the Orthodox being the people of the New Israel.

However, the reason that we list the Orthodox separately from the non-Orthodox has little to do with simply marking distinctions. It is because the Church prays differently for the Orthodox and for the non- Orthodox. For instance, in the Divine Liturgy, at the proskomidi (the service of preparation) we take particles of prosphora and place them on the diskos with the Lamb and the particles that have been placed there in commemoration of the saints. Such particles are only taken for Orthodox Christians, because they only can participate in this ministry, and because the prepared diskos at the end of the proskomidi is a icon of the Church, with the Saviour surrounded by the saints, the faithful departed and the members of her company still struggling in this earthly life. Similarly, the Church only permits us to serve memorial services for the Orthodox, for the content of many of the prayers would make no sense if applied to someone outside the Church.

These disciplines themselves are manifestations of the Church’s love for the people who are prayed for. Her ministry of prayer is a healing ministry. If you went to a physician with a foot badly infected with gangrene and he advised amputation, you would not be surprised and might later be thankful to him for saving your life; but if he advised amputation when you went to him with a bout of flu or for whatever complaint you sought his help, you would know that he was a quack. Doctors wisely suit the treatment to the disease, and the Church does the same. It may be that a particular priest, out of ignorance, to curry favour with certain people in his congregation or, worse, thinking himself to know better than the Church and to be more kindly than She, might serve a pannikhida for a non-Orthodox or commemorate them in the proskomidi or perform some other inappropriate prayer, but, just as it is advisable to choose a physician who follows professional good practice, so it is spiritually wiser to follow the Church’s disciplines, which are manifestations of her Christ-centred love and channels of His love towards us.