He, the Son of God, came to earth and founded the Church, through His Apostles and disciples (Mat 28:19-20) for the salvation of mankind. Then, the Apostles appointed successors, known as bishops, priests, deacons and the bishops in turn appointed the other successors. This process is known as Apostolic succession.
We believe that we maintained a direct, unbroken and uninterrupted continuity of love, faith, and order with our Lord Jesus Christ for 2000 years. And it will stay the same forever because our Faith is led by the Holy Spirit, our protector and Comforter (John 14:16-18).
The word “ORTHODOX” comes from the old Greek language and it means:
“ortho” = right, straight and “doxa” = faith, knowledge, glory, praise.
So, orthodox means the right faith. Not because we the people are “right”, but because what is taught and practiced in Orthodoxy is the right believing, the straight line until today, the right way to glorify God, the right worship.
Receiving the commandment directly from our Lord Jesus Christ (Mat 28:19), the disciples started to spread the Gospel to the whole world. Within only a few years after the Resurrection, colonies of Christians sprung in the major cities of the Roman Empire. With only a few intervals of peace, the Church was always persecuted throughout the whole world and thousands upon thousands of Christians were martyred and they are still martyred today, especially in middle-eastern countries. The faith and love expressed by the Christians was viewed as a threat to the religion and political policies of the Empires.
Until the year of 1054, the Christian Church was unified. But after the Great Schism, the Church from Rome (Western Roman Catholic) separated from the Church from Constantinople (Eastern Orthodox). The Great Schism came about due to a complex mix of religious disagreements and political conflicts. Eastern Orthodoxy is the second-largest Christian denomination, with more than 260 million faithful around the world.
The Orthodox Church jurisdictions with the largest number of adherents in modern times are the Russian and the Romanian Orthodox Churches.
The most ancient of the Eastern Orthodox communities existing today are the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Georgia.
The first Orthodox communities in what is today the continental United States were established in Alaska and on the West Coast, as the extreme end of the Russian missionary expansion through Siberia in 1794, through Saint Herman.
The Divine Liturgy, especially the Eucharist, is based on repeating the actions of our Lord Jesus Christ (“do this in remembrance of me” Luke 22, 19), using the bread and wine as His real body and blood (known as the words of the institution). We can NOT receive Holy Communion without proper preparation and it is our duty to always be prepared. After we receive Confession and then the blessing from our spiritual father, we receive Holy Communion on a spoon for “the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life”.
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