Liturgical Languages in Today’s Orthodox Tradition

Abstract

The Christian tradition from the first days of its existence used the living word of the gospel. From the event of Pentecost, when the word of faith sounded in the ears of the listeners in their own language, the Church established an important principle: the Heavenly Father gave the apostles of Christ the gift of speaking in different languages, but did not give the multi-lingual pilgrims in Jerusalem the gift of understanding Hebrew. During the 2,000-year history of the Church, Christ's teaching was spread in the language of the respective peoples. But parallel to this, a tendency to use in worship old languages considered "holy" was later noticed. While the truth is that what is sacred is the content of Christian preaching and worship, not the language in which it is offered. To this day, this practice of neglecting the understandable language of the people is observed in some of the local Orthodox churches. And this seriously complicates the work of the Christian mission.