Jump to Asking a blessing What to call him The first email What to ask him, and what not to He is busier than he looks
Most people who are drawn to Orthodoxy read for months before they speak to a single Orthodox Christian. That is the wrong way round, and usually it is shyness rather than conviction that causes it.
Here is what you need to know to get past it.
Asking a blessing
The customary greeting: cup your hands in front of you, right over left, palms up, bow slightly, and say Father, bless. He makes the sign of the cross over you, lays his hand in your palms, and you kiss the back of his hand.
The hand-kiss is respect for the priesthood, not for the man. Priests will tell you this themselves, usually with some embarrassment.
You do not have to do any of this. A visitor, an inquirer, or anyone who is not Orthodox can simply say hello and shake his hand. No priest will hold it against you, and pretending to a custom you do not yet mean is worse than not doing it.
What to call him
A priest is Father and his first name — Father John. Almost universally in North America.
His wife has a title, and which one depends on the parish’s heritage rather than a strict rule:
- Presbytera in Greek parishes
- Khouria in Antiochian parishes, from the Arabic for priest
- Matushka in Russian, OCA and ROCOR parishes — literally “little mother”
- Pani in Carpatho-Russian and some Ukrainian parishes
OrthodoxWiki’s own caveat is the honest one: people generally use the title from the country their parish came from. If you do not know, ask someone. Nobody minds.
A deacon is Father Deacon, or just Father. One clear difference: you do not normally kiss a deacon’s hand.
A bishop is Your Grace. An archbishop or metropolitan is Your Eminence. (A patriarch is Your Beatitude, and the Ecumenical Patriarch Your All-Holiness, which you are unlikely to need.) The blessing is asked the same way.
If you get it wrong you will be corrected kindly, once, and it will not come up again.
The first email
Priests expect enquiries from strangers. It is not an imposition; for many of them it is the best part of the week.
Keep it short. Who you are, that you are interested in Orthodoxy or would like to visit, and a question about when to come. That is enough. If you want to open in the customary way, “Father, bless” is the usual first line.
Most active parishes also have someone whose actual job is looking after visitors and inquirers. If the priest hands you off to that person, you have not been fobbed off.
What to ask him, and what not to
Worth asking him: what this parish’s process is for inquirers. Which services to come to, and when. What to read first. Anything about your own situation — your background, your marriage, your family, your doubts. Those are the questions only he can answer, because they are about you and not about Orthodoxy in general.
Not a good use of him: asking him to adjudicate an argument you read online, to comment on another parish or jurisdiction, or to deliver a complete spiritual direction in a first conversation. Service times, parking and whether the parish serves in English are usually on the website.
The rule of thumb: general questions have general answers, and this site and others can give them. Questions about you need a person who knows you, and that relationship starts somewhere.
He is busier than he looks
A great many North American Orthodox priests are bivocational — they hold an outside job as well as the parish. One priest writing about it describes serving the Liturgy knowing he might be called into work, and the feeling of being a mediocre engineer and a mediocre priest at once.
So: expect a slow reply. Do not assume evenings and weekends are free — weekends are emphatically not free. Keep the first message short. If you hear nothing for a few days, a single gentle follow-up is reasonable, and silence is far more likely to mean a funeral and a day job than a judgement on you.
A note. These articles explain what the Orthodox Church teaches and why. They are not spiritual direction. Anything touching your own rule of prayer, fasting or confession belongs with your priest or spiritual father, who knows you and your circumstances.
- How to greet an Orthodox priest or bishop properly — St John the Evangelist Orthodox Church (OCA) — the blessing, described step by step
- Clergy etiquette: addressing clergy and monastics — All Saints of North America, Hamilton — the fullest single guide to titles, including the deacon exception
- Presbytera — OrthodoxWiki — the origins of Presbytera, Khouria, Matushka and Pani, and the caveat about which is used where
- Clergy etiquette — OrthodoxInfo — an independent compilation; traditionalist in outlook, accurate on forms of address
- On being a bi-vocational priest, Fr Anastasios Hudson — Pravmir — a priest on what the job actually costs
- Visiting an Orthodox church for the first time — OrthodoxCrafter — a lay newcomer guide; the source of “you are not required to do everything”
One passage. One week with it.
Words for the Narrow Way takes a single saying of Christ and gives it seven days — the passage in full, what the Greek is doing, how the Fathers read it, and one practice small enough to actually do.