Jump to Arriving Candles Venerating an icon The sign of the cross Standing, sitting, kneeling Communion, and the one thing you can share in After What to wear The things you are worried about that do not matter
The other articles on this site explain why Orthodox worship is long, what an icon is, and why visitors do not receive communion. This one is about your body: where to stand, what to do with your hands, and what happens when everyone else moves and you do not know why.
It is the thing people are too embarrassed to ask, and the thing that keeps some of them from coming back.
One promise before the details. Everything below is custom, not law, and almost all of it varies between a Greek parish, an Antiochian one, an OCA one and a Russian one. Nobody is counting. A visitor who stands quietly at the back for an hour and does nothing at all has done nothing wrong.
Arriving
You will probably walk in partway through. That is normal, not late.
Most parishes serve Matins — a preparatory service — for roughly an hour before the Divine Liturgy, with no break between them. Two parish guides put it in almost the same words: when you arrive on Sunday morning, worship will already be in progress.
If you do come in well after the start, there is a courtesy worth knowing. Wait a moment in the entrance if the priest is censing, if the Gospel is being read, if the homily is under way, or during one of the processions the Church calls the Entrances. Slip in at a seam. The Antiochian Archdiocese’s own etiquette guidance is fairly firm about this; some Greek parish guides are much more relaxed and treat the posted start time as, in their words, an educated guess. Both attitudes are real.
Sit or stand toward the back or the sides. The only thing you can actually do wrong here is block the aisle or stand where you cut off someone’s view of the altar.
Will there be pews? Depends where you are. Most Greek, Antiochian and OCA parishes in North America have them. Many Russian and Serbian parishes, and most monasteries, keep an open floor with a few chairs along the walls for the elderly. Neither is more Orthodox than the other.
Candles
Just inside the door there is usually a stand of candles and a box for a small donation. People take one, light it, place it in the sand, and pray for a moment — for someone living, someone dead, or themselves.
This happens continuously through the early part of the service, not at one appointed moment. It is not a ritual you have to get right. The candle is an old image of a prayer going up.
Visitors may do this. One Serbian parish’s guide says so outright: light a candle whether or not you are Orthodox. The only timing restriction is the same as for arriving — not during the Entrances, the censing, the readings or the sermon.
Venerating an icon
Near the entrance there will be an icon on a stand. People stop at it on the way in.
The usual sequence, taught in nearly identical words by Antiochian, Greek and Serbian parishes: make the sign of the cross and bow from the waist, twice; kiss the icon; cross yourself and bow once more.
Where to kiss it matters more than the choreography. Kiss the hand or the feet of the figure, or the border of the icon. Not the face. One Greek parish’s etiquette page says it flatly: it is not proper to kiss an icon in the face. This is convention rather than canon — no council legislated it — but it is universal enough that it is worth knowing.
Two practical notes the parish guides themselves raise: blot lipstick first, because the residue genuinely damages icons; and if you are not Orthodox, this is optional. Do it if it is honest for you. The Orthodox Church in America’s own answer to a nervous visitor is the right instinct — do these things when they express what you actually believe, not to blend in.
The sign of the cross
Thumb and first two fingertips together for the Trinity, the last two fingers folded to the palm for Christ’s two natures. Forehead, chest, right shoulder, then left. Right to left — the opposite of the Western order.
It is customary at the mention of the Trinity, on entering and leaving, when passing an icon, and at various points in the service. When exactly is not fixed, and different parishes do it more or less often.
The thing to hold onto: no one is watching your hands. Following the person in front of you is a perfectly normal way to get through a first visit, and so is doing nothing.
One small point of technique that some parishes stress and others never mention: when a priest blesses you, the custom is to bow rather than cross yourself.
Standing, sitting, kneeling
Standing is the default. Sitting is fine when you need it — age, pregnancy, illness, a bad knee, a night shift. No source treats this as a failure, and one Antiochian parish’s guide says so about as plainly as it can be said: if you are exhausted, sit.
Kneeling is the one place here where there is an actual canon rather than a custom. Canon 20 of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325 directs that prayer be offered standing, not kneeling, on Sundays and through the fifty days of Pascha — because those are days of resurrection, and kneeling is a posture of penitence. Canon 90 of the Council in Trullo in 692 says the same for the Paschal season.
In practice this varies a great deal. Prostrations during Lent are a different matter and remain common, and at least one Greek jurisdiction is described as tolerating Sunday kneeling rather than forbidding it. If you see people kneeling on a Sunday, they are not doing something outrageous.
Communion, and the one thing you can share in
At some point everyone will begin to move forward. You stay where you are.
Communion in the Orthodox Church is for baptised and chrismated Orthodox Christians who have prepared. Every jurisdiction agrees on this and there is a separate article here on why. It is not a judgement on you; it is what the Church understands communion to be.
Do not cross your arms over your chest and go up for a blessing unless you have asked. A few parishes have borrowed that Western practice; most have not, and at the chalice the crossed-arms posture is what a communicant does — you can be given communion by mistake. If you would like a blessing, ask the priest afterwards.
Antidoron is the part you can share in, and it is worth knowing about. At the end of the Liturgy, blessed bread — cut from the same loaf the eucharistic bread came from, but not consecrated — is handed out. Its name means “instead of the gift.” In most North American parishes, across jurisdictions, anyone present may take it: an OCA parish puts it as “everyone present, Orthodox or not,” and Greek and Antiochian parishes say the same.
Not everywhere, though. Some parishes reserve it for the Orthodox. Watch what happens, or ask whoever greets you.
After
At the end there is usually a line to kiss the cross the priest is holding and receive antidoron. A visitor can join it, bow for a blessing, or step aside. Any of those is fine.
Then there is coffee hour, and it is not optional in the way you might assume. It is where the parish actually talks to each other, and it is the natural place to say you are new. Tell the priest. He will be glad you did, and every parish guide consulted for this article says the same thing.
What to wear
There is no enforced dress code in the great majority of parishes. The informal standard is modest and reasonably tidy — what you might wear to meet someone whose good opinion you wanted. Flat shoes, because you will be standing.
Headscarves. In some Slavic and Russian-tradition parishes, most women cover their heads, and in a few places it is genuinely expected — one ROCOR cathedral in London publishes a dress code and keeps spare scarves at the door. In most North American Greek, Antiochian and OCA parishes it is uncommon and nobody will think anything of a bare head. You cannot always tell in advance which kind of parish you are walking into, which is an argument for dressing modestly and then not worrying about it.
No ordinary parish will turn a visitor away over clothes.
The things you are worried about that do not matter
- Standing there not knowing when to sit, stand, cross yourself or bow. Everyone did this once.
- Venerating an icon wrongly, or skipping it entirely.
- Not going up for communion. This marks you as a guest, which is what you are.
- Sitting while others stand.
- Not following in a book, or not understanding the language if part of the service is not in English.
- Getting your fingers wrong.
The convert writer Frederica Mathewes-Green, in an essay that Greek, Antiochian and OCA parishes all republish, puts the whole anxiety to rest in a line: standing there feeling awkward is all right too, and no one will notice.
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.
- What should I do during the service if I’m visiting? — St Michael Antiochian Orthodox Church, Beaumont, Texas — an Antiochian parish, unusually direct
- Church etiquette guidelines from the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America — archdiocesan guidance, stricter on arriving late
- Church etiquette — Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, Metropolis of Denver — a Greek parish; the source of “not proper to kiss an icon in the face”
- Orthodox church etiquette — St Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Church, Johnstown — Serbian practice, including kneeling
- What to expect when visiting — Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, Iowa — pews vary; antidoron offered to all
- Can non-Orthodox attend an Orthodox church? — Archangel Michael Orthodox Church, OCA Diocese of the Midwest — “never left out of the welcome”
- Attending services — Orthodox Church in America — the national OCA voice on not performing conformity
- Antidoron — OrthodoxWiki — notes that some places reserve it for the faithful
- Should Orthodox Christians kneel on Sundays? — Pravmir — Canon 20 and the range of current practice
- Twelve Things I Wish I’d Known, Frederica Mathewes-Green — republished by St Innocent Orthodox Church — a convert’s essay that parishes of every jurisdiction hand to visitors
- Visitor information — Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church, St Louis — candles open to all; headscarves traditional but optional
- Visitors’ guidance — ROCOR Cathedral, London — the strict end of the dress-code range, and an honest example of it
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.