Topic: Intercessory Prayer at the Liturgy

[Father Peter]

Hiya

Our community in Kent used to rent a Cemetery Chapel in Maidstone, and surrounded by so many graves, recent ones as well as those going back 150 years, we used to pray in the Liturgy for those who had been recently bereaved, those who had died unmourned, and those who had died by their own hands, that God would have mercy.

How spiky are the various Orthodox communities about prayers for wider categories and named folk at the Liturgy?

Is there a difference between praying with those who are heretics and teach heresy, and those who are heterodox through the failure of Orthodoxy to witness in the West for centuries?

If we pray for the Queen, the Court and the Government, should we not also pray for family and friends, at least for their salvation and conversion to Orthodoxy?

What's the different attitudes, I'm not dogmatic any and either way.

[moronikos]

On the sign up sheet at the narthex of the church, we have a list to put people's names on for prayer during the liturgy.  The people who sign up are supposed to put an asterisk next to people who aren't Orthodox so that Father does not mention them out loud.  I don't know if he mentions them silently or not.  I will have to ask.

I remember that after 9/11 at a prayer service at the Greek parish in town, we of course prayed for the victims and their families--but not specifically by name.  Most of those of course would not be Orthodox.  Maybe it wasn't the canonical thing to do???  However, I do think it was the Christian thing to do.

The swine, Joseph

[Father Peter]

I remember that after 9/11 at a prayer service at the Greek parish in town, we of course prayed for the victims and their families--but not specifically by name.  Most of those of course would not be Orthodox.  Maybe it wasn't the canonical thing to do???  However, I do think it was the Christian thing to do.

I think that's what I mean by the question. Isn't there a difference between a heretic who teaches heresy and one who has been born into heterodoxy through no fault of their own.

This is why Timothy the Great of Alexandria taught that those who were Chalcedonians of the simple sort did not need to present a theolgoical thesis when they came across to the Church but if they rejected heresy that was enough. Yet clergy had to spend a years probabtion before being received in their orders to ensure their stability.

I'm not saying that no distinction is necessary, not at all, but if a child is known to us, say, who is desperately ill, yet its parents are not Orthodox, and don't know anything about Orthodoxy, but are seeking to be devout according to what they know of the truth, should we not pray, even and especially at the liturgy?

I don't know. I'm not trying to change tradition. But it seems to me there is a difference between praying 'Lord, help Arius who has a bad foot at the moment', and praying for a simple believer who hasn't been fortunate enough to find Orthodoxy yet but still has needs?

[arimethea]

On the sign up sheet at the narthex of the church, we have a list to put people's names on for prayer during the liturgy.  The people who sign up are supposed to put an asterisk next to people who aren't Orthodox so that Father does not mention them out loud.  I don't know if he mentions them silently or not.  I will have to ask.

The reason for the asterisk may be so that your priest does not commerate them by placing a particle on the paten for them.

I know today that the victims of the camp in California and of the earthquake in Iran where mentioned at the great entrance for the commerations of the departed. I also know that they where not commerated during the prothesis. Another example, deals with the death this past year of the Governor of our state. He was remembered for the 40 days after his passing and at the memorial service the Sunday after his passing he was among those remembered.

There have been very few times in history that Orthodox have been under an Orthodox nation and ruler. From very early times civil authorities have been prayed for in the services, even when those civil authorities where actively trying to kill us.

[Father Peter]

Yes we have commemorated folk at the Great Entrance rather than at the prothesis.