Focus is communal worship and prayer

On Sunday, the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. This has been observed since the first century. It is linked to Pentecost, honoring all the Apostles who were the first witnesses to receive the Holy Spirit.

St. Peter and St. Paul were chosen for this feast to represent the Apostles on purpose. Jesus called St. Peter the rock of the Church (Matthew 16:18) and St. Paul in the Holy Spirit had to qualify himself above all the Apostles because of his greater suffering (2 Corinthians 11:23).

Two Apostles were chosen for this feast because the early Church never liked the idea of a single man in charge. Thus, all the Apostles are represented as equal. This is due to the Holy Trinity, where God is relational because He is three persons in one essence.

The same principle applies to the Church. Clerical authority is relational, even if one is given an honorary status. Worship is relational, since the clergy’s prayers require the laity’s responses to be complete. This is why the Orthodox Church is most relational with the early Church.

For the early Christians, prayer was a relational word and a public voice. Just as love is a relational term, so is prayer a communal orientation. Even marriage had strong social effects.

In ancient times, praying by oneself was accepted, but only in obedience to public prayer. Private prayer had to conform to public worship and its theology, which was also relational. Any private revelation was tested by a spiritual heritage. No prayer was in isolation.

This applied to all features of life, even reading. In the fourth century, St. Ambrose was seen reading the Bible alone silently. This was viewed to be bizarre behavior because reading had a public sense to it. It was good for someone to read all by himself, but he had to read out loud.

When silent prayers began to invade worship in later centuries, people complained. They could not hear the priest’s words at the altar. Every word of prayer is supposed to be heard in liturgy and responded to because the people’s amen is just as meaningful as a priest’s consecration. In Greek, Liturgy means “work of the people.”

So there was no such thing as private worship in the modern sense. Even if living as a monk or nun in a desert, there was a public feature to it. Because of Western Christian innovations, we today have made a distinction between public and private. We have separated the self from the Church. And this is why some people today regard Jesus as a private affair.

This is believed because they see the person, the family, the Church as a collection of isolated individuals. Worship has even come to be seen as a gathering without bishops and priests. This is not what the Lord Jesus and the early Christians meant for the Church.

The Apostles obeyed one another, as well as their own councils, not relying on private visions for divine guidance. St. Peter submitted to the authority of St. James, the bishop of Jerusalem in Acts 15. St. Paul submitted to the Apostles’ authority and their councils. A private individual or a supreme religious leader was not desired.

But to some people today, prayer and authority are a hyper-private affair. What is heard from God as they pray and read the Bible does not have to be scrutinized by a community. Some do not go to church on Sundays. In extreme cases, private prayer and hearing Jesus are applied in the same way that ghosts and spirit-guides are listened to.

Though St. Peter and St. Paul are chosen for this feast day, they represent all the Apostles and the rest of the Church. This is a relational feast for relational worship. Resisting relational prayer is a sign of love growing cold. Only in Satan’s spirit of individuality do sin and evil percolate.

The Rev. Andrew Gromm is pastor of St. Michael Orthodox Church in Youngstown.