More About Holy Incarnation
Photos from a typical Sunday at Holy Incarnation.
Holy Incarnation Is...
Orthodox
Orthodox Christianity is the least-known and least-understood of the Christian confessions in America. About 3 million Americans are Orthodox Christians. We are neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic. Orthodox Christianity began at Pentecost and has preserved the Apostolic Tradition "in its teachings, practices and authority" unchanged for 2000 years. We believe that God has revealed Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that Jesus Christ is both God and man. He took on our flesh, lived a sinless life, was crucified, rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven where He is today. We believe, as the Fathers of the Church have affirmed since the earliest days of the Church, that "God became human, that man might become divine." That is, that we are called not just to be "nice" and "good" and "moral", but united with God Himself through Christ, to be as St. Peter said, "partakers of the divine nature" (II Peter 1:4).
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Multi-Ethnic
Orthodox communities are not just Greek and Russian and Eastern European. Orthodoxy has always existed unchanged in the Middle East. There are also Japanese Orthodox, African Orthodox, Eskimos who are Orthodox. Nearly all the parishioners at Holy Incarnation are converts to the Faith, including our priest and his family. And nearly all are of European descent. So Orthodoxy is not just for Russians, Greeks, Middle Easterners -- anyone can be Orthodox. In fact, since Western Europe used to be Orthodox, chances are your ancestors were Orthodox a thousand years ago!
English-Speaking
We're as American as apple pie. Our services are entirely in English, except for the Kyrie in Greek and the closing phrase in Latin. We are proud to say that our parish was the first English-language parish in the Downriver area.
Western Rite
Most Orthodox churches use the form of worship common in the Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries. A handful of parishes, however, use the older Western form of worship--a worship form common to Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians until the changes in the 1970s. In fact, 10% of all parishes in the Antiochian Archdiocese are Western Rite. Therefore, liturgical services at Holy Incarnation are comfortable and familiar to those who long for the reverence, tradition and solemnity of the past. Specifically, Holy Incarnation employs the old Latin Mass--except in English!
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Reverent & Prayerful
An Orthodox worship service is "heaven on earth". Our form of worship remains unchanged from Christ and the Apostles. If you took a Christian from the first century (or from any time or place during the first millennium A.D, for that matter) he would be completely at home in our services, and vice versa. Some of our hymns date back to the first century, and our services preserve the same ancient format of the earliest centuries. To visit our services is not only to go back in time, as it were, but more importantly to be lifted out of time and space and into the presence of God Himself, to worship Him alongside the angels and all the saints who have gone before us. Any description of a vision of Heaven in the Bible, -- whether Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6 or St. John's vision in Revelation 4, -- shows the same elements that you'll find here: chanting, incense, candlesticks, falling on our knees before God. We do not just imitate the heavenly worship; we actually participate in it.
You'll also find a profound reverence at our services. We're quiet when we enter so that we can prepare ourselves to listen to the Spirit. We genuflect and kneel, because we're in the awe-filled presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. We chant using the ancient, yet familiar, chants (the Gregorian chant) because we wish to hear the angels singing with us. And we are comfortable with silence, because the noise of our world can distract us from the Word the Father speaks.
Welcoming
Above all, you'll find that we are welcoming and friendly. We're just regular folks, like you. And so we live life as you do -- with hurts, with joys, with sorrow, with laughter. And together we "build one another up" as we strive toward the common goal: to enter as one into the kingdom of heaven, joined with the angels and saints and faithful departed, partaking in God.
