Lord, “sanctify them that love the beauty of Thy house!”

At the end of each Divine Liturgy, the priest leaves the altar, stands in front of the ambo (the elevated part of the church in front of the altar from which the deacon proclaims the litanies and reads the Gospel) and reads the ‘prayer behind the ambo’. In this prayer we hear the following words based on the 8th verse of the 25th (26th) Psalm: “Sanctify them that love the beauty of Thy house.” For many of you, these words should be comforting because you truly love our church and make great efforts to beautify it. Some of you sing or read beautifully, others sew or embroider vestments, a third person decorates the icons with flowers. Someone else paints icons, another cleans and tidies up the church, and all of you donate for repairs. Thus, through your efforts, our church truly becomes magnificent and, as far as it is possible, reflects the splendor of the eternal Heavenly Kingdom! This is the whole point of decorating the church, so that this elegance reminds us of the beauty of the future heavenly life.

Of course, the most important decorations in the church are not the vestments, the golden dome, the new steps in front of the main entrance, nor the beautiful icons, but the people who come to pray and partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. The most gracefully-built church and the most elegant divine service without people, without parishioners, is like an empty house and the whole reason for this beauty is lost. Thank God, all of you understand this and there is always someone in the church at the services to ‘beautify’ them.

Since all of us take such great care in decorating the church with icons, vestments, and flowers, let’s not forget about ourselves and try not to create dissonance in the church’s beauty with our outward appearance. In earlier times, no one would have thought of coming to services, especially on feastdays, dressed in everyday clothes. We all know the idiom ‘Sunday best,’ which refers to the best, most beautiful, clean, elegant clothes that are worn only on Sundays and holidays. Someone may object and point out that a person’s appearance is not important, that the main thing is for one’s soul to be purified of sin. Naturally, the sinlessness of the soul comes first, but we humans are complex beings, a mixture of both the spiritual and the earthly, and it is difficult, even impossible, to simply separate one from the other. It is good and proper to dress according to the situation in which we find ourselves: at the fitness club in sportswear, in bed in pajamas, at home in slippers, in a restaurant with your wife or girlfriend in clean and fine clothes, in church in the very best. Let us try, especially on Sundays and holidays, to come to services beautifully, cleanly, neatly, and modestly dressed, so that the temple and the divine services are truly made splendid by our presence, and so that our appearance does not distract from the beauty of the divine services. Let us pray as well as act in all spheres of our lives so that this external beauty becomes a reflection of the spiritual beauty of our souls.

priest Alexis