Vespers

Heard in the wild

The longer version

What it means

The Divine Liturgy is the Orthodox Church's Eucharistic service — the equivalent of the Catholic Mass — celebrated Sunday morning and on feast days. It's almost entirely sung or chanted, lasts an hour and a half to two hours, and follows the text of St. John Chrysostom (or, in Lent, St. Basil) essentially unchanged since the fifth century. It moves through litanies, hymns, scripture readings, the great entrance with the bread and wine, the consecration, and communion, with incense throughout and the priest often behind the icon screen. Orthodox Christians stand for most of it.

Vespers is evening prayer — psalms, hymns, the "Gladsome Light" hymn, and prayers — sung Saturday evening in Orthodox parishes because the liturgical day begins at sunset, and daily in monasteries. Catholics and Anglicans also have Vespers (Evening Prayer, Evensong), from the same root.

Why people say it

Orthodox Christians worship this way because they believe the Liturgy is heaven on earth — a joining of the church's worship with the angels' — and that the form the fathers gave it needs no improvement. The length, the standing, the chant, and the incense are not obstacles but the point: worship that involves the whole body and takes its time. Vespers exists because the church sanctifies the evening, and because the Sabbath rhythm begins the night before.

How to respond

If you visit an Orthodox Liturgy, arrive when you can, stand where there's room (the back is fine), follow along loosely with a service book if offered, and let it happen. Don't receive communion; do take the blessed bread offered afterward, and go to coffee hour. If you attend Vespers at a monastery, it's shorter, quieter, and beautiful, and you may sit. If a friend converts to Orthodoxy and speaks of "the Liturgy" with reverence, this is why.

If you hear it in different churches

Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches celebrate the Divine Liturgy. Roman Catholics have Mass and, in the Liturgy of the Hours, Vespers (Evening Prayer), sung solemnly in cathedrals and monasteries. Anglicans have Evening Prayer and choral Evensong, which is the Anglican Vespers and a treasure. Lutherans have Vespers in their hymnals. Protestants generally have no equivalent to the Liturgy; the Orthodox service is the most different worship experience a Western Christian can have.

Where does “Vespers” come from?

The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (Archbishop of Constantinople, died 407) and the Liturgy of St. Basil (died 379) took their present shape in the 300s–700s and have been the Orthodox Eucharistic services since. Vespers descends from the evening prayer of the synagogue and the early church's lamp-lighting service; the hymn "Gladsome Light" (Phos Hilaron) is from the 200s, the oldest Christian hymn still in use. The Western Vespers developed in parallel in the Benedictine hours; Cranmer merged Vespers and Compline into Anglican Evening Prayer (1549), and choral Evensong became its glory.

Good to know

You might also hear

Common questions