The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

The article raises the question of what the language of worship should be and attempts to identify the basic theological and liturgical criteria that determine the relevance of the language to its task. The author emphasizes that the main task of the divine liturgical language is to connect the congregation of believers with God, even though the best divine liturgical language is unable to denote the divine mysteries in their entirety. The article refers to such important topics as the connection of the liturgical language with other elements of worship and its correlation with the language of Bible translation. According to the author, the liturgical language should be modern, it should be understandable in order to inspire action, but at the same time, unlike the everyday spoken language, it should be more sublime, for which purpose it can rely on contemporary translations of Scripture. The language of worship should help all members of the congregation to participate in prayer, therefore it should make use of different language forms, such as the women’s language, the youth language, the language of the poor and other groups. Apart from that, the language of worship should take into consideration a variety of socio-cultural and geographical contexts. In addition to the words of prayers and sermon, the language of 
worship should also include bodily postures, gestures, and liturgical actions. The author of the article takes into account that the language of worship is exposed to such contemporary cultural characteristics as the availability of e-mail, text messages, chats and tweets; however, he insists that language is not an end in itself, but only a means to approach the meeting of justice and mercy that is possible at the eternal divine bosom.