Fr. John Whiteford has been sharing his experience of the Orthodox Conference in Erie, Pennsylvania which took place this past June.The conference services were held at the Church of the Nativity which was an Old Believer parish that has now become a part of ROCOR. They still worship in the Old Believer form but the liturgy is in English. I recommend a visit to Fr. John’s blog for some interesting reading. The following is a taste of what you will read.
As I said, I had never seen the Old Rite in actual practice, and was struck by the way the people were censed. When the deacon would cense them, they would face the deacon with both arms raised in an orans, and then would bow towards the deacon, and then turn, and make the sign of the Cross towards the altar. The scriptural basis for this practice is “Let my prayer be set forth as incense before Thee, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice” (Psalm 141:2, in the KJV). This was particularly striking when the choir was censed. I was generally standing behind the male choir, and so could not see their faces when they were censed, but when the women’s choir was sensed I could… and it is something you would have to see. They would be standing in a semi-circle around the music stand singing, all nearly uniformly attired, and then as a group, they would all turn at the same time to face the deacon with their hands raised, then do the bows as I described, all the while never missing a beat with what they were singing… despite the fact that they all had their eyes off the music book while doing so.
