How to make a prostration

The approach of Great Lent is a good time to make sure that we know how to make a full prostration properly. On most Sundays we make the Sign of the Cross and touch the ground – this is known as a 'small prostration'. A full prostration involves lowering our whole body to the ground so that our head almost touches the floor as demonstrated in the video below:



We make full prostrations (both in church and in our private prayers) when the Prayer of Saint Ephraim is read during Great Lent; we also make them on the Sunday of the Cross (the Third Sunday of Great Lent).

Making a full prostration is not physically that hard, but often people make it more difficult than it needs to be. There is no need to 'take a knee' when making a prostration. Going down in two stages by kneeling on one knee followed by the other actually makes a prostration more difficult.

Those of us who wear long garments in church need to push our bottom up quickly when rising from the prostration to avoid standing on the back of our skirt or cassock. This action becomes automatic after a few hundred prostrations!

When venerating icons we always make the Sign of the Cross before the prostration. However, there are important instances when we make prostrations in church without making the Sign of the Cross. Basically, when we are being 'blessed' we do not make the Sign of the Cross but just prostrate. For example, when the Cross is brought out of the altar on the Sunday of the Cross, we don't make the Sign of the Cross but simply prostrate. Likewise, on weekday Liturgies when the chalice appears before Holy Communion we just prostrate without the Sign of the Cross.

We also make prostrations without the Sign of the Cross when we ask forgiveness. Next Sunday is the Sunday of Forgiveness and during the rite of the forgiveness in Vespers we just prostrate ourselves before our fellow Christians and ask their forgiveness without signing ourselves with the Cross. When a person prostrates to ask forgiveness they say 'Forgive me [Name]'; the other person then prostrates too and says 'Forgive me [Name]'.

This rite of forgiveness is very important for Orthodox families and should be performed all the year round and not just in Great Lent. We should make a full prostration to ask forgiveness of our parents, spouses or siblings whenever we have been disobedient or hurt them by our sinful actions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Animals in Orthodox Icons

Image
Animals are often depicted together with saints in Orthodox iconography. These animals are either mentioned in the saint's life or, as in the case of St. George, refer to miraculous appearances of the saint. Saint Gerasimus ( right ) is often painted together with his lion ‘Jordan’, and St. Seraphim of Sarov, more rarely, with his bear ‘Misha’.  Below, Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsk is depicted next to a bear illustrating an actual event in his life. St. Peter was imprisoned and then exiled by the atheistic Communists for his refusal to compromise the Orthodox faith by submitting to the new ‘Soviet’ Church. He died in December 1936 after ten years of  persecution.   In the case of martyred soldier saints, animals often illustrate rank rather than a particular incident in the saint’s life. Saints Sergius and Bacchus, for example, are often depicted on horseback as a representation of their status in the army. All these representations of animals occur in tra...
Read more

What is a woman?

Answering the simple question ‘what is a woman?’ has proved difficult for some senior politicians in the UK. The scientific answer is clear. A woman is an adult human female. This answer is also completely Orthodox. It’s impossible for anyone to change sex. Every diploid cell in the human body has either ‘male' or ‘female' genetically stamped on it. Males have the XY sex chromosomes whilst females have XX chromosomes. (Some children are born with an intersex condition in which the external genitals do not match up with the internal reproductive organs or the sex chromosomes. When treating these rare conditions by surgery, doctors are not changing the sex of the child; instead, they are trying to conform the outward genitalia to the internal reproductive system.) Senior politicians who cannot answer this basic biology question say that sex is a different concept from gender. In other words, children are assigned male and female at birth, but they can later choose to reject this ...
Read more