4/8/2020
Archpriest Andrei Ukhtomsky
St. John Vishenky was an Orthodox monk and polemicist (16th-17th C.) who lived on Mt. Athos and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His teaching on the Church, in the context of the defense of the Orthodox Church and its structure from attacks by representatives of the Catholic church, is also valuable in our time, inasmuch as it clarifies the truth of the Church.
The Rite of Divine Liturgy in its most basic form—reading the Holy Scriptures, prayers for the living, prayers over the Gifts, and finally, Holy Communion—had already taken shape in the first century.
