The Mysteries

The Orthodox Church calls the sacraments mysteries. Baptism and chrismation are administered together, including to infants, and the newly illumined receive communion at once — a practice that keeps initiation a single movement rather than three stages separated by years.

The enumeration of seven Mysteries entered Orthodox usage relatively late, under Western influence, and the Orthodox tradition has never treated it as exhaustive of the Church's sacramental life. Monastic tonsure, the blessing of water and the burial of the dead are all sacramental acts.

Cyril of Jerusalem's mystagogical lectures and Ambrose's Concerning the Mysteries, both archived here, are the fullest fourth-century evidence for what was actually done and said.

Follow this theme through the archive

• Cyril of Jerusalem

  Bishop of Jerusalem whose catechetical lectures to candidates for baptism are the fullest picture we have of how the fourth-century Church taught the faith.

  Father or writer

• Ambrose of Milan

  Provincial governor acclaimed bishop by the people of Milan before he was baptised; he shaped Latin theology, brought Greek thought west, and made emperors answer to the Church.

  Father or writer

• The Eucharist

  The Church's central act, and the earliest thing outsiders noticed about Christians.

  Theme

• Baptism, chrismation and entry into the Church

  How a person becomes an Orthodox Christian, and what the fourth-century sources show us about it.

  Lesson