Behaviour in church 

A word should be said for one's behaviour in church. 

I have been attending a particular church now for the past 25 years and see a great many changes, mostly negative, in the way people are behaving. The worst part is that the people are on the face of things becoming more pious rather than less. But it is a false piety done entirely for show. Being charitable, the best that can be said is simply that they do not know what they are doing and think that it is what is supposed to happen because unfortunately people are like sheep. 

Making up private rituals for oneself 

Firstly, people have taken to inventing private rituals of their own. Each one seems designed to take up as much time as possible, to be as ostentatious as possible, and to ensure that when similar private rituals are made up by a large proportion of the congregants, a small proportion are left who then have even less time to squeeze in their own performance of a ritual that they were supposed to be doing anyway - and gets reduced from the five seconds they would have taken to but one second left for themselves. I will explain. 

First, they will perform some elaborate ritual even at the door to the church. This involves suddenly stopping even when someone was behind them. Crossing themselves several times, prostrating several times, kissing the door itself, and repeating. In reality, they need not have done anything other than just crossing themselves just the once. 

They will repeat similar things with kissing icons. To be sure, there can be different things one can do for different icons / relics / crosses / other holy objects. One can cross oneself more than once and prostrate before kissing the icon. But this should be a speedy process and mindful of others in the queue. As well as being mindful as to trying not to be ostentatious. It need not keep repeating itself. It should also be mindful of the fact of which icon or relic you are kissing with some attempt at differentiating it from other ones based on hierarchy. For example, it is fine to cross yourself and prostrate say three times if, say, it is the icon of Mother of God and it happens to be the Mother of God's birthday; as long as you then only cross yourself and prostrate once, if at all, for most of the other icons. One should always be mindful as to having some knowledge of what the icon you are venerating even shows. Some people seem not to know or care and just perform their own five-minute elaborate ritual the same for absolutely every icon they are kissing - even when they repeat the same thing for another icon showing the same thing! And they even go ahead and do it for the second icon when the second icon is not as important an example as the first one! 

For example, at my parish, there is an incredibly rare true reproduction of an Athonite icon of the Mother of God that if venerated, should mean the worshipper has no need for venerating a secondary icon of the Mother of God. But people just go ahead and do both with equally elaborate rituals for both. And then go ahead and do the same for some icon of a lesser saint. It beggars belief. 

When I visited Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, I wanted even once to prostrate before kissing the Silver Girdle of the Mother of God and immediately I was admonished for doing so purely because the father thought I would be holding up the queue (but also I suspect because the Athonite fathers can see right through ostentatiousness and false piety). 

Making the sign of the cross & bowing / making the sign of the cross / bowing

Next, people have taken to doing something very strange. They make the sign of the cross in a bizarre, exaggerated manner, as widely and as pronounced as possible. And then, they bow! Every time!

Firstly, one should make the sign of the cross in a more quiet fashion, without your elbow getting outstretched seemingly one metre to the right but keeping your elbow downwards and within your own personal space.

Secondly, one need not bow every single time. Most of the time, it is not to be accompanied with a bow. Most of the time you just cross yourself. You would accompany it with a bow on a few occasions e.g., when the father is elevating the Gifts, or the Gospel. Occasionally, one is to also prostrate (where it says to do so, literally). 

Also, sometimes, one ought only to bow and not to cross him- or herself. E.g., the father simply gives a blessing. 

Again, the analysis here is that people are showing off and / or do not know what they are doing. If they think that the priest giving a blessing is as important as the priest elevating the Gifts and announcing that we are in the fear of God to draw near, then what on earth do they think this is? 

Greek tradition of not kissing or bowing to anything on receiving the Mystery

One would do well to recall the Greek way of neither kissing anything (neither the priest's hand, the chalice, a cross, an icon - nor your neighbour) nor bowing to anything (same thing again, not to bow to anything) on receiving the Mystery. When you have Christ inside of yourself, you should not be doing these things. 

Yet the same people I have observed over the last 25 years have gone from merely kissing the chalice to bowing and kissing everything and anything on receiving the Mystery. I cannot fathom why. 

Behaviour in queues 

The biggest irony is that in a queue itself, the people are behaving like a rabble. On having already received the Holy Communion they will still queue for the antidhoron, and then push in front of people many years older than them. They seem to base this on social standing rather than merit and will push in front just because they are well-known in the church and have celebrity status (rather than being more pious people - whom you would recognise for their piety as they would not be pushing anyway!). 

They even teach their children to push in front of elders. 

This needs to stop. A priest should be teaching his people not to engage in such fundamentally corrupted behaviour and it should be preached as a matter of priority that people learn to queue respectfully. One is nothing and a nobody if he or she has received Holy Communion and then pushes in front of others just for being more well-known in a church than them - if anything, you should treat others as though they might be an angel in disguise; or even Christ himself.