The sickness in your soul affects your body and, likewise, what you do with your own body affects your soul. Think about how a soul is sickened when a person allows his or her body to be moved by the passions of lust, gluttony, or sloth (laziness). If you sin by saying something you should not have said because you allow anger to influence you, your body becomes an instrument and victim of the sin rooted in your soul. You can use your body to do evil and further injure your soul or, instead, you can choose to use your body to do good and contribute to your soul’s healing and transformation.
Proper physical acts of worship and veneration performed with your body are honest expressions of the faith, humility, reverence, fear of God, repentance, and love within your heart. These actions of your body also help you to acquire and maintain a proper inner attitude. So, these physical actions work two ways: They are outward expressions that flow from you inner soul and also act as outward physical therapeutic exercises that help you cultivate and nurture your inner soul.
The Prostration
As Orthodox Christians, we use our bodies to worship God. We also use our bodies to venerate the Saints and the sacred things of the Church. We seek to encounter the Divine Grace with our bodies. Making a prostration is one way your body participates in the therapy of your soul. Command your body, the same body that falls into sin because of pride, to humble itself by falling before your Master and King.
A prostration is made this way: Stand up. Make the sign of the Cross, kneel on both knees, place your hands on the ground and touch your forehead to the ground. Stand up again.
The act of making a prostration teaches us that when we fall into sin, the proper response is always to rise up in repentance.
Of course, just because you make a prostration doesn’t mean you are truly humble. Remember that prostrations are expressions of humility and repentance, but they also may help you to acquire real humility and genuine repentance within. If you don’t feel very humble, make prostrations anyway. Humble your body to remind your soul to be humble before God.
The Bow (“metania”)
Often, instead of making a full prostration, we make a low bow while reaching with the right hand toward the floor. You may touch the floor with the tips of your fingers or just reach toward it as an expression of humility and reverence. Then stand straight up again and make the sign of the Cross. (Some people may make the sign of the Cross before the bow, instead of after it.)
The Kiss
In the Orthodox Church, we often worship God and venerate holy things with a kiss. Orthodox people sometimes kiss each other on the cheeks as a sign of fellowship.
When you approach the Holy Icons of Christ and the Theotokos in the Narthex, make a bow (or three) and kiss the Icons reverently with love. Preferably, kiss the hand or feet (if shown) of the one depicted. At different times, the priest may offer you the Gospel Book, a Cross, an Icon, or some other sacred thing to venerate with a kiss.
When wearing lipstick, a woman should not kiss the Icons or anything else since the wax and pigment can soil or damage sacred things. If she is wearing lipstick, an air kiss in which the lips do not actually touch the thing is fine.
When done properly, these physical actions of worship and veneration express the condition of the soul through the body, contribute to the healing of the soul, and teach you to keep your body and soul aligned.
Read: Genesis 18.1-4; Leviticus 9.24; Number 22.31; Judges 13.20; 1 Kingdoms (1 Samuel) 24.8; 1 Kingdoms (1 Samuel) 28.14; Psalm 95.5-6; Matthew 2.10-11; Luke 24.1-7; Luke 5.12; Revelation 7.11-12
Text copyright © 2017 by Fr. Symeon D. S. Kees