I can't speak for the household devotions and piety of other Orthodox: being a convert, I didn't grow up with it, and my experience of that private sphere of Orthodoxy is limited. The Theotokos has less of a role in daily prayers, I think. We don't have a rosary. Our prayer ropes are mostly used for the Jesus Prayer: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." IIRC there is at least one prayer to the Theotokos in the standard daily prayers booklet, but nothing like Catholics do with the rosary. Personally, I ask the Theotokos to watch over and protect my kids, and the kids in my life that I'm unable to protect. I get the sense that she takes an active interest in our parish communities, and she once answered a nagging personal protocol question for me.
There is a subtle difference, IMO between how Catholics and Orthodox interact with saints, maybe including the Theotokos. I could simply be reading Catholics wrong, but it seems like they have a designated patron saint for everything, so for any particular problem, you look it up in the (perhaps imaginary) directory, find the saint in charge, and ask for his or her intercessions. Like a holy bureaucracy. Plus a particular devotion to St. Francis and a handful of "national" saints like St Patrick, St Anthony, etc. The Orthodox have a few saints associated with very particular things: one asks St. Phanourios for help finding lost things, St. Euphrosynos for cooking help, St Panteleimon for healing from diseases, St Nektarios for help with cancer... but for the most part, we don't specialize them much. They are friends and allies on a much broader level, and while everyone reveres the Theotokos, it is common for people to have a particular saint (perhaps in addition to their patron saint) that they have a particular devotion to, and to whom they take their personal concerns. It's common to adopt a patron saint for your household, for your homeschool, for your choir, for your ladies' auxiliary, etc. but not because that saint has a particular association with, say, choirs or education or anything... more because they showed up and volunteered for the job. An older friend assured me that the reason her house only lost a window in the last hurricane-- even though all the other houses on her street had significant roof damage-- is because she entrusted the house to St Nektarios before she left. She and St Nektarios are pals. It seems much less formal and organized than Catholic devotion to saints.
The Theotokos is a saint, too, but *bigger* :) She's the boss.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-07-14 01:48 pm (UTC)There is a subtle difference, IMO between how Catholics and Orthodox interact with saints, maybe including the Theotokos. I could simply be reading Catholics wrong, but it seems like they have a designated patron saint for everything, so for any particular problem, you look it up in the (perhaps imaginary) directory, find the saint in charge, and ask for his or her intercessions. Like a holy bureaucracy. Plus a particular devotion to St. Francis and a handful of "national" saints like St Patrick, St Anthony, etc. The Orthodox have a few saints associated with very particular things: one asks St. Phanourios for help finding lost things, St. Euphrosynos for cooking help, St Panteleimon for healing from diseases, St Nektarios for help with cancer... but for the most part, we don't specialize them much. They are friends and allies on a much broader level, and while everyone reveres the Theotokos, it is common for people to have a particular saint (perhaps in addition to their patron saint) that they have a particular devotion to, and to whom they take their personal concerns. It's common to adopt a patron saint for your household, for your homeschool, for your choir, for your ladies' auxiliary, etc. but not because that saint has a particular association with, say, choirs or education or anything... more because they showed up and volunteered for the job. An older friend assured me that the reason her house only lost a window in the last hurricane-- even though all the other houses on her street had significant roof damage-- is because she entrusted the house to St Nektarios before she left. She and St Nektarios are pals. It seems much less formal and organized than Catholic devotion to saints.
The Theotokos is a saint, too, but *bigger* :) She's the boss.