Church Life
When am I supposed to do prostrations, and when am I not?
So the rule of the church is, prostrations are done basically Monday through basically after liturgy on Saturday. Sunday is the day of the resurrection, so we don't do prostrations on Sunday. Neither do we do prostrations on Saturday night going into Sunday. So when a priest enters the altar on a normal weekday, he does three full prostrations to the ground. When he enters the altar on Saturday evening for the vigil, he makes the sign of the cross and bows from the waist three times. Likewise, when the Holy Communion comes out on a weekday liturgy, we should all be prostrating to the ground. But on Sunday we don't prostrate to the ground at all. This is such a frequent problem within the history of the church, it actually pops up in numerous canons where people are instructed not to do prostrations on Sunday, because people are so prone to prostrating on Sundays. So those are the general guidelines and understandings of prostrations and when it's appropriate. Now, we have some caveats, like on the Exaltation of the Cross, the Sunday of the Cross, when the cross comes out in the church, it's one of those rare Sundays where we do a prostration. We actually do a prostration on the Sunday morning, and then at the end of liturgy, after we receive Holy Communion, we likewise do a prostration. On a normal day, if we've received Holy Communion, we no longer prostrate our bodies, because we have the body and blood of Christ dwelling within us. It's seen as not being appropriate to do a prostration at that time.
Edited from his answer on camera. The clip has the full thing.
From “Live Q and A 12/11/25”
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