Happily, that's not the case. In our own diocese, severe measures have been taken and the abuses are now strictly limited. And yet, though we have successfully checked certain improprieties, we cannot claim to have achieved the heights demanded of true Orthodox worship. Each priest must work to insure that order, decency, reverence and contrition prevail in our churches. We twentieth-century Christians can not even imagine how seriously the Christians of the first centuries celebrated the Divine Liturgy.
History records many moving examples of their piety, such as the following.
St. Basil the Great was celebrating the Divine Liturgy in Caesarea, Asia Minor, for a congregation of devout, contrite, and attentive Christians, when a state official, an unbeliever with bad intentions, entered the church. This official was so impressed by the reverence of everyone present, the laity as well as the clergy, that he had a change of heart, and acknowledged within this church that the true God was indeed worshipped. It is not enough to go to church. We must attend with faith, reverence, and fear of God. With faith that the church is the house of God.