OUR AIM
The divine service plays an extremely important part in our rite remaining at the same time unexplored and unordered for years and years. The ULC sets itself as an object supporting initiatives directed toward studying and developing the divine service life of the Kyivan Church. We do not intend to somehow substitute ourselves for the official ecclesiastic institutions that are responsible for divine service condition or to compete with them in this field. Rather, our task is to create an environment where persons interested in Eastern divine service could realize their ideas and skills for the welfare of the whole Church.

The ULC activities are concentrated on both pastoral and research trends. The pastoral trend envisages various measures for popularization of the Byzantine divine service via publishing relative literature and placing materials of pastoral character and dedicated to divine service in the internet.
The ULC research activities have three main directions:

1) study of the sources of the Kyivan Church's old liturgical tradition;

2) study of the actual condition of the Kyivan Church's divine service;

3) study of opportunities for optimization and development of divine service practices in the modern ecclesiastic and social circumstances.

We have concrete projects for every direction mentioned above which are in different stages of realization. This website has been created not only for presentation purposes, but also as a place and environment for realizing our projects. Its structure represents to a certain degree all the activities of the ULC as it consists of three main sections: Sources, Present day and Development. In these sections, we publish materials which we consider useful for those who want to know divine service better or study it for scientific purposes. Having limited resources, we nevertheless plan to further develop our website periodically enlarging it with new materials. So we invite to cooperation everyone interested and appreciate your suggestions and notes concerning our work.

Taras Shmanko
The Ukrainian Liturgical Centre director