Nave

The word nave is commonly derived from the Latin navis, "ship," and the image is far older than the word. One of the earliest surviving descriptions of a church interior, in the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, directs that the building be long, oriented eastward, "like a ship," with the bishop presiding and the deacons moving about like sailors seeing the passengers to their places. The early Church loved this picture: the Church is the ark of Noah, in which a family was carried safely through the waters — a figure, St. Peter says, of baptism (1 Peter 3:20-21) — and the boat on the sea of Galilee, tossed by the storm while Christ, seemingly asleep, is in fact aboard and in command (Matthew 8:23-27).

So the nave is not a waiting room before the holy part of the building. It is the vessel itself, and everyone standing in it is a passenger and a crew member on the same voyage — which is why the Liturgy's petitions are all in the plural.

Step into the nave and you are surrounded: Christ, the Theotokos, angels, martyrs, and saints look out from the icon screen ahead of you, from the walls around you, and — in a domed church — from the dome above you. This is the point the architecture is making. The congregation in the nave is not the whole assembly; it is the visible edge of one that includes "so great a cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1). The faithful venerate the icons on entering, and stand for worship among them, one company of the living and the glorified.

The nave has its own geography. At its eastern edge, a raised step or platform — the solea and ambo — juts out from the icon screen, where litanies are intoned, the Gospel is read, and Communion is given. To the sides, the kliros holds the chanters and choir, who are not performers but the people's appointed voice. The floor in between belongs to the faithful.

What furniture the nave holds varies by region, and the variety is worth being honest about. The older practice, still usual in much of the Orthodox world, is an open floor: the faithful stand for the services — standing being the tradition's normal posture of attention and resurrection joy — and move freely to venerate icons or light candles. Greek and Athonite churches often line the walls with stasidia, high-armed wooden choir stalls one can stand in or lean against through long vigils. In North America and some other places, many parishes have adopted pews or rows of chairs, so a first visit may look more familiar than expected; benches for the elderly and infirm are common everywhere, and no tradition treats standing as a contest of endurance.

However it is furnished, the nave keeps its meaning. It is the place of the baptized people of God at their proper work — the room where the Church, gathered as one body and headed east, does what a ship is built to do: carry everyone aboard toward home.