Omophorion

The omophorion is a broad band worn about the shoulders, originally of wool, and the interpretation given in the Byzantine tradition is fixed and unanimous: it is the lost sheep that the shepherd finds and carries home on his shoulders, and the bishop wearing it is carrying the human race that Christ took up. That is not a decorative gloss added later. It governs the material, the wool, and it governs why the vestment belongs to bishops alone.

It is also the vestment that makes the liturgy episcopal. A bishop who is present without it is present as a bishop but does not preside as one, and the older canonical texts are explicit that he does not serve without it. Where a Latin bishop is identified by mitre and crozier, an Orthodox bishop is identified by this.

Two forms are in use. The great omophorion is long and broad, passing round the shoulders with one end falling in front and the other behind, and it is worn for the opening portions of the liturgy. The small omophorion is shorter, with both ends hanging in front, and is worn later in the service and at other rites. In practice a bishop may put on and take off the omophorion a dozen times in a single liturgy, and each removal is a statement rather than a convenience.

The most explained moment in the choreography is the removal of the omophorion before the reading of the Gospel. The reason given is that Christ is then present and speaking directly, so the bishop lays aside the sign of his own representative office for the duration of the reading, and stands as one of the listeners. It is put back on afterwards. The same logic governs other removals and resumptions at points in the liturgy, and a server whose whole task during a hierarchical service is to hold, fold and present the omophorion at the right moments is a normal feature of a cathedral sanctuary.

Set beside the Latin pallium, the omophorion shows what a shared origin can come to mean in two places. Both are shoulder bands, both are wool, both are read through the shepherd carrying the sheep, and they are historically related. The western band narrowed steadily over the centuries into a thin circlet with pendants and became a privilege granted from Rome to metropolitans, expressing a relationship of jurisdiction. The eastern band stayed broad, stayed with every bishop, and expresses the episcopal order itself.

Two churches took the same piece of cloth and made it carry two different ecclesiologies, and both can point to the same parable while doing it.