Hopko’s 11th maxim, ‘Go to liturgical services regularly’, is an invitation to anchor your life in the Church’s prayer.
But ‘regularly’ need not mean ‘every single service, no matter what’; it can mean a stable, realistic pattern of attendance (e.g., Divine Liturgy every Sunday and one weekday service when possible). For neurodivergent Christians, such a pattern should take seriously your sensory limits, executive function, and energy. The goal is not to collect attendance ‘points’, but to let Christ reshape your time, body, and imagination through the rhythms of the Liturgy, the feasts and fasts, and the presence of the saints.
Because services can be loud and crowded, this maxim should be interpreted with compassion and creativity for autistic needs. You might stand at the back or near a door, use earplugs or noise-reducing headphones, hold a small object to stim with (such as a small cross or a prayer rope), or agree with your priest that you can step outside and return as needed without shame. The relatively predictable structure of the Orthodox Liturgy does mean that, once you become familiar with it, the sensory and social load is easier to handle and your mind can rest more on the prayers themselves. For some, ‘going regularly’ may also include connecting via livestream when illness, shutdown, or travel makes physical attendance impossible, while still treating in-person Liturgy as the irreplaceable centre whenever you are able to be there.
This maxim also touches the pain many autistic people feel when church becomes a place of misunderstanding, exclusion, or pressure to mask. Going to services regularly does not mean enduring spiritual or psychological abuse, forcing eye contact, or pretending that everything is fine while you quietly break down; it means returning again and again to Christ in the midst of His people, with your real body and real needs, and letting Him meet you there. You may need to choose a parish or a particular priest who is willing to discuss accommodations, to arrive early or late to avoid crowds, or to sit or kneel when others stand, without apologizing for being ‘different’. In this way, Hopko’s maxim becomes not another impossible social demand, but a promise: that the liturgical life of the Church can be a stable, patterned refuge where your neurodivergent nervous system and your baptized soul are both slowly shaped for the Kingdom.
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