The bread for everyone.
Antidoron is the blessed bread handed out at the end of the Liturgy. It comes from the same loaf the Lamb was cut from, and it goes to everyone: the people who received Communion and the people who did not, the visitor who wandered in, the child who was not fasting. That is the whole idea of this book, and why it has the name.
The name
The word is Greek, antidoron, "instead of the gift." In the early Church the faithful brought the bread for the Liturgy themselves; what was not needed for the Eucharist was blessed and given back at the end, so no one left the church with nothing in their hands. A thousand years later the custom is unchanged. You come forward, you kiss the cross, the priest puts a piece of bread in your palm, and you eat it on the way out with the hymns still going.
A prayer book that costs money, needs an account, or sells your attention is a prayer book with a doorman. This one is meant to be the bread at the end of Liturgy instead: free, given to anyone who comes forward, cut from the same loaf as the service itself. The texts are the Church's own, each with its translator named on the page where it appears. Nothing you pray is recorded. There is no streak to break and no subscription to the faithful, and there never will be.
Who made it
My name is Nikita Huttenlocher. I DJ for a living, I write software, and I am a parishioner at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I built this because the prayer book on my shelf does not know what day it is and my phone does, and I was tired of flipping between the book, a calendar app, and whatever the parish emailed that week to find out whether it was a fast day and which Gospel was appointed. I wanted one page that already had all of that on it, in the order Father gave me, and I wanted it to open in a church basement with no signal.
Antidoron is made by Huttenlocher Technologies, the small software company I run in Myrtle Beach. It is not an official work of any Church body. Where the Church's own English is used, it is used with the blessing of the body that owns it and credited on the page; where that blessing has not been given yet, the older public-domain translations stand in and say so.
How it stays free
The faithful never pay. There is no premium tier, no locked prayers, no ads. The cost of running it is small and I am carrying it. If parishes later want more than the free parish page, such as giving handled inside the app with the records flowing into the books they already keep, that will be offered to parishes, plainly priced, and it will never put a wall in front of a single prayer.
What to expect
- A straight answer. Write to hello@huttenlochertech.com and a person replies, usually the same day.
- Corrections that reach everyone. If a fast or a saint reads wrong for your Church, tell us the date and what your parish keeps; a priest reviews it and the day is fixed for everyone without an update.
- Honesty about what is missing. The troparia and kontakia of the day, the akathists and the canons are not in the book yet, and the book says so where you would expect to find them. Sources ›
Say the name
An-TEE-tho-ron in Greek, an-TID-or-on in most American parishes. Either is fine. Father will know what you mean.