What we do during the week leads up to the Lord’s Day, Sunday, when the priest, hierarch, with the people pray and supplicate the Holy Trinity in the divine liturgy. This chapter is the largest in this volume and much attention is given to the broad and specific meaning and arrangement of phrases, terms, and groups of prayers. There are fifteen sections. A principle that helps to understand why the Orthodox worship liturgically and why we believe in the real presence of Christ Jesus bodily in the Holy Eucharist, also called holy communion, is guided by the revealed truth that humans are by nature sacrificial. People were created to make offerings, to give something back to God, not just giving the same thing back to God. The true Church will have the fruits of true offerings and life-changing practices and doctrines that can be clearly discerned by those who seek it out. This first part will group together several sections: The Proskomedia, The Beginning of the Liturgy of the Catechumens, The Little Entrance and the Thrice-Holy, and the Liturgy of the Word.
A major misconception from many other Christian groups is that priests separate the people from God and replace Christ in actuality rather than representatively like an icon. In Orthodoxy, the priests pray in such a way that reveals the true celebrant of the liturgy – Christ Himself. The liturgy continues the Mystical Supper, not merely remembers Christ as if it were a common person’s birthday. Some may say that our worship cannot be the same because places change, time changes, leadership changes. But the sacrifice that is offered is “bloodless” and “rational.” It is one and unified because Christ is the high priest of every liturgy so that our worship is one and unified — in fact, the same. Christ must be present mystically and truly for there to be unity, truth, authority, and purity of worship. Without that basic assumption and reality, there can be no Christian group who can rightly and logically claim to have the fully revealed way to salvation. Elder Joseph and his disciples experienced Christ’s light and love so intensely that they reported to have felt like dying if that grace-filled state continued any longer than a minute. The fact that we cannot discern Christ’s presence is not God’s fault, but our own sinfulness and rationality working backward. Or, out of love, we are not ready to see what is actually happening.
The prayers of the liturgy are spoken through the entire community. Priests and deacons, the whole clergy, are called by God Himself, not by any person’s choice or will, so that they might lead a higher life of service, even though we are all part of “the royal priesthood.” If we are all priests, some vested, some not vested, then our function as Christians is to offer right praise and sacrifice, the essence of worship in the liturgy. Offering or anaphora in Greek, is our common work. The hierarchs lead us to Christ, not away from or separate from Christ’s living words. The choir symbolizes the people, the deacons call the people to prayer, the priest speaks to the people, prays with us, and at times prays on behalf of us to Christ. In the middle of the popular trend of interfaith dialoguing, many Christians have forgotten that the liturgy is a dialogue between priest and participants and Christ Himself who leads us to the Father through the Holy Spirit. This hierarchy is based on love and service, the very example that Christ set up in the Old Testament priesthood and which is fulfilled in the New Testament with the new commandment: love one another. The resulting lack of this fruitful order among Christian groups is obvious. The Orthodox liturgy gives thanks for Christ’s sacrifice and offering, not just as if in the past, but also now and into the future kingdom of heaven.
Prayer is iconic. Since we’re in the image of God, the clergy, elders, and eldresses represent an image of service in Christ and the bishops too have a self-sacrificial leading role in Christ. The people represent the priesthood too and the choir of angels. If prayers weren’t ordered in the ways outlined above, worship would be “dissonant” besides being unfruitful. The body of Christ is the body of our of joint prayers. Orthodox Christians have a single mind in prayer, not disparate and contradictory wills in prayer during the liturgy.
Prayer is unified as one offering to the Holy Trinity, and prayer isn’t an individual action, whether in Sunday worship service or in our time alone or at home. Prayer is connected to all people since Christ too prays for all people, and all created things. The proskomedia begins the liturgy. Then, the liturgy of the catechumens who receive instruction and the liturgy of the faithful who receive the Holy Eucharist follows. There are three kinds of offerings. The proskomedia takes place in the sanctuary of the temple and the hierarch or priest reads prayers and names of people. The prosphora is the bread brought before the priest. This offering is traditionally made by the people. It’s used for blessed bread and the Holy Eucharist. Then, a rich series of prayers are offered up in praise, hymns, songs, and supplications for God’s mercy on us and to make us holy with incense. Our prayers rise and we ask the Holy Spirit to come upon us all and to transfigure the bread and wine into the Holy Body and Blood of Christ for our spiritual food. His presence is truly there and within us. Spirituality without a life-changing belief in physicality is not better than empty intellectualism, paganism, or the widespread kind of secularism that gives no place for physicality and spirituality to meet. In fact, the superabundant spiritual bread of Christ can be discerned in the Scriptures. In the garden, the first people saw what was pleasing to them, to their eyes, but God told them, “Don’t take and eat. You will die.” The allurement of sight and senses overpowered the ear and the message of the words. Now, Christ says, “Take and eat. You will live.” The reversal happens to us on the spiritual and physical level in Orthodoxy. The Serpent said then, “Eat. You won’t die.” But we did die. The Serpent says now about the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, “Don’t eat. Don’t touch that wood of the cross.” Satan today says, consume and touch and do everything in this world except don’t come to the Orthodox Church to eat from that tree. Satan says today, you can have everything. You can pursue life through licentious desires, money, power, success, and fame, but don’t accept any holy bread and wine, don’t accept any of His glory or grace from that cross. The Accuser says that we shouldn’t touch Christ lest we die from our sinfulness. Christ reverses this satanic promise and subtle threat. Christ promises us everything for giving up our passions, if we can take up a cross too. Some Christians doubt this holiness or think themselves unworthy to approach God’s holiness to make them holy. The natural development for all humanity is to restore this relationship.
The prosphora offering is in the shape of a circle called the Lamb with different parts designated for prayers to the Theotokos, the Mother of God, and then the saints, hierarchs, the living and departed, and ranks of angels. Those who have died in Christ are not lost. They are in the center of Christ, this offering of bread and wine brought onto the altar and transformed; now, Christ appears among us mystically. Commemorations of the departed teach us that prayer isn’t limited to this world. Naming and commemorating the dead also links to the biblical genealogies of the Old Testament. The lists of names were a sacred family tree that showed the “unbroken chain of faith” and “the inheritance.” The substance (hypostasis) of people are never lost, Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos teaches. The Church has its own genealogy that outlines who has received the rewards, since all will receive resurrection, but not all inherit the same blessings.
Catechumen is a Greek word that means instruction by word of mouth, or learning by listening and hearing, since the root etymology gives it that force. Christianity was a very acoustic and oral faith. Alphabetic writing was a medium that accompanied and served this aural tradition, especially since the Eastern and Semitic cultures of the time were more of “an ear culture” that was able to unify the visual and auditory world via a non-alphabetic and non-abstracted perspective, to borrow a phrase and concept from the Roman Catholic writer in the 1960s and 1970s, Marshall McLuhan. Homilies also are a form of catechesis that help Christians understand the faith. Since many come into Orthodoxy already baptized from other traditions or left the Church as a youth, though not mentioned by Metropolitan Hilarion, do not need to be separated from hearing the liturgy of the faithful. The content of catechesis could be summarized in about eight lessons, taken from the section called The Beginning of the Liturgy of the Catechumens. Lesson one, “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” begins the liturgy. It is trinitarian and announces a blessing to mankind. The kingdom is coming and is here now. Lesson two, the Forerunner preaches, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The kingdom is from above and we should turn to it quickly; all resurrect, but not all receive a reward, which are great compared to the little we give up in this life. Lesson three, Christ’s teachings and parables focus on entering the eschatological (end of time) kingdom of heaven. Worldly kingdoms and systems aren’t the answer; they don’t offer blessedness or heaven, though many utopias are built on them. Lesson four, Christ came into conflict with the religious authorities of his time and nations because of His kingdom’s preaching and His commandments. Pilate and Herod are just a few examples. They crucified Christ according to man’s kingdom. Lesson five, Christ was crucified with the plaque: The king of the Jews.” Lesson six, Christ loves mankind. That is shown through his incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Lesson seven, Christ presides in love at this and every liturgy for us, awaiting our own resurrection through our death, our falling asleep in Christ and obeying his commandments. Lesson eight, the liturgy’s theme is the kingdom of heaven and the true offering we give back to God in this kingdom, where Christ is the ruler, the king, and we are the transfigured, offering creatures unto ages and ages. We bless and we proclaim Christ to be the King; we experience it now. Whatever kingdom we are coming from doesn’t have the answers, and it probably is going to conflict with the kingdom of heaven and the efforts to enter it with rewards and pure clothing. So, the kingdom of God is connected to the biblical genealogies, the commemorations, and the inheritance we seek. The Beatitudes are Christ’s moral teachings. It pronounces that weakness of spirit, physicality, or circumstances is strength. That unhappiness and sorrow is our joy. That humility, a meek attitude, and poverty in spirit helps us attain to inheriting the kingdom of heaven and its blessings and rewards. Christ’s life-giving Passion for our sinful passions is the only exchange between us and God that can be called a “ransom,” St. Maximus the Confessor teaches. That is what ransom means. Not a transaction between God and the Devil, or the Son and the Father due to assuaging wrath or slaking a thirst for justice.
The little entrance and the thrice-holy give us a glimpse into the eternal kingdom of God. The Gospel is taken from the sanctuary into the nave. The liturgy of the word includes the prokeimenon before the Gospel reading and censing. It’s necessary here that prayers are offered to ask God to open our mind and understanding to the teachings of the Gospel. That is a key difference between the Orthodox understanding of Scripture and the Protestant and Roman Catholic one. The Scripture requires assistance, patience, and the help of elders and authorities, and ultimately the Holy Spirit Himself. Salvation is a mystery; that is, how we enter the kingdom of God. To enter and live in this heavenly kingdom, prayer and sacrifice must be right and unified through the power of the Holy Spirit. So, the holy mysteries connect directly to the entrance into the heavenly kingdom.