This next part of chapter three covers these sections: The Beginning of the Liturgy of the Faithful: The Great Entrance, the Preparation for the Eucharistic Offering, and The Kiss of Peace and the Symbol of Faith. The great mystery of salvation is contained in the divine liturgy, and we are empowered by the Holy Spirit through the one sacrifice of Christ Jesus for ages and ages, since God is the creator of the ages, and this age will end with the revelation of His Cross to the faithful and the faithless, when all sin will be gone from the face of the earth. This coming heavenly kingdom, then, connects directly to the holy mysteries of the Orthodox Church. Christ is not only the King of saints, but even the King of sinners and unbelievers, as the New Testament teaches. The holy gifts, the Body and Blood of Christ, and our prayers help us to enter the kingdom of heaven to escape the coming chastisement of the Lover of Mankind. The Scriptures teach, unlike the grim gnostic fatalism of the afterlife, ultimate submission of all to Christ the King at the close of this age isn’t different in meaning than salvation.
The ordering of the divine services comes from a book of rubrics called the Typikon, typika meaning “ordering” in Greek. It’s a rule of life too. In this service book, there is no mention of a discrete category called “laity,” since the Eucharist is a joint action between the universal priesthood, between the vested priests and the unvested priests. Holy ordination is a special kind of calling and higher service and life of sacrifice for the whole community that is accomplished through the Holy Spirit, in the laying on of hands in the Church. So, the people unvested offer prayers with the priest vested. There is a real distinction in roles here. But in the prayers of the priest and the laity we can read that there is “no worthy man” unless the Holy Spirit comes upon us and the gifts we offer. All celebrants and participants, all the faithful profess to be ‘’unprofitable servants” in the liturgy. There are no worthy esoteric priests or gnostic mystics like the paganism of the past, who did have special access to the strange gods unlike others. Christ is always the high priest who offers prayers for us every liturgy. Nearly of the liturgical prayers are offered to God the Father, explains Metropolitan Hilarion. It’s through Christ as the Priest and King, through his death and resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit that we find mercy, comfort, and love in the God Father who is alone Good and Our Teacher. The power of the Spirit descends, and the sacrifice of praise ascends to Our Father. This cycle of thanksgiving is the life of the Holy Trinity that we can enter too. The priesthood shows us in the liturgy the unity of prayer of the Holy Spirit, sacrificial praise, union with God, healing, service, and salvation. There is “no personality” showing in the priest celebrating the liturgy because the community understands that Christ is the Priest leading us to the Father’s Holy Table.
The preparation for the eucharistic offering teaches us that the sacrifice of Christ reflects our human nature to offer something back to God in a refashioned form like common bread and wine. For example, in the Old Testament the sacrifices of Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron and Samuel foreshadow Christ’s sacrifice. However, the Old Testament prophets continually tell Israel that God never required or needs our sacrifices. If no one can offer sacrifice and God doesn’t even need them, it begs the question of why we offer it and what kind of faithfulness each type shared in the sacrificial examples of the Scriptures. Out of love, Christ came to the world and offered himself and was also at the same time the person who offers to God the Father by the Holy Spirit. Christ is both the offered and the one who offers in the hands of the priest and prayers of the faithful. Anything we receive is fully a gift, a loving reward for nothing that we can do humanly speaking. How to guard that gift and how we increase and reform that gift into something better is maybe the right question to ask about human offerings. That human or animal blood couldn’t take away sins according to the Hebrew prophets is a consistent message in the East. So, the prayer reads in St. Basil the Great’s Anaphora: [that] we may receive the reward of wise and faithful stewards on the awesome day of Thy just retribution.” Just as we had a stewardship over the garden, so now we must keep this grace that has been given to us through the mysteries in God’s kingdom, which lives in the heart – the nous. The parables focus on the kingdom of God speak about how to exchange this passing world for the greatest rewards in the next life. The goal isn’t to instill a fear of a never-ending hell, but how to love God and neighbor that will bring us into unity with God and humanity with most benefits bestowed on us in the resurrection. The divine liturgy unites the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the whole history of mankind and it shows the end toward which all things move.
The kiss of peace is directly linked to the Holy Eucharist because it fuels love and peace and faithfulness. After the clergy exchange this peace, the holy gifts are placed on the altar. Affection and touch forms part of our nature too, and we receive grace when this affectionate exchange is done in the Spirit. We are also the temple of Christ so that we kiss the entrance, the porch, and the gates of the mouth, where we praise and partake of the Holy Eucharist. When we open the doors of our hearts, like the royal doors, we enter the heavenly kingdom and paradise of the ages and ages even while this age is coming to an end. To say that God’s kingly justice is one thing, but his love and mercy is another matter is called a heresy that actually divides God, according to the catechetical lessons of St. Cyril of Jerusalem.