This section of chapter three covers The Eucharistic Canon (Anaphora) of St. John Chrysostom of Constantinople. The major contents of this eucharistic canon includes thanksgiving, remembrance of the Last Supper with the “words of institution,” the invocation (epiclesis) of the Holy Spirit with the consecration of the holy gifts, and the commemoration of the saints, both the living and the departed. Religious sentiment of creatures is fully expressed in apophatic language, for example, “incomprehensible” and “invisible.” These terms are important in the Orthodox divine liturgy, and it differs much from western forms of worship. The anaphora prayers use the verbs “to hymn, to praise, to give thanks, to worship” – mostly have a dominant element of the oral and acoustic characteristics of human nature, not exclusively in the realm of vision and logic. Western culture has a highly developed – very useful – visual and cerebral approach to religion and life. However, the Orthodox liturgy teaches us that we cannot rely heavily on our comprehension and what is visible to us. In other words, the whole experience of the divine liturgy is a reality that happens at once with the mouth and the ear, the use of voices and hearing of words along with the iconography that all begins to live in the heart, not primarily the mind or the eye – the cognitive and visual parts of humanity.
The anaphora prayers are directed to God the Father, given with the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is united with all creation in the Trinitarian Creator. For example, the saints and angels are asked to attend our worship at the same time with us. The angels sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” that is from the Scriptures, in Isaiah’s prophecy and John’s Revelation. The animals are not only symbolic, but they are mentioned to be present. The eagle sings and shouts to the calf and the calf cries to the lion and the lion speaks to the man (Rev. 4:7-8) from the Gospel of John. So, we get the picture that all creation involves itself in salvation and submission to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit in the kingdom of heaven, experienced really in the divine liturgy. The angels conclude with “Hosanna in excelsis deo…” and the kingdom of the aeonian life begins then, now, and will be for many ages to come. Vision and logic require sequence and linearity, but sound and hearing in the context of poetic imagery through words happen all at once like the complete biography of a saint in a single painted panel while we sing her commemoration. All symbols fall away, teaches Metropolitan Hilarion, in the eschatological kingdom, except for one sign, the Cross of Christ. The necessary and beautiful visual imagery, sensations, chronological time, symbols will eventually be removed and renewed so that we can truly see who the real source of all life is. Our bodies will resurrect, and we will continue to create poetic compositions with a new physicality that will be given and sung back to God, which requires not a static existence that some Christians teach, but a dynamic existence of many, many ages to be lived out. What God can offer goes beyond what we can see at once. But we can hear it with a glimpse of it. Only God can be all-seeing, that is, all-knowing. God’s kingdom is like an “inexhaustible cup.” It is full. But it can be refilled again and again as much as we drink from it.
The anaphora prayers also teach us the meaning of eternal life and offering. The priest prays, “We offer to him his own.” That means we creatures are meant to be poets, makers that take what is given and remake it and return it to God to deify it and unite to creation again. A very possible and starting definition of an age (aeon) is the completion of a created cycle like this. For example, the Holy Trinity gives, creates for us all, we receive it, we work it, we offer it back to God for all things and giving thanks – the essence of eucharistic worship. Since God is inexpressible, unknowable, we require ages and ages to learn and love who God is. We receive blessings in physical matter, the material for poetic compositions, we remake it, and God transforms it into Himself so that “all is in all” and that beauty of resurrected creation is completed, and a new created age will come, something greater than we can imagine than that first poetic, eucharistic common work. God will multiply, not merely add to his creation. Metropolitan Hilarion teaches that this created effort of humanity is “our destination.” Human nature is anaphoric and the anaphora prayers are linked to the ages of ages. Metropolitan Kallistos also explains the same process of salvation. The physical world, matter, is for our eternal survival; without it, we couldn’t offer sacrifices; to make holy is our nature, the nature of “rational” creatures. So, the definition of “rationality” is to offer back – with a “bloodless” sacrifice – what we’ve been given to transform our work and energy into God’s life so that many of these non-linear happenings occur. The first image of man – the archetype is Christ – makes more images to be transfigured by the power of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Metropolitan Kallistos frames this aeonianlife and prayers with a broad scope, “we do not act alone,” when we offer in this earthly life as well as in the next. He also teaches that “we stand within nature, not above it” like the philosophers of reason and knowledge. Humans are by nature “the offerers rather than rulers.” The ruler is the King of all, Christ Jesus. This comes true in the Lamb offered in the Eucharistic Canon or Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great, two of the major liturgies that are in use among local Orthodox churches. So, rational creatures find their ultimate meaning in the anaphora, a “bloodless” and creative, common work that is united to the Holy Trinity. The priest again prays, “we offer unto Thee this rational and bloodless worship …” Rational nature is anaphorical and offerings are purificatory “for the fulfillment of the kingdom of heaven.” The restoration of all things allows for continual offerings to be made like this – it’s possible. Attaining to this heavenly kingdom requires purification and this anaphora of Christ that we offer to Him. All theology of the Orthodox Church exists in the Eucharistic Canon, Metropolitan Hilarion teaches. The next section discusses The Eucharistic Canon in the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great.