In the
Divine Liturgy, after the initial doxology in which the celebrant blesses the
Kingdom of God and blesses with the sign of the Cross the altar table and its
antimension before using it, the assembled Church next prays the Great Litany.
This represents the intercessory prayers of the royal priesthood, wherein the
Church prays for the whole world in the Name of Jesus, standing in the gap and
lifting up the whole needy cosmos to the mercy of God. St. John Chrysostom, if
taken straight from his Liturgy in the fourth century to ours, would be
surprised that this was done so early in the liturgical assembly.
That is
because in St. John’s day, there were catechumens present, men and women who were
not yet part of the royal priesthood (that is, the holy laity), and who were
therefore not yet qualified to offer those prayers to God. Our present
liturgical ordo is not the actual service as served by Chrysostom (whatever our
ascription says in the final dismissal), but the service of the Byzantine
Church, dating from a time after the institution of the catechumenate had died
out. In Chrysostom’s day, the intercessory prayers were only offered after the
catechumens had been dismissed. In the later Byzantine Church, there were no
catechumens, and the only people present for the Liturgy were the baptized,
since everyone had then been baptized in infancy. Thus there was no difficulty
in everyone praying the intercessory prayers of the royal priesthood, because
everyone present was then a part of that priesthood.
The
absence of catechumens during the praying of the Great Litany stressed the
nature of the intercessions as prayers offered in the Name of Jesus. Praying
“in the Name of Jesus” does not mean that we end our prayers with the verbal
formula “and this we pray in Jesus’ Name” as if it were some sort of
invocational magic wand. To pray in the Name of Jesus means to pray with the
authority of Jesus, with His boldness before the Father, with His access to the
Father’s presence. It means, in short, praying as part of His Body. That is why
catechumens could not offer those prayers, for they were not yet part of that
Body. It was only through holy baptism that they became holy; only through the
initiating water and the Spirit that they became part of the royal priesthood
and eligible to offer the Great Litany, praying for the world with the
authority of the sons of God and members of the Body of Christ. Anyone can
pray, of course, and God who hears the cry of every sparrow that falls also
hears the cries of Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists trembling in their
proverbial fox-holes. But Christian intercession is different. Christian
intercession is done in the Name of Jesus, with sure and certain access to the
presence of the Father. Christian intercession is like no other.
In those
intercessory prayers of the Great Litany we note a certain generosity of spirit
and universality of concern. That is, we don’t just pray for our little
congregation, or even for all the Orthodox, or even for all Christians. Instead
we pray for absolutely everyone, Christian or not. We pray “for the peace of
the whole world”, “for this country and its President” (or its Queen, if living
in the British Commonwealth), despite the fact that many in the country are not
Christian and the ruler may not be Orthodox. We pray “for every city and
countryside”, regardless of how many Orthodox Christians may be in them, “for
travellers by land, by sea, and by air, for the sick and the suffering”, with
no concern for whether the travellers, the sick and the suffering belong to our
faith confession. In short, just as God causes His sun to shine on the just and
the unjust, so we also pray for everyone, regardless of their deserving. This
generosity of spirit and universality of concern in prayer is intended to flow
over into the rest of our lives too—just as we pray for people regardless of
their deserving, so we love and give to people regardless of their deserving.
We pray for travellers whether or not they are Orthodox travellers, and we give
spare change to beggars whether or not they are Orthodox beggars. The Great
Litany thus trains us to regard a person’s need as the primary thing, not their
deserving. Their deserving and their final eternal score can be safely left
with God. Our job is to pray, and love, and give.
We note
too that such universality of concern is mentioned in general terms. We pray,
for example, for all the sick, but do not need to know their names and
ailments. If one does know the name of someone needing prayer, that is fine,
but such people are generally those we already know anyway. In saner times, the
individual and specific suffering we knew about were mostly those of local
people—we knew about a particular beggar’s plight because we saw him in the
streets—and thus could do something about it. That is a much saner approach
than the one current today, where we are informed at length about the suffering
of multitudes of people that we cannot really help. Through newspaper, radio,
and especially the nightly news, we are inundated with stories and sound bites
of suffering—multitudes left homeless from a flood in China, whole families
slaughtered for their Faith in the Middle East, crowds being blown up by a
suicide bomber in Germany, epidemics in Britain, drought and famine in Africa.
Sometimes, on rare occasions, we are given the opportunity to actually help by
contributing money to relief organizations. But mostly we are simply bombarded,
overwhelmed with news of suffering about which we can do nothing. No wonder our
heart is worn and weighed down. We were never meant to live like this.
When
story after story is read over the news detailing disasters from across the
world, I sometimes want to reach into the television and seize the news anchor
and demand, “Why are you telling me this? No really—why are you telling me
this?” It is not because I need to know, for I can and do pray for the sick and
suffering anyway without this information. It is unlikely my prayers are made
more effective by the weighing down of my heart. So then why am I told this?
The answer, I’m afraid, is “For the entertainment value”, though of course no
one in the media would phrase it like this. It is left to the prophetic
song-writers to pull the mask off our cultural dysfunction and speak the truth.
Take for example the old 1982 song “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley. Henley
reveals why I am told this: “It’s interesting when people die.” The Great
Litany, on the other hand, allows us to pray for the world without knowing the
details. There is only one person with large enough shoulders to bear the
weight of the world, and know the details, and hear every suffering cry. And He
has already carried their sins on the Cross.
The
prayer offered at the conclusion of the Great Litany seems not directly
connected with the petitions that have preceded it, but seems to be a general
sort of prayer that could be offered in any situation. In it the celebrant
invokes God “whose power is incomparable, whose glory is incomprehensible,
whose mercy is immeasurable, and whose love for man in inexpressible”. Note all
the negative adjectives. They show that God is bigger than any words could
describe (theologians call this “apophaticism”), beyond any description we
could come up with, so that words almost have no meaning. Almost, but not
quite—at the end of the day, we do have to say something in our corporate
prayers. But by using these negative terms (“not comparable, not
comprehensible, not measurable, not expressible”) we show how vast is God’s
love and mercy to us. And that, when all is said and done, is why we sinners
have the courage to pray and intercede at all. God allows us the vast dignity
of causality, so that our little prayers become caught up in the immense
tapestry of God’s will, and help work His purposes in the world.
By Fr. Lawrence Farley
Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/commentary-divine-liturgy-great-litany/
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