The Catalog of Good Deeds: Introduction to Liturgics

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Next in this commentary series we examine the Anaphora, which is a Greek word meaning “offering” (the verb form is used in Leviticus 17:5, for example, where it describes the offering of sacrifice). It is a long prayer, punctuated by a number of “Amens”. It begins with the celebrant’s blessing “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” and does not conclude until the end of the words, “and grant that with one mouth and one heart we may praise Your all-honourable and majestic name: of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages”. The congregational “Amen” which follows seals the entirety of the long anaphoral prayer. It is sometimes referred to as “the Eucharistic prayer”, since it constitutes the heart of the Eucharist and serves to consecrate the gifts of bread and wine, transforming them by the Spirit’s power into the Body and Blood of the Lord. A Eucharist can do without the antiphons if need be, or even without the Creed, but not without the Anaphora, for it is this prayer which makes the Eucharist to be the Eucharist. We may look at three of its characteristics, for they reveal something about who we are as Orthodox Christians and how we are to live.

First the prayer is dialogic. That is, it begins not with words addressed to God but with a dialogue in which the celebrant and the congregation address each other. The long prayer is prefaced with this back and forth: the priest first blesses the congregation in the name of the Triune God (in the words cited above), and they respond by blessing him in return: “And with your spirit!” He then tells them, “Lift up your hearts!”, and they respond, “We lift them up unto the Lord!” In this second exchange he is not urging them to cheer up, encouraged possibly by the fact that the end of the long service draws near, but telling them to ascend. The Lord reigns in heaven, and in the Liturgy we ascend to where He reigns. Our Liturgy in St. Herman’s therefore is not served in Langley, but in the Kingdom; not on earth, but in heaven. In the Liturgy time and eternity intersect, and heaven meets earth. We serve and worship with the Mother of God, the saints, and the angels, for we ascend to where they are. In a final exchange the priest says, “Let us give thanks unto the Lord”, and the people respond, “It is meet and right”. The meaning of this last exchange is easily missed: the priest is obtaining the liturgical assent of the gathered community to offer the Eucharist, for it is as part of that assembly that he speaks and acts. It is his signal to proceed with the anaphoral prayer.

It is not just in the opening preface that we find congregational response. Throughout the anaphora the congregational voice is heard, joining the priest, finishing his sentences. Thus, for example, when he rejoices in the heavenly song of the angels and says that they are “singing the triumphant hymn, shouting, proclaiming, and saying” the congregation joins in and completes his sentence: “Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord of Sabaoth! Heaven and earth are full of Your glory! Hosanna in the highest!” And again, when the priest says, “Your own of Your own we offer unto You, on behalf of all and for all”, the people again join him, saying, “We praise You! We bless You! We give thanks unto You, O Lord!” It is as if they are so enthusiastic they cannot keep themselves from joining in. Yet these congregational interruptions do not reveal only their liturgical exuberance, but also their sacramental status. They join in with the priest because they are the royal priesthood, the body of the high-priest Jesus Christ, and it is this corporate priesthood to which the celebrant gives voice. Their dialogic participation reveals that they are not simply passive observers, but active offerers; not an audience, but a priesthood, not the great unwashed, but the holy people of God, made holy through the washing of holy baptism.

Secondly, the anaphora is an anamnesis, a word sometimes rendered “remembrance”. Thus in the Authorized King James Version of Luke 22:19 we read that Christ said, “This is My body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of Me”. Such a translation can be a bit misleading, for we often tend to think of remembering in terms of mental activity—I can daydream about the future or remember the past, but in both cases words describe a purely cerebral happening taking place inside my head. The word anamnesis is less misleadingly rendered as “memorial”, and in Hebrew thought a memorial is not a merely mental process but an action that is done. Thus in Numbers 10:1f, Moses was commanded to make two silver trumpets which were to be blown over their sacrifices in times of war, and “there shall be a memorial for you before your God” (v. 10). In other words, when the trumpets are blown over the sacrifices, they will “be remembered before the Lord your God and you shall be saved from your enemies” (v. 9). In this memorial, it is God who does the remembering. And God’s remembering here is also not a purely mental act, but means that God takes action and saves. That is the point of Christ’s words at the mystical Last Supper: the act of eating bread and drinking wine during their gathered assembly is Christ’s memorial, the means whereby God remembers Christ and His sacrifice and take action to save us. Through this memorial, Christ’s saving sacrifice becomes present and active in our midst. The bread which we eat as His memorial is His sacrifice, His true Body, and the cup from which we drink is His Blood. That is why the liturgical tradition everywhere speaks of the Eucharist as a bloodless sacrifice—it is not a fresh immolation of Christ, or a re-crucifixion, but an anamnesis of His once-for-all offered sacrifice. There is no salvation without the Cross, and the Cross is not sacramentally saving in our weekly lives without the Eucharist. We are saved by His sacrifice, since we are the people of the Eucharist.

This means that the Eucharist is the most important thing we ever do, and we live from Eucharist to Eucharist, even as we live from breath to breath. Without the Eucharist, we have no life. One remembers the story recounted long ago by Gregory Dix in his classic The Shape of the Liturgy, about the importance of the Eucharist in the early church: “A whole congregation of obscure provincials at Abilinitina in Africa took the risk of almost certain detection by assembling at the height of the Diocletian persecution in their town, where the authorities were on the watch for them, because, as they said in court, the eucharist had been lacking a long while through the apostasy of their bishop Fundanus and they could no longer bear the lack of it. And so they called on a presbyter to celebrate—and paid the penalty of their faith down to the last man.” The story reveals not only the courage of these obscure Christians, but also the importance of the Eucharist for all of us even today.

Finally the anaphora is an extended epiclesis or invocation of the Spirit. The epicletic character of the entire prayer is summed up most succinctly in so-called epiclesis itself, in which the celebrant asks God to send down His Spirit upon the offering. But we must look more carefully upon the actual wording, for the Spirit is not simply invoked upon the gifts of bread and wine alone, but also upon us as well. Thus the celebrant prays, “Send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here offered and make this bread the precious body of Your Christ and that which is in this cup the precious blood of Your Christ, making the change by Your Holy Spirit.” Note: “Send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts”. The final goal of the epiclesis and of the anaphora and the Eucharist as a whole is not to merely change the bread into the body of Christ, but also to change us into His body. Through eating the sacramental Body of Christ, we are incorporated afresh into Him as His mystical Body. The goal is not simply the transformation of the gifts, but our own transformation as well. Regarding the transformation of the Gifts of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood, St. Cyril of Jerusalem once said, “Whatever the Holy Spirit has touched is sanctified and changed”. He might have said this about us also, for the goal of the Eucharist is to sanctify and change us as well. We walk into the church guilty, stained, weighed down with sins and heavy laden; we walk out of the Church after receiving the Eucharist forgiven, cleansed, liberated and light.

The Anaphora is the heart of the Divine Liturgy, for it is our liturgical thanksgiving. It reveals us as the holy people God, baptized so that we may declare the wonders of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9).

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/commentary-divine-liturgy-anaphora/

Next in this commentary series on the Divine Liturgy I would like examine the Peace and the Creed. The liturgical exchange of the Peace (or “the holy Kiss” to use more ancient terminology) goes back to the very earliest possible time. St. Paul ends both of his epistles to the Corinthians by telling them to “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12), as he also does in his first epistle to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 5:26). This kiss was not simply epistolary convention, but a liturgical action—since Paul’s letters would have been read to the churches during their liturgical assembly (probably at the conclusion of their readings from Scripture—compare the pairing of Paul’s letters with Scripture readings in 2 Peter 3:16), the holy kiss he bids them offer also formed part of their liturgical assembly.

In fact it formed an integral part of every celebration of the Eucharist, and the earliest extant account of the Eucharist from the second century pen of St. Justin Martyr tells us that “having ended the prayers [i.e. the prayers of intercession] we salute one another with a kiss” (from his Apology, chapter 65). During the time when the church congregations were small enough to be intimate and close-knit, the holy Kiss was exchanged even across the gender divide (thus Tertullian in his To His Wife, 2, 4), and on the mouth (the custom being mentioned in Sophronius’ account of the Life of St. Mary of Egypt). It was not long until this custom was felt to be problematic, and the Kiss was later restricted according to gender. But however given, the Kiss of Peace is still retained in our Liturgy, as the deacon bids the faithful every Sunday “Let us love one another!” He is not here inculcating an internal attitude, but giving liturgical directive — a directive which is followed by the clergy when two or more of them concelebrate. It is tragic that the laity do not follow suit and exchange the Kiss among those standing next to them. St. Justin Martyr would wonder, as would Chrysostom, why the people were not doing what they were told.

The Kiss of Peace is not simply an expression of socialization, a kind of liturgical “hello there, nice to see you”. Rather it functions to seal the intercessory prayers of the people which (as we see from Justin’s description) it immediately followed. In this exchange each communicant recognizes his fellow-communicant as a fellow-member of Christ’s Body — that is, flesh of his own flesh, blood of his own blood, as intimately a part of himself as one member of a human body is to another. That is why the Kiss was never exchanged with the catechumens, for they were not yet members of that one Body (or, in the words of Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition, “their kiss is not yet holy”). Far less would it be exchanged with a heretic, as St. John reveals when he forbids the faithful to give the heretic any greeting — i.e. any liturgical greeting (2 John 10).

The Peace serves to express the mutual love and seal the unity which all enjoy as members of the one Body of Christ. Without this unity, our intercessory prayers remain unsealed, ineffective, unheard, for they are only sealed through love. Christ teaches this when He says that if we refuse our brother forgiveness, we ourselves will not be forgiven. St. Peter taps into the same principle when he insists that a man must honour his wife as a joint heir of the grace of life, lest his own prayers be hindered (Matthew 7:14-15, 1 Peter 3:7). A person trained in the western church’s concern for legality will look only to the question of whether or not a Eucharist is “valid”. But validity is not the issue; the power that comes from love is. In the Didache (ca. 100 A.D.) it says “let no one who has a quarrel with a companion join you until they have been reconciled, so that your sacrifice [i.e. the Eucharist] may not be defiled” (Сhapter 14).

This leads to another function of the Peace in the Liturgy, that of sacramental preparation. The mutual recognition and acceptance of one another as fellow-members of the same Body allows for reconciliation before the weekly reception of Holy Communion. The Church has always applied to its own Eucharistic worship Christ’s words in Matthew 5:23f: “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.” Christ originally intended this counsel to show how essential forgiveness was to worship, and He said it was so crucial that even if it was at the last moment before the sacrificial knife fell upon the neck of the sacrificial animal that one remembered a need for reconciliation, even then one must call a halt to the offering and go first to be reconciled. Our sacrifice is the Eucharist, and the weekly Kiss allows for a weekly opportunity for reconciliation and peace. That was why it was exchanged after the intercessions and before the Eucharist. It sealed the former and prepared for the latter.

The Kiss of Peace is followed immediately by the Creed. The Creed was not originally a part of the Eucharist, but of baptism. It constituted an expression of the faith into which the candidate was baptized, and if he or she could not confess that faith, then baptism was not possible. In Constantinople it was first inserted into the Liturgy around the end of the fifth century. And of course once it found a place in the Liturgy, no bishop wanted to be known as one who removed it from the Liturgy as if he disagreed with its contents. So, the Creed became a fixture in the Eucharist.

Whether through accident or providence, it is fortunate that it did, for it expresses the inseparable link of love and belief, of our interior disposition and our outer confession of faith. We need both to be truly Orthodox, for love without faith and faith without love are equally unavailing. The Peace and the Creed are joined in a kind of liturgical symbiosis: “Let us love one another that with one mind we may confess Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity one in essence and undivided”. To offer a pure sacrifice we need both love in our hearts, and the true faith on our lips. Both lovelessness and heresy would contaminate our offering; we need to love one another and confess the true faith.

The presence of the Creed reveals that it matters what we believe, and that mere sincerity is not enough to participate in the Church’s offering. And we must also embrace not just the words of the Creed, but the meaning of those words as intended by their authors. In some circles it is enough to simply say the words, apart from their original meaning and intent. Thus one could say the words about Christ being raised from the dead and still believe that His body was never physically raised. “By ‘the Resurrection’” this person might say, “I only mean that Christ’s spirit and values will always be triumphant. By the words ‘He was born of the Virgin Mary’, I only mean that Christ was morally unique among all the rest of humankind.” One could fill a bibliography with people saying such things. But anyone with a shred of historical integrity and any loyalty to the Fathers will renounce such sophistry. We must say the words and mean by them what they originally meant. When we say that He was raised from the dead, we mean that His glorified physical flesh and bones emerged from the empty tomb, leaving only the grave-clothes behind. When we say that He was born of the Virgin Mary, we mean that He had no physical father. One can play games with history, the Creed, and the Fathers, but God is not mocked. The creed of one saying this is not ours, and we cannot in conscience give him the Kiss of peace, “for he who greets him shares his wicked work” (2 John 11).

The Peace and the Creed thus form both an expression of and a foundation for unity. As soon as the Kiss is exchanged and the Creed is chanted, it is time to stand aright, to stand with fear. The time for the sacrifice of praise is then at hand.

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/commentary-divine-liturgy-peace-creed/

In this commentary series on the Divine Liturgy I would like examine the original transition from the so-called “Liturgy of the Catechumens” (i.e. the first part of the service to which catechumens were welcomed) to the so-called “Liturgy of the Faithful” (i.e. the second part of the service from which catechumens were excluded and to which only the communicant faithful were welcomed). As we saw in my previous commentary on the Liturgy, the Byzantine liturgical developments have displaced this transition somewhat: originally the catechumens were prayed for and sent out immediately after they were prayed for after the Gospel reading and the sermon. The original intercessions of the Church for the world were only offered after the catechumens had departed. The insertion of the Litany of Fervent Supplication before the Litany of the Catechumens (our present arrangement) disturbs this original arrangement, dislodging the original transition. The original beginning of the Liturgy of the Faithful came not after the sermon, but after the dismissal of the catechumens. It began with the prayers of intercession for the world (what we now call “the Great Litany”) and made a final visual transition as the clergy approached the altar.

We must try to imagine what the Liturgy looked like during the time of Chrysostom and of Maximus the Confessor a couple of centuries later. In that time while the catechumens were being prayed for and dismissed, and then as the prayers of intercession were offered, the deacons exited the church through the north door to enter the little building adjacent to it where the holy vessels were kept. There they gathered up the bread and wine, the chalices, cloths, spoons, spears, and everything needed for the Eucharist and came back with them to the altar, where the episcopal celebrant was waiting for them. While they were gong, the bishop and his presbyters were preparing themselves for the Eucharist: they washed their hands and moved to take their places around the altar. Today the priestly celebrant stands at the altar for the entire service, but originally their place during the readings was sitting on their seats in the far east end of the apse, on the synthronon. Thus the transition from the service centered on the Gospel to the service centered on the Eucharist had a distinctly visual component, for one could observe the clergy leave their seats where they had sat throughout the readings to gather around the altar table.

The prayers accompanying this transition express what they are doing, and may be aptly described as prayers of access to the altar. Today these prayers are mistitled “The Prayers of the Faithful”, since they come at the place where the Prayers of the Faithful for the world—i.e. the Great Litany—once stood. But they are clearly not the prayers of the people, but the private devotional prayers of the clergy. Even a quick look at the prayers themselves reveals this: the clergy pray that God who “have accounted us worthy to stand even now before Your holy altar” may “enable us whom You have placed in this Your service, blamelessly and without offence to call upon You at all times and in every place”. The second prayer asks that God would “grant us to stand blameless and without condemnation before Your holy altar” and would “grant also to those who pray with us [i.e. the laity] growth in life and faith and spiritual understanding”. The silent prayer which the celebrant offers while the Cherubic Hymn is being sung says the same: “Enable me who am endowed with the grace of the priesthood to stand before this, Your holy Table, and perform the sacred mystery of Your holy and pure Body and precious Blood”. Yet another prayer, offered after the Great Entrance has taken place, is another prayer of access to the altar: “Accept also the prayer of us sinners, and bring us to Your holy altar, enabling us to offer unto You gifts and spiritual sacrifices for our sins and for the errors of the people”.

Why such a plethora of prayer all begging the same thing? Because it is a great and fearful thing for mortal man to stand before the consuming Fire of the holy God. We tend to imagine that a church service is simply a matter of us on earth sending our prayers “upstairs”, and launching our supplications to heaven. It is much scarier than that: it is a matter of inviting the Lord of all, before whom even the glorious cherubim and the fiery seraphim veil their faces in awe, to come “downstairs” and to dwell in our midst. “Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire?” asked the sinners of Zion with trembling (Isaiah 33:14). Who indeed? Yet we sinners in the Eucharist invite the devouring Fire into our midst, inviting a collision of sinful man with the holy God. In this collision (with the clergy in the front seats—hence all those prayers of access to the altar), we take a tremendous risk. Some found this to their cost, as St. Paul reminded his Corinthian converts who received unworthily (1 Corinthians 11:30). But if we all approach in penitence, in humility, forgiving others with contrite hearts and asking for our own forgiveness, this collision does not destroy us, but heal us. We are not consumed by the devouring fire, but illumined, warmed, transformed. These prayers of access to the altar reveal that the Eucharist to which we now transition is a daring epiclesis, invoking the fire of God upon us and inviting into our midst both judgment and salvation.

This Eucharist is not only a collision, but also a coalescing, as heaven joins with earth. In the days of Chrysostom and Maximus, the gifts of bread and wine were brought into the church to the accompaniment of a psalm—almost certainly Psalm 24:7-10. It was an obvious choice, since the psalm speaks not only of the Lord of glory coming in (i.e. Christ coming to us in the Eucharist through the Chalice), but also of doors and gates. What better psalm could serve for the procession as it re-entered the nave through the doors and gates leading to and from the sacristy outside? And the refrain of the psalm expressed the nature of the Eucharist which followed—originally the refrain was simply a triple “Alleluia”, but later was added to it the words “Let us who mystically represent the cherubim and who sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity now lay aside all earthly cares that we may receive the King of all who comes invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts”. The refrain was sung over and over between the verses of the psalm until the procession reached the altar and placed the gifts upon the table. (Eventually the psalm dropped out, leaving the refrain all by itself, which was later split in half in mid-sentence to allow for intercessions during the procession.)

But however it is now sung, the words of the refrain reveal the true nature of the Eucharist as a joining of heaven and earth, an intersection of time and eternity. It is not simply a matter of us on earth singing like the cherubim while the cherubim themselves sing in heaven. No: Christ comes upborne by those angelic hosts, and we represent the cherubim by giving audible earthly expression to their spiritual songs as they accompany Christ as He comes to us in the Eucharist. Heaven joins with earth, and earth is lifted up to heaven. That is what the celebrant means when he says to the people to “Lift up your hearts!”—he is not exhorting them to cheer up, but to ascend to heaven. It is easier than it sounds, for in the Eucharist heaven comes down to us on earth. We serve and receive the Eucharist with the angels of heaven, with the saints, and with all the faithful who have gone before. Our Christian dead may indeed be described as “the dearly departed”, but in the Eucharist we find that they have not departed very far. They are with Christ, and so with us as well.

All this is revealed in this original transition to the Liturgy of the Faithful. That Liturgy is a collision and a coalescing, and it brings the potential for both judgment and salvation into our very midst.

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/commentary-divine-liturgy-transitioning-eucharist/

I sometimes cannot help asking myself three liturgical questions whenever I visit churches which serve the Liturgy in the “classic” pattern I learned in seminary — all of those questions quite rhetorical. I would like to share them here in a spirit of calm inquiry in the hope of provoking helpful discussion about things liturgical. My approach might be styled as motivated by a spirit of “liturgical reform” by some, or even “renovation” by the less sympathetic, but my aim is not so much reform or renovation as a return to patristic common sense. That is, at Liturgy I cannot help wondering what St. John Chrysostom would think about what we have done with the Liturgy ascribed to him, and concluding that he would be less than thrilled at some of the changes that have evolved over the years. This does not mean that we should take the liturgical scalpel to the texts as Vatican II has done with the Roman Mass. But it does mean that if certain aspects of our praxis would raise the eyebrows of a Chrysostomus redivivus, perhaps we should revisit that praxis.

Question one: why do the people say “Amen” to prayers that they have not heard? Where the practice obtains of saying the prayers silently, the priest will say (for example) the prayer after the Great Litany silently or quietly enough not to be heard by the congregation, and then raise his voice so that the final bit of the prayer can be heard: “for unto You are due all glory, honour, and worship: to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever unto ages of ages”. The congregation (or perhaps the choir, substituting for the congregation) then answers, “Amen”. The part that can be heard is not a prayer, or even a sentence, but simply a clause. The problem, of course, is that such a practice makes nonsense of the people’s response “Amen”. The word “amen” does not mean “the prayer is over”. As St. Justin Martyr explained long ago, it signifies “so be it” (in his Greek, genoito/ γενοιτο), and represents the people’s participation and assent to what has been said. This congregational assent transforms the utterance from being the private wish and prayer of the celebrant into being the corporate prayer of the gathered church. As Schmemann says (in his book The Eucharist), “With this word the ecclesial assembly concludes and, as it were, seals each prayer uttered by the celebrant, thereby expressing its own organic, responsible and conscious participation in each and every sacred action of the Church”. This presupposes, of course, that the prayer has been uttered and heard. Of course the people know (maybe) what the priest has said silently, but private knowledge is not the point. Liturgical worship is not private knowledge, but public utterance. As it is, the people are sealing not a prayer, but a clause, one with minimal content. The fact that this is not felt as odd reveals how greatly the role of the laity has been devalued and rendered liturgically irrelevant.

And sometimes it is worse than this. In places where the priest serves without a deacon, it is customary for him to intone the Great Litany, and then straightway intone the final clause of the prayer (the so-called exclamation or ekphonesis), and then, after the Amen has been sung, say the prayer quietly during the singing of the First Antiphon. (Presumably this is why that prayer is called in the liturgy books “The Prayer of the First Antiphon”.) This means that the people are saying their Amen not only to a prayer that they have not heard, but to a prayer that has not yet been said. Their “amen” and their role then is not only irrelevant, but nonsensical. I can imagine St. John Chrysostom raising his eyebrows.

The second question is this: why do we sometimes talk to people who aren’t there? I refer of course to catechumens in congregations where catechumens do not exist. Whether or not a congregation has catechumens within it, oftentimes the deacon and priest will assume they are there and talk to them. The deacon begins by addressing them, “Pray to the Lord, you catechumens!” and then goes on to pray for them. He will conclude by talking to them again, bidding them, “Bow your heads unto the Lord, you catechumens!” Then the priest prays a prayer, asking God to look down upon the catechumens “who have bowed their necks before” Him and unite them to His holy Church through baptism. After all this, the deacon again talks to them, ordering them twice to “depart” and again to not remain. But if no catechumens are there, who are priest and deacon talking to and about? Generally speaking, sane people do not talk to people who are not there as if they were.

If a congregation does have catechumens, it is reasonable for them to pray for these catechumens even when they are absent—but not to talk to them. In the case of absent catechumens, the church might reasonably pray for them in the third person, omitting the lines in which catechumens are addressed in the second person (e.g. “Pray to the Lord, you catechumens!”). And of course one would not tell people to leave who were not present in the first place. As it is, we are talking to catechumens who aren’t there, and then telling them to leave, when we would in fact want them to remain even if they were there. When Chrysostom had his catechumens dismissed, he expected them to actually leave. That is, his words had existential meaning and a corresponding reality in congregational life. He would wonder why we pretend we have catechumens when we don’t, why we tell them to pray and bow their heads to the Lord when they are not there, and why we tell them to leave when we expect them to stay for coffee hour, or at least until the end of the service.

Question three: why do we pretend things have happened when they haven’t? Here I refer to several things. In some congregations the deacon cries out before the Gospel, “Stand upright!” (or “Let us attend!”; the Greek is orthoi/ ορθοι) and in some places this is taken as the signal to kneel. We tell people to stand up straight, and then don’t bat an eye when they do the opposite. Their piety may be commendable (if a touch uncanonical), but it makes nonsense of the liturgical direction.

It is similar later on when the people are bidden to bow their heads to the Lord (i.e. bow their heads forward so that the priest may extend his hand over them to bless them), and everyone present remains with unbent neck—except, oddly enough, the priest who turns his back on them to bow his head to the Lord. Or, most strangely of all, the diaconal command, “In the fear of God and with faith, draw near!” This is, of course, not a suggestion, but a command to all those listening to come forward to receive Holy Communion. The liturgical text assumes that the people have obeyed and that everyone present drew near, for the next diaconal litany begins, “Stand upright! Having partaken of the divine, holy, most pure, immortal, heavenly, life-creating and awesome mysteries of Christ, let us worthily give thanks unto the Lord”. In some congregations hardly anyone comes forward to receive (I remember being in one packed Greek church of about 500 people, where my wife and I and four other people were the only communicants), but the deacon insists on chanting as if the congregation had partaken of the divine and holy mysteries. In all this we see a gap between what we say and what actually happens. Our liturgical words have been, if not exactly emptied of meaning, then certainly subject to an existential erosion of meaning. We no longer mean exactly what we say. Constantinople’s pastor, I suggest, would not be amused.

What to do? One sometimes hears that no one can do anything to close the gap between words and reality in the Liturgy without the pronouncements of an Ecumenical Council. Such a view of history is defective. As a matter of historical fact, liturgies evolved throughout the centuries through shared local variation, quite apart from the mandates of an Ecumenical Council. Such councils, whether “ecumenical” or “provincial”, only concerned themselves with liturgical details when abuses and problems became widespread enough to merit their attention. Thus the Council of Nicea ruled that deacons should not commune presbyters (canon 18), and that one should not kneel liturgically on Sundays, or during the Paschal season (canon 20). Thus the “Quinisext” Council ruled that the pre-Eucharistic fast should be maintained even on Holy Thursday (canon 29), and that milk and honey should not be offered on the altar (canon 57). In all these rulings the councils were not concerned to police every liturgical development that occurred (which was beyond their power even if they had wanted to), but to simply curb developments they felt were widespread abuses. Liturgy grew and developed because it was alive, and quite apart from conciliar decrees. (For a quick overview see Taft’s The Byzantine Rite: A Short History.) The bishops had the major share of decision-making and control because the bishops then (unlike now) were the local pastors. As such, of course they had liturgical authority over the churches in which they had the weekly burden of pastoral care.

For now, the best we can hope for is to at least start the discussion. It is not an unimportant one. And we should hold the discussion realizing that St. John Chrysostom is watching us with interest. He might not now get a vote in the proceedings, but his approval or disapproval should surely matter to us.

We invoke his name and his authority at the conclusion of every non-Lenten Liturgy, and we will one day have to face him and perhaps explain to him why it is we serve “his Liturgy” the way we do.

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/three-liturgical-questions/

I would like to conclude this commentary series on the Divine Liturgy (or at least the first part of the Liturgy, the so-called “Liturgy of the Catechumens”) with a reflection on the reading of the Gospel. In the Liturgy, after the reader chants the prokeimenon and the epistle, the Gospel lesson is then chanted. But it is not chanted without a somewhat elaborate preparation. Prior to the priest taking the Gospel book from the altar table and giving it to the deacon who will read it, the Gospel is censed from all four sides. The Church recognizes the holiness of objects by censing them, so that it censes the holy icons on the icon-screen before the start of the service, the holy Gifts of bread and wine before they are moved to the altar table, and the holy people of God as they assemble for worship. In the same way the holy Gospel book is also censed before it is picked up because the book represents Christ—we show our reverence for Him by showing reverence to the volume containing His words.

It is easy to miss the significance of this censing, since (for some reason unknown to me) the deacon censes not only the Gospel book but also the interior of the altar, the people within the altar, the icons on the icon-screen, and the people standing in the nave. The rationale for the censing is thus easy to lose sight of, as one might suppose the deacon is censing the altar table along with pretty much everything else in church. But he is not censing the altar table; he is censing the Gospel book, which happens to be resting on top of the altar table. The focus and rationale for this censing is even easier to lose if the comprehensive censing is done during the reading of the epistle, for one might then imagine that the censing has something to do with the epistle. It does not. It has nothing to do with the epistle, and everything to do with the Gospel.

The censing of the Gospel book at this point shows the importance of the reading. The epistle is important too, but we do not cense the epistle-book before reading it. The Gospel book, alone among the books we use, is censed before being read. This reveals the supreme importance of those words—among all the other holy words, these words represent the Holy of Holies, the very words of the Master, the ipsissima vox of Christ Himself, and in them Christ even now stands in our midst to speak to our hearts.

Hearing these words brings with it a tremendous responsibility, for we will no longer be able to claim ignorance of the divine will if we fail to carry it out. The Lord warned us, “To whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48), and once we receive the gift of hearing the words of Christ, we will be required to fulfill them. We need therefore to let these words sink not just into our outer ears, but also into our inner hearts. That is why in every Christian liturgical tradition a prayer precedes the reading of the Gospel, asking that we might be worthy of hearing it. The Gospel prayer in our present Liturgy asks that God might illumine our hearts with the pure light of His divine knowledge and open the eyes of our mind to the understanding of His Gospel teachings so that we might think and do such things as are well-pleasing to Him. The prayer, too often said silently, is clearly meant to be said aloud, for it represents not the private devotional prayer of the priest, but the prayer of the entire congregation about to hear the words of the Gospel. It is only after that prayer is said that the deacon dares to read the Gospel to the people of God.

To do this, he stands among them, not reading the Gospel from the ambo at the front of the Church facing the people, but standing in their very midst. That is because it is not the deacon who speaks so much as Christ Himself, dwelling in the midst of His assembled people, and speaking His words. We honour the Lord who thus manifests Himself in our midst by holding candles before the book containing His words, standing as a kind of honour guard around Him. The psalm sung as a prokeimenon between the epistle and the Gospel always has as its refrain the cry, “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”, because the words of the Lord always produce joy in the hearts of those who hear them with faith.

Before reading the Gospel, the deacon asks for a blessing, since he is mindful of the importance of the work he is about to do. The celebrant responds by blessing him as he requested, asking that God, through the prayers of the Evangelist whose book he is about to read, may indeed enable him to proclaim the good news with great power, fulfilling the purpose of the Gospel. It is only after receiving this priestly blessing that the deacon reads the Gospel. And the people also require a blessing to hear the words of Christ fruitfully: the priest therefore blesses them also, saying, “Peace be unto all!” The words of Christ are chanted to the cry, “Glory to You, O Lord, glory to You!”, for these are not the words of someone long dead, but those of One even now alive in their midst.

All this extra ritual emphasizes something fundamental, not only about the Gospel reading, but also about the Liturgy as a whole—that in the Liturgy, Christ Himself comes to meet and transform us. Liturgy is not like a funeral, wherein someone offers a eulogy praising someone no longer among them. It is a banquet given by our divine Host who sits among us as we come to His festal table. Even more than that, Christian Liturgy represents the voice of Christ Himself, praising His Father from the midst of His people. That was the insight of the writer of Hebrews 2:11f: the verse from Psalm 22:22, “In the midst of the church I will sing hymns to You” finds its fulfillment in Christ. In the midst of the Church He sings our hymns to the Father, for we are His Body. He stands among us, in the midst of His lampstands (Revelation 1:13), healing us with His Word, feeding us with His Body and Blood. Every Liturgy is our saving rendezvous with this ever-living and saving Son of God.

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/commentary-divine-liturgy-gospel/

In the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, after the Trisagion Hymn comes the chanting of the prokeimenon and of the epistle. In many places the prokeimenon now has practically no purpose or significance, and looks like a verbal tag chanted in haste by the reader to introduce the epistle which follows it, for the people either make no congregational response to the chanting of the prokeimenon or a distinctly minimal one.

Originally of course the prokeimenon was chanted precisely in order to facilitate a congregational response, because the prokeimenon was the refrain they were to sing interspersed among the verses of the psalm that the reader chanted. The prokeimenon then did not serve as an introductory tag to the epistle, but as part of a psalm which was inserted between the Old Testament reading and the epistle. This psalm provided an opportunity for the people to rest from listening and to refresh their attention by singing before listening to the next lesson. (We see this same practice of inserting a psalm between numerous readings in the Vespers of Holy Friday, when the faithful listen to substantial readings from Exodus 33, Job 42, Isaiah 52-54, and 1 Corinthians 1. The prokeimenal psalms there are interspersed between these readings and provide a break from listening.) In today’s usage, the Old Testament reading has dropped away from the Liturgy, leaving the interspersed psalm hanging with not much to do, its once-numerous verses now reduced to a single verse. No wonder in some places even this verse is now omitted; its original function has now become superfluous. One could wish for the restoration of the first lesson and the interspersed psalm, not the further reduction of the psalm’s refrain.

But however the prokeimenon is chanted, after it comes the reading of the epistle, usually from the pen of St. Paul. The reader chants it from the midst of the assembly, facing east along with the rest of the people, for it represents the abiding voice of the apostle still sounding in the midst of the Church. It is too easy to under-value this reading, especially if the deacon insists upon doing the pre-Gospel censing of the Gospel book and much else during the time when the epistle is being read. The deacon may regard it is a kind of liturgical multi-tasking, but it actually serves to denigrate the significance of the epistle. St. Paul should not have to compete with the deacon and the bells on his censer for the people’s attention. His words should command the undivided attention of all—including the deacon.

We can miss also the full significance of the epistles. We regard it as “Scripture”, a holy text, and of course it is. But it is also a personal letter addressed and written to people other than ourselves. In listening to the epistle we are in fact reading someone else’s personal mail. Think of how it would look if we read a letter addressed to someone else in a public place—say a personal letter written by the bishop and addressed to the priest. Wouldn’t this be regarded as a bit odd, and perhaps a little inappropriate? But no one regards the reading of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians as odd or inappropriate, despite the fact that we are not Corinthians and the letter was written to people other than ourselves.

This is because the value of the letter resides not in the personal circumstances which Paul addressed, but in the abiding apostolic witness. These epistles reveal how the apostles dealt with problems in their own day, and thus how they would deal with the same problems should they befall us. The Corinthians were told, for example, that the person who was living in open and serious sexual sin (in this case, living with his step-mother) must be excommunicated (1 Corinthians 5:1f), and so through this particular example we know how the apostles would deal with open and serious sexual sin in our own congregations today. We can learn from these epistles what the apostles thought about who Jesus was, what salvation consisted of, and thus how we must therefore conduct our lives. Because the Church is apostolic, their words and views have an abiding and authoritative significance for us. Paul’s words to the Corinthians are not out-dated vestiges of controversies and cases long dead, but living words of contemporary counsel. No wonder we read them every time we meet to celebrate the Lord’s Eucharistic presence among us.

The epistles also reveal the nature of our salvation—that is a corporate reality, not an individual and private one. If Christianity were a philosophy, it might be embraced and followed privately, without much reference to others who decide to adopt that philosophy themselves. But our faith is not a philosophy, but a family. Each one of the epistles was written to a community, a family, a group of believers who met together every week as the body of Christ. The exceptions of the epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, prove this rule, for they were written to individuals to give them advice for ruling and living in the church community (see 1 Timothy 3:14-15). Salvation consists of being part of the Church, and of finding our identity and healing within it.

It is easy to zone out mentally during the reading of the epistle, or to regard it as a mere add-on. This is especially so if the homily is routinely based not on the epistle, but on the Gospel reading. But we must not let our attention flag and our minds wander, as if St. Paul had nothing important to say to us that day. We should listen up and pay strict attention. After all, before the epistle is read, the deacon cries out, “Wisdom!” and “Let us attend!” If we want to leave the Church assembly with more wisdom than we had when we entered it, we should indeed attend to what Christ’s apostles say to us.

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/commentary-divine-liturgy-epistle/

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Anaphora: the Meaning of the Central Prayer of the Liturgy

“Greet One Another with a Holy Kiss": the Historical Meaning of the "Holy Kiss"

From the Liturgy of the Catechumens to the Liturgy of the Faithful

Three Rhetorical Questions about Divine Liturgy

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Why Is Epistle Read during the Divine Liturgy?

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