Why Is Epistle Read during the Divine Liturgy?
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/
