And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.” (Luke 10:27)
How are we to love God with all our being – heart, soul, mind and strength? One way is through the sensory richness of worship as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware describes:
In our worship, we make use, in the first place, of words, and these words bear a literal meaning, grasped by the reasoning brain. But far more than the literal meaning of words is involved in the act of worship. Beyond and beneath their literal sense, particular syllables and phrases are rich in associations and undertones, and possess a hidden power and poetry of their own. Thus in our prayer, we use words not just literally but beautifully; through poetic imagery – even if the texts are in rhythmic prose rather than rhymed stanzas – we endow the words with a new dimension of meaning.
We worship, moreover, not through words only but in a wide variety of other ways: through music, through the splendor of the priestly vestments, through the color and lines of the holy icons, through the articulation of sacred space in the design of the church building, through symbolic gestures such as the sign of the cross, the offering of incense, or the lighting of the candle, and through the employment of all the great ‘archetypes,’ of all the basic constituents of human life, such as water, wine, bread, fire and oil.
In our literal use of words we reach the reasoning brain; by means of poetry and music, of art, symbol and ritual act, we reach the other layers of the human personality. (THE INNER KINGDOM, p 63)
We know God not only through Orthodox theology, but also through all of our senses and with all of our bodily organs. To fully experience God in our lives, we engage not only our minds but our hearts, souls and bodies as well. For this is how we experience the beauty of God’s revelation.
‘Beauty will save the world,’ said Dostoyevsky. It is a primary function of worship to render manifest the saving power of this divine beauty. (THE INNER KINGDOM, p 66)
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)
Fraternized 