Visions of the Liturgy: Old (Testament) and New (Children)

But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”  (Luke 18:16-17)

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  (Matthew 18:3)

While Jesus taught that we have to become like a child to enter the Kingdom of God, through history theological reflection tended not to see the Kingdom from a child’s point of view.  Theology made ideas of the Kingdom ever more complex.  Even the Liturgy which is to reflect the Kingdom was not understood from the point of view of the child but became increasingly complex with layers of meaning that no child could even see let alone understand.  The Liturgy seems not to have been developed with the child in mind, and today many people do not appreciate children in the Liturgy because they are noisy, distracting, disruptive while they want an experience free of childlike behavior.   And yet we cannot enter that Kingdom unless we become like a child for the Kingdom and the Liturgy which reflects it are not the constructs of theologians, scholars, mystics and the highly educated experts, but are the revelation of and from God for those who can be children.

The late great liturgical scholar Robert Taft summarized the Orthodox Liturgy this way:

“In the cosmic or hierarchical scheme, church and ritual are an image of the present age of the Church, in which divine grace is mediated to those in the world (nave) from the divine abode (sanctuary) and its heavenly worship (the liturgy enacted there), which in turn images forth its future consummation (eschatological), when we shall enter that abode in Glory.  Symeon of Thessalonika (d. 1429), last of the classic Byzantine mystagogues, has synthesized this vision in chapter 131 of his treatise ON THE HOLY TEMPLE:

The church, is the house of God, is an image of the whole world, for God is every where and above everything.   .  .  .  The sanctuary is a symbol of the higher and super-celestial spheres, where the throne of God and his dwelling place are said to be.  it is this throne which the altar represents. … The bishop represents Christ, the church [nave] represents the visible world.  .  .  .

I mention the apostles with the angels, bishops and priests, because there is only one Church, above and below, since God came down and lived among us, doing  what he was sent to do on our behalf.  And it is a work which is one, as is our Lord’s sacrifice, communion, and contemplation.  And it is carried out both above and here below, but with this difference: above it is done without any veils or symbols, butt here it is accomplished through symbols. . . .

In the economic on anamnetic scheme, the sanctuary with its altar is at once: the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle decreed by Moses; the Cenacle of the Last Supper; Golgotha of the crucifixion; and the Holy Sepulchre of the resurrection, from which the sacred gifts of the Risen Lord — His Word and His body and blood — issue forth to illumine the sin-darkened world.     . . .

In the iconography and liturgy of the church, this twofold vision assumes visible and dynamic form.  From the central dome the image of the Pantocrator dominates the whole scheme, giving unity to the hierarchical and economic themes.  The movement of the hierarchical theme is vertical: ascending from the present, worshiping community assembled in the nave, up through the ranks of the saints, prophets, patriarchs, and apostles, to the Lord in the heavens attended by the angelic choirs.  The economic or ‘salvation-history’ system, extending outwards and upwards from the sanctuary, is united both artistically and theologically with the hierarchical. ”  (THE BYZANTINE RITE: A SHORT HISTORY, pp 69-70)

The Liturgy and the Church are about ranks of bishops, apostles, angels, priests, saints, prophets and patriarchs.   What is missing?  Children.  We cannot enter the Kingdom without them or without being one of them.   We don’t have to have a seminary degree to understand the Liturgy.  We need the eyes of a child.  If the received Tradition forgets that, it has forgotten a key to the Kingdom.  We can do the Liturgy perfectly rubrically correct, according to the Typikon, with every ritual required.   We still need to have the heart of a child to enter the Kingdom.

It also is interesting that the received Tradition turned to and returned to the Old Testament for its liturgical meaning, rites and symbols rather than exploring themes suggested by the Gospel.   In the Old Testament, we understand, everything was in shadows and symbols:  “For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities…”  (Hebrews 10:1)   Christ came and revealed the Light opening Paradise to us, opening our hearts and minds and eyes to see clearly no longer in shadows: “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”  (Matthew 4:16)   But now according to Taft’s description it is the nave of the church and the non-clergy who live in the world of symbols (the shadowy world of the Old Testament!).  It is all that the Church permits for the non-clergy.    Behind the icon wall, reserved for the clergy is the Kingdom opened.  The Gospel, however, proclaims that we no longer sit in darkness or in shadows for the Light has come.   There is another effect of this return to the shadows of the Old Testament – the hierarchy serves to further distance the Savior from the people He saved!  It is moving away from Christ who ended all of the dividing walls and opened Paradise to all.

For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.  (Ephesians 2:14-22)

The Significance of Vespers

“…the recovery by the Church of the true spirit and meaning of the liturgy, as an all-embracing vision of life, including heaven and earth, time and eternity, spirit and matter and as the power of that vision to transform our lives… For, as we have seen, the only real justification of the parish as organization is precisely to make the liturgy, the cult of the Church as complete, as Orthodox, as adequate as possible, and it is the liturgy, therefore, that is the basic criterion of the only real “success” of the parish.

Let the Saturday service – this unique weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection, this essential “source” of our Christian understanding of time and life, be served week after week in an empty church – then at least the various secular “expressions” and “leaders” of the parish: committees, commissions and boards, may become aware of the simple fact that their claim: “we work for the Church” is an empty claim, for if the “Church” for which they work is not primarily a praying and worshiping Church it is not “church”, whatever their work, effort and enthusiasm. Is it not indeed a tragic paradox: we build ever greater and richer and more beautiful churches and we pray less and less in them?…

All conversations about people being “busy” and “having no time” are no excuses. People were always busy, people always worked, and in the past they were, in fact, much busier and had more obstacles to overcome in order to come to Church. In the last analysis it all depends where the treasure of man is – for there will be his heart. The only difference between the present and the past is – and I have repeated this many times – that in the past a man knew that he had to make an effort, and that today he expects from the Church an effort to adjust herself to him and his “possibilities.”

(Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “Problems of Orthodoxy in the World,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, 1965, pp. 188-189)

Prayer: Standing in God’s Presence

The Gospel lesson for the 4th Sunday of Great Lent, Mark 9:17-31, should be a message of hope for many of us.

Often, in the face of tragedy or problems, we feel hopeless, wringing our hands and worriedly asking, “what went wrong?”  and “What should I do?” or “why me?”

We see the disciples in this condition in the Gospel lesson.  A man brought his sick child to the disciples and asked them to heal his son.  But try as they might, the disciples were not able to heal the boy.  Jesus had given the disciples the power to exorcise demons (Mark 3:15), and they had had some success (Mark 6:7-13), but in this case they failed.   Later, away from the prying ears of the crowd, they privately ask Jesus to explain to them why they couldn’t heal the boy but Jesus was able.

Jesus tells them fasting and prayer are the activities needed to remedy the situation.   But note Jesus does not tell them it was their lack of faith that led to their failure.    Rather Jesus reminds them how to consciously stand in God’s presence – through prayer and fasting.

The disciples had in fact on another occasion requested that Jesus teach them to pray (Luke 11:1-4).  Jesus complied to their request and taught them the Lord’s prayer.

The disciples didn’t ever ask – “teach us to do miracles” – nor did they ask “teach us how to pray so that we get everything we want”  NOR even “teach us how to pray so prayer works for us.”

Prayer always puts us in God’s presence.   And being in God’s presence it turns out is the goal of the spiritual life.  The goal is not getting all our prayers answered – we are not trying to turn God into our personal Amazon.com so that He delivers to our doorstep everything we request.

Prayer puts us into God’s presence, and makes God present to us, which makes union with God possible.   We are not just asking for gifts, we are asking to be with the giver of life.   St. Paul says:   “I seek not what is yours but you”  (2 Corinthians 12:14).  That precisely should be our attitude toward God – don’t seek what He can give you, seek God the giver of every good and perfect gift.

There are plenty of things in our lives that come between us and God – our worries, our problems, our temptations, our disbeliefs, our selfishness, our lusts – all of these personal demons.

Prayer and fasting cut through all of those things and put us back in the presence of God.  The goal is to be not only mindful of God but united to God.  We can only begin that journey by prayer and fasting.   We have to lay aside all earthly cares and truly believe that the most important thing is to be in God’s presence.  And that is true whether things are going good or bad, whether we are in a time of prosperity or poverty, whether experiencing a blessing or a curse.   Being in God’s presence is the goal no matter what else is going on around us.  Even if it is the moment of  our death, if we are in God’s presence, we are where we need to be.

Remember Satan does not tremble because the church has wonderful fellowship hours, or at church dinners, nor at church fund raisers, nor at church schedules.

But Satan is crushed by humble, heart felt prayer – by our standing in God’s presence, by our submitting our lives to God’s will.

As we move into these last two weeks of Great Lent, make Christ Jesus the center of your life so that you always follow Him and you keep Him near you.

One last thing to remember, in ancient Israel, King Hezekiah when he launched his reforms to restore proper religion told the Levites:  “My sons, do not now be negligent, for the LORD has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him, and to be his ministers and burn incense to him.”   (2 Chronicles 29:11)

The task the priests of Israel were chosen for was to stand in God’s presence!  Now we come to the New Testament where the priesthood has been expanded to all believers.  The Apostle Peter tells us:

Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  (1 Peter 2:4-5)

Now it is the task of each of us and all of us – not just the priests – to stand in God’s presence and to offer spiritual sacrifices.   We all are to “liturgize” together to the glory of God.  We are to make God present in every moment of our lives.

For the Peace from Above

For the peace from above and for the salvation of our souls . . . . For the peace of the whole world, for the welfare of the holy churches of God, and for the union of all, let us pray to the Lord. (Petitions from the Divine Liturgy)

St. Tikhon, the Enlightener of North America comments:

Therefore the angels at His very birth already sing “on earth peace, good will toward men.” But perhaps you might ask — where is peace on earth, since from the coming of Christ until this day we see conflicts and wars; when at the present time one nation rises against another and one kingdom against another; when even now discord, hostility, and animosity are seen so often among people?

Where are we to look for peace, which was brought and left by Christ (cf. John 14:27)? “It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains”; “all nations will stream toward it” “and beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” “and they will not train for war again” (Is. 2:2, 4); “every man shall sit under his own vine undisturbed” (Mic. 4:4). This kingdom of peace on earth, which was foretold by the Prophets of the Old Testament, is indeed the Church of Christ; and it is in it [the Church] that peace should be sought. Here man is given peace with God, since in the mysteries he is purified from sin and becomes a child of the Lord, pleasant to Him. Here also in the services offered to God, in the mysteries, in the order and life of the Church, a Christian draws peace and delight and calmness for his heart.

The nature of man is transformed and renewed, and into his meek, gentle, truly humble, merciful, and loving soul comes the God of peace and love. And a Christian then experiences the heavenly bliss of which there is nothing higher on earth. No troubles or sufferings of any kind can overshadow this blissful peace in a Christian. On the contrary, we know from the history of the Church of Christ that holy men even rejoiced in suffering and boasted in sorrows, captivity and prisons, deserts and dens of the wicked. Amidst all deprivations they were placid and calm, perhaps more so than people who live with all the comforts and prosperity ever feel. They are not afraid of death itself; they calmly expect its approach and depart to the Lord in peace. Peace is dispersed everywhere in the Church of Christ.

Here people pray for peace in the whole world, for the unity of all; here all call one another brethren, and help one another; here everybody is loved, and even enemies are forgiven and cared for. And when Christians listen to the voice of the Church and live according to its commands, then they truly have peace and love.  (St. Tikhon of Moscow: Instructions and Teachings for the American Orthodox Faithful (1898-1907), Kindle Loc 453-471)

The Divine Liturgy and Personal Prayers

While one’s personal prayer life and joining in the prayer at the Liturgy are integrally linked and inseparable  in the spiritual life of Orthodox Christians, they are also  two distinct types of prayer.  When one joins the community at the Liturgy, we are joining to pray communal prayers, to join our heart and mind to those of all the other believers assembled together.  It is both how we compose the Body of Christ and experience the Body of Christ in our own person.

 Fr. Thomas Hopko writes:

“Liturgical prayer is not simply the prayers of individual Christians joined into one. It is not a corporate ‘prayer service’ of many persons together. It is rather the official prayer of the Church formally assembled; the prayer of Christ in the Church, offering His ‘body’ and ‘bride’ to the Father in the Spirit. It is the Church’s participation in Christ’s perpetual prayer in the presence of God in the Kingdom of heaven (cf. Heb 7.24–25, 9.24).  . . .  In the Orthodox Church there is no tradition of corporate prayer which is not liturgical. Some consider this a lack, but most likely it is based on Christ’s teaching that the prayer of individuals should be done ‘in secret’ (Mt 6.5–6). This guards against vain repetition and the expression of personal petitions which are meaningless to others. It also protects persons from being subjected to the superficialities and shallowness of those, who instead of praying, merely express the opinions and desires of their own minds and hearts. . . .

When one participates in the liturgical prayer of the Church, he should make every effort to join himself fully with all the members of the body. He should not ‘say his own prayers’ in church, but should pray ‘with the Church.’ This does not mean that he forgets his own needs and desires, depersonalizing himself and becoming but one more voice in the crowd. It means rather that he should unite his own person, his own needs and desires, all of his life with those who are present, with the church throughout the world, with the angels and saints, indeed with Christ Himself in the one great ‘divine’ and ‘heavenly liturgy’ of all creation before God.   Practically this means that one who participates in liturgical prayer should put his whole being, his whole mind and heart, into each prayer and petition and liturgical action, making it come alive in himself. If each person does this, then the liturgical exclamations become genuine and true, and the whole assembly as one body will glorify God with ‘one mouth, one mind and one heart’…”   (SPIRITUALITY, pp 127-128)

We come to the church at liturgy to join and become part of the community (common-unity), to share in the life in the Body of Christ.  Communion and community are related words and concepts.

In this sense, we don’t come to the Liturgy to say our private prayers.  Christ taught us to do that at home, hidden from the eyes of others – to do such private praying in the privacy of our own room (Matthew 6:6).  The liturgy is a time to set aside our private prayer books and to pray the liturgy with everyone assembled.  If we pray with the community, and “go to church” exactly for that purpose, then perhaps we can also learn tolerance for others.  They are not there to annoy us, but are there exactly so that we can pray with them, sharing space and time in community.  The people who aren’t dressed appropriately, or the crying babies, over-active children, the people coming late, those walking in and out of liturgy – these are the people we are coming to church to pray with and for.  So they aren’t disrupting our liturgical prayer life, they aren’t distracting us, but are there for us to note them and pray with and for them.  We come to the Liturgy to be fully aware of those with whom we belong in the Body of Christ.  This is part of the love for one another of which Jesus spoke (John 15:11-17 – note that Christ taught that loving one another would increase our joy, not detract from it!).

We also come to pray with and for the needs of the community.  In some places  it has become common practice to turn in long lists of names of the people for whom we privately are praying.  We somehow seem to think this makes the Liturgy personal.  But truthfully turning in such long lists of names does exactly what Fr. Hopko says shouldn’t happen at the liturgy: It turns the Liturgy, the common prayer of the people, into “the expression of personal petitions which are meaningless to others.”   You are supposed to pray personally and privately for all the people on your prayer list, but all those names aren’t meant to be expressed in the Liturgy.  The liturgy prays for virtually every one on earth in its various petitions.  Turning in long lists of names may seem pious and prayerful, but we are already praying for virtually everyone at the liturgy in the many categories of people we pray for in the various petitions.  Naming people at the Liturgy changes the nature of prayer at the Liturgy into private petitions.  It is appropriate for the local community to pray by name for people of special interest to the community that have special needs, but these should be names known by virtually everyone in the community and whose needs are well known too.

A friend tells me that turning in long lists of names to be read at the Liturgy is common in places where Communion is infrequent.  He thinks it is just another practice that has emerged in churches in which actual communion has disappeared.  Like the proskomedia, names are being offered because frequent Communion has disappeared.  It is the substitute for the reality of the sacrament.  If people are living the Christian life and joining in the community’s Eucharist, they are “in Christ” in reality, not just in name.

We “go to Church” in order to fully experience the sacramental reality of the Community’s Eucharist.  That is something we cannot experience at  home in our private prayer life.  Our private prayer life is in fact nourished by our liturgical prayer life in community.  But we should not be reducing Liturgical prayer to being just our private prayer.  Individualism is meant to be overcome in Christ in whom we become part of His body, members one of another (Romans 12:5).

 

The Divine Liturgy is the Kingdom of God

“The Divine Liturgy is the Kingdom of God, and the food at the Supper of the Kingdom is love. Through repentance and fear of God, we traverse the sea of this life and arrive at love.

‘Repentance is the ship,

fear is its helmsman and

love is the divine harbor.

So fear places us in the ship of repentance, conveys us across the sullied sea of life and brings us to the divine harbor which is love, to which all those who are weary and heavy laden attain through repentance [cf. Matt. 11:28]. Once we arrive at love, we have arrived at God.’”

(St. Isaac the Syrian in The Divine Liturgy: A Commentary in the Light of the Fathers  by Hieromonk Gregorios, p 294)

Listen to the Gospel

“These Gospel lessons are not merely to be listened to in church; the whole point is that they are to be ‘taken home’ and meditated upon in terms of my life, my family situation, my professional obligations, my concern for material things, my relation to the concrete human beings with whom I live.” (Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent, pp 90-91)

The Unworthy Impediment

While piety sometimes can make us believe we are  not worthy to receive Holy Communion on a particular day when the Eucharistic Liturgy is being offered, the reality is Christ came to call the sinner to repentance, to heal the wounds caused by sin and to end the separation of humanity from their Creator.  Christ came precisely because we are unworthy to approach God, in order to make it possible for us to be restored to unity with God again.    The incarnation is about God taking on sinful flesh to heal us and restore us to union with God. Christ did not become incarnate because we all were so holy that He was drawn to us.  He came because we are sinners and unworthy.   The God who is love sees our unworthiness and in His loving compassion reaches out to us, cutting through all bonds and barriers in order to save us from the consequence of our own sins.  Christ comes to save us from our unworthiness.   Before ever cutting yourself off from Holy Communion, speak with your father confessor or parish priest.  Do not disobey Christ’s commands to “Take, eat” and “Drink of it, all of you.”   Russian Orthodox theologian Fr. Nicholas Afanasiev writes:

“If personal unworthiness was indeed an impediment against receiving communion, then practically no one could ever be admitted to the Eucharist…. The Eucharistic gathering is the manifestation of the Church in all her fullness and all her oneness. Eucharistic communion is the very expression of life in the Church. If we eliminate Eucharistic communions, then what is left of our life in the Church? Is prayer even temporarily able to replace communion? The prayer of the Church is prayer ‘in Christ’, but it is impossible to be ‘in Christ’ apart from Eucharistic communion with Him.”  (Living Icons by Michael Plekon, p 169)

If we have a sense of our unworthiness, our own sinfulness, then we are in the proper frame of mind to approach the Chalice in humility and repentance.  We always are unworthy of Christ dying on the cross for us.  We are always unworthy of having our sins forgiven or entering into God’s Kingdom.   It is that knowledge which makes us humble ourselves before God and beg His mercy.

The Holy Spirit: Uniting Eucharist and Communicants

“The Eucharist requires the memorial (or anamnesis) of the whole history of salvation. This is epitomized in its central point, the life-giving cross, the cross of Easter. These events which are written in the ‘memory’ of God are made present, actual and active by the ‘memory’ of the Church.

In this living ‘memorial’ the priest is the image of Christ, an ‘other Christ’, as St John Chrysostom says. He bears witness to Christ’s unshakeable fidelity to his Church. Through the one who sums up the people’s prayer and constitutes for them the sign of Christ, Christ our one high priest accomplishes the Eucharist. And everything is done in the Holy Spirit.

It is in the Holy Spirit that the Church is the ‘mystery’ of the Risen Christ, the world in process of transfiguration. The Spirit ‘broods’ on the waters at the beginning and ‘hovers’ over them like a great bird. In order to make the human being live, God breathes his Spirit into the clay. The Spirit comes down on the Blessed Virgin in order that the Word may take flesh in her.

He rests on Jesus as his Messianic anointing and it is in him that Jesus thrills with joy and multiples the ‘signs’ of the Kingdom. It is by the life-giving power of the Spirit that God raises Jesus (Romans 1:4). Likewise when the people are assembled to offer themselves in the offertory of the bread and wine, the Spirit comes upon them to ‘manifest’ the body and blood of Christ through the bread and wine (the word ‘manifest’ is found in the Eucharistic liturgy of St Basil). The Spirit thereby integrates the people in the glorified humanity of the Lord. So the memorial is effected by the coming of the Spirit in response to the Church’s epiclesis (a word that means ‘invocation’).

All the faithful ratify this invocation by their amens. In this respect they are concelebrants of the liturgy. But only the apostolic witness of the bishop (or of the priest representing him) can testify to the epiclesis being heard, to the fullness of God’s faithfulness.”  (Oliver Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, pp 111-112)

Let Us Depart In Peace

The dismissal of many Orthodox service seems to be a series of faux-endings strung together as if they didn’t quite know how to bring it to a conclusion.  According to one humorous anecdote, one can know that one is Orthodox if in a liturgical service one is still standing and continuing in prayer 15 minutes after hearing the celebrant say, “Let us depart in peace.”

Hieromonk Gregorios in his book, The Divine Liturgy: A Commentary in the Light of the Fathers, comments on the Liturgy’s dismissal – we have sojourned to join the angels in heaven, and then prepare to disembark once again into God’s earth.

“The Divine Liturgy is a journey whose purpose is man’s encounter and union with God. This goal has now been realized: we have reached the end of our journey, we have seen the true Light, we have seen the Lord transfigured on the Mount Tabor of the Liturgy, we have partaken of His holy Body and most pure Blood. And as we venture to utter to our exalted Visitor, Lord, it is good for us to be here (Matt. 17:4), our Mother Church reminds us that the end of the liturgical journey must become the starting-point for our spiritual journey: Let us go forth in peace.

We have to leave the Mountain of the Transfiguration in order to return to the world and tread the way of martyrdom of our lives. This journey becomes our martyria, our witness to Christ – the Way and the Life – who has become our guest. During the Divine Liturgy, we received Christ within us. Now we are invited to pass Him on to the world, to become witness to the life of Christ. ‘We should come out of the sacred assembly…as if we had descended from heaven itself’, so that when our family, our friends or our enemies see us, they will all understand the benefit we have received from the Church.

After Holy Communion, we go out into the world as Christ-bearers and Spirit-bearers. Thereafter, we strive to preserve the Light we have received ever-burning, and to keep undefiled the gifts of grace which we have received. Then, even without words, our presence will transmit the Grace we have received to the souls of our brethren who were not present at the Liturgy. For the Christ-bearing believer is earth that brings forth fruit of itself (Mark 4:28).” (p 309)