The Liturgy Explained

1- Just as the root of the vine ministers and distributes to the branches the enjoyment of its own natural and inherent qualities, so the Only-begotten Word of God imparts to the Saints, as it were, an affinity to His own nature which is that of God the Father, by giving them the Spirit...

And the Saviour Himself says: He that eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood, abides in Me, and I in him. For here it is especially to be observed that Christ says that He shall be in us, not by a certain relation only, as entertained through the affections, but also by a natural participation. For as, if one entwines wax with other wax and melts them by fire there results of both one, so through the participation of the Body of Christ and of His precious Blood, He in us, and we again in Him, are co-united. -St Cyril of Alexandria

2- If the poison of pride is swelling up in you, turn to the Eucharist; and that Bread, Which is your God humbling and disguising Himself, will teach you humility. If the fever of selfish greed rages in you, feed on this Bread; and you will learn generosity. If the cold wind of coveting withers you, hasten to the Bread of Angels; and charity will come to blossom in your heart. If you feel the itch of intemperance, nourish yourself with the Flesh and Blood of Christ, Who practiced heroic self-control during His earthly life; and you will become temperate. If you are lazy and sluggish about spiritual things, strengthen yourself with this heavenly Food; and you will grow fervent. Lastly, if you feel scorched by the fever of impurity, go to the banquet of the Angels; and the spotless Flesh of Christ will make you pure and chaste.- St Cyril of Alexandria

3- The Liturgy begins then as a real separation from the world. In our attempt to make Christianity appeal to the man on the street, we have often minimized, or even completely forgotten, this necessary separation. We always want to make Christianity “understandable” and “acceptable” to this mythical “modern” man on the street. And we forget that the Christ of whom we speak is “not of this world” and that after his resurrection he was not recognized even by his own disciples.- Fr Alexander Schemmann

4- The tradition from which he comes is what we Orthodox Christians might call “man centered.” The focus is on how God affects “my life,” what “I get out of worship,” etc. In this mindset, worship must be “appealing to me,” to “fit my needs,” and so on. “Personal taste,” rather than the faith, often dictates the external form of worship, which can lead to congregations offering “traditional,” “contemporary,” “pop,” “folk,” “rock,” and other “styles” of services, each “form” appealing to the taste of a specific “group” within a community, yet no one form appealing to the community as a whole. The Orthodox Tradition approaches such things from the exact opposite position, understanding as well that how one worships is not a matter of “personal taste.”

Rather than being “man centred,” Orthodox Christian worship is “God centred.” Worship, as we read in Scripture, must be offered “in Spirit and Truth” and must be “well pleasing unto God,” Who is the only One we strive to “please” by our worship.

We do not gather for worship to be entertained, to be “relevant,” or to “appeal” to this group’s “taste” at the expense of the whole. While humans have the need to worship, worship must offer a glimpse of the divine, not an affirmation of humanity. Worship must always be seen as focused on God, period, and not on “me.”- Fr Thomas Hopko

5- This, then, is the aim of the Liturgy: that we should return to the world with the doors of our perceptions cleansed. We should return to the world after the Liturgy, seeing Christ in every human person, especially in those who suffer. In the words of Father Alexander Schmemann, the Christian is the one who wherever he or she looks, everywhere sees Christ and rejoices in him. We are to go out, then, from the Liturgy and see Christ everywhere.- Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

6- When the Christian begins to perceive the true dimensions of the Sacrament, he is filled with the desire to approach it more and more closely. Thus, the life of the faithful Christian goes from Liturgy to Liturgy. His chief concern is how to offer a more acceptable presentation before God every time; how to conform his own presentation to that of Christ before the Heavenly Father; how to attain to a greater fulness of divine love, how to become a worthy disciple of the Lord.- Elder Zacharias

7- “If you want to experience the Kingdom of Heaven in the Liturgy, preserve the sanctity and respect of the place”- Bishop Epiphanius, Bishop of the Monastery of St Macarius the Great

8- And yet, from its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth. It rendered impossible all joy we usually think of as possible. But within this impossibility, at the very bottom of this darkness, it announced and conveyed a new all-embracing joy, and with this joy it transformed the End into a Beginning. Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible. It is only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world, and it lost the world when it lost that joy, and ceased to be a credible witness to it. Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.

Joy, however, is not something one can define or analyze. One enters into joy. “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Mt. 25:21). And we have no other means of entering into that joy, no way of understanding it, except through the one action which from the beginning has been for the Church both the source and the fulfillment of joy, the very sacrament of joy, the Eucharist. - Fr Alexander Schmemann

Preparing for the liturgy

9- We must not forget that our participation in the abundance of life which the Lord offers us in the Liturgy, depends not only upon how much we have prepared in our ‘closet’ the day before, but every day as well. Our whole life ought to be a single preparation to present ourselves worthily before God in His house, and to thank Him for what we owe Him with all our heart, and in a manner befitting Him.- Elder Zacharias

10- The warmth and peace that we have accumulated in the secret ‘closet’ of our heart will accompany us when we assemble for the Divine Liturgy, forming a holy and mystical space within us wherein our spirit can move freely and creatively.- Elder Zacharias

11- It is generally known among Christian ascetics that a ‘rich’ liturgy is preceded by a ‘strong’ night, that is, by a good preparation, wherein the Christian makes an effort to conform his spirit to the spirit of the Liturgy, to the downward path of the lord Jesus to the infernal regions. Elder Zacharias

12- One way of preparing is by praying on our own for a period of time before the Liturgy, and then going to Church with our heart full of warmth, faith, love, hope, in expectation of the Lord’s mercy, and full of spiritual dispositions. That is an offering we bring to God and the Church, a gift to the assembly of the brethren who have gathered together in the temple. The gift that we cultivate when we are alone unites us with the Body of Christ. It leads us into the communion of all the other gifts of the members of Christ’s Body, the Saints in heaven, and also of His elect upon earth so that in truth we become rich.- Elder Zacharias

13- Consequently, the more we cultivate our gift when we are alone, the more we shall be prepared when we come to church, to enter this blessed communion of gifts, the blessed communion of those who possess gifts, the blessed communion of the grace of God. For the grace of God establishes the Church, who, like a mother, helps and inspires the faithful with her prayers and Liturgies, which create an upward impetus, while the Saints, who are the glorified members of the Body of Christ, pull them up with their prayers and intercessions. This is the meaning of the Church: a helpful push from below and a saving pull from above.- Elder Zacharias

offering

14- The bread and wine stand for us i.e. for our life, for the whole of our existence, for the entire world created by God for us.They are our food, our food makes us live , it is that which becomes our body.By offering it to God, by sacrificing it to Him, we show that our life is given away to Him, that we follow Christ, our Head, in His movement of total love and sacrifice. Thus in the procession of Offertory our very life is being brought to the Altar, presented to God in an act of love and adoration.- Fr Alexander Schmemmann

15- The bread and wine resemble us in that we are an oblation to God. As the bread cannot be offered before going through many phases, so likewise we must pass with our Lord through the fire of His suffering. Also as the wine is not offered before it is pressed, we must be pressed with Him through the winepress of His Cross, so that we may be offered to Him.- Fr Tadros Malaty

16- Man approaches the Sacrament with his being divided and corruptible, but also with all his pain, his agony, his faith, however faltering and limited it may be, his longing and his desire to become a partaker of eternal life. Although he offers God perishable gifts of bread and wine, they are nonetheless impregnated with his prayer, his suffering, his despair, his gratitude, and his hope, the content of his hear and his whole life, which is limited, temporary, meaningless, corruptive, irredeemable. He offers wretched  tears and the humble thoughts of repentance, with which he poured out his heart to the ‘God of knowledge’ in his private prayer.

He offers thanksgiving, glorification, praise and supplication. He offers his expectation. He says to God through the mouth of the priest: “We offer unto You Your gifts from what is yours, for everything, concerning everything and in everything,” knowing that he has nothing of his own. Even his life is a loan of God’s goodness…. The All-good and Merciful God says through the mouth of the priest: ‘The Holies are for the Holy.” He returns His Gifts to His people, to those ‘called to be saints’ (see Rom 1:7); but now they are filled with His own life, which is eternal, incorruptible, blessed, never fading.

At that sacred moment, the inconceivable and indescribable exchange of human life with the divine takes place. It is in this exchange that the great mystery of the Divine Liturgy lies. This exchange is essentially the purpose of the sacred Act which brings eternity and salvation to earthly man. Through this exchange, the soul is blessed with the gentle breeze of the light-bearing divine love which makes man in corruptive and unites him to the Almighty Jesus with a powerful bond of perfect love. - Elder Zacharias