Sermon on the Divine Liturgy, Part 1

By Fr. Seraphim Johnson (+2009)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we talked about the Holy Myrrhbearers, and the Myrrhbearers are an example to us that we as Christians are called to be different from everyone else—that in fact we have a privilege; we have the privilege of following our Saviour. But in taking advantage of that privilege it means that at times we are going to be different from those around us. We’re not going to be able always to live just the way everybody around us lives. Today I’d like to talk about one of the ways in which that difference becomes very clear to us, and I’d like to go into some details this Sunday and next. I’m going to talk about what is for us as Christians the greatest privilege of all, namely the Divine Liturgy.

We live as Christians in two worlds, or at least we should try to. We live in this world, the world around us, the world of everyday time and place, but as Christians we are also called to live in a new world, in God’s world—a world in which time and place do not have the same meaning they do in our world. And the place where those two worlds touch, where they come together so that we can pass from one to the other, so that we can in fact begin living in the new world, is in the Divine Liturgy. In the Liturgy the barriers between our time and God’s time, between earth and Heaven, between this world and eternity are taken away. And, as it were, we pass right through those barriers, we pass through into eternity. We pass through to stand before the heavenly throne where our Saviour is always offering Himself in that one offering on the Cross constantly before God because, as I’ve said different times, time doesn’t really exist with God, and as our Saviouroffered Himself on the Cross, so He is always offered; He always is a sacrifice for us, and when we come to the Liturgy, we share in that.

So from the very earliest days of the Church the Liturgy has been a special time for Christians—something to be approached not in a casual way, but with all of the care, all of the attention, and all of the reverence of which we are capable.

If you could come and see how the Liturgy begins, you would see that the very first thing I do is come into the church and stand in front of the closed doors and the closed curtain and begin with prayers, confessing my sins to God, using the very same prayers you should say every night in your evening prayers, the three troparia beginning “Have mercy on me, O God.” So we, the priests and the deacons, before we dare to serve the Liturgy, start by confessing our sins to God. Then we kiss the icons, on the iconstasis and on the walls, asking the help of the Saints. And just as the priest starts the service that way, we all should start the service that way. When you come into the church, the first thing you should do is to ask God’s forgiveness for your sins; and you should come and reverence the icons. You know, it’s something to think about: we come into the church sometimes, and we have other things on our minds. And we might think we could instantly enter into the spirit of the service, but of course we can’t. If you go to visit someone, you wouldn’t walk into the house and assume that with no transition you could immediately be in the mood to talk to them about something serious. And even worse, if the host were present, you wouldn’t start talking to all the other guests before you said anything to the host.

So it is when we come into the church. We need to come first of all a little bit ahead of time. It’s not good to come right at the very beginning of the service, because it doesn’t give you time to calm yourself. You see, we are trying to make a transition from the world of constant cares in which we are always living to the world of God where there is only one consideration: holiness. And that’s not an easy transition to make. So, as a practical matter, we need to come to church in time so we can calm ourselves, get peaceful inside a little bit, not to talk—that’s why we read the Hours, so people won’t talk, so people will be able to listen to something quiet, something peaceful, something to calm the heart, to calm the mind, to help you to enter into the service. The service moves at a different pace. The Liturgy is not conducted in the same way that the things of the world are; it moves at a slow pace, so that you have time to take in what is being said, so that you yourself have time to slow down, so that you can find some peace in your soul by this calming, this slowing that the Liturgy induces as a preparation. If our mind is in turmoil, if our mind is tense, then we are unable to enter into the Mysteries which are appearing. We are present when the veil of time is pierced, but we are unable to go through it and to participate in eternity.

Then the priests go inside the Holy Altar, and they put on their vestments. And we wonder: why do we wear vestments? They are symbolic in many ways. The first one, underneath, the stikharion, was actually worn by the priests of the Old Testament, and it’s worn today by deacons and by priests. The epitrachelion which goes around the neck is a mark of the yoke of Christ and the grace that has been poured out. We have prayers that we say as we put on our vestments, and when I put on the epitrachelion, I say a prayer from the Old Testament that refers to the grace that was poured out on Aaron. As the grace ran down his face (they poured oil on his head), it ran down on his beard, and it ran down to the hem of his garment, it says; the grace was poured out so fully on him. This is the grace, not for our worthiness, but the grace that has been poured out on the priests and deacons. Now for priests, who wear the epitrachelion around the neck, it hangs down on both sides to show it is truly the yoke of Christ that we have taken on and to show that we have the grace of the priesthood in full. If we had a deacon, you would see that he wears his stole—the same basic vestment—not fastened together, but over only one shoulder to show that he has only part of the grace and also only part of the responsibility.

Then we put a belt around to hold the stole on to show that we are ready to serve, that we are strong in the Lord. We put cuffs on our hands for two reasons, partly for safety because it seals the sleeves and none of the particles of the Body of Christ will go up there, and also to remind us of Christ’s bonds, that our hands are dedicated to God. Then over all we put on the phelonion which reminds us of the seamless robe of our Saviour. In particular we need vestments, we need to wear something different, to remind ourselves that what we are doing is not an everyday thing, but that what we are doing is timeless—that what we are doing is not a part of our normal routine, but that we are leaving the normal way of life, and we are entering into something different, something beyond time, beyond place.

Now, you don’t have vestments, although for the women with scarves it’s something similar in a way. When you put your scarf on, that’s a reminder right there that you are before God. But you can always put vestments on your hearts. When you come into the church after you’ve said your prayers, you need to pause and be quiet for a few minutes, and in that way you can vest your minds, you can vest your hearts. Put off the normal thoughts, the normal concerns that you would have. Don’t worry about your job; don’t worry about what you’re going to cook when you get home. Put those things aside just as we put aside our normal everyday clothes when we’re going to serve, and try instead to put on thoughts of what is going to happen, thoughts of Him in Whose presence you are about to be—as we clergy put on our vestments.

Now the next thing that happens, happens without your seeing it; it happens behind the closedcurtain as a reminder of the Nativity of our Saviour and His life in obscurity as a child and as a young man. I prepare the bread and the wine that are going to become His Body and Blood. I take a sword, a little lance that is very sharp, and cut out portions of a loaf of bread. One large portion is called the Lamb because it is the Lamb of God we are offering, and this portion is going to become the Body of our Saviour. I actually take the lance and say, “One of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side”—and I pierce the Lamb at that point—”and forthwith there carne out blood and water,” and then I pour the wine into the chalice and a couple of drops of water—the wine which in an hour or so will be transformed into our Saviour’s Blood. So you see we are remembering even then exactly what it was that happened, our Saviour’s sacrifice on the Cross. Then we cut out particles for the living and for the dead and for all the Saints, and we arrange them around the Lamb on the diskos. Later, as I’ll tell you next week, they’re put into the chalice around communion time.

So you, when you come into the church, having prayed to the Saints, need to take a lance to your own hearts and cut out an offering from your hearts to Christ—cut out an offering of your attention, an offering of your love. And you need also at that time, while it’s still quiet before the Liturgy has begun, to pray for the living and the dead who are close to you, those Orthodox living and dead whom you love, who have asked you to pray for them—to remember them, to commemorate them in your own hearts. This part of the Liturgy is the beginning, the proskomede, the preparation, and that we must all do in our hearts when we come to church, i.e., prepare ourselves for what is going to come.

The second part of the Liturgy is the Liturgy of the Catechumens. The catechumens are those who are being instructed in the Faith, those who are learning how to be Christians, and we all are still learning. There is none of us who knows what it is to be a Christian. All of us are still being instructed in the Faith, so we all need to be present at the Liturgy of the Catechumens. Actually it’s based on the synagogue service, the service at the time of our Saviour, the service that He Himself attended. It begins after the Great Doxology, which really comes from Matins. It begins with a blessing, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Very few services start that way. Almost all of our services begin, “Blessed is our God.” The Liturgy begins, “Blessed is the Kingdom” because at this point we have broken through time, we have broken through place, and we are now coming into God’s Kingdom. We are coming literally before God in His Kingdom.

And realizing that we are in His presence, that we are in His Kingdom, the first act is the Great Litany where we pour out our prayers for all the needs of the world. Listen carefully to the Great Litany. We pray for all Christians, we pray for this church, we pray for our Bishop and for priests and deacons, we pray for those who rule us. We pray for the city where we live, we pray for good weather, we pray for the food that we need. We pray for those who travel, we pray for safety, we pray for forgiveness, and we ask the prayers of the Theotokos and of all the Saints, and while the deacon is reading those prayers, we respond, “Lord, have mercy, Lord, have mercy.” This is our constant cry. We might say it’s our anthem, our battle cry as Christians: “Lord, have mercy.” So realizing that now we are in the presence of God, we begin by asking for His mercy.

Then we go to a very ancient style of singing. The choir chants the antiphons. Now unfortunately we don’t have a very big choir here. If you were to go to a large church, you would find that they have two choirs, one on each side, and they take turns singing verses from the Psalms, first the right choir, then the left. This goes back very far, in fact to St. Ignatius of Antioch, who as a little child was taken before our Saviour, Who lifted him up and showed him to the people. St. Ignatius of Antioch had a vision of the angels praising God antiphonally in Heaven, and he introduced this singing into the Church.

We sing from the Old Testament. We chant Psalms, which remind us that our God is the God Who revealed Himself to ancient Israel also, and He is the God not only of our times, but of all time, and He is the God Who brought salvation to Israel in its time.

We sing also a hymn, “Only-begotten Son of God,” that was composed by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. And we chant the Beatitudes, the New Testament commandments. (We didn’t chant them today because we’re using the Paschal antiphons during this period. But normally we would chant the Beatitudes.) We went through the Beatitudes during Great Lent; they show us the way of life that is expected of a Christian. Usually we would hear them, to remind us what it is we are called to, to instruct us in the way we should live. At the end of the Beatitudes, the Gospel is brought out for the first time and shown to us. This is called the Little Entrance, and I stand and hold the Gospel and say “Wisdom,” which is what we’re going to receive from the Gospel. Then I give some directions: I say “Upright!” And what that really means is: Stand up! Pay attention! Be reverent! because the Gospel is in your presence. In fact, if you watch, you’ll see that the next thing I do is kiss the Gospel, because our Saviour is present there. His very words are there in the Gospel.

So when the Gospel is brought out, it reminds us all to lift up our hearts, to open our minds, to be prepared to hear the Word of God which is soon going to be read. But first we call on all the Saints. We chant the hymns to the Saints, and when more than one priest is serving, the Altar is censed at this point. Because, just as our incense goes up, the prayers of the Saints for us are going up. In the book of Revelation, in fact, it says that the Saints stand by the altar of incense, and their prayers go up to God. So when we commemorate the Saints, we also have the incense going up to remind us of their prayers.

Then we chant the thrice-holy hymn, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal.” This hymn was revealed to a young child. Something the children might keep in mind is that that child really must have been paying attention during the service. It was in the fifth century in Constantinople when there was a great danger of earthquake, and people were very frightened. They went to church to pray that they would be saved from the earthquake, and one of the young children who was there was actually lifted up in the air, and he saw and he heard the angels singing this hymn, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal.” When he came back down, he told what he had heard, and from that time the Church began chanting that hymn during the Liturgy. So think how you should be paying attention. When you hear that hymn in particular, you should remember that it was revealed to a child like you—a child who was listening, a child who was paying attention, a child who was praying to God. This is your opportunity to join with the angels in offering the very words to God that the angels offer to God.

You’ll notice that on a few of the great feasts (i.e., the Nativity, Pascha, and a few others) this hymn isn’t sung, but we chant instead, “All ye who in Christ have been baptized, Christ have ye put on,” because in ancient times in the Church, baptisms were performed on the eves of those feasts, and those who were newly enlightened, newly baptized, were brought for the first time to church to receive the Holy Mysteries. So still today we chant, “All ye who in Christ have been baptized.” But remember, you have all been baptized in Christ, so you have all put on Christ as your vestment, as your robe, as the One you should be wearing when you come to the Liturgy.

Then we have the reading of the Epistle when we hear the words of the Apostles to us. I’ll give you a little pointer. During the Epistle, the priests and bishops (but not the deacons) are allowed to sit down because we in our unworthiness are successors to the Apostles, and so when they are reading the writings of our brothers, we can sit down. But everyone else should stand up if possible. Particularly the children should be standing when the Epistle is read. Only if you are old or sick should you sit down.

Then the Gospel—the words of our Saviour Himself—is read, and we should stand with all the reverence of which we are capable and all the attention of which we are capable. There should be no moving around, no coming or going or blowing out candles, but listening to the words of the Saviour. He is called the Word of God, and here His word is coming right to us, right to our hearts. So we must have all the attention possible.

Then following the word of God comes the part of the service that is simultaneously the most anticipated and the most feared: the sermon. Anticipated because you can sit down and most feared because you have to listen. But it’s when we preach what has been said, what we have learned so far, and try to apply what we have heard in the Epistle and in the Gospel, the feast we are celebrating, the service we are performing. We take it and apply it to our lives, and it’s not always easy to listen, particularly when the priest gets going too long, but this, also, is an important part of the service.

Then after the sermon we pray once again, concluding the Liturgy of the Catechumens. We pray first of all (and I’m going to do it in just a minute) for the living and the dead, and at that time I open up the antimension. Now you can’t see it very well, but if you watch, you’ll notice that at the mean point of the Liturgy there’s a cloth open on the Holy Table. It’s light in color and has a red background behind it. And if you could see it, you would see that it shows our Saviourentombed, taken down from the Cross, very much like the Epitaphios that we had out in the church on Holy Friday. Right now the Epitaphios is also on the Holy Table, but that’s only until the Ascension. This cloth called the antimension (that means “instead of the table”) is always there.

And there’re two special things about the antimension. The first thing is that it has a relic of a Saint in it, because in the ancient Church the tombs of the martyrs were used as the Holy Table.We don’t have a tomb, but we take a relic of a saint and we put it in the antimension so that when we serve Liturgy, we are serving on the bodies of those who have gone before us and who have completed the fight and have given glory to God by their lives. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is that it is signed by a bishop. It’s signed by our bishop. (Actually this one is signed by Archbishop Maximos.) It is in effect a license for us to have Liturgy; without it we’re not allowed to have Liturgy. Because you see, a parish is not an isolated community, but we are part of a larger body, and the bishop is our link with that larger body. I do not by myself as a priest have the right to serve Liturgy. Only as the bishop gives me permission do I have the right to serve Liturgy, and the antimension is the bishop’s permission, the bishop’s license to us so that we are allowed to have services here. It’s the mark, the sign, that we are in union with the whole Church, and were we to do something dreadful, the bishop would demand it back, and then we would no longer be allowed to serve Liturgy because we wouldn’t have it.

So when you see the antimension being opened, remember what is happening—that we are now coming to the crucial part of the Liturgy when we affirm our union throughout time and throughout space with the whole Church of God and with our bishop. If you watch carefully you’ll see that during the first litany I open it halfway when I mention the bishop’s name, and then during the litany of the catechumens, when we pray for those who are about to be baptized, I open it the rest of the way as I ask God to reveal the Gospel of righteousness unto them. You can open your hearts also at this point, and you can consider if you are ready for the Mystery which is to follow.

Because the catechumens, those who are not part of the Body of Christ, those who have not been baptized, are dismissed at this point. They are told to leave the church. When we have catechumens, they go outside in the hall; they aren’t allowed to be in for the rest of the service. But how about when we in our hearts are not part of the Body of Christ? When we have been inattentive, when we have not been praying, when we have not prepared ourselves for the service, then you might almost say that we too should leave. In fact, in the ancient Church only those who were prepared for Holy Communion were allowed to stay at that point, and all the rest were asked to leave because they had not prepared their hearts. We’re not so strict now, but still we should try to prepare our hearts, because otherwise when those words “Catechumens depart” sound out, know that if you have not been listening, if you have not been attending, if you have not been preparing your heart, then in your heart you leave at that point. In your heart you are not part of the Christian body gathered around the Holy Table for the Mystery which is to come. And that is a great fear and a great danger.

Now next week I will talk about the rest of the Liturgy—about some of the dangers and about some of the terrors that should be before us when we come, some of the seriousness with which we should approach. But for now try to remember: when you come to church, pray quietly, try to get your mind out of the world in which you have been living and into the new world, the redeemed world, the world where there is no time, where there is no space, the world of our Saviour. Vest yourselves with peace, vest yourselves with reverence and attention, and then be ready to offer your prayers for all of your fellow Christians and for all of their needs, and also open your hearts and your minds and your ears for instruction in living the Christian life.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.