Sermon on the Divine Liturgy, Part 2

By Fr. Seraphim Johnson (+2009)

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

Last week we started talking about the Liturgy, and we got through the first part which is called the Liturgy of the Catechumens, the part that ends when we dismiss the catechumens.

Now we’re going to talk about the remaining part of the Liturgy and try to see what it should mean to us. Right after the catechumens are sent away, we have two litanies for all the faithful, beginning “As many as are of the faithful, again and again, in peace let us pray to the Lord.” It seems like we’re just saying the little litanies again, basically, but in the Altar the priest is reading prayers for the forgiveness of our sins. The priest prays, interestingly enough, for the forgiveness of his own sins and for the forgiveness of the ignorances of the people. So you see we have the greater burden; we look at the ignorance of the people, and we ask God’s forgiveness. Of coursewe all have the obligation to try to overcome that ignorance and to try to overcome those sins. So, as we enter into the second part of the Liturgy, we begin by asking for forgiveness, just as we began the first part of the Liturgy also with the priest’s prayers for forgiveness, the Fiftieth Psalmin fact. We ask forgiveness now because we are approaching the most wonderful miracle that God has granted us.

The next thing you hear is the Cherubic Hymn. The one we normally chant was written, as was “Only-begotten Son of God,” by the Emperor Justinian. As the choir slowly chants the hymn, the priest reads a long prayer, confessing his unworthiness, and then he repeats the words of the hymn three times. Then we bring the incense, and we cense the whole church; just as we censed at the beginning of the first part of the Liturgy, now we cense the whole church again to prepare for the second part of the Liturgy. And the incense is a reminder and a symbol to us that our prayers should be going up as the smoke of the incense is going up. And our hearts should be opening up before God and sending up prayers just the way the censer is sending up smoke. While the priest is censing, he recites again, silently, the Fiftieth Psalm so that he is preparing himself, acknowledging his sins.

Then we bring out the Holy Gifts. We bring them from the side table, the prothesis table, where they were prepared, out through the church, in through the Royal Doors, and place them on the Holy Table. Mystically we’re representing here the burial procession of Christ. Watch and you’ll see that I have on my back the veil, the aer it’s called, that goes over the Holy Gifts (it’s over them now), and that corresponds to the winding sheet in which our Saviour was wrapped, the shroud in which He was buried. So we bring the Gifts out, and now at this point we must note carefully what the hymn says. First of all we say we are like the choirs of angels: “Let us who mystically represent the cherubim, put aside all earthly cares.” And that’s the key right there. We have to put aside everything of the world around us. And that means the big things and the little things. Obviously we shouldn’t be standing there in church thinking about what we’re going to do later or thinking about things we should be doing at home or things we should be doing at work. We shouldn’t even be thinking about the housekeeping jobs around the church. If possible, from then on we should let the candles alone and only in an emergency put them out when they’re really too low. And ideally each person should be quiet, including the children, so they don’t distract other people and make them think about worldly concerns like taking a child out in the hall and explaining to the child why they should behave. That’s a worldly concern you’d rather not have to worry about. And the noise of explaining might distract other people in the church also. So we should put aside all earthly cares.

Try to think: what would be in your heart if you went to Liturgy only once in your life? You know, the wonder-working icon comes or a myrrh-gushing icon comes or a weeping icon comes, and people come with great fervor because it’s unusual; they’re not used to seeing it, and it’s a special blessing. Or sometimes even when a person with a good reputation comes, a saintly reputation or a pious reputation, people go to see him. Or we could go even further: if the President comes to visit, people will take a bit of trouble sometimes to try to see him, just to catch a glimpse of him. But Liturgy—we don’t take it very seriously because it happens every week. But try to imagine if this were the only time in your life that you were going to be present at the Liturgy. What kind of attention would be in your heart? What kind of feelings would you have? Imagine the reverence you would have, the fear you would have. And try to capture some of that at each Liturgy. The one advantage of what happens when icons or visitors come is that they give us a reminder of what we should be feeling when we come to Liturgy every week—of what we take for granted. We have a remarkable capability as human beings to take things for granted. That’s the main reason I’m talking about these things, because we do take them for granted. They happen so often that we don’t think about them.

Now when the Holy Gifts are placed in the Altar on the Holy Table, we recite the prayer that we chanted on Great Friday when we carried the burial shroud: “Noble Joseph.” It’s written right on the Epitaphios itself: “The noble Joseph, taking Thine immaculate Body down from the Tree, and having wrapped it in pure linen and spices, laid it for burial in a new tomb.” We say that every time when we cover the Holy Gifts with the veil. They’re hidden from our sight as our Saviourwas hidden in the tomb. And you know at that point the curtain is closed, as the grave was sealed. Although many Orthodox today open the curtain for part of the time, normally we keep the curtain closed, as was the old practice, because, mystically speaking, Christ is now in the tomb, and our eyes are no longer to dwell on Him, just as the eyes of His followers did not dwell on Him when He was in the tomb. They didn’t see Him again until the Resurrection. As a concession to Pascha and the season, I’m opening the curtain a little more just now, but after Ascension we’ll go back to the way we’re used to doing it.

Now when the Gifts have been placed on the Holy Table, we have a litany, but it’s a different litany from the first one we had. We began the Liturgy of the Catechumens, the first part of the service, by praying for all kinds of worldly needs, earthly needs, and then after the sermon (you’ll hear it in a minute) we have another litany where we pray for the rulers, and we pray for everyone who does good things for the church, we pray for all the departed, and we pray for the sick; but now we don’t pray for people anymore in those terms. We don’t pray for the things of this world anymore. The litany now is a spiritual litany. We pray for peace, for a peaceful day, and a sinless day. We pray that we will have a guardian angel defending us and protecting us. We ask for things that are good for our souls and for forgiveness of our sins. We ask for a good answer at the dread judgment seat of Christ. And if you stop and think about it, that judgment seat is right before us, because He is about to become present.

Then after we pray for our spiritual needs—and everyone should be joining in, because we all have spiritual needs—then we are called to love one another. Unfortunately you don’t have the chance to hear this too well. But in the Altar, if there’s one priest, the priest kisses the Holy Gifts while the choir is chanting. If there are many priests, you can hear the actual prayers when we call for love because the choir chants them. And if there are many priests, the priests each kiss the Holy Gifts in the Altar, and then they give each other the kiss of peace. They kiss hands and cheeks, and in the ancient days in the Church the whole congregation gave the kiss of peace to each other to show the kind of love that should dwell among Christians. That remained the practice for several centuries, in fact, and then when the Church opened up after Constantine legalized it, and a lot of people started to join who didn’t come for spiritual reasons, but for social reasons or political reasons or whatever, the Church had to discontinue the kiss of peace because it became too disorderly, too disruptive, and the proper spirit was no longer present. But you should realize at that point when we’re just about to say the Creed, that we are called to be in a state of love with everyone else who’s in the church. All enmity, all hard feeling must be put away, and we must love those who are with us, our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Only then are we entitled to recite the Symbol of Faith. Only then are we permitted even to be present for the Liturgy, to be present for the great miracle which is going to happen. If we come without love in our hearts, then woe to us, it’s very dangerous.

Now right before the Creed the priest, or deacon if we had one, would say, “The doors! The doors!” People now don’t understand this. They think it means to open the curtain, but what it really means is to lock the door to the church. In the ancient Church, only those who were baptized were allowed to be present at this part of the Liturgy. Only those who were baptized even knew the Creed. The Creed was a secret, and they weren’t taught the Creed until they were baptized. They weren’t even told the details of what the Liturgy was until they were baptized. And they were never permitted to be present. We have a strange situation now: we throw the catechumens out, and we let the heretics and the faithless stay. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Really we should throw everyone out who isn’t going to come to Communion or who isn’t at least capable of coming to Communion by having been baptized. I think sometimes, as I’ve told you before, when we say, “The doors! The doors!” we really should lock the doors. In the ancient Church, they locked the doors to keep the pagans out. We have to lock the doors to keep the Christians in sometimes, especially the children.

Then we have the privilege of saying the Creed, the Symbol of Faith, the “I believe,” because we are followers of our Saviour. That’s our hymn, our expression of faith. And in ideal situations only those who were Christians would know it. In fact, they used it at this point as a sort of test. They locked the doors, and then they said the Creed, and everyone had to join in. And look out—if you didn’t know the Creed, they’d unlock the doors and put you out and lock the doors again at that point. If you knew the Creed, that was the guarantee that you were a Christian and that you belonged there. So we should all join in and say the Creed when that time comes—and say it from your heart, too. And when you’re told to lock the doors, not only should you lock out the pagans and the heretics, you should lock extraneous thoughts out of your heart. We started by putting aside all earthly cares; now we need to lock the doors of our hearts so that we think only of what is taking place before us, and we put away all those thoughts which would distract us, all those thoughts which would draw us away. From now on we should be paying the closest attention—no wandering around, no playing games, none of those things—just listening, attending.

Now immediately we’re told, “Stand well. Stand with fear. Let us attend to offer the holy oblation in peace.” And that means just what it says. We should stand up, and we should pay attention with fear, because what is happening before us is frightening. Then the priest says, “Lift up your hearts,” because it’s not enough that we stand up physically, but we also must stand up spiritually. St. Ephraim the Syrian has an interesting passage in this regard. He says, “After the priest has said ‘Lift up your hearts,’ and you reply, ‘We lift them up unto the Lord,’ what do you say, my brother? Didn’t you promise the priest to lift up your heart? And aren’t you afraid to be a liar at that time? O great wonder! The Lamb of God is sacrificed for your sake. All the heavenly powers pray with the priest for you. Christ’s blood is poured into the mystic cup for your cleansing. And you are not ashamed. You do not mourn for yourself at that moment, not praying for yourself or for others.” How can we be so cold-hearted? But we often are. We all forget. We all have trouble paying attention. So we have to remind ourselves. We have to make the effort every week to lift up our hearts, to realize what that means.

Then the priest says, “Let us give thanks unto the Lord.” At that moment (and I’m sorry that you can’t hear it, but I don’t have permission to change the Church’s practices), we begin the prayer of the consecration, the Anaphora, the offering to Christ. It’s a beautiful prayer. It recounts everything that happened in Christ’s life—all of the things God has done for us to bring us salvation. In the Liturgy of St. Basil this prayer is very long; there isn’t anything left out. It’s so long, in fact, that St. John Chrysostom abbreviated it; he cut it down to just the main points, the highlights, but still, everything we need to remember about Christ’s offering for us is there. You should try to read this prayer sometime. It’s in many of the prayer books. Read it at home and see what it says. It’s a beautiful prayer. This is the reason for the service, the reason we are here, the reason we are having the Liturgy. In fact, according to St. John Chrysostom, priests have even seen angels serving with them at times during this prayer. In the prayer we call out, saying that we are going to chant the angels’ hymn, and we chant a hymn which is made up of two parts. We sing “Holy, holy, holy,” which is from the Old Testament. The angels sang it in honor and praise of God. And then we chant, “Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord,” and we join with those crowds in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday—the last time our Lord was shown honor by men in His earthly existence. We join the voices of angels and the voices of men bringing praise and glory and honor to the Saviour.

These words prepare us to hear the words of the Saviour Himself at the Last Supper when He said, “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood,” when He presented the bread and the wine which were transformed mystically into His Body and Blood. When we hear those words, we bow down (if it weren’t Sunday, we would do prostrations at this time). We should bow down and reverence our Saviour and the tremendous, unimaginable Gift that He gives us.

Then we take those Gifts and hold them up. You can see while the curtain is open. I lift them up in the shape of a cross (I have my hands crossed) and say, “Thine own of Thine own.” The only offering we have to make to God is that which He gives us. We think we make a sacrifice, we think we make an offering, but what do we have to give God? What do we have that we have not received from Him? So the offering we make is what He has given us. And the supreme gift, the supreme offering we make is His Body and His Blood as we hold it up.

And now while the choir is chanting “We hymn Thee” comes the most important and the most solemn moment, the most frightening moment of the whole service. If you watch while the curtain is open, you can see. I make the sign of the Cross, first over the diskos with the bread and then over the chalice with the wine and then a big one over everything. And at that moment we are praying that the Holy Spirit will come and will transform the bread into the Body of our Saviour and the wine into the Blood of our Saviour, will literally change them so that they are no longer bread and wine, but the Body and Blood of the Lord. We fall down at the end (if it weren’t Sunday, you would do a prostration when we come to the end of “We Hymn Thee”), because that is the point at which the change has occurred, the point at which our Saviour is physically present in our midst—no longer only spiritually present, but now also physically.

There’s a story that Fr. Panteleimon tells of a village priest who was very holy (unfortunately I don’t remember his name), but he lived earlier in this century in Greece. And the people had to come to his Liturgy from several villages because he was the only priest in the area, so they had to walk a long way, and it was difficult. And they had a long walk home, often in the heat. This priest had an annoying habit. When he reached this point in the Liturgy, when the choir was chanting “We hymn Thee,” he would take maybe half an hour. Nothing would happen, and they would repeat the hymn over and over and over, but the priest wouldn’t give the next exclamation, so the Liturgy couldn’t go on. And they’d pause, and they’d wait, and then they’d chant again, but nothing happened, and it kept on like that, and they didn’t understand what took so long. So finally people got annoyed because they had a long walk home, and they took the priest aside and said, “Now, what’s the problem? You know we’ve got a long trip, and it takes you forever. Other priests are quick. What’s the matter?” And he said, “Well, I’m afraid when I get to that point.” You see, he had spiritual vision which most of us don’t have. He said, “When I come to that point in the Liturgy when I have to reach over the Holy Table and bless the bread and the wine to make it the Body and Blood of Christ, I see a wall of fire surrounding the Holy Table.” And he said, “I’m afraid to put my hand through because I’m afraid it will burn me. And I have to pray, and I have to confess my sins, and I have to ask God’s mercy before I have the courage to reach through the wall of fire to bless the Gifts.” He saw with spiritual eyes. He saw what is really there. We don’t see. We don’t understand, because our eyes are blind. Our eyes are heavy. We don’t see what’s really happening, so we take it for granted. If only we could understand what’s going on; if only we could understand that Christ is present; if only we could think: if this were the one time in our lives that we could attend the Divine Liturgy, how would we feel? Wouldn’t we feel great awe? And great fear?

Now when the Holy Spirit has come down and transformed the Gifts, then we call on all the saints. We say, “Especially the holy Theotokos,” but we call on all the saints. Then silently I pray for all those in positions of authority, for our bishops, for all those in need, and again, in the Liturgy of St. Basil we go into incredible detail praying for everyone you can imagine. St. Basil was very careful. He even has one petition toward the end of the Anaphora where he says, “all those whom we have not prayed for either because we forgot or because there were too many names.” He leaves nothing out; we pray for everyone. Then, right before we pray out loud for the bishops, we bless the antidoron, which you will receive if you’re not coming to Holy Communion and which you will receive after Holy Communion to cleanse your mouth. Now,with Christ present on the Holy Table, we pray once again for our spiritual needs. We repeat thelitany that we prayed before the Anaphora, asking again, now in His physical presence, that He will come to us and that He will give us all those things which we need for our spiritual life. We end with the words of the prayer which He Himself taught us, the “Our Father,” the Lord’s Prayer. And again, we should bow down in our hearts, if not otherwise, when we come to that prayer. Everyone in the whole church should join in that prayer because that’s the prayer our Saviour gave us, the prayer that is truly the example for all other prayers. And in a sense at that moment we are now before the judgment seat of Christ. We are standing before the Holy Table, the Holy Communion is on it, and we are right there being judged by Christ. So when we pray for mercy, when we pray for a good answer at the judgment seat, we are right there. And the Lord’s prayer is given to us, as it were, as our answer at the judgment seat.

Now the Lamb is broken; the Lamb as the Body of our Saviour is broken into four pieces and placed into the chalice. One piece is placed in; a second piece is for the Communion of the clergy, and two pieces are for the Communion of the people. Also we add hot water to the chalice so that it will be more nearly the temperature of blood. Then, while the curtain is closed and the choir is chanting, the priests receive Communion, and the deacons, and then we put in all those particles that we took out during the prothesis in remembrance of the living and the dead. We put those in the chalice, and we pray for the forgiveness of sins of all those whom we commemorated.

And now, while the priests are receiving the Mysteries, rather than a period for rest, a time to sit down or chat with your friends, this is a time when people out in the congregation should be preparing themselves to come to Holy Communion. Go and kiss the icons and unite yourselves in prayer with all of the Saints. They are images of Christ. Then come and stand quietly and say your prayers. Fr. Isaac has told me that the time when our prayer is most heard, when our prayer is most fervent, is when we are waiting for Holy Communion. Priests receive the Lord’s Body in their hands. When I take the Body of the Lord in my hand and I bend over the Holy Table with It, I always pray for the people in the congregation and their needs, those who come to me for confession. That’s the opportunity when I can present their needs before God. Then I pray for my own needs. It’s a time when our prayer is most readily heard because we are closest to God then.So while you’re waiting to come to the Holy Mysteries, you should be quietly standing there praying for your fellow Christians and for yourselves. And of course you shouldn’t be making noise, because then you keep other people from praying, if they have to deal with the noise and confusion. So we should try (and I know it’s a wait sometimes), but we should try to prepare ourselves and to pray while we’re waiting.

Then when I come out with the chalice and say, “With fear of God, with faith and love draw near,” that’s our invitation, the time when we are called to come to receive our Lord’s Body and Blood. And you see how we should come—with fear of God, not trusting in our own righteousness, but with fear of God, with faith in Him and in His love, and with love for Him and for our fellow men. This is the point of the service. This is the offering of our Saviour to Himself, His call to us. And as often as we can be prepared, as often as we can be ready, we should try to answer that invitation and come before Him. But we should always come with the proper fear. We should prepare ourselves, and we should realize what we are doing. The Apostle Paul says, “For anyone who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment on himself, not recognizing the Body of the Lord.” Those are frightening words. Those words mean that if we come without preparation, without an awareness of what we are doing, then it will not be of benefit to us, but will actually harm us, will actually bring us sickness and maybe even death to receive the Holy Mysteries. So we have to realize the power, the awesomeness of what it is we are about to do and not, as is so easy for us, take it for granted. We must realize the importance and the power of what we have.

Then the Holy Gifts are shown for the last time to the people and taken back to the prothesis table, a symbol to us of Christ’s Ascension into Heaven. Then I come out into the body of the church and read a prayer of thanksgiving in which we all should unite in giving thanks for the Mystery we have just received, the Mystery at which we have just been permitted to be present, the Mystery which has the potential either to heal us or to destroy us. God’s love is a very powerful thing. As the Fathers teach us, God’s love is either the source of our joy and our healing and our enlightenment in the heavenly kingdom, or that same fire of God’s love is the source of our burning and our torture in hell. So it is with the Holy Mysteries, because God’s love is made available to us there. God’s love is brought before us there. They are to us either an occasion of health, an occasion of healing and forgiveness, or they are an occasion of condemnation. And by our carelessness and our inattention and our lack of preparation, our lack of fear, we eat and drink condemnation to ourselves. May it never be that way for us! May They always be to us a source of strength, a source of closeness to our Saviour.

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