Blessing of the water by orthodox Christians in Africa (photo from here)
By Protopresbyter George Metallinos
The Sanctification of the Entire World
The objective of ecclesiastical
worship is the sanctification of the entire world. Man’s life is
sanctified, but so is the environment that surrounds him. Within the
boundaries of worship, Man is projected in Christ as the master and the
king of Creation, who is called upon to refer himself, along with
Creation, to the Creator – the source of their existence and
sanctification.
a) The Sanctification of Time:
The liturgical year is the transcending “in Christ” of the “calendar
year” and the transformation of the calendar into a feast-day almanac.
With Her celebrations and Her services, the Church sanctifies and
transforms the year of our daily lives, by unifying and orienting it
towards the kingdom of God. Liturgically speaking, Time ceases to be a
simple, natural framework, inasmuch as it is transformed into a point of
reference used for determining the content of worship. This is
evidenced by the terminology used: “Matins” (=morning), “Vespers”
(=evening), “Midnight”, “Hours”, etc.... From the liturgiological
aspect, the organizing of the annual cycle on the basis of time periods
(day, week, year), with an analogous organizing of one’s very life, is
called the “Annual Liturgy”.
The liturgical year “baptizes”
Man’s entire life into the worship of the Church. The repetition of the
feast-days every year renews the catechesis of the faithful and it gives
a special meaning to the customary (Greek) wishes: “and next year,
also”, or, “for many more years” – wishes that refer to new
opportunities for learning. The liturgical year is linked to the
Church’s cycle of feast-days, whose basic structural element is
festivity. There is a cycle of “mobile” feast-days with Easter at its
centre, and a cycle of “immobile” feast days, with the Epiphany and
Christmas at its centre. The periods of the Triodion and the
Pentecostarion belong to the former cycle, having received their names
from the respective liturgical books that predominate therein.
The Triodion period is a
sectioned one, just as the human body is sectioned: the first four weeks
can be regarded as the body’s extremes; the body itself is the Great
Lenten period, and the Holy Week of Easter is the head. Hymns, readings
and rituals all comprise a spiritual preparation for one’s
participation in the Holy Week and the Resurrection. From Easter Day,
the period of the Pentecostarion begins. Easter and Pentecost were
already feast-days of the pre-Constantine order, and albeit Hebrew in
origin, they now had a Christian content. Christ and His Passion are
what differentiated the Christian from the Jewish Passover-Pascha, which
had now become a symbol of the new life; of the divine kingdom. The
coming of the Holy Spirit during Pentecost inaugurated the new century.
The cycle of immobile feast-days
was organized with the day of the Epiphany at its centre (6th January),
a date that originally also commemorated the Birth of Christ. The
separation of the two celebrations for historical and theological
reasons was effected around the middle of the 4th century. With
Christmas as their basis, the other, Magisterial feast-days
(Circumcision, Baptism, Presentation, Transfiguration) were each put in
their respective place. But the Theotokos also comprises a “liturgical
sacrament”. The feast-days relating to the Holy Mother (Birth,
Presentation, Annunciation, Dormition, etc.) are all linked to the
Magisterial feast-days, expressing the same sacrament. The celebrating
of the memory of Saints is an extension of the liturgical honour
bestowed on the Theotokos. What seems odd for some people however is
that the Church “celebrates” by honouring the memory – that is, the
dormition – of Her children and not their birth. We Orthodox Christians
do not celebrate our birthdays; we celebrate on the day of
commemoration of the Saint whose name we bear. In Christian terms, a
“birthday” is the day of one’s ‘dormition’, i.e., the day that one is
born into eternity. The Saints embody the “common life” and are
projected as the leaders of mankind, in its course for making man real.
Our nation’s association with the Saints – with the Most Holy Mother at
the head – is apparent in the two-fold festivity that is performed in
their memory, both inside the temple with the Holy Altar at the centre,
and outside the temple, with the secular table at the centre. The book
of the lives of Saints is a cherished article for the people, as it is
seen as a “hoarding” of the Church’s historical memory and a guideline
for the faithful. The course of the faithful is shaped, “along with all
the Saints”.
The liturgical organizing of
Time in its micro-temporal dimension is analyzed in the weekly cycle of
services and the day-to-evening services. The weekly cycle is composed
of two parts: the Saturday-Sunday cycle and the five-day cycle. Each
day of the week is dedicated to the memory of a certain soteriological
event or a certain Saint: Sunday is dedicated to the Resurrection of
Christ; Monday to the Angels; Tuesday to Saint John the Baptist;
Wednesday and Friday are respectively linked to Judas’ betrayal and
Christ’s Crucifixion (which is why these are two days of fasting); on
Friday, the Church also commemorates the presence of the Holy Mother by
the Cross; Thursday is dedicated to the Apostles and Saint Nicholas; and
Saturday is dedicated to the deceased.
The weekly cycle was organized
on the basis of Sunday (Greek=Kyriaké), the first celebration –
historically - to be set down by the Church. Being directly related to
the Lord (Greek=Kyrios) Jesus Christ (Cor.I, 12:3), it represents a
confession of faith unto Him. Being also related to the “eighth day”, it
was linked to the Divine Eucharist as a permanent and immobile day for
its commemoration. The Sunday “day of rest” – which was imposed by
Constantine the Great in 324 A.D. – did not relate Sunday with the
Sabbath, but instead portrayed itself as the transcending of the
Sabbath. Sunday is “the first of the Sabbaths (=the first day of every
week), the Queen and the Mistress”, we chant. The Sabbath reflects the
natural life of the world, whereas Sunday represents the eschatological
day of entry into the new aeon.
The day-to-evening services
include the following: The 24-hour cycle begins with Vespers (see
Genesis 1: “and it became evening, and it became morning….”) and its
services coincide with the ancient division of Time (evening, midnight,
dawn, third, sixth, ninth hours). The services are: the “Esperinos”
(Vespers = of the day’s end) or “Lychnikon” (=of the lamp), the Major
and Minor “Apodeipnon” (=after the evening meal); the “Mesonyktikon”
(=of midnight); the “Orthros” (=of dawn) – the most extensive and
theologically opulent service, and the “Ores” (=Hours), which are the
1st, the 3rd, the 6th and the 9th, in commemoration of the major moments
affecting our salvation (the Crucifixion, the Death of Christ, the
descent of the Holy Spirit).
But, while all of ecclesiastical
worship was indissolubly interwoven with natural Time, the Divine
Liturgy remained beyond Time and its confinements. Thus, it does not
belong to the cycle of day-to-evening services, nor are any of the other
services regarded as preparation for it. That is why it can be
performed at any time – morning, noon or night – as the par excellence
celebration and festivity of the Church.
Bishop Innocentios of Rwanda & Burundi (from here)
b) The Sanctification of Life:
The epicenter of the sanctifying function of the Church is Man. From
the moment of his birth into this world and his spiritual re-birth in
the Church, through to the last moment of his presence in this lifetime,
ecclesiastical worship constantly provides Man with opportunities for
“ecclesiasm” and continuous rebirth. The catholicity of the spiritual
and everyday caring of the Church for Her faithful is evident in the
liturgical book “Major Book of Benedictions”. Its very structure and its
texts embody the objective of the Church, which is the “complete”
incorporation of Man in the ecclesiastical body, the struggle for
victory over the devil, the demonic powers of the world and sin, and the
confronting of everyday problems and needs. The wealth and the variety
of the benedictions and the Services of the book of Benedictions is
indicative of the love and the concern of Orthodoxy for the personal and
the social life of the faithful; for the cycles of his life, and his
more common and everyday labours.
The Church sanctifies Man from
the moment of his birth, giving Her blessing to the new mother and the
newborn child, preparing the latter to be eventually received into Her
bosom. After all, the sanctification of the family begins from the
Sacrament of Marriage. On the 8th day, the infant receives its name with
a special liturgical act, and its personal “otherness” is thus
confirmed – something that is afterwards proven by its incorporation in
the ecclesiastical body. On the 40th day, the infant is “led to” the
temple to be “churchified”, to begin its ecclesiastical life, which
corresponds to the commencement of adult catechesis.
After this spiritual
preparation, Baptism follows; this is the entry into the body of Christ,
which gives Man the possibility of living the life of Christ and of
constantly receiving His Grace. Infant baptism, familiar since Christian
antiquity, can be comprehended only in the cases of pious parents and
godparents - in other words, of a Christian background – and cannot be
imposed by any legislation. Through Baptism, the “neophyte” is inducted
into a specific community – the local Church – by participating in the
ethos and the way of existence of the Church. The more perfect this
induction is, the more consistently will his Christian status evolve.
But the faithful is called upon
to augment the gift that he received through his baptism, by orienting
his life in a Christ-centered manner. Thus, after “nature” (=soul and
body) has died and risen (=immersion) in the baptismal font, the human
persona is also sanctified through the Sacrament of Chrismation which
functions as the personal Pentecost of the faithful, so that through his
spiritual labor, he will become a “temple” of God and his life a
veritable Liturgy. The Sacrament of Repentance (Confession) provides the
opportunity for a continuous transcending of sin and the transforming
of death into life.
Furthermore, the Church blesses
the “paths” that the faithful voluntarily choose for their perfection:
either marriage (in Christ), or monastic living. Both are “sacraments of
love”, with a direct referral to Christ. Marriage, when preserved
within the framework of a life in Christ, leads to the transcendence of
the flesh and to one’s perfect delivery unto Christ, thenceforth
coinciding with monastic ascesis. In this way, the Sacrament of
Marriage reveals the truth of the Church without being used to serve
conventional expediencies of everyday living. Wherever marriage is
perceived simply as a moralistic adjustment or a “legal transaction”,
“political” marriage is preferred, which may be a legal act, but it is
nevertheless a marriage that is not spiritually “equivalent” to the
ecclesiastical one, which is a Sacrament of Grace.
Furthermore, ecclesiastical
worship provides sanctifying acts for every moment of one’s life. In
fact, through them, it proves that it is not a “spiritualist”
(abstractly spiritual) affair, or a “religious” affair, because the
sanctification it provides also constitutes a proposal for confronting
the everyday problems of each person. In one of the Matins Prayers, we
ask God to grant Man His “terrestrial and celestial gifts”.
There are blessings even for
instances in life that seem trite and insignificant, such as (for
example) “for a child’s haircut”, “for when a child leaves to learn the
sacred texts”, “for ill-natured children”, etc.. Other blessings refer
to the intake of food, the various “vocations” and works of the faithful
(eg, travels) as well as “professions”; inter-personal relations are
blessed, so that there will be justice, peace and love; God’s Grace is
requested for man’s tribulations, for his illnesses, his mental health
and his psychosomatic passions. An important place in the worship of
the Church is given to death: the cessation of the body’s collaboration
with the soul, until the moment of the “common resurrection”. The
Church does not overlook this supreme existential event of life; in
fact, She stands near the person from the moment that death makes its
appearance. She confesses the near-death person and offers him Holy
Communion; She inters his body, which has now been delivered to
mortification and corruption, sending off the soul to its last journey
and beseeching Christ to receive His child, who has abandoned the world
with the hope of acquiring “eternal life”. The funeral service is one of
the tenderest and touching texts in ecclesiastical worship.
In parallel to the above, the
church offers prayers for various moments of public life: serious
circumstances and disasters, dangers, malfunctions in public life, both
in the micro-society of the village or the town, as well as the
macro-community of the homeland and the nation. The relative prayer
material refers to national anniversaries, the structures of civil life,
education, the armed forces, public health… This incomparable
liturgical wealth remains broadly unknown and so we remain ignorant of
all those elements that can give meaning to our lives.
The orthodox liturgy in the land of Turkana (from here)
c) The Sanctification of Material Creation:
Creation, both liturgically and theologically, is the broader
territory provided for man’s fulfillment; it is the framework of his
everyday life – especially in rural communities, where this is perceived
more profoundly. Man’s association with Creation constitutes a special
theme of ecclesiastical worship and it unfolds during special services
that prove the ecclesiastical acknowledgement of material creation
(bread), which was assumed by Christ’s human nature and which is
constantly transformed into the “flesh” of Christ during the Divine
Eucharist.
Our liturgical act blesses and
sanctifies water, wine, sustenance, living and working quarters, flora,
fauna, natural phenomena (wind, thunder, rain, earthquake, etc.), for
the protection, finally, and the salvation of man. During worship, the
faithful offers the Creator’s gifts - in lieu of his giving thanks - so
that they might be “baptized” in Divine Grace and be returned to the
offerers, for their own sanctification and preservation. During the
Divine Liturgy, “one could say that a march, a parade of the whole world
towards the Holy Altar is taking place” (Fr. John Zizioulas,
Metropolitan of Pergamus). This negates every notion of an opposition
between the natural and the supernatural, since the creation being
offered to God (bread and wine) becomes the carrier of the Uncreated
(Grace) and sanctifies the participants.
The God-centeredness of
existence is inspired by the theology of such texts. Through nature, Man
is referred to the Creator, by comprehending the world as a gift of the
Creator, learning to use Creation eucharistically (with gratitide) and
acquiring the empirical certainty that the issue is not “what does man
eat”, but with what presuppositions he eats something, given that
sanctified nature co-sanctifies man also. Thus, the faithful learns to
become an “officiator” of Creation, in a “cosmic liturgy” that is
officiated by the Saints. The Saints, with their imperishable and
miracle-working relics, reveal the destination of Creation, which are
its sanctification and its incorruptibility. Each faithful is invited
to our worship, so that he can be wholly sanctified; so that he will be
enabled to co-sanctify Creation along with him, through his association
with it.
Click:
LOVERS OF TRUTH: THE LIFE OF HIEROMONK SERAPHIM ROSE
Lover of Truth: St John, The Wonderworker of San Francisco
Lover of Truth: St John, The Wonderworker of San Francisco
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