Introduction

When we hear the word fasting, most of us immediately think about food—what we can eat, what we cannot eat, and whether we are doing it right. But fasting is much older, deeper, and more hopeful than a dietary rule. Fasting exists because God loves us too much to leave us trapped in our own appetites.

From the very beginning, human beings were created with real power and real responsibility. Scripture tells us that God gave humanity dominion over the earth—not domination, but stewardship (Genesis 1:26–28; 2:15). We were meant to shape the world, bless it, and help it flourish. Power was never the problem. The problem has always been what happens when power is exercised without holiness.

When power is exercised without holiness, even our best intentions go sideways. We hurt ourselves, we hurt one another, and we damage the world entrusted to us (Genesis 3:16–19; Romans 8:19–23). Fasting exists because God refuses to abandon us to that condition.

And this is important: fasting is not God’s way of making us weaker. It is part of His way of teaching us how to use our strength well.

Fasting as a Condition for Harmony

One way to understand this is through music. Sound was made good, but with the potential to be made better; to serve higher purposes. Music is one such purpose.

Music takes tremendous human ability and freedom. A musician can produce an almost limitless number of sounds. But good music does not result from musicians exercising all their abilities whenever they feel like it. Music requires discipline. It requires restraint. It requires the musician to learn that simply because he can play a note does not mean that he should play it.

One of the first skills a musician has to develop is the ability to listen. He learns to distinguish pitch, tempo, dynamics, consonance, and dissonance. Before he can contribute well, he has to learn to hear what is actually happening around him.

Then he learns to match pitch and tempo. If everyone insists on his own pitch or his own tempo, the result is not freedom. It is noise. But once musicians have learned to listen and to discipline themselves, they can begin to sing or play together.

And then something even more beautiful becomes possible: harmony.

To harmonize, the musician has to understand his own part and how it contributes to the whole. Sometimes his part is prominent. Sometimes it is barely audible. Sometimes he sings loudly. Sometimes softly. Sometimes the most important thing he can do is rest and allow someone else to carry the melody.

This requires ability, but it also requires humility, submission, attention, and self-control. A musician may have tremendous technical skill and still ruin an ensemble because he sings too loudly, rushes the tempo, or insists on drawing attention to himself. The mature musician does something much harder: he submits his ability to the needs of the music.

When musicians learn to listen, develop their abilities, and play their parts well, the sum becomes greater than the parts. Sound is transformed into beauty.

This gives us a way of understanding fasting. Fasting is not just about what we do or don’t eat or when we eat. Food is one application of a skill and need that is much more general: learning to govern ourselves so that we can participate in something greater than ourselves.

St. Paul uses the language of athletic training rather than music, but the principle is very similar. He writes, “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things,” and then says of himself, “I pommel my body and subdue it” (1 Corinthians 9:25, 27). The athlete disciplines his strength so that it can accomplish something. The musician disciplines his ability so that it can become music. And the Christian learns to discipline his desires so that his whole life can become an offering to God.

I. Beyond Hunger: The Sacred History of Fasting

The Bible begins not with scarcity, but abundance. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were surrounded by provision. Genesis tells us that God made “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9). There was no hunger, no anxiety, no competition.

There was only one act of restraint. God told them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16–17).

That command was not arbitrary. It was an invitation. It trained trust. It trained restraint. It trained discernment. In other words, it was a form of fasting.

The Fall did not happen because Adam and Eve were hungry. It happened because desire was granted authority. Genesis tells us that the fruit was “good for food, a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). Desire outran obedience to God; appetite replaced trust in God. Because they would not fast from that fruit, humanity lost access to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22–24).

And that pattern does not stop there.

Immediately after the Fall, we see it again with Cain. God warns him before he sins. He says, “Sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). Cain is not powerless. He is untrained. He does not pause. He does not restrain himself. Power without holiness becomes violence (Genesis 4:8).

Cain’s failure does not remain personal. His descendants boast of violence and the whole line of Cain is beset with sin (Genesis 4:23–24). What began as unrestrained appetite becomes culture. Disorder spreads.

Then there is Esau.

Esau comes in hungry from the field. Hunger is real. But instead of waiting, instead of trusting, he trades his birthright for a bowl of soup (Genesis 25:29–34). Scripture concludes bluntly, “Thus Esau despised his birthright” (Genesis 25:34). The future is sacrificed to the present moment. Desire had been granted authority and Esau suffered for it.

This is a recurring biblical warning: a lack of self-control leads to ruin. As Proverbs puts it, “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Proverbs 25:28).

But the story does not end with Adam.

At the beginning of His public ministry, Christ goes into the wilderness and fasts for forty days. And then He becomes hungry (Matthew 4:1–2). The temptation that follows should sound familiar. The devil says, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3). Christ has the power to do it. Hunger is not sinful. Bread is not sinful. The temptation is to allow appetite to determine how divine power will be used.

Adam was surrounded by food and would not refrain from the one thing God had withheld. Christ is surrounded by stones, hungry after forty days, and refuses to turn even one of them into bread apart from the will of His Father. His granted no authority to human weakness or desire. Adam allows appetite to become authority. Christ restores appetite to its proper place under obedience.

And this is crucial for understanding Christian fasting. Fasting is not a technique for saving ourselves through self-control. Christ saves us. But Christ restores our humanity, and part of that restoration is learning again how human desire is supposed to work; to submit the appetites as they themselves are being retrained to incline us only toward the good, the beautiful, and the true.

God’s response to our problem is not to remove desire. He does not make us less human. Instead, He heals us and gives us training. Fasting is not punishment. It is medicine. It is a habit that helps restore the image that has been distorted (1 Corinthians 9:25–27; Colossians 3:9–10).

II. Fasting Beyond Food: Purifying the Mind, Mouth, and Motions

One of the most important things to understand about fasting—and about the Christian life—is that we are not changed simply because we have agreed that Orthodox ideas are the best. Scripture tells us, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22). Ideas alone do not transform us. We are formed by sanctifying repetition, habit, rhythm, and environment.

This is why the Church does not simply tell us to be holy. She gives us practices—rituals—that shape us slowly and faithfully over time (Acts 2:42; 1 Timothy 4:7–8).

Tito Colliander begins Way of the Ascetics with essentially this point: “Faith comes not through pondering but through action. Not words and speculation but experience teaches us what God is” (Colliander, ch. 1).

Fasting is one of the Church’s most basic formative practices.

In fact, Colliander calls fasting a teacher. The Church, he says, has given us a teacher that can reach us wherever we are: “Do you wish to know his name? It is holy fasting.” He continues: “We learn to do this through obedience, and obedience we learn through practice. The best form of practice is that provided by the Church in her prescribed fast days and seasons” (Colliander, ch. 12).

That is why fasting works.

Scripture tells us that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14). Adam and Eve did not fail because they lacked information. They failed because they did not restrain their desire. Again, they granted desire authority it did not deserve.

Fasting works below the level of argument. It slows impulse. It interrupts bad habits. It retrains instincts. Many of us discover, when fasting begins and we are forced to slow down, how often we reach automatically for food, our phones, or the distraction of shiny things. Fasting gently reminds us that desire does not have to be obeyed immediately.

It teaches us the spiritual equivalent of what the musician learns: not every impulse needs to become a note.

Colliander makes the same point in remarkably practical terms. He tells us to begin with the small desires because they are connected to the larger ones: “If you have the urge to drink two cups of coffee, drink only one!” The point is not that the second cup of coffee is evil. The point is learning that the desire itself does not have to be obeyed. He describes this as learning, with God’s help, to silence our “loud-voiced will” (Colliander, ch. 5).

Fasting also trains the mind. Christ tells us, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). Attention is a form of appetite. That is why fasting is traditionally paired with prayer, Scripture, and silence. If we fast from food but continue to feed outrage, anxiety, or constant stimulation, fasting will feel frustrating. Desire simply relocates; it can’t just be about food.

This is another place where the musician helps us. The musician cannot play well unless he learns to listen. He has to stop producing sound long enough to hear the music around him. The Christian life requires the same kind of attention. We cannot learn to love God and our neighbor if we never learn to listen to them.

Fasting trains the mouth as well. Scripture warns us that “the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things” (James 3:5). Hunger often reveals impatience in speech. This is not failure—it is revelation. Fasting shows us what needs healing.

And fasting trains the body. Scripture urges us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). Formation is embodied. Waiting, standing, refraining, tolerating mild discomfort—these things teach patience without lectures.

Again, think of the musician. Years of scales, breathing exercises, repeated passages, and learning when not to play eventually become something that looks effortless. The discipline has entered the body. The musician no longer has to reason through every note. His instincts have been formed.

Ascetic practice works in much the same way. We practice patience so that we can become patient. We practice restraint so that restraint can become natural. We practice gratitude so that gratitude becomes our instinctive response to the world.

Colliander actually uses this same analogy. He warns that just as a pianist can practice so zealously that he injures his hands, ascetic practice can become distorted through excess. Fasting, obedience, self-discipline, watchfulness, and prayer are all forms of practice, he says, and practice must be undertaken soberly, without exaggeration (Colliander, ch. 21).

The psalmist prays, “Search me, O God, and know my heart” (Psalm 139:23). Fasting answers that prayer. It reveals impatience, anxiety, and entitlement—not to shame us, but to make repentance honest and possible. Fasting provides just enough stress for our weaknesses to be revealed without causing damage.

And once they are revealed, grace can begin healing them. When desire is retrained through patient practice, fasting stops being a burden and becomes a source of freedom.

III. Eating with Reverence, Fasting with Joy: The Art of Holy Balance

Fasting is not the goal of the Christian life. Communion is.

The problem in the Garden was not eating—we were told to eat (Genesis 2:16); the problem was that we ate without reverence, restraint, and trust.

Christ restores what was lost through obedience, fasting, and the Cross. The Cross becomes the new Tree of Life. In the sacramental life of the Church, we are invited to eat again; but this time we are doing it correctly. Not grasping. Not consuming. But receiving (John 6:51–57; 1 Corinthians 10:16–17). Note that we do not “take” communion; we “receive” it.

This restoration is why Christian fasting always points toward a feast. We fast before receiving the Eucharist. We fast through Lent toward Pascha. We fast through Advent toward the Nativity. The Church teaches us to refrain so that our desires can be pointed toward something good and so that we can learn how to receive.

Scripture reminds us, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Food becomes gift again, not entitlement. As St. Paul says elsewhere, “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4).

Colliander is explicit that the ascetic struggle is a means rather than an end. He compares it to a prescribed cure: however difficult it may be, its purpose is to restore health. Prayer, fasting, watching, and work are tools given to us on the way toward freedom—the freedom in which Adam was created and which is restored to us in Christ (Colliander, ch. 11).

The Fathers give us a beautiful example of this balance.

Dorotheos of Gaza tells of a holy elder who became ill and could eat very little. His brother prepared food for him, but instead of honey accidentally poured rancid linseed oil over it. The elder tasted it and said nothing. He ate quietly and even accepted a second helping. Only when the brother discovered what he had done did he realize why the food had tasted so terrible. Horrified, he blamed himself for what had happened. The elder gently reassured him: if God had wanted him to eat honey, the brother would have given him honey (Dorotheos of Gaza, 146–47).

Do you see the freedom here? The elder was not ruled by appetite or comfort. He was free to ignore his primal desires and choose love.

That is the point of Christian asceticism. A person who has to satisfy every appetite is not free. A person who cannot tolerate inconvenience without becoming angry is not free. A person whose hunger immediately turns into cruelty toward the people around him has not yet learned what fasting is supposed to teach.

Christ therefore warns us not to fast with gloom or pride (Matthew 6:16–18). And here Colliander gives us a useful diagnostic. If our ascetic discipline produces “overstrain, intolerance and self-righteousness,” something has gone wrong. He says that if we do not find in ourselves the fruits of “love, peace, joy, moderation, humility, simplicity, uprightness, faith and patience,” then our work has been in vain (Colliander, ch. 21).

That is a much better measure of a fast than whether we successfully avoided some kind of milk derivative.

St. Paul writes, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Colliander describes fasting accordingly as “a step on the road of emancipation and an indispensable support in the struggle against selfish desires.” But he immediately counsels moderation: fasting must not weaken the body excessively, should not be undertaken recklessly, and, like every discipline, “demands practice” (Colliander, ch. 20). Thus moderation and balance are themselves seen to be both beautiful and beautifying.

Conclusion: From Noise to Music

So let’s return to music.

Imagine a gifted but undisciplined musician sitting down with an orchestra.

The conductor feels like a restriction. The score feels like a restriction. Tempo feels like a restriction. The other musicians feel like restrictions. Why can’t I play what I want? Why can’t I play when I want? Why can’t I play as loudly as I want? I could own this show!

But the mature musician sees those same things very differently.

The score gives his playing meaning. The conductor helps hold the ensemble together. Tempo allows his notes to meet the notes of others. The other musicians do not diminish his freedom; they make possible a kind of beauty he could never create alone.

And even the rests matter. Sometimes faithfulness means sounding the note. Sometimes faithfulness means remaining silent so that another voice can be heard.

That is the kind of freedom fasting teaches.

We were created as God’s image and given dominion within His creation (Genesis 1:26–28). We were made to take the tremendous possibilities of the world and cultivate them into something good, harmonious, and beautiful. We were made, as St. Peter puts it, to be a “royal priesthood” offering the world back to God in thanksgiving (1 Peter 2:5, 9).

Sin turns that freedom into noise. Every appetite demands to be heard. Every desire wants to become a note. Every person insists on his own tempo.

Christ restores the pattern in us.

And He restores the pattern in us so that we, as His imagers, can once again do what we were created to do: take the possibilities of the world entrusted to us and work them into something better; something harmonious and beautiful that glorifies God and serves our neighbor.

Through prayer, fasting, worship, repentance, and the other disciplines of the Christian life, God teaches us how to hear His pattern again, submit ourselves to its movements, and spread it.

Fasting teaches us to listen. It teaches us restraint. It teaches us when to act and when to wait. It teaches us to want the right things, in the right way, at the right time. Not so that we can escape the world, but so that we can finally participate in it properly. Not so that we can become impressive ascetics, but so that we can become capable of communion and love.

When musicians devote themselves to listening, discipline, and playing their parts well, something happens that none of them can accomplish alone: sound becomes music.

That is an image of the Church, and fasting helps condition us towards it. God is not teaching us merely how to say no; He is teaching us how to become part of the deeper music.

Works Cited

Colliander, Tito. Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth. Translated by Katherine Ferré. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981.

Dorotheos of Gaza. Discourses and Sayings. Translated by Eric P. Wheeler. Cistercian Studies Series 33. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977.

Introduction

Before I talk about prayer, I want to provide some context:

God is Beauty, Light, and Love. He made the cosmos good and with the potential to become better forever. That is, to grow in beauty, light, and love each moment into eternity.

God’s desire for us is to do His work. To “subdue” the world to His plan of harmonious perfection. This is the work we were made for – we “Image” God in this way. But we have corrupted the “Likeness.” This means that even our well-intentioned efforts spread the corruption in our hearts into the world through the work we do. This is what we call sin. The Greek means to miss the target. The target is to move things from the crooked to the straight and even from the good to the better; anything that keeps us from doing that well is sinful.

It is in this context that I believe prayer makes the most sense. It helps us avoid thinking about prayer as purely intercessory. Our theology is largely defined by our culture, and our culture is both transactional and, forgive me, entitled. This means that we are primed to think of God as a sort of Santa Claus. We modify this vision and describe it using Orthodox words, but the underlying expectation remains. As we mature in Orthodoxy, we might adjust it to take into account the need for holiness, but it is still transactional; “if I do good, God will hear me.” After all, God is a loving parent who does not give a child who asks for bread a stone or who asks for fish a snake (Matthew 7:9-11). But scripture is contextual: we are called to work the vineyard of this world at least as much as we are called to enjoy its fruits.

The Metaphor of Work

The good news is that as much as our culture is about consumerism, it also has historically had one that is rooted in a strong work ethic and entrepreneurialism, or what I like to call “getting things done.” Some of us have been supervisors, managers, investors, and owners of businesses or leaders in the military or civil service. All of us have reported to people as workers. What were those work conversations like? When were they most productive? Sometimes it was intercessory: we might ask for more resources so that we can be more effective, or we might ask for a raise, but is that what most of the communication is about? No. The communications between management and workers of a healthy organization are designed to help the worker be more effective: clear goals, responsibilities, and consequences. Later conversations involve both positive and negative evaluations with the expectation that over time the workers will be able to work with less guidance. In theological terms, this is what happens in theosis: it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us. During this time, prayer becomes increasingly hesychastic, with the worker basking in the glory of God and God’s will being done efficiently by His servant.

So, having added this dimension to the definition of prayer, let’s talk about how prayer perfects us.

Introduction: what prayer is and why we do it

Prayer is communication and relation-building with God. Communication is always difficult, even among people with similar characteristics; it is even more so when few characteristics are shared. While God became man so that we could know Him, it is still hard for us to understand His will; we simply don’t have the concepts, the symbols, or the words. In addition, our noetic receptors are all but shut. We do not hear the clear communications of God, despite the fact that they are constant and clear to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Prayer is not just the communication between man and God, but one of the primary mechanisms He has given us to improve our understanding.

The Metaphor of Music

The disciplines of musical training turn a person into a musician who can easily sing/play any music alone and with others in a way that brings joy to the musician’s heart and to the community.

• Musical practice trains the intellect to think musically (notes, chords, harmonics, progressions, modes, melodies, tones, scansion)

• Musical practice trains the reins/instincts/passions to automatically adjust timing and pitch to meet what is written and being sung. Builds up the ability to ignore distractions and focus on what is necessary.

• Musical practice trains the nous/heart for a deeper appreciation of music that moves us towards awe of beauty, the beautiful, and the One who is the author of beauty.

The Metaphor of Work

A healthy workplace:

• Trains the intellect by getting workers familiar with the company’s ethos, mission, and processes, and how each specific employee helps fulfill its mission

• Trains the instincts through repetition until the mechanics of the employees’ work can be handled automatically, and they are able to spend their energy improving the efficiency, scope, and beauty of their work.

• Trains the nous by allowing the employee to work in harmony with other employees and departments, internalize the ethos of the company and the desires of the leadership, and bask in the way their work serves both the company and its customers.

How prayer does these same things for us:

Prayer:

• Trains the intellect for theological thinking. Words. Concepts. Symbols. Ethos.

• Trains the instincts. Self-control. Automatic preference for things that are good and holy and true.

• Opens the heart to the experience of God so that love of both God (awe, worship) and neighbor (sacrificial love).

The communal aspect of the prayer rule:

• Rote prayer is not merely a private or individual act. It binds the faithful together across time and space. To pray the Church’s prayers is to join a living, mystical community—the communion of saints—who have prayed these same words across centuries and continents. This shared spiritual vocabulary allows believers to experience time and space sacramentally and corporally, collapsing the apparent distance between the living and the departed, the local and the universal.

• Moreover, a common prayer life strengthens the practical cohesion of the Church. It creates a shared theological and moral culture, allowing for better communication, cooperation, and unity within the Body of Christ. In an age of polarization, the shared experience of daily prayer can be a source of profound reconciliation and common purpose. Thanks to the shared psalmody of prayer, we can follow St. Paul’s direction to go about “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19a).

• And this is to say nothing of our worship, which is the communal culmination of personal prayer.

The Special Case of Silent Prayer

[…]

Conclusion

Repetitive prayer is not dead ritual but dynamic formation. It trains the intellect to think theologically, disciplines the instincts toward virtue, and prepares the heart for divine encounter. It also weaves the individual into the community of saints, creating a shared culture that manifests the love of God in the world.

In short, the prayer rule makes the crooked straight—not just in ourselves, but through us, in the world we touch. We are always replicating what we are. Through prayer, we become properly patterned imagers of God, capable of helping to re-pattern a broken world in love, peace, and grace.

From the UOC-USA Prayer Book:

I. WHAT IS NECESSARY DURING PRAYER

1. Constantly remind yourself that you are in the presence of the Almighty and are asking Him to forgive the multitude of your sins, for which you will have to answer, perhaps even today – for we do not know the last day of our life. St. Ephraim the Syrian says, “Being responsible for all my evil deeds, when I am at prayer, I am fearful that fire from heaven might destroy me. However, I do not fall into despair, for I hope in the Mercy of God.” This is an example of prayer that is well pleasing to God.

2. Concentrate on the purpose of prayer. Attempt to make all the Signs of the Cross, all prostrations and other liturgical actions with great reverence. This drives away negligence, slumber and being inattentive while praying.

3. Do not think about personal or worldly concerns, which can always be addressed after prayer.

4. Remove all earthly thoughts that distract one’s concentration during prayer. If you find your thoughts drifting to earthly matters, ask forgiveness of God, that you interrupted your conversation with Him.

5. Always attempt to avoid feelings of pride, self-satisfaction.

6. If you desire to pray without a prayer book or reciting specific prayers, you should do so.

7. Ask the Lord to reveal to you the most meaningful way to pray to Him.

II. WHAT DISTRACTS PRAYER

1. An excess of food, drink, or sleep.

2. An excess of any things that can tempt the spirit and make it indifferent and insensitive to spiritual treasures and can lead to an obsessiveness and compulsion to sin.

3. Spitefulness and anger.

4. An unhealthy obsession with your profession, work or worldly matters. You concern yourself with these matters during most of the day. Leave them for a few moments during your time in prayer.

5. Desire to satisfy the excessive pleasures of the body.

6. All great and minor sins for which we do not repent. They remove us from God and lead us closer to greater temptation and evil.

III. WHAT HELPS PRAYER

1. Reading the Bible (every day) and the writings of the Holy Fathers help you understand the way a true Christian should live.

2. A life in accordance with the Commandments of God. In order for Him to attend to us, we must be attentive to Him.

3. Reflection about your day – considering how you may have sinned against God and how you may have harmed others.

4. A pure conscience and participation in the Holy Mysteries.

5. Fasting.

6. Acts of charity that help others and enable the Mercy of God to be evident in us.

7. A constant and unrelenting struggle against the passions, sinful deeds and evil thoughts, which influence the soul. The Holy Fathers have written that there are eight major passions to avoid: A love of food (gluttony), lust, love of money and material goods (greed), anger, strife over earthly concerns, spiritual disillusion and negligence, a desire for personal glory and pride.

IV. CONCERNING PROSTRATIONS AND PRAYER

Full prostrations and prayer while kneeling are not prescribed for Sundays and Great Feast Days, as well as during the period from Pascha to Pentecost and from the Nativity of Christ to Theophany. On days when one participates in Holy Communion, one should not make penitential prostrations.

V. ABOUT MAKING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

1. We make the sing of the cross with our right hand. We place our thumb and the first two fingers together and the last two fingers we place in our palm. With our united thumb and first two fingers we touch our forehead, our abdomen, right shoulder and the left shoulder. When making the Sign of the Cross, we finish by placing our arm at our side and bowing.

The united thumb and first two fingers symbolize our faith in the Holy Trinity – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The two other fingers symbolize our faith in the Incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ and that He had two natures Divine and human and that he came from heaven to earth (the palm) for the sake of our salvation.

7

In the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, our Lord gives us a wonderful comparison between a type and an antitype: the serpent lifted up in the wilderness and Christ lifted up on the Cross. Because of their hard-heartedness, the people of Israel had been bitten by poisonous serpents, and those who looked upon the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up were delivered from the poison. Our Lord tells us that this prefigures the Cross: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” Christ is lifted up, and when we turn to Him in faith—when we acknowledge Him, bow before Him, and give ourselves to Him—the poison of sin and death is overcome.

But there is a warning hidden in the story of that bronze serpent, and it is a warning that Orthodox Christians especially need to hear.

Orthodoxy is unapologetically maximally incarnational. The Word truly became flesh. God entered His creation, and because of the Incarnation, creation can be taken up, sanctified, and restored to its proper purpose. That is part of the reason we have beautiful temples, icons, relics, holy water, incense, candles, vestments, and all the other material things that surround our worship.

We have a lot of holy stuff.

But precisely because we have so much holy stuff, we need to make sure that our relationship with it is itself holy.

Think again about the bronze serpent. God commanded Moses to make it. God worked through it. People really were healed when they looked upon it. There was nothing wrong with the serpent. It was a God-given instrument of healing.

And yet, centuries later, we learn that the Israelites had turned it into an excuse for idolatry. The thing through which God had worked had become detached from the God who worked through it. And so the righteous King Hezekiah broke it in pieces and called it Nehushtan—a piece of bronze.

That distinction matters enormously for us. A holy thing is not a talisman.

We know that the Cross is powerful. Why? Not because two pieces of wood arranged in a particular shape contain some independent magical force. The Cross is powerful because of Christ. On the Cross, Christ defeated sin and death and opened the way to resurrection.

So yes, we venerate the wood of the Cross. Glory to God that we can do so. We have a relic of the True Cross at St. Sophia Seminary, and I can go there and kiss that wood. That physicality reminds us that Christianity is real. God really became flesh. Christ really suffered. His hands really touched wood. His blood really flowed. He really died, and He really rose again.

But we must guard against magical thinking. If an icon streams myrrh, is that because the icon has somehow acquired an independent sacred power? Heaven forbid. It is miraculous because God is working through His creation for the salvation of His people. The gift directs us toward the Giver. The image directs us toward its prototype. The holy thing draws us toward the Holy One.

The danger begins when the gift replaces the Giver, and the type replaces its prototype.

And now we can turn to the Epistle, because St. Paul is dealing with a surprisingly similar problem.

Today’s reading comes from the conclusion of Galatians. St. Paul writes, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.” Paul elsewhere used a scribe, but here he draws attention to these words being in his own hand. St. John Chrysostom sees even the large, perhaps awkward letters as evidence of Paul writing this himself.

And what is so important that Paul wants to put it in his own hand?

“It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would compel you to be circumcised.”

That has been the controversy running through the entire Epistle. Gentile Christians were being taught that faith in Christ was not enough—that in order to belong fully to the people of God, they also needed circumcision and the observance of the Jewish Law.

That was a problem. But the problem was not that circumcision was not evil.

After all, God had commanded it.

That is important. Paul is not contrasting something holy with something obviously wicked. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant. The Law was holy. It guarded Israel, it it helped formed Israel, and it helped prepare Israel for the coming of Christ.

But what the Law had been preparing Israel for had now come to fulfillment in Christ.

That is why St. Paul is so fierce about this. Something God had given for a particular purpose was now being treated as though Christ had not come and fulfilled that purpose.

Do you see the similarity?

The bronze serpent was given by God. It was good. God worked through it. But eventually the people confused the instrument with the One who worked through it.

Circumcision was given by God. It was good. It formed and identified His covenant people. But now some were insisting upon it as though union with Christ were insufficient.

The problem is not the thing itself. The problem comes when something meant to lead us toward God begins to take the place that belongs to God.

And so St. Paul forces upon us a very simple question, and it’s a question all of you have been asked:

Have you united yourself to Christ?
Have you united yourself to Christ?
Have you united yourself to Christ?

Our catechumens must be tempted to look at us during the reception service as though they were St. Peter after the Resurrection: “Yes, Father. I already told you!” But the Church asks several times because she wants that answer to go all the way down into the heart so and instinctively defines us and our relationship with the world.

Have you united yourself to Christ?

That really is central. Everything else has to be understood in relation to that.

And please don’t misunderstand me. This is not an attack on Holy Tradition. Quite the opposite. Holy Tradition does not take us backward into a world without Christ. Holy Tradition teaches us how to live in Christ. Its rituals, disciplines, images, prayers, and customs embody our faith in Him. They train us to perceive the world in Him and direct us toward Him.

But precisely because these things are powerful, we must never confuse the means with the end.

St. Paul then tells us something about the teachers who were troubling the Galatians. They wanted the Galatians circumcised, he says, “that they may glory in your flesh.” They were using religion to create a visible sign of belonging—a sign by which they could measure success and claim these people as their own.

In his homily on these verses, St. John Chrysostom notices that Paul directs much of his anger toward the teachers rather than toward those who have been misled.

There is a lesson there for us. Do you blame the neophyte who, in his zeal, follows the bad teaching of someone he trusts? Neophytes do knuckleheaded things. That is almost part of being a neophyte; it’s why neophytes are not given positions of responsibility. But the greater responsibility belongs to the teacher.

And that should make every priest and teacher tremble a little.

As your teacher and priest, what might I give you as part of “the package” of Orthodoxy that is actually just something I am accustomed to? What might I treat as essential because it is important to me because it was part of my formation? What might I teach you to identify with so strongly that, rather than helping you become a new creation in Christ, it becomes another identity in which you glory? What if my teaching leads you to become a child of hell rather than a child of God (Matthew 23:15)?

That question is especially important now because we have more Orthodox teachers available to us than perhaps any generation before us. Anyone can start talking online, and the teachers who attract attention are often those who speak most confidently, draw the hardest lines, identify the clearest enemies, and offer the strongest sense of belonging.

And belonging is both powerful and important.

That brings me to one contemporary example: nation and culture.

Human beings naturally live in peoples, nations, languages, and cultures. These things can be great goods. A culture can be sanctified by Christ. Its language, music, customs, family life, feasts, stories, and habits can preserve the faith and transmit it from one generation to the next.

Orthodox Christians in America know this especially well because we received the faith through cultures that had been shaped by Orthodoxy for centuries. Syrian, Lebanese, Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian—all of these peoples have given us treasures, and we should receive those treasures gratefully. For them, their faith and culture are natural and largely invisible to them– like water to a fish. But it stands in contrast to our own culture, so we see it clearly.

Until we have a mature American Orthodox culture that naturally produces saints, we should be humble enough to learn from cultures that have been doing this much longer than we have.

But a culture can carry the faith without being the faith.

A nation can serve Christ without being Christ.

And when we forget that distinction, something good can become Nehushtan.

But this danger is much broader than nationalism. We can do it with almost anything that has helped us become Orthodox. We can do it with a jurisdiction. We can do it with a particular style of music. We can do it with the way we fast, the prayers we use, the books we read, the teachers we follow, even the particular customs of a parish.

And converts are especially susceptible to this because we are trying to learn what Orthodoxy looks like. That is a good desire. We come into the Church, and we want to learn how Orthodox Christians pray, how they fast, how they worship, how they raise their children, how they organize their lives and we want to do that ourselves. Glory to God.

But there is a temptation to take the particular form through which we learned Orthodoxy and identify it with Orthodoxy itself.

We say; “This is how Orthodox Christians do it; this IS Orthodoxy”

Well, maybe. Or maybe this is how the people who taught us do it.

That distinction requires humility.

The problem is not that these things are unimportant. They are important precisely because Christianity is incarnational. We need concrete practices. We need particular melodies. We need actual words and gestures and disciplines. We cannot live Christianity in the abstract.

But all of these things have a purpose. They are supposed to form us in Christ.

And that gives us a way to test them. Is this making me more faithful? Is it making me more humble? Is it teaching me to repent? Is it helping me love God and my neighbor? Is it drawing me more deeply into the life of the Church?

Or has it become another way for me to know that I am right and somebody else is wrong?

That is when we need to be careful.

And this is one of the great lessons of Pentecost. Pentecost does not abolish particularity. Notice what happens: the Apostles do not all begin speaking the same language. The Holy Spirit does something much more wonderful. Each nation hears the one Gospel in its own tongue.

Unity does not require sameness. The languages remain languages. The cultures remain cultures. The particular gifts remain particular gifts, and they are beautiful. But now they are capable of being taken up into something even greater than themselves.

They can glorify Christ together.

And that brings us back to St. Paul: “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He is not going to glory in circumcision.

And I am not going to glory because I can do services in Ukrainian. I am not going to glory because I am getting better at Byzantine music. Those things can be good. They can be beautiful. They can serve the Gospel.

But they are not the Gospel.

What do I glory in?

The Cross of Christ.

Because the Cross is where the old man dies. The old Anthony (I call him “Doug”) who wants praise, recognition, belonging, certainty, and the approval of his tribe—that man has to go onto the Cross.

And that gives us a useful test.

When someone teaches you that in order to be a faithful Orthodox Christian you have to adopt all the things that he has adopted—the same practices, the same cultural preferences, the same opinions, even the same enemies—take an emotional step back.

Some of those things may be good. Some may even have helped that person grow in holiness. But that does not make them the Gospel.

Ask instead: Is it true? Is it holy? Does it serve salvation? Does it help me repent? Does it help me love God and my neighbor? Does it build up the Body of Christ?

St. Paul gives us a different model. In 1 Corinthians 9 he says, “To the Jews I became as a Jew,” and “to those outside the law I became as one outside the law.” Why? “So that some might be saved” (1 Corinthians 9:20–22).

Notice what Paul does. He does not demand that other people become like him. He gives up his own preferences and prerogatives so that he can meet them where they are and lead them to Christ; this is the part of his ministry we are to imitate (1 Corinthians 4:16). The culture serves the Gospel; the Gospel does not serve the culture.

That is what culture is for. That is what ritual is for. That is what our customs and teaching are for: they are meant to lead us into the new creation.

So love your country. Love the good things in your culture. Seek what is just and good in politics and public policy. Receive with gratitude the cultures that preserved and handed Orthodoxy down to us.

But do not turn any of them into Nehushtan.

Do not take something through which God has worked and begin treating it as though it were God.

Do not let the gift replace the Giver.

Do not let the image replace its prototype.

Do not let the culture replace Christ.

And do not let any of them divide you from God or from one another.

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”

That is where all of this has been going: a new creation.

The bronze serpent served its purpose, but it was not God. Circumcision served its purpose, but it could not give the life that comes through union with Christ. Our rituals, cultures, customs, and identities can serve holy purposes, but none of them is the source of our life.

Christ is.

And so St. Paul gives us our final word:

“Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That is our boast. That is our identity. That is our salvation.

Before the “Blessed is the Kingdom”

Let all things be done decently and in order. (1 Corinthians 14:40)

St. Paul was dealing with a dangerous situation in Corinth: factions, a lack of self-control, and a lack of humble charity; all leading to a lack of fellowship. Individual vices compounded, threatening to turn the liturgy into a parody of its purpose: a diabolical ritual of division rather than a godly one of communion. Proper order in church is essential for cultivating the kind of loving environment that will open the community to the presence and working of the Lord in their midst.

But the answer is less the imposition of rules than it is a restoration of real purpose and meaning. This is a hospital; and we are both patients and healers. There is an important thing that good doctors know but that many have forgotten. It’s not just about identifying ailments and their corresponding prescriptions. That’s important, but we can’t forget the context in which medicines work: the body wants to be well. A healthy atmosphere isn’t just one that is free of disease, but one in which people flourish. Orthodoxy, with all of its rituals and all its beauty, and the availability of grace, is designed to facilitate that kind of atmosphere. Everyone who comes to church has given their lives to Christ; they want to be made well and know that the Christ who is in their midst is the one who can make it so.

So how do we make sure that everything is done decently and in order; that is to say, in a way that builds piety, community, and love? Again, the body wants to be made well; it is designed for health. I’m not just talking about the individual bodies, but the collective body of believers. It wants to be well, with the eye doing its part and the foot its own, with all of the members being under the governing authority of the head. And that head is not – of course - any of us, but Christ. The liturgical dance perfects us when we defer to and follow His lead; and he leads with harmony, beauty, and truth. The rituals of the Liturgy, crossing ourselves, bowing, the processions, the queuing and folding our arms before communion, the constant movement of the children, the singing together, the speaking in unison; all of it molds us from broken individuals, through grace, into a holy family; His holy family.

Every year, I vary the theme of the teaching liturgy. Today, I am going to focus on some of the rituals that help us develop the kind of culture that will lead us always onward and upward.

After the First Antiphon

The rituals are awesome, but how do we know what to do when? Two things will help: first, finding people who have been doing this for a while and doing what they do. That’s the traditional way to learn; not from books, not from the YouTubes, but by being part of a real community and imitating the people who have been doing things well for long enough for it to become natural. The second is to realize that there is often more than one way that experienced people do things, and therefore, that there is more than one way to do things well. This does not mean that “anything goes.” But, at least in this parish, it means that doing things “decently and in order” doesn’t mean that everyone’s actions are perfectly choreographed and everyone moves in lockstep. There are many biblical verses and images that support this view, from “let the little children come unto me” to “the strong bear the burdens of the weak” to the constant movement of the the cherubim and seraphim around the very throne of God tto the image of the church as parts of a body all with different functions and roles; all speak to harmony within a unity of vision rather than uniformity of action.

After the Second Antiphon

An example of a harmony resulting from unity of vision leading to different actions at any given time is the ritual of venerating icons and lighting candles. In general, this is a time for communal prayer; this is why it isn’t really appropriate to say the Jesus Prayer during the services: it is a private devotion, in part meant to deepen our participation in the greater mysteries. Venerating icons and lighting candles are private devotions and venerating icons are private devotions, but they are part of the ritual of preparation for entering into communal worship. They are the traditional things that Orthodox Christians do when they first arrive to the service. For a very few people on Sunday morning, this is done before the start of Orthros. For everyone else, it is done when they first arrive. Just as it is proper when arriving to a big celebration at someone’s house to seek them out and greet them when first arriving, so it is proper to go and venerate the icons of Christ, His Mother, and St. Raphael when we first arrive. I also go over and venerate the Gospel at the place where we do our confessions to ask the Lord for forgiveness of sins, and the icon of the Inexaustable Cup to pray for people who are struggling with addiction. It is also traditional at this time to light candles and pray for our families, our friends, those who are struggling, and, in the Memorial place, for our departed loved ones.

After the Third Antiphon

A minute ago, I told you that it is traditional to go to the front and venerate the icons when you first come in, no matter when that is. This is one of those examples of how people can do things at different times and all be right. But, again, that does not mean that “anything goes.” For one, we don’t play with candles, and we should always light candles with our children to reinforce the proper – and safe – way to do it. In addition, there are times when it is not appropriate to venerate icons and light candles: we do not do that during the processions of the Little and Great Entrances; during the reading of the Epistle and Gospel, and during the Homily. You may feel self-conscious coming up front to venerate icons even when it is allowed, but I assure you that it is part of the constant movement of the “liturgical dance” in established parishes in traditional Orthodox nations. At the very least, venerate the icon of St. Raphael when you first come into the narthex, the icon of Christ there in the middle of the nave when you come in here, and, if you are short enough, the icon of the angels, as well.

Homily

We are the hordes that were brought out of the hedges and byways. We were dirty and broken; but the Lord invited us into His house. Into His Kingdom. Our clothes were soiled and torn; how could they not be? But the Lord didn’t want that to divide us or keep us from the celebration, so He gave us wedding garments. Again that is us. But it’s not really about clothes is it? Yes, we should wear clothes that are appropriate – modest, humble, and respectful, but the clothes are really about the state of our soul. At baptism, God gave us a new garment by forgiving us of our sins. He clothed us in the robes of righteousness. The language of the baptismal services says that we are meant to keep it “undefiled.” This isn’t about clothes. It’s about virtue. I can wear these vestments, and still be like a whitewashed sepulcher on the inside. This makes me like the man in the parable who was sent into eternal torment, despite the fact that my vestments are so nice. For what it is worth; one of the reasons that we vest our priests in such beautiful vestments is so that you are not distracted by my sin. It is similar with the way we dress; when we dress modestly, we do not distract people by our pride. And, the beautiful thing about rituals is that, done well, they transform our hearts. The longer we dress modestly and piously, the more that the acts of putting on and wearing those clothes transform us into modest and pious people. This is not a case of faking it until we make it, but rather “dressing” as the people we are striving to become more of. I have dressed like a priest long enough to have seen the transformation in myself.

The Release of the Catechumen

Starting next week, we will be releasing the catechumens (“Depart all catechumens, let all catechumens depart…”) to go upstairs for instruction on the Orthodox Christian faith.

Before the Great Entrance

It’s okay to move around during the liturgy: in fact the people on the sides and in the middle will need to move out of the way in this next section so that the clergy can process for the Great Entrance. In addition, some people may want to make their way to the procession to touch the vestment of the deacon and priest. This is a good and pious ritual as long as it is done reverently and with the proper understanding. When we do this, we are imitating the woman with the issue of blood who touched Christ’s garment and received healing. But it’s important to remember that in the symbolism of the Great Entrance, Christ is being carried into Jerusalem on a donkey. I, your priest, am just the donkey; Christ is symbolized during the movement by the bread I am carrying. You don’t touch it or the garments that cover them because that would not be safe; so, instead, you touch my garment.

After the Litany of Supplication

God wants us to be one as He is One. The skills of community have atrophied quite a bit; the Liturgy will help to build them back up. One of the ways we do that is by singing together and saying things in unison. Doing this well requires that we submit ourselves to the rhythms, melodies, and patterns of the things that are being sung and said. We add strength to the celebration in the same way a single twig adds to the strength of a bundle; not by standing out, but by being part of it. When one of my seminary students asked a monk for advice on how best to sing as part of a church choir, he told her to be invisible. What he meant was that our rhythms and pitches should match that of the music and other singers in a way that adds to the whole rather than distracting from it. This is as true when we are reading the communion and post-communion prayers as it is when we sing the Our Father, the Creed, and Lord have mercy.

Before the Kiss of Peace

We are going to try something today; it’s new to many of us, but it is actually something quite ancient. After the exclamation, “Let us one another, that with one accord we may confess…” we are going to share the kiss of peace.

During this time, you may turn to the people immediately around you to quietly share the greeting “Christ is in our midst… He is and shall be.” If there is room and the other person is up for it, you can also share a dry kiss on each cheek. Please don’t move around for this; this is one of those things where there really can be too much of a good thing. Regardless, it is best to be finished with your greeting when the deacon or priest comes out of the altar and offers that same greeting, “Christ is in our midst,” to you; that puts a punctuation mark on the kiss of peace and is the indicator that it is time to stop the greetings so that we can say or sing The Creed together. The reason most parishes do not do this good and ancient practice is that it can become immoderate and disruptive. Let’s avoid that.

Before the Anaphora

This is the pinnacle of the service. All of our attention is on participating in the prayers and beauty of the changing of the Gifts and our own partaking of them. Please not that, while it is never proper to talk during the Divine Liturgy, it is especially important to stay quiet during the Anaphora and Communion. Seriously, we shouldn’t even be talking in the Fellowship Hall while people are taking communion.

Final Word

Everything needs to be done in good order, but this is the good order of an orchestra or a ballroom dance rather than that of a military parade.

Recognizing the need for order, we are sometimes tempted to impose discipline on others without first cleaning up our own thoughts and actions; maybe even using the log in our own eye to beat people about the head to get them to fix the spot in theirs. That’s not required. Everyone is trying to do things well. Plus, this isn’t basic training; it’s a hospital. Hospitals have their own rhythms and their own disciplines, but it is a quiet, persistent, and patient one; devoted not to order for its own sake, but for the sake of healing. People want to be well; let’s let all we do here be done in love so that health and holiness may abound.

Matins is a category of service known as an “Office.” Offices are common prayers that can be prayed without a priest, if one is not available or one wants to serve at home. Other Offices include: Vespers, Compline, Akathists, Supplicatory Canons, and the Hours.

Just like any other service in the Church, Matins has various themes. One theme is that of the fall of mankind. We join Adam in his weakness. As Fr. Alexander Schmemman describes it in For the Life of the World;

When we first wake up, the initial sensation is always that of illumination; we are at our weakest, as our most helpless. It is like a man’s first real experience of life in all its absurdity and solitude, at first kept from him by family warmth. We discover every morning in the amorphous darkness the inertia of life.

And while Matins – and especially the Six Psalms – does call us to experience this darkness, it does not leave us there. This brings us to the second theme. To continue with Fr. Alexander’s meditation;

[T]he first theme of Matins is … the coming of light into darkness. It begins not like Vespers with the creation, but with the Fall. Yes in this very helplessness and despair, there is a hidden expectation, a thirst and hunger. And within this scene the Church declares her joy, not only against the grain of natural life, but fulfilling it. The Church announces every morning that God is the Lord, and she begins to organize life around God. [During Matins] the sun itself rises, dispelling the darkness of the world, and in this the Church sees the rising of the true Light of the world, the Son of God.

Along with this theme of “the Fall”, we also remember that Light has dawned in the world through Jesus Christ. The Matins service guides the believer from the Fall to Illumination.

The Matins service is an amalgamation of several services: the Royal Office, the Nocturnal Office (Six Psalms through the Kathisma), the Cathedral Vigil (from the Poleyeleos through “Having Beheld the Resurrection of Christ”), and the Morning Office (from Psalm 50 through to the end).

Because of its flexibility, Matins serves as the basis for the Funeral service, the memorial Panakhida, and various Molebans (prayer services for specific purposes). When done in its entire monastic form, it takes several hours. The version we use takes about an hour.

The Royal Office

The first part is the “Royal Beginning”, so-called because the psalms that can be chanted (19 and 20) speak of the “king of kings,” tropars in honor of the emperor (“O Lord, save your people”), and litanies for the civil authorities. The Royal Office section is often omitted in parish usage. The Antiochians do a version without the Psalms. I encourage you to sing along to “O Lord Save Thy people…” this is one of our greatest liturgical anthems; our “fight song,” if you will.

The Six Psalms

About the Six Psalms, Fr. John Whiteford writes;

The faithful should be aware of the fact that the reading of the “Six Psalms” is one of the most important points in the service ‚ a time when all should put aside other thoughts‚ stand quietly‚ and concentrate on these penitential prayers. The reading does not constitute a pause in Divine Services‚ a time during which to go for a walk outside or to talk to one’s neighbor. It is one of the holiest moments in the entire service.

During this time the lights are turned off – and the lampadas remain unlit - so that we can better contemplate our mortality and the futility of a life lived separate from God. Some believers close their eyes so that they are not distracted as they “keep their mind in hell and despair not” (St. Silouan the Athonite). Tears of repentance – metaphorical or real - are entirely appropriate during this time. I encourage you to stay as still as a corpse – not even crossing yourself – as you join the Psalmist in contemplating death and looking forward to the Resurrection. This is not a time to light candles or venerate icons, even if you first come into the nave at this time. In such cases, it is best to stand at the back of the nave and contemplate death – and hope for the resurrection - with the rest of us.

After this, in a full service, the Psalms and hymns of the Kathisma would then be sung.

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Resurrectional Evlogitaria

The Six Psalms are followed by the Great Litany, the antiphonal hymn “God is the Lord”, the main hymns for the day, the Kathisma (we only do the hymns, to the Psalms), and the Resurrectional Evlogiteria. These hymns celebrate, among other things, the witness of the Myrrbearing Women. These hymns are separated by Psalm verse 118:12, reminding us that following God’s statutes allows us to participate in the resurrection. It is good to venerate icons and light candles during this time and all the way up to the reading of the Gospel.

The Hymns of Ascent.

These songs are related to the Psalms of Ascent (119-134; in parish usage, we sing these in their entirety at Presanctified). These are the Psalms that were sung on the way up to the Temple in Jerusalem. Symbolically, we ascend in them towards the pinnacle of the Matins service: the proclamation of the Resurrection Gospel and the Hymn of Resurrection.

The Proclamation of the Gospel

The Gospel is preceded by two prokimens (pieces of Psalm) that we chant antiphonally. The first rotates with the eight week cycle of the Octoechos while the second “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” is the same every Sunday. In our tradition, the Resurrection Gospel is proclaimed from the south side of the altar towards the north, proclaiming Christ’s victory over the forces of evil (which sacred geography has residing to the North). The Gospel reading is followed by the last part of the Cathedral Vigil portion of Matins, the hymn “Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ.” During this hymn the priest brings the Gospel book out for people to venerate. This celebrates Christ being in our midst, with the Gospel representing His presence. Marking this, the usual greeting between the priest and the person venerating the Gospel is “Christ is in our midst; He is and always shall be.” It is fine to venerate icons and light candles from the end of the Gospel through the Great Doxology.

The Hymns of Repentance and Psalm 50 through the Canon.

The Morning Office proper begins now with the Hymns of Repentance, Psalm 50, the Deacon’s prayer, and the Canon. In its present form, each of the nine sections of the Canon begins with an Ode that is designed to connect specific Old Testament themes to the New Testament. Two notable things that happen are the singing of the Resurrection Kondak after the Sixth Ode (omitted in current Antiochian practice) and the Magnificat, sung before the Ninth Ode. It is accompanied by a full censing by the deacon.

The Praises (Psalms 148-150) and Doxology

The structure of this section is very similar to “Lord I Call” and the “Aposticha” at vespers, with the first few verses being sung in the tone of the week, the bulk of the Psalms plain-chanted (or intoned in the tone), and then the final few verses chanted in alternation with hymns that are sung in the tone of the week. In our parish, on Sundays, the “both now and ever” verses for the Theotokos are always the same words sung in tone two (Obikhod).

After the Praises come the Great Doxology.

Fr. Dimitri Sokolof
After the Psalms of Praise with their hymns have been chanted, the Holy Doors are opened and the priest calls out “Glory to You Who has shown us the Light,” thus inviting the faithful to glorify God for having given us the Light of the spirit – Christ Savior, who came into the world to illumine mankind, which had theretofore lived in the darkness of superstitions and iniquities.

During the Great Doxology, the Deacon performs the Great Censing of the Proskemedia, the altar, and the entire nave, purifying us and the worship space one last time before the Divine Liturgy begins. At the end of the Doxology, a hymn of the Resurrection is sung.

Bibliography

Neale, J. M., & Littledale, R. F. (1874). A Commentary on the Psalms from Primitive and Mediæval Writers: Psalm 119 to Psalm 150. (Vol. 4, pp. 357–358). London: Joseph Masters.

Reardon, P. H. (2000). Christ in the Psalms. Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing.

Sokolof, D. Archpriest. (1968) A Manual of the Orthodox Church’s Divine Services. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity.

Christ is in our midst!

Today it is a great blessing, as always, to gather together in the praise, worship, and supplication of the Lord. Today we’re going to do what’s called a teaching liturgy. At different parts during the Liturgy, we’re going to pause, and I’m going to offer a reflection on it.

I love doing this, in large part because I love the Liturgy so much, and not apart from my love of Christ. The Liturgy, for me, is one of the ways that I find the purest expression of that love and the purest way for me to feel His love for all of us.

We’ll do this, Lord willing, every year, and there won’t be much repetition because there is always so much. This is one of the great mysteries: because God is beyond time and beyond space, it is possible to continually grow in His love and in knowledge of Him, and to work toward His glory without ever reaching the end of it. Through Jesus Christ, this is possible. It is a wonderful thing to gather together in that reality.

So what is this Divine Liturgy? Today you’re going to get more of a mystical reflection than a historical one.

Before we begin, I want you to think of a time when you knew love, when you felt peace—not as an external thing around you, but as something that had moved into your heart. Think of a time when you had, at least for that moment, no doubt that love was real, that you were in that love, and that that love was moving you deeper into something glorious.

Or perhaps I’m overstating it. Think of a time when you felt free to be yourself.

For many of us, when we think of those memories, it’s a place and a time when we were safe, when we were able to be vulnerable without risk, when we were outside, perhaps, our normal routines. It gave us a chance to open ourselves to something that, as Christians, we know to be reality: God is continually with us, offering us His mercy, His love, His comfort, and His strength.

So often we are not open to that experience. So often, because of all our baggage, the shields that we have built up, all the walls and armor, we aren’t able to experience that.

But this is what we are meant to work toward: developing our hearts so that they are continually open to that reality; creating within our homes the kinds of cultures where we are safe and can be open to that experience; and certainly, within our churches and parishes, that is what we are doing here. That is what it means to live as a people of God: a people who are continually open not just to the knowledge of God, but to the experience of Him.

Without opening our hearts to Him, He cannot live within us and we within Him, as Saint Paul says we are called to do.

So the Divine Liturgy is set up—it is designed—with this in mind. The Lord knows our armor. He knows the things that keep us from being open to an experience with Him. This is one of the ways—I would say it is the main way—that He has established for us to be in Him and Him in us.

Do we do it through prayer? Yes, of course we do. Do we do it when we’re with our friends and with our families? Yes, of course. But this is a way that is always available to us.

So that’s what we’re going to reflect on. We’re going to reflect on the way this Liturgy opens our hearts to an experience of God, so that we can be in His grace, be forgiven of our sins, and have a new life in Him, growing toward perfection in glory with Him forever.

At the end of the Liturgy, afterward, when we’re sitting around, I encourage you to ask questions. Ask, “Why this thing? How does that fit in?” I love those kinds of questions.

When I was considering becoming Orthodox, I wasn’t going to commit to anything until I was convinced that this was a system I could trust, because I knew the Lord Jesus Christ, and I knew that I wanted to have a life in Him. I wanted to see how the Orthodox experienced that.

I was convinced enough not just to become a member—remember the old commercials, right?—but also a priest.

So let us begin our worship with Him. Again, I’ll offer reflections. It may seem to break up the Liturgy a little bit. That’s why we don’t do it every time. Usually, there’s only one part where the priest adds to the Liturgy, and that’s during the homily. But even there, the homily is taken at different times in different traditions. We’re used to it being after the Gospel, but I’ve known priests who did it at the end, and some priests after they took Communion. So think of it kind of like that.

After the First Antiphon – on transitioning into grace

Thinking again of those times when we feel at peace, when we’re open to God’s love, usually it’s not something like the road to Damascus experience, where we’re doing one thing and all of a sudden—boom—it hits us. Oftentimes, it takes a time of transition.

For some of us, we like to go into nature, and it takes that time of getting into the woods and maybe spending about an hour walking until the confusion of the world finally leaves our thoughts and we’re able to be open to God and to how He appears and reveals Himself to us in nature.

It’s the same for us as we come into the church. We can’t expect ourselves simply to flip a switch: “Okay, I’m worried about traffic. I’m worried about how much gas my car has,” all those things that the world throws at us, “but now, when I walk through the doors—boom—I’m ready to know God.”

We need a time of transition, and the Liturgy has that built into it. I don’t want to say that these words are wasted or anything like that. That’s not what I’m saying. But if we went straight from “Blessed is the Kingdom” to the proclamation of the Gospel, the reading of the Gospel, and the preaching of the Word, we wouldn’t be as ready to hear it and to experience and interact with it in peace.

So what we do is sing these songs that are of God, that are about God, and they’re beautiful. The poetry of the words and, glory to God, the beauty of the music lift us up and prepare us during this service.

The Kingdom of Heaven and our world are united in one. This is the realization. This is why, in many of our churches, they’re built with a dome. It’s God coming down in our midst, and there is created a place outside time, outside space, so that we can be in that experience.

But we can’t just walk into it and say, “Okay, I’m here, God. Talk to me.”

So this is one of the reasons why, during this Liturgy of the Word, we have this preparation: to prepare our minds and our hearts to be open to the proclamation of the Gospel.

After the Second Antiphon – on the silent prayers

Now we’re going to have another litany. Our prayers are repeated. We sometimes say the same prayer several times. Why is that? Well, because we’re supposed to. The Gospel tells us: if this is important, ask the Lord for it, and ask again. Don’t give up on your prayer. Keep asking. That, by itself, will soften our hearts so that we can actually be prepared for the answer and the response of God in His love.

If you’ve been to a Liturgy before, you may have heard some extra words, unless you go to an Antiochian parish. The doxology at the end of the litany is not usually taken out loud in our tradition, just the last part. But those are the endings of a prayer that has been offered on behalf of the people of God. They’re sometimes called the silent prayers.

There’s even music designed to give the priest time to offer those prayers in earnest on behalf of the people.

People can get wrapped around the axle about whether these prayers should be taken out loud or not. Obviously, I don’t get wrapped around that particular axle. I serve an Antiochian church when I’m not here. I say them out loud every time. It’s not a problem.

It’s only a problem if we think that those prayers are only for the priest. How could that possibly be just for the priest, unless it’s a prayer asking for him, asking for forgiveness? These are offered by the priest on behalf of all the people.

This points to one of the interesting things about the structure of the Church: there are different roles. Notice I went sideways [with my hands], right? I didn’t go up.

This [up and down] is sometimes the model that we get, and Saint Dionysius was trying to teach us certain things about the heavenly and the earthly kingdom. He made it seem to suggest that priests were above the people and bishops above the priests. But in the Kingdom of God, it’s not like that.

There’s the royal priesthood, and within that royal priesthood, all of us are called to a life in Christ, a life in holiness, with different roles.

So you figure out: What is the role that I’m called to fulfill? In most of our life, it’s messy. But I know when I walk in here, “Today I’m the priest.” So I put this on, and then I pray as a priest.

It doesn’t mean that I’m praying prayers that are better than the prayers that you did or anything like that. It’s the role. It’s like within a family: there are roles that each person has, not so that one can lord it over the other. No, not at all. It is so that the Kingdom can be made manifest within that home, so that the Kingdom can be made manifest here.

Not with me playing some kind of god, but leading us as the people of God in prayer toward the Lord. It’s an important distinction.

These prayers are not secret in the sense that we keep them hidden from you. They’re available in every Liturgy book. You’re allowed to read them. Every once in a while, we’ll take them out loud because the theology of the prayers of the Church is pure, and we learn how to pray from them.

After the Little Entrance

So this is an interesting ritual that we just did. I took the Gospel Book up from the altar, brought it around, and now I’m going to put it right back in the exact same place. This is called the Little Entrance.

You’re allowed to ask questions: Why are you doing that? How did that end up there?

Well, it ended up in the Liturgy for different reasons, but it represents—it’s symbolic of—Christ coming into the midst of His people, incarnate two thousand years ago.

In some traditions, the Gospel will be held in front of the people and it will be proclaimed, “Christ is in our midst,” as a reminder: yes, two thousand years ago these words were spoken and lived by the incarnate God in our midst, and He continues to be in the midst of all of His people.

This is a glorious proclamation. As Christians, we know this. This is beginning Christianity. But when we participate in it through ritual, we are psychosomatic beings. The physicality of the faith reminds us of the truth of it.

This is why we have these different rituals. It’s not just because it ended up in the Liturgy because the Gospel used to be hidden or something like that. This is very intentional.

We’re remembering the time when Christ was literally in our midst, proclaiming the Gospel, preparing His people for His death and resurrection. And now He is in our midst so that we can participate in that death and resurrection, a new life in God through Christ.

The Time of the Homily – On the Glory of God

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

Christ is in our midst.

So this would be the time when the priest would usually give the homily. Instead, I’m going to share a little bit more about the service and why it is we do it the way we do.

One of the most striking things to people from other Christian traditions is our use of incense. We use incense in the Church, and yes, it smells nice and it’s good. There are a lot of hypotheses about where this comes from, whether it comes from pagans or whether it comes from Constantine or something like that.

Well, in the Orthodox Church, there is an intentionality to reflect the glory of God, the throne room of God. In the Bible, we’re given glimpses of this, both in the Old Testament and in Revelation. Wherever God is, He is surrounded by beauty. He is surrounded, oftentimes, by smoke, incense, sweet-smelling fragrance, fire, and so on.

And so it is not just the incense, but the structure of the church itself.

There are different ways to try to provide an encounter with the difficult mystery of the Incarnation: God and man. You can move toward the man part and look at Him in His humility, or you can look at Him and say, “No, we need a reminder. We live in our humility. We know what a man is like. We do not know what the glory of God is like.”

That is the path the Orthodox Church usually takes in its architecture and its focus on beauty.

It’s not to puff ourselves up. It had better not be to puff ourselves up and say, “Look what we have built! Look what we have here!” That would be wrong. That would be the worship of a false god.

Instead, it is done to the glory of God so that we have a sense, the beginning of an understanding, of what He is in His glory.

The prayers that I read before the Little Entrance, when I brought the Gospel out, mention how the Lord is always surrounded by His glory: Cherubim and Seraphim, these holy beings continually singing His praise.

We don’t really have a sense of what glory is in our world. We have a sense of what popularity is, of what riches provide, and things like this, but not the glory of holiness, purity, and truth.

And so the Orthodox Church is set up in a way to give us the beginning of an understanding so that, through participation in worship in such structures, surrounded by that kind of beauty, our minds and our hearts can be open to the reality of the true beauty that is in God.

That is also, by the way, why we sing everything. We sing everything.

This is another notable difference. [People ask;] “Why do you sing? You chant the Gospel. It would be much easier to understand if the priest just read it.”

Okay, fair enough, especially sometimes when we ornament it too much.

But so far, I’ve described the Liturgy as if it were a way of establishing our individual hearts, preparing them for an encounter with God. It softens our hearts, opens them, so that we can know Him and be ready for His love, His mercy, His strength, His courage.

But when we add the music to it, it helps us realize that we are not being brought into salvation alone. The Lord desires that we be one as He is one.

And so it is that the pinnacle of our experience of God on this side is done communally. More than just communally, it’s done through music.

Think about what music does to us. It forces us to be together. Music, in order to be done well, requires that you listen as much as you sing. You listen so much that your reality merges with the reality of the singer next to you, so that you are ready to match and harmonize with him and move together as a group in beauty to the glory of God.

Again, it can seem like maybe it’s just a ritual, maybe just a drug. But when it is filled with the knowledge of God and with the beauty of His Word, as it is here in the Liturgy, it moves us to something greater.

It allows us to participate in the oneness that God desires for us: us in Him, Him in us, and us together as He is one.

Music allows us to do this in a very special way.

The call and response from the priest to the pleros, with the “Lord, have mercies” and so on, is very intentional. They overlap. They share the same pitches. They harmonize together.

This is the way that we are meant to live together: listening to one another, not just so that we can respond to them, but so that we can know them, so that we can share their lives and live in harmony together.

This is not something that comes naturally to us in our human state. We need to have these patterns of behavior, which can be experienced through music, in order to get us out of the rut of the sin that has rooted itself in us, the loneliness, the individuality that makes us separate ourselves not just from God but from other men.

The Liturgy is part of the cure for that illness through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We’re now going to continue with the Divine Liturgy. We’re going to make a transition from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

After the Litany of the Catechumens

The fact that the Lord chose to present Himself—His Body, His self, His reality—to us in the form of a meal again teaches us something about how we are not meant to be saved alone.

The table is a communal place. It is a place where family and friends, people united in fellowship, gather together.

This is the best Thanksgiving dinner, lifted up to a new level, because our Lord Jesus Christ was there in the flesh, offering Himself to us: “This is My Body. This is My Blood. Do this in remembrance of Me.”

“… Participate in this until all things are remade.”

It can seem a little strange. We need to be reminded that it is a meal that we are celebrating, because sometimes we forget that this is a table. It’s an altar, yes, but it is a table.

The cup and the plate will be placed here. We don’t all gather around; there’s not room. It’s brought out to the people.

But you should recognize that it is the fulfillment of the very best meals that we have together with our families, with our friends, with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s continue into that part of this service.

Priestly (Silent?) Prayer for the Faithful

Again and again, we bow down before You, our good and loving God, and we pray to You. Hear our prayer. Cleanse our souls and bodies from every defilement of flesh and spirit, and enable us to stand before Your holy altar free of guilt and judgment. Grant also, O God, to those who pray with us progress in life, faith, and spiritual understanding, so that they may always worship You with fear and love, and may partake of Your holy mysteries without blame or condemnation, and be made worthy of Your heavenly Kingdom, so that, ever guarded by Your might, we may give glory to You: to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and to the ages of ages.

Before the Great Entrance

So this next moment is the Great Entrance.

Before, we brought the Gospel out for the Little Entrance. For the Great Entrance, there’s the movement of the gifts that have been prepared before this service from the side altar to the central altar, to the table.

There’s an interesting allegorical meaning here. Just as when we brought the Gospel out, it’s a ritual reminder of Christ in our midst.

During this time, we are reminded of a couple of things. One is the movement of our Lord amidst His people during the Great Entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday—or Willow Sunday.

So it begins as this triumphal thing: Christ in our midst, and He’s held up, and the priest is saying these prayers. It’s a joyous thing.

The Lord has finally come into His place.

But then, as the priest takes those gifts up into the altar—and often there are stairs—we participate in that transition, that time of recognition that there is something difficult that comes between that moment and the glorious Resurrection.

That is the Lord sacrificing Himself for us, for our salvation, through the remission of our sins.

As those gifts are placed on the altar, the prayers that the priest says are remembrances of that: “The noble Joseph took down Your most pure Body from the tree, wrapped it in clean linen and spices, and laid it in a new tomb.”

Then the covering is no longer the covering, the swaddling clothes of the infant. It becomes the shroud of the tomb, the wrappings around our Lord in His grave.

But we know that this is not the end. We live on the other side of the Resurrection. We live in that time when the Lord has been resurrected, and we are living a new life in Him.

And so we prepare ourselves for an encounter with Him through His Body and Blood.

Before the Anaphora

I just want to call attention to one thing. We are about to go into the most solemn part of the service and there is no way that I would interupt it to offer a reflection; the best reflection would be hesychastic [silent], so after these remarks, I won’t offer any more comments until the end.

One of the nice things about our mission setup is that – while we love our iconostases – it’s natural here for you to be able to see and be a part of what is going on on the altar in a way it isn’t in many Orthodox Churches.

Before the service, the priest commemorates the members of the community and the people whose names have been brought to him for prayer. All of those are represented by a piece of bread and put onto the plate, next to the piece of bread that becomes the Host.

So it’s a symbol of us there.

And then the beautiful thing is, at the end of the service, we consume the Host together, and there remains the Body and Blood, especially the Blood in the cup.

All of those commemorations, all those names, are put into the cup with the prayer, “Lord, wash away the sins of those commemorated here by Your precious Blood, through the prayers of Your saints.”

It’s a wonderful reminder of the universality of salvation: that through the Blood of Jesus, through His Passion on the Cross and through His Resurrection, all are saved through His Blood. All who have given their lives to Him are saved through His Blood.

It’s a great mystery, and it’s a wonderful reminder that even when we are apart, we are still together in Christ and, in this case, literally in His Blood.

It’s just a beautiful thing.

So if you ever do have someone that you’re praying for, bring those prayers so that we can pray together for that person, for that concern, together as well. We struggle together.

At the End of the Service

I just want to point this out [pointing into the altar]. This is an antimension, and this is the thing that is given to the priest and the parish. It is permission for us to serve the sacred services here together around this table.

This one is a replica of one from sixteenth-century Ukraine.

Without it, the priest—even a validly ordained priest—is not allowed to celebrate the Liturgy.

What this is a reminder of is that we are not alone in our salvation. We are part of a Church, a Church where there are roles, and the priest and the people need the blessing of a bishop in order to celebrate divine services.

This is the symbol and the actuality of the blessing of a bishop, so that we’re allowed to celebrate together.

What a blessing to celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ and His love for us together.

Please come forward to venerate the Cross and receive some of the blessed bread.

Censing.

Introduction: God has answered our wailing.

The Lord God has seen the despair of His people and He has come to rescue us from our affliction. He has seen the confusion and chaos of the world that has damaged us, our families, our communities, and our world. This Gospel and liturgy that we celebrate is the end to confusion and the Way of salvation; not just the salvation of our souls which have been lost to sin, but the salvation of this world. War, poverty, oppression… this world groans in agony from chaos and corruption. Through the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, we will participate in the transformation of ourselves into the Body of Christ and of this place into the very Throne Room of the Immortal, All-Powerful, and All-Loving God. This is the balm to heal all wounds, an end to chaos, and The Way to perfection. We are entering into the Kingdom of God.

Blessed is the Kingdom… The Great Litany. The First Antiphon.

The House of God as a thin place.

Right now, this still looks like a hotel conference room. But it is not; it is now a place of power. The barrier between earth and heaven has dissolved. This is a what is known in mythologies and stories as a “thin place”. But this is no mere story. Our reality is being merged with the reality of the eternal worship that surrounds God’s throne. The beauty of the icons and altar, the music, the chanting, the vestments, the incense, the cloud of confessors, and the angels who came here with us; all these are part of the majesty of heavenly worship into which we are being drawn. We are like the Prophet Isaiah or the Apostle Paul or St. John the Theologian, allowed to experience things that the eye cannot see nor the mind comprehend. If we open our hearts to this reality, we will be transformed by this mystical journey.

Little Litany. The Second Antiphon.

Why so many litanies? The linking of life and liturgy.

Why do we repeat things? Because they are important. Because they make us part of something greater. They pattern our souls according to the logic of love. When we pray, we are part of something magical: God working through us and with us to transform this world. Our every moment throughout the preceding days has been transformed by prayer; this is the continuance and crowning of that prayer.

Little Litany. The Third Antiphon. The Little Entrance.

The Little Entrance as the meeting of man and Word.

Come let us worship! We have now reached the historical beginning of the Liturgy. Antiphons as the culmination of our preparation. We need these so that we can be ready to receive the Gospel. There is a danger of distilling the Liturgy down to its critical parts… we need time to adjust (the Liturgy as we celebrate it has already been pared down). This part of the Liturgy is called the Liturgy of the Word. We are reminded of Christ’s earthly ministry, when He walked among us and taught us with His own lips. The Little Entrance is often seen as a symbol of this ministry. The hymns, bits of Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel readings are truths proclaimed by the Church and should be accepted and appreciated as the modern iteration of that time when God walked the earth. He lives in the Church and its voice is His voice.

Tropars, Kondak, Trisagion. Prokimen. Epistle. Alleluia. Gospel.

The Divine Liturgy as Teacher.

The Liturgy is designed to re-pattern our minds according to the Gospel. In other words, we are meant to learn from it. How do we learn? We must be active participants in the process. We must prepare. This is not entertainment, but a life experience; the quality of that experience is up to us. Some are transformed into saints by their participation; others waste this powerful time by daydreaming, just trying to enjoy the music, or gutting it out. It is the same as in school (we get out of it what we put into it), but the lesson being taught here and now is so much more important than that offered in any school. The homily is part of that. If we have prepared ourselves to hear the Gospel through prayer, fasting, the service of neighbor, and the study of Scripture, then we will benefit from even the dullest preacher presenting the most formulaic sermon. Again, we control what we get out of the lesson. We need to work with the Holy Spirit so that God can speak whatever words we need to hear into our minds and hearts.

Litanies of Supplication, Catechumen. The Great Entrance.

The Liturgy as celebration and sacrifice.

This is the beginning fo the Liturgy of the Faithful. [History of movement (bringing gifts from the skeuphylakion). Symbol of movement (celebration and sacrifice).] Just as preparation for Word makes it more effective for us, so does preparation for Christ’s sacrifice allow that sacrifice to work more powerfully within us. He offers Himself up in His Passion for the remission of our sins. Do we admit that his gift is something we need? Have we accepted it? Without this, we are no better than the spectators at the Roman colosseum, hoping to be entertained by a gruesome spectacle. We may or may not be entertained, but we will not be saved.

Litanies of the Faithful. The Great Entrance. Litany. The Peace. The Kiss of Peace.

Christ is in Our Midst!

Through our participation in this worship, the grace of God has allowed us to enter into a very special psychological, spiritual, and communal state. There is only love within us. There is only love among us. There is no remembrance of past wrongs, no prejudice, no expectations; there is only the reality of the God who lives in us and draws us as one into His body. After the Creed, comes the Anaphora, when the Holy Spirit comes down into us and the gifts we are offering, changing them into the one the thing needful; the one thing that can save our broken souls and this broken world. The prayers the priest prays are pure theology. Fr. Taras has been given a blessing to pray them out loud. Due to the solemnity and seriousness of the this part of the service, we will not be offering any other reflections until after Communion.

The Creed. The Anaphora. Litany. Lord’s Prayer. Communion.

Let us depart in peace.

Now take that peace and power that you have received and share it with a waiting world. If you have questions about the liturgy, just ask! Your bishops, priests, and deacons live for the Liturgy and it is their desire and calling to share its joys with you. [Priest as shaman – helping others into into a relationship with the sacred].

Let me leave you with this final thought;

How would you react if you found out your Army instructor was a Medal of Honor winner, your coach had won the Olympic gold, your Med School lecturer was a Nobel Prize winner, or your Business School teacher was a member of the Fortune 500 who did it all from scratch. You’d pay more attention to their words. You’d have more respect for them and everything they said. You would not want to miss a single lesson. And the beauty is that you would become better by your extra attentiveness. Christ the Great Rabbi is here. Among us. Teaching us. Preparing us for paradise.

After attending the Divine Liturgy at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, emissaries of St. Volodymyr, the King of Kyivan-Rus’ reported: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. One thing we understood, was that God was in our midst!” This is the experience that is available to all of us when we come to Divine Liturgy; but as with all things, this experience will be greater the more we prepare for it and the more we understand and open ourselves up to it. The time of preparation is over – now is the time to grow in our understanding of it and to open ourselves up to it.

For the next hour or two you can relax, open yourself up, and be vulnerable; you can’t really do that at school or work; you may not even be able to do it with your friends. You certainly can’t do it on social media. But if you do it here, you open yourself up NOT to the risk of hurt or manipulation but to the love and transformational mercy of God. The words, hymns, and actions of the Divine Liturgy are the way that God has chosen to work with us to accomplish His will that “all be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.” Through these words, hymns, and actions, He will strengthen our hearts, heal our pain, and help us realize just how good it is to be alive.

Today’s Liturgy is a Teaching Liturgy; I will be taking time at various points in the service in order to explain what is going on. Right now, I encourage you to strap in and prepare yourself for the powerful way God has chosen to meet and help us, His children: the Divine Liturgy.

After the First Antiphon

Right now, this may still look like a former medical center in downtown Anderson. But it is not; it is now a place of power. The barrier between earth and heaven has dissolved. This is what is known in mythologies and fairy tales as a “thin place.” But this is no mere story. Our reality is being merged with the reality of the constant and eternal worship that surrounds God’s throne. The beauty of the icons and altar, the music, the chanting, the vestments, the incense, the cloud of confessors, and the angels who came here with us; all these are part of the majesty of heavenly worship into which we are being drawn; this experience merging with that of the tens of thousands of angels, the thousands of archangels and the cherubim and seraphim who do this at the throne of God 24/7. We are like the Prophet Isaiah, the Prophet Daniel, the Apostle Paul, or St. John the Theologian, allowed to live through things that the eye cannot see nor the mind comprehend. If we open our hearts to this reality, we will be transformed by this mystical journey.

After the Second Antiphon.

Why do we repeat things? Because they are important. Because they make us part of something greater. They pattern our souls according to the logic of love. When we pray, we are part of something magical: God working through us and with us to transform this world. Our every moment throughout the preceding days has been transformed by prayer; this is the continuance and crowning of that prayer.

Before the Entrance

The Divine Liturgy did not always look exactly like it does now. For one, there used to be a lot more movement. Instead of singing the first antiphons in church, we would have sung them on the way to church. The service would have begun as the Gospel was brought from the outside into the sanctuary. Now the ritual of bringing the Gospel out of the altar to the people reminds us of something very important: that Christ God has come from heaven to be in our midst! This is what we are celebrating and confirming when we kiss the Gospel and exchange the words; “Christ is in our midst – He is and shall be.” God did not just take on flesh two thousand years ago, He lives in the Church and its voice is His voice.

After the “Holy God”, Before the Epistle

In conversations, especially in conversations with people wiser and more knowledgeable than us, we should spend more time listening than speaking. Our liturgical dialogue with God is the same. Up to this point, we have been doing most of the talking, sharing our litanies of concerns with Him and asking for His mercy. Now it is time for us to stop talking and listen to His Word. The Epistles and Gospel readings are like food for our hungry souls. Before each reading, the deacon says; “Let us be attentive!” This is not the time for us to let our minds wander or count the number of tiles in the ceiling but rather a time to ask what God is trying to say to us and think of how we can improve our lives by putting His words into practice.

After the Gospel Reading

For today’s homily, I want to address a common question that many of us have but are afraid to ask out loud: “Why do we do this every week?” We sometimes forget that the central action of the Divine Liturgy is a ritualized “meal”, when we all eat the “Mystical Supper” together. Meals need to be repeated regularly. This isn’t just because our bodies need nourishment. If this were the case we could just shove something into our mouths when our bodies started getting hungry. That’s important, but meals are more than that. Every evening when families sit down together to eat, they are affirming some very important things. They aren’t just a collection of hungry people, satisfying their bodily needs – they are a family that gathers to share stories and remember who they are. In fact, it is when they eat together that the family is most itself. No matter how busy their schedules are, families have to set aside this time together to maintain their connection and shared identity. I am convinced by observation and research that families that build their schedules around an evening meal are more resilient and that the children in such families are given a psychological boost that goes far beyond the nutrients they have been given.

It can be a real drag to eat dinner together: we all have to set down our phones and pause our video games, leave the discord servers, and stop bingeing TikTok, YouTube, and Netflix! But the benefits are clear and this sacrifice is worth making. Even if it is the same thing pretty much every evening.

It’s the same for the Divine Liturgy. There are always other things that seem more fun to do on Sunday mornings: video games, doom-scrolling, movies, sports, and how about just sleeping in and going to Waffle House for breakfast? But there is no better way to build resilience and a healthy identity – I mean to know who we are at the deepest level, even below ideology and whatever other attribute the world is trying to get us to obsess over at the moment – than to set all that stuff aside for a couple of hours and enjoy the meal that the Lord has set aside for us.

Just like it’s okay for us to rather be doing something else at dinner time, it’s okay that part of us would rather be doing something else on Sunday morning. Part of growing up is learning to do what is good and right even when we’d rather be doing something fun and easy. That’s commitment. And commitment is both a critical component and a consequence of love.

Before the Great Entrance and the Cherubic Hymn

We are about to sing about how this is the time when we need to “Set aside our earthly cares” so that we can open ourselves up to something greater. The King of All Creation, the Ruler of the Heavenly Hosts, the One Who Is is with us now. We all know how crazy it is to see two people out on a date spending the whole time on their phones. But that is what we would be like if we used this time to worry about all the crazy things going on in our lives. At least for now, we need to let them go. Our problems will still be there when this is over … and if we do this thing well, we’ll be able to meet them with newfound strength. So let us lay aside all earthly cares as we ritualize the triumphant God in our midst.

Before the Creed: The Kiss of Peace

The Divine Liturgy would be a waste of time for us – an empty ritual – if we did not have love for one another and for God. The priest reminds us of this right before we say the Creed when he says; “Let us love one another so that with one mind we may confess.”

In the early Church, this would be the point in the service when everyone would greet one another with the “kiss of peace.” We symbolically offer this kiss of peace to one another as the priest says “Christ is in our midst” and everyone responds “He is and shall be.”

After the Creed and before the Holy Anaphora

Through our participation in this worship, the grace of God has allowed us to enter into a very special psychological, spiritual, and communal state. There is only love within us. There is only love among us. There is no remembrance of past wrongs, no prejudice, no expectations; there is only the reality of the God who lives in us and draws us as one towards His peace and perfection.

This is not just some feeling that we cultivate – our salvation should never rely on something so unreliable as our feelings. God is not with us like some kind of imaginary friend or even just as a spirit whose presence cannot be known with the senses. He is actually with us. We have heard His words and we have sung His praises. Now we will do something that no mind can ever fully understand. It is hard enough for us to accept that the uncontainable and all-powerful God became fully human to be with and save us; it is an even greater mystery to understand why and how He – the God-man – decided to continue His salvific ministry to us by giving us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink in the Eucharistic Communion. This is how the God-man explained this to His followers back in the day;

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. (John 6: 53-55)

And St. John, a witness to these events, then describes that “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” (John 6:66)

Again, we cannot understand why or how the Lord has given us this method to accomplish our continuing transformation. It alternately mystifies, frightens, and humbles us. Without understanding, with the fear of God and with faith and love we join all of the saints from every place and age who have participated in this very same Communion – for there is only One Sacrifice. It is a Sacrifice that exists at the center of all our time and of all our space, a singularity that draws us towards it and through it and then on into something greater. Further up and further in!

During the upcoming prayers, the priest will ask for the Holy Spirit to come upon all of us and on the gifts being offered. God reliably answers this prayer, changing the bread and wine into Christ-God’s flesh and blood. The miraculous transformation then continues as we follow His command – eating His flesh and drinking His blood. For this is no ordinary meal but the medicine of immortality that transforms us into something better, something eternal, and something glorious.

So as to preserve the dignity of the Eucharistic Meal, I will not pause the service again until the end. Let us now enter into these, the most powerful prayers we know.

Before the Dismissal

This has been a miraculous time. God has come into our midst and then into our bodies through the Holy Eucharist. This is not just so that we can become better people, taking it “for the remission of sins” but so that we be the instruments that God uses to heal, transform, and bring joy to this fallen world.

Let me leave you with this final thought;

How would you react if you found out your Army instructor was a Medal of Honor winner, your coach had won the Olympic gold, your medical school lecturer was a Nobel Prize winner, or your business school teacher was a member of the Fortune 500 who did it all from scratch? You’d pay more attention to their words. You’d have more respect for them and everything they said. You would not want to miss a single lesson. And the beauty is that you would become better by your extra attentiveness. Christ the Great Rabbi is here. Among us. Teaching us. Preparing us for paradise. We become better by attending to Him and all He teaches through His Church.

SUMMARY VERSION

The Gathering and “Blessed is the Kingdom”

When we first come together for the Divine Liturgy, we carry with us the noise, burdens, and distractions of daily life. The Church, in her wisdom, does not demand that we shed these instantly; instead, the opening moments of the Liturgy are like a gentle transition, a spiritual “warm-up.” We gather around the celebrant, but we also gather around Christ Himself, the invisible High Priest, who offers Himself — and invites us to offer ourselves in return.

This self-offering begins with our first act of dialogue. The priest proclaims: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” These are not words to be overheard; they are words that require our response. We are not passive spectators. The Kingdom is proclaimed, and we affirm it by saying Amen. With that single word, we declare, “Yes, this is true. Yes, this is the authority I recognize. Yes, I step into this holy reality.”

In this way, the Liturgy teaches us to let go. We begin releasing the things that divide us, distract us, or weigh us down. The prayers and litanies that follow — “In peace, let us pray to the Lord” — call us to embrace peace instead of resentment, unity instead of division. Slowly, we are led out of our baggage and into freedom. The Liturgy is not just God’s work for us; it is also our work together — leitourgia, the work of the people, for the people.

The Little Entrance: The Gospel and the Beatitudes

As the Liturgy moves forward, we arrive at the Small Entrance. The priest takes the Gospel book from the altar and carries it out, only to return it again to its place. On the surface, it may seem like a simple ritual motion, but it carries profound meaning. The Gospel, resting at the center of the holy table, reminds us that the Word of God is always at the heart of our worship. When it is lifted up and brought among us, we are reminded of Christ’s own coming into the world — His advent, His ministry, and His return to the Father.

This movement is surrounded by words and hymns that prepare our hearts. The psalmody reminds us to bring all of life’s sorrows and joys before God. The hymn about Christ, the Only-Begotten Son, taken just before the Small Entrance, recalls His incarnation, death, and resurrection — the central mystery of our faith.

[And then, at least in the northern Slavic tradition, as the entrance leads us deeper into the Liturgy, we hear the Beatitudes. But notice how they are introduced: not with triumph, but with the cry of the penitent thief, “Remember me, O Lord, in Your Kingdom.”

The Beatitudes are the commandments of the New Testament, a countercultural charter of what it means to live in Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. These words run against the grain of worldly success, but in them, Christ gives us a new way of seeing: weakness is not defeat, meekness is not failure, and sorrow is not despair. These, too, are paths into the Kingdom.

After the Gospel: Standing Aright

When the Gospel is proclaimed, we are transported into the very scene of Scripture. Gospels, we meet a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years, unable to stand up straight. She was not possessed, but burdened with a “spirit of infirmity” — something that had crippled her body and spirit. And yet, in the synagogue, on the Sabbath day, Christ laid His hands upon her, and she was made straight.

The Gospel says she “stood aright.” The Greek word behind this phrase is connected to the root of orthodoxy — “upright praise.” To stand aright is not only a matter of posture but of worship, of being restored to the ability to lift our eyes toward God in thanksgiving. The Lord’s work is to raise us up, to free us from whatever has bent us down: grief, resentment, sin, or despair.

This healing also reminds us of the Sabbath. While human rules sought to limit what could be done, Christ reveals that the Father never ceases His work of love. God did not stop working after creation; He is always sustaining, healing, and making new. The liturgy trains us in this same posture: we sit, we bow, we rise, and above all, we learn to stand aright before Him. Even when life leaves us stooped over by pain or regret, the Eucharist touches us with grace and straightens us in thanksgiving. We are called by the deacon to “Stand Aright” several times during the Liturgy.

The Great Entrance: Offering and Becoming Icons

At the Great Entrance, bread and wine are carried in solemn procession from the table of preparation to the altar. On the surface, it seems a simple transfer of gifts, but this is a deeply symbolic act. The offering of bread and wine represents our own offering of ourselves — our lives, our struggles, our joys. These simple gifts, the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, will become the Body and Blood of Christ. And so, in them, we place all that we are, trusting God to transform it.

As this procession unfolds, the choir chants the Cherubic Hymn: “Let us who mystically represent the cherubim, and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity, now lay aside every worldly care.” These words invite us to see ourselves as more than ordinary participants. In that moment, we are called to become icons of the angels, joining heaven itself in its unceasing praise.

But there is a condition: we must “lay aside every worldly care.” The resentments we nurse, the burdens we carry, the inner voices that accuse us — all of these must be set down. Only then can we receive the King of all, who comes to us in humility and forgiveness. Just as the risen Christ appeared to His disciples with the greeting, “Peace be with you,” so too does He meet us here, ready to reconcile us and feed us with His own life.

The Kiss of Peace and the Creed: Love and Our Common Story

Before we enter the central prayer of the Divine Liturgy, the anaphora, we are called to make peace. The priest exhorts us: “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess…” This is not a polite suggestion. It is the necessary condition for true worship. How can we proclaim the unity of the faith if our hearts are divided by resentment, jealousy, or bitterness? To confess with “one mind” means first to let go of what separates us, forgiving both ourselves and one another.

In ancient times, this moment included the kiss of peace — a real, physical expression of reconciliation. While many churches no longer exchange the kiss in that form, the call remains: we must let ourselves love. This means allowing God’s unconditional love to reach us, despite the “yes, but” that so often rises in our minds: Yes, but how could He love me? or Yes, but what about what they did to me? The Liturgy teaches us to drop the “yes, but” and to rest in the truth that we are loved.

Only then do we proclaim the Creed — not as a dry theological statement, but as our shared story, our sacrifice of praise. From creation to Christ’s resurrection, from the Spirit’s presence in the Church to our hope for the life of the age to come, the Creed is our collective act of remembering. To remember God’s saving works is to give thanks. And in speaking these words together, we become a people shaped not by divisions or ideologies, but by gratitude for what God has done, is doing, and will do.

The Anaphora: Mercy, Remembrance, and Thanksgiving

At the heart of the Divine Liturgy is the anaphora — the great prayer of offering. The priest calls us to stand aright, to attend, to lift up our hearts. In this moment, we are fully present before God, joining earth to heaven in one act of praise and thanksgiving. The gifts of bread and wine, fruits of the earth shaped by human hands, are offered up. But more than that, we offer ourselves, our lives, and our very being, that they too may be consecrated by grace.

The priest proclaims: “A mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise.” God’s mercy is not simply the withholding of punishment; in the ancient sense, it is His overflowing generosity, His abundant sharing of Himself with us. To recognize this is to respond in gratitude. The whole anaphora is an act of remembrance — not mere recollection, but a making-present of God’s saving works. We remember creation, the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, and the life of the age to come. In remembering, we give thanks, and in giving thanks, we are transformed.

Soon, the priest will invoke the Holy Spirit, calling Him down upon the gifts and upon all of us. This is no distant reenactment of the Last Supper, but the living presence of Christ among His people. Here we taste the Kingdom; here we receive not only bread and wine but the very life of God.

Before the Epiclesis: Thine Own of Thine Own

At this moment in the Liturgy, the priest recalls Christ’s command: “Take, eat; drink of it, all of you.” Christ offers Himself as food — not in a self-serving way, but as the One who absorbs all of our darkness on the cross, even descending into death, and transforms it into life. Unlike the world’s hunger to consume and take from one another, here is a self-offering that nourishes and restores.

The priest then prays: “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.” Everything we have comes from God; in the Liturgy, we return it to Him. And in His mercy, He gives it back to us, transfigured. As we stand before this mystery, our words grow fewer. We can only say the simplest things: “We sing to Thee, we bless Thee, we thank Thee.” The Holy Spirit is invoked, not only upon the gifts, but upon us, so that both may be transformed by grace.

Before the Our Father: Learning to Pray

As the service continues, we prepare to say the prayer that Christ Himself gave us. When we say “Our Father,” we are not praying alone — Christ prays with us, making Himself one of us. This prayer is not a list of demands; it is a series of holy amens. We say, “Hallowed be Thy name… Thy Kingdom come… Thy will be done.” God’s name is already holy, His Kingdom already coming, His will already active — but we are learning to want what He wants.

At the heart of this prayer is forgiveness. We ask God to forgive us, even as we forgive others. The Liturgy gently teaches us to let go of resentments, even ones we cannot easily resolve. To carry grudges, even toward the dead or toward ourselves, is to weigh ourselves down. Here, in Christ’s presence, we can lay them aside.

Soon, the bread will be broken — for Christ Himself chose to be broken with us and for us. In our brokenness, we find not rejection but communion. The One who was broken on the Cross comes to us in love, so that our wounds may become places of His presence.

Conclusion: The Eucharist and the Liturgy After the Liturgy

As the Liturgy nears its close, we remember that its heart is the Eucharist: the Body and Blood of Christ, uniting us as one family in Him. We do not gather for ritual alone, nor for our own sake, but to manifest Christ’s presence for the life of the world.

Yet the service does not truly end when the final prayer is said. Strengthened by the Eucharist, we are sent out into what some call the “liturgy after the Liturgy” — our daily lives. The peace we have received is not meant to stay within the walls of the church. We carry it into the world: into our homes, workplaces, and encounters, becoming vessels of grace wherever we go.

TRANSCRIPT OF HER REMARKS (lightly edited);

Fr. John Klingel:

We are very pleased and honored today to have with us Sister Vassa Larin, who will give us a teaching liturgy, a commentary on the principal aspects of the service. She’s a liturgical scholar and a very good person, and we are extremely fortunate and blessed to have her come here and minister to us in this fashion.

Sister Vassa:

Before “Blessed is the Kingdom”

Good morning to everyone, and a blessed Sunday to you.

We have gathered now for the first part of what is called the Divine Liturgy. The gathering is the first action that we have undertaken as a group, as a community, together around the main celebrant of this rite, of this sacrament, Father John. Having gathered, we are about to begin what is called the beginning, the enarchis, of the Liturgy.

This is the warm-up part because we still have stuff in our minds. We’re still making a transition into this sacred space and into this action that is an ascent into more intimate communion with our Lord. He is the invisible celebrant and the head of this action of the Church that is self-offering. He offers Himself, and in response to Him, we are self-offering. We’re letting go bit by bit. This is what the whole celebration is helping us do: let go of that baggage that hinders our more intimate communion with Him.

Father will begin, and we will respond to his beginning by saying something in response to his initial doxology, which is, “Blessed is the Kingdom.” He will be blessing the kingdom of a certain someone. Whose kingdom is it? Whose authority is it that we recognize as our primary authority? Our Triune God. He will say, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That is his assertion, and then it can’t go without us. We’re not passive bystanders, because we have to say “Amen” to that. We say “Amen.” We don’t sometimes realize that he enters in this way, the main celebrant, our priest, Father John. He enters immediately into dialogue with us. We have to affirm. We have to say, “It is so.” That is our “Amen.”

Then we proceed with these warm-up prayers. First, our common prayer. We’re really relearning to pray together in this first part, while we’re getting our acts together to prepare for more attentiveness. This is the introductory part. As I said, gathering and warm-up. We’re learning to pray together.

So it’s going to be this litany of, “In peace, let us pray to the Lord.” We’re re-embracing peace. A lot of things today divide us, right? But this is not the place where we bring those things that divide us. This is the sacrament of unity par excellence, the Eucharist, where we come together to praise, to thank God.

We will not hear here, in our liturgical tradition, a litany of things that are wrong with the world. We hear what we are to praise God for, and we will be letting go bit by bit and being led into this mystery. We’re letting go of our complaints. We’re letting go of our divisions and our politics. We’ll be letting go of our resentments, which is not easy to do.

So we’re self-offering. This is a sacrifice of praise. This is what our Liturgy is known as, aside from being Divine Liturgy, which underlines the role of God on the one hand, but also our role. Liturgy is a work of the people, but it can also be translated as a work for the people, because God is at work here in our midst.

And so we now begin to let go of things that hinder our communion. Next time, I will make brief comments before the first of the two entrances of this celebration. Right now, we’re working up to the moment of the Small Entrance, and we will be moving spiritually with the movements that the main celebrant makes, Father John. They will be symbolizing this ascent that the whole service is into closer communion. So with every entrance, it’s like we’re entering closer.

Before the Little Entrance

Now we have reached the part right before the Small Entrance, which is basically our celebrant, Father John, taking the Gospel Book from the altar table. In the very center of the Holy Table we have the Gospel Book, lest anybody doubt that Holy Scripture is indeed at the center of our attention and our focus: the Word of God.

Our main celebrant, Father John, will bring out the Gospel Book and basically put it right back where he took it in the first place. What does this mean? It has a complicated history that we are not going to get into right now. But what this motion, this action, means—that we are following, that we want to keep up with—is that our further entrance into the mystery, and indeed our life journey, is made by and through the nourishing action and invitation to us of the Word of God.

The Gospel Book also symbolizes the coming into our world of our Lord Jesus Christ, His advent into this world, and then His return to His Father, as Western Christians today celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. That is good to keep in mind.

Now, as far as the chanting goes and the text that we hear, liturgy is not only text. It’s also these motions. It is an action of the Church. We have heard psalmody. We have together praised the Lord. We have said, “Praise the Lord, O my soul,” and so forth. We have also heard a hymn from the sixth century about the dogmatic teaching of the Church concerning the Only-Begotten Son of God, His virgin birth, and, of course, His trampling death by death and His resurrection.

The resurrection is the occasion because of which we gather on a Sunday. We remember the resurrection, and we remember that it is by the way of the Cross that we come to new life on a daily basis, by trampling death by death.

We will hear right now another very important warm-up kind of text for us. Psalmody was important because psalms, in general, teach us to put all of our human joy and sorrow and pain, all the darknesses and the lights in our life, at God’s feet. We involve Him in our ups and downs. Then, through the teaching of the Church and through acknowledging the truth of the faith and of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the will of His Father and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, this is how our salvation, our return home, is occurring: by the action of the Holy Trinity.

But we also have what’s coming up right now in the Beatitudes. We will be singing together with the wonderful choir here. Actually, the Beatitudes are introduced by the words of the penitent thief: “In Your Kingdom remember me, O Lord.” We’ll hear that more than once.

The penitent thief—his basic attitude: “I might have spent my whole life pillaging, even murdering.” This is the worst of the criminals, but our Lord chose to be crucified amongst criminals, like one of them. We’re also not divorced from the worst criminals in this world. We’re not an elite here, gathered separately from all of that. We place ourselves—we know ourselves—amongst the worst of the worst, even as we offer gratitude to Him for also being with us there, as we, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, enter into closer communion.

So we’ll have the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” We’ll hear those right after the prayer of the penitent thief. They’re like the main commandments of the New Testament. We remember this countercultural faith that we embrace: being poor in spirit, being amongst the mourning or the weeping. We’ll say, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek.

Is that how we define success usually in our culture? Well, we’re being told by our Lord: Don’t be afraid to be left behind. Don’t be afraid to express My meekness, My poverty of spirit, and so forth.

The purpose of this entrance that is signified by the actions of Father John—the destination is not actually to stand in front of the altar table, although he will pause there because there is something that is a rather late interpolation into the Liturgy. That doesn’t make it bad, but we will be hearing certain hymns of the day, of the Sunday. So we’re reminded at this moment of the occasion for which we have gathered: the hymns, the kontakion, the troparion, also of the saint of the day.

Father will eventually reach his destination. After that, he will go to the High Place. You don’t see it from where you’re standing, but the High Place is this sort of seat that is right behind the altar table, and that’s considered, symbolically speaking, the dwelling place of God. This is symbolism, okay? But we’re being helped to become more attentive, closer to God.

Why? Well, at this moment in Liturgy, because the readings are following. There’s going to be the Epistle reading. We’re supposed to be already getting our acts together after the warm-up. We’ll hear the Epistle reading, always a little bit more challenging to understand than the Gospel reading, and then there will be the Gospel reading.

So now we’re all attentive. We’ll hear Father say, “Wisdom!” We practice being attentive. But that’s it for now. Next time, we will talk about the next part of Liturgy that’s leading us up to the next, Great Entrance.

After the Gospel

So we give glory to the Lord right after hearing a passage from the Gospel. Having been transported to that synagogue in the Holy Land, today we see something happen to this woman. For eighteen years, she has been bent over. What the Lord does for her, by compassionately laying His precious hands on her, is that she is made straight.

There’s something about being straightened out, or being able to stand aright. Some of you know that there’s a very popular book today called 12 Rules for Life by a famous clinical psychologist, Jordan Peterson. His first rule for life is, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.”

There’s an interesting phenomenon in our lives: we might be really bent over from something that happened to us. Maybe we have a few things in our lives that might have bent us over and crippled us to the point where we can’t see up. We can’t see anything good. We’re so crippled by the event.

This woman, it is said by commentators, was not possessed by a demon. It says in the Gospel that she had a spirit of infirmity. She wasn’t possessed. However, it was somehow a spiritual phenomenon. Whatever it is that the enemy of our salvation, who doesn’t want us to live or to see light, was allowed to unleash this kind of darkness on her.

And so along comes the Lord of the Sabbath on the Sabbath day, when it was a no-no to work. But the work of God never stopped. Yes, the Sabbath is inspired by the rest that God had after His creative works. On the seventh day He rested. But did God stop working in our world? No. That’s why our Lord Jesus Christ says, “I am working, and the Father is working still.” He never stopped working in the world. The Sabbath did not mean that God’s work stops.

And so our Lord goes ahead and heals this woman on a Sabbath so that she can stand up straight.

We practice these bodily positions. We also sit, obviously, as you are sitting right now, when there are times of rest in Liturgy. We have a concentration of behavior that we practice in a ritualized way, which we should also practice at proper times and places in our everyday lives.

So standing up straight, blessing God, being able to praise God, to look up and say, “Thank You, God, for our blessings”—this is something that might be hindered by certain dark things that happen because people are free. God took a risk with His creation, allowing for freedom. That means that there could also be dark moments and phenomena.

Nonetheless, He also sends us His Only-Begotten Son, and He never stops working. Our Triune God doesn’t stop working. But as we see in this passage, there are those—the priests at this synagogue—who try to get in the way of God’s work.

We don’t have priests and hierarchy in the New Testament era of the Church so that they can be gatekeepers or prevent us from accessing the works of God. No, they do quite the opposite. They have to help us navigate those abundant waves of grace to which we have access as a result of all of the salvific works of our Lord, and also the resulting sending down of the Holy Spirit.

To help us navigate all these waves of grace, we have priests, and we have sacraments, and we have feasts that divide things up into portions for us at certain proper times and in proper ways. It’s sort of like the beginning of chapter nine of Proverbs, where we read about Wisdom building herself a house and erecting seven pillars, and then dividing up her wine and her bread and inviting us to this feast.

We see these seven pillars, the seven days of the week. It’s within time, because time is signified by seven pillars. It’s divided into seven-day weeks. It’s within time, gradually, as we are works in progress—or, as Saint Paul said today in the Epistle we just heard, we are these works in progress of God—and it is gradually, through being nourished by the mysteries, in bits.

Why would we celebrate only the birth in Bethlehem of our Lord, a feast coming up? Why would we only celebrate that and not the whole mystery of Christ together? Well, because we live within time, and we need to be nourished in this way, in bits and pieces.

Like the woman in the synagogue, we might have longer or shorter periods in our life when, for whatever reason, we go through times of being bent over. But our cross-carrying way is to approach through walking through things, through going also into community, through not self-isolating.

It’s significant that it is within community and in the synagogue that this woman—it must have been hard for her, all keeled over, to come and show up. But she suits up and she shows up. It’s within community that she is able to encounter the Lord and to be made straight.

We remember also, because of the word orthodoxia: What does it mean that we are upright? We are engaging in upright praise. Orthodoxy is learning. We don’t do it perfectly. We are always learning, and our goal is to have what is often translated as “proper praise,” but it means “upright praise,” orthodoxia. Proper praise, being able to make this sacrifice of praise, of proper speech in general, and of proper worship—doxa is sometimes translated as worship because worship consists of praise.

Well, it’s not easy for us actually to praise God. We have a lot of “yes, buts.” It’s hard for us to be grateful. But at the Eucharist that we are celebrating now—Eucharist meaning thanksgiving—we’re flexing those muscles of gratitude.

It’s not easy, sometimes or many times in our lives, as you know, to bring out and truly say from our hearts that “Alleluia.” It’s, as Leonard Cohen said, a cold and a broken hallelujah sometimes in our lives.

Nonetheless, when we are able to embrace gratitude, we release a lot of the burden. We cease to be so bent over. We want to say “yes, but,” and we want sometimes to have things fixed, but they’re not. We’re not fixed.

We have a self-help culture that tells us there’s a self-help group and there is a vitamin supplement or whatever that’ll fix anything wrong with you. But we’re not all fixed, and that puts a lot of pressure on us to be fixed.

Sometimes we are called to patience and to await new life. As we say in the Creed, we don’t have a feeling of dread and doom and gloom as Christians. We don’t expect doom and gloom around the corner. What we expect, what we yearn for, what we look toward, is the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.

It’s new life that we look toward, and our Lord comes and touches us, as He does at this celebration when we receive Holy Communion. Leading up to it, He touches us and helps to make us straight.

Before the Great Entrance

Now we have reached the part of the Divine Liturgy when we will be following this motion of offering: the offering of the gifts of bread and wine that have been prepared at a little table known as the Proskomedia, or Prothesis, table. Upon it right now, the chalice and the paten, or diskos, upon which the holy bread, yet to be sanctified, has been placed in a special rite before the Divine Liturgy that we don’t see.

We’re not going to get into that, but it is the rite of the Proskomedia, or preparation of the gifts. Now these gifts have to be transferred to the main table in the center of the altar. This small act of transferring them before the Eucharistic Prayer is solemnly read by the priest has been ritualized throughout the historical development of Liturgy into what is now the Great Entrance.

So you will see Father John go through, according to the more ancient tradition, the whole nave and then come through the center. He will place the chalice and the diskos onto the Holy Table.

During this, we will be chanting the Cherubic Hymn, or Cherubikon. The Cherubic Hymn is reminding us that we are not only called to unity with one another in this celebration, but we are also experiencing unity with the heavenly Church, concelebrating with us.

As Father already said in the little prayer right before the Small Entrance—I didn’t comment on it then, but you could hear it loud and clear—our concelebrants are the invisible good guys, the angels. We are also called mystically to represent them.

This is how the beautiful hymn that we are about to hear, that the choir will chant and we along with them, goes: “We who mystically represent the Cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity, now lay aside every worldly care.”

First of all, we mystically represent the Cherubim. But in the Greek, it doesn’t say we’re mystically representing them. It says mystikōs eikonizontes, which means we are mystically being icons of the Cherubim. We are actually living icons, mystical icons.

In what way do we mystically become icons of the angels and Cherubim and the rest of the bodiless powers? They’re not humans. They are different from us in several ways. We’re not going to get into that today either. But we are like them in this moment in that we are praising God. We are singing the thrice-holy hymn.

There are two ways in which we have sung this thrice-holy hymn, or will yet. First of all, the Trisagion: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal.” That’s the thrice-holy hymn. But we will, during the Eucharistic canon, also say, “Holy, holy, holy.” That’s thrice holy. Who does that all the time in heaven? The Cherubim and the rest of the bodiless powers. They are constantly praising.

So we are setting aside all earthly cares. We talked a little bit about letting go, about self-offering. We’re letting part of ourselves go: those parts that are our resentments, those parts that are resentments also against ourselves. We have a lot of “I should have,” “I shouldn’t have”—all of that stuff.

No. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Who is our first debtor? We are, right? “I should have,” “I shouldn’t have”—all of these gaping holes in our hearts that are not a godly kind of guilt—we also set aside. We can’t forgive others if we’re not forgiving ourselves.

We’re setting aside all these worldly cares, as we will be chanting. The second part of the Cherubic Hymn will happen after the procession. There might be commemorations, depending on how Father John does this. I will allow myself to be surprised, perhaps. Some priests do fewer commemorations; some do more.

In any event, he says something, and then comes the rest of this hymn. We find out what the purpose is of praising and representing, or being icons of, the Cherubim: “that we may receive the King of all,” because we’re preparing for Holy Communion throughout all of this.

So we have to set aside all of that stuff—the lack of forgiveness, the resentment, worldly cares, and the rest of it, and our complaints. We want to be able to be in a state to receive: to receive forgiveness, Communion.

Our Lord comes and says, “Peace be unto you,” like He does to the disciples after His resurrection. What did they all just do? They abandoned Him. Peter betrays Him, and they abandoned Him, except for John at the Cross. But the risen Lord comes, despite their closed doors, and says, “Shalom. Peace be unto you.”

So that’s what He’s about to do now. He forgives us for all of our abandonments, and we have Communion.

We’re going to have this hymn right now. We’re getting ready to get up and mystically be icons. We’re icons in the Church too, whom the priest incenses with the thurible, or censer—not only the painted icons, but us—because he’s saying to us, “You’re also icons.” We’re created in the image and likeness of God.

So we’re rising to this dignity that we already have. We’re being dignified with this Communion. So we’re going to get right to that.

Before the Kiss of Peace and Creed

Now we have reached the point right before we are about to profess love for one another, and then the Creed. Right after that will be the central prayer of the Divine Liturgy, called the Anaphora.

But first, before this Anaphora—that is, our prayer of offering, of thanksgiving, of remembrance—because one of the main points of everything that we’re doing here is to remember Him. Our Lord says what the purpose of this is: “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Do we often, or always, think of Him, how He’s in our midst? Does He become present to us? He is becoming present to us. But sometimes we might not actually be doing this in remembrance of Him because of distractions or something.

But we are remembering, because when you’re not forgetful of the good that somebody did for you, you’re being grateful. If you forget, that’s a sign of ingratitude.

So first, we take another step to let go of any roadblocks that we erect in our hearts to closer communion with one another and with God by making peace with one another.

We no longer, in most of our churches—I don’t know how you do it here—actually give the kiss of peace. The kiss of peace would be the ancient way of doing this moment when Father John says, “Let us love one another, that we may with one mind confess.” Then the part that is sung is, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and so forth.

But “with one mind to confess” means that we have to love one another. We have to let go of those things that we don’t love. Oftentimes we project onto others things we don’t love about ourselves. So we forgive ourselves and one another.

He says, “Let us.” I love the way it goes in English: let ourselves love. It’s up to us. We can let ourselves love and not say “yes, but,” and believe that we’re loved. We also don’t accept unconditional love from God that easily. We say, “Yes, but how could God love me?” Some of us might say that.

Anyway, we say, “Let us love one another.” We let ourselves be loved as well, and then we profess our common story in the Creed. That’s our common story. Although a lot of things divide us today, we profess again, letting go of our “yes, but,” our common story.

The Creed is a story of God’s salvific works for us. From the beginning, we begin by remembering creation. We’re not forgetting; we’re expressing. The Creed is an expression of gratitude, and it’s also an expression of praise. It is a prayer. It’s not just some kind of constitution of the Church. It’s not this dry document. It’s a sacrifice of praise to say the Creed.

I referred to that phrase before at the beginning. I said our Liturgy is a sacrifice of praise. Sacrifice—why? Well, because we’re letting go of that which we don’t want to praise, and secondly, we’re becoming holy through praising. Complaining doesn’t actually make us holy.

What does “sacrifice” mean? It comes from sacer and facere, two Latin words meaning “to make holy.” A sacrifice makes holy. So part of our sacrifice of praise is saying the Creed together.

We say, “I believe.” It’s not the same thing as knowing. It’s believing. You know things you know, but it’s a choice to believe. You make a choice. Nobody can force you to believe. It’s an act of freedom.

And so we say, “I believe.” We begin in saying that we believe that He created all things visible and invisible. What are the invisible things? He created those beings, the bodiless powers and so forth.

We go all the way to the end, but we go beyond the end. We go toward the future. We say that we look toward, or in the Latin even says we expect, the resurrection of the dead. In the Greek, it’s that I look toward. In the Slavonic—I come from the Russian Orthodox tradition—we say we yearn for the resurrection of the dead. This is our basic attitude: “and the life of the age to come.” So that’s the future.

In this celebration, we’re actually thanking the Lord—which might sound strange to us—but in the Eucharistic Prayer that will follow, there will also be this enumeration of all the salvific works of God: doing everything after we fell, after we repeatedly choose our own path. He does everything to bring us back.

Anyway, that Eucharistic Prayer is also this act of offering God praise, letting go. I’ll briefly say something when we get to that, right after the Creed. But now we want to do our final letting go, our self-offering: to love one another, and then to profess our common story.

Before the Anaphora

Now Father is about to invite us to stand: “Let us stand aright. Let us stand with fear.” Again, we’re asked to pay attention.

Now we are pure attention. We’re there. We have ascended, and we are standing before the holy gifts that are together with us to be consecrated, because we’re offering ourselves just like we offer these gifts that are made by human hands.

Even though, initially, the wheat to make the bread is obviously given by God, an action of God in the natural world, and the grapes are given by God, certain things have to be done by human hands. God has given us these fruits of the earth, but there’s human cooperation that makes all of this possible.

That’s part of the mystery of the Church. It’s not just God, and there’s no Liturgy, or Divine Liturgy, without that work of the people as well. Just like there’s no dancing if there are no dancers, it’s not an abstract thing in a galaxy far, far away. We’re participating.

And so we are going to be consecrated. Now we have to let that happen by opening our hearts and praising God. Basically, God doesn’t ask us for a lot, right? But we have suited up. We’ve shown up.

And so Father says, “Let us stand aright. Let us stand with fear, that we may offer the holy Anaphora.” He’s referring to the prayer that he’s about to say. So we want to listen in to every bit of this.

Then we will respond, saying in what spirit, in what way, we are doing this. It’s this intriguing phrase. It’s actually not exactly passed on correctly, because tradition is passed on by fallible human beings. When we say, “A mercy of peace,” it was originally simply “Mercy, peace.” It was a way that ancients greeted someone else, saying “mercy, peace” as a response, like, “I come in peace and only with goodwill.”

“Mercy” in the Greek does not mean just a withholding of punishment the way it does in modern-day English. It means a heart overflowing. It’s an overflowing of goodness. God’s mercy toward us is the way He shares of Himself with us. It’s His way. That’s why we say, “Have mercy.” Have it Your way, not our way with the “yes, but.”

So we say, “A mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise.” That’s what we’re doing. It’s simply an announcement. It comes from ancient forms of liturgy where it was sometimes just, like “Wisdom! Stand aright!” these little phrases. It’s almost like coming from that ancient tradition of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, where they were sometimes not very coherent phrases.

So we say, “A mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise,” and onward we will be engaging the “Holy, holy, holy,” joining the angels in praising. Then we will get to parts closer to the event of the Mystical Supper.

This is not just a reenactment of the Mystical Supper. This is in remembrance of everything of Him, and everything that He did, that His Father, together with the Spirit and with the eternal Logos, did from the beginning and before time. And we’re remembering that.

The next time I check in will be right before the words of institution, the commandment to take and eat and to drink of it, all of us. Then right after that will be that moment—it’s not the only moment of consecration in the Liturgy—but it’ll be the calling down of the Holy Spirit upon these gifts and upon all of us. So we’re all going to be transfigured.

Before the Epiclesis

And so next, Father John will say that we, remembering this holy commandment—which commandment? The one we just heard. He’s saying to all of us, “Take, eat,” and, “Drink of it, all of you.”

He offers Himself up as food for us in a sacramental way, in a way that is for us an overcoming of the kind of consumerism and wanting a piece, say, of each other in ways that are self-centered.

Our Lord offers Himself up for us. He offered Himself up, absorbing also on His Cross, and even descending after His death into our hell. He absorbs all of the very darkest of our darkness, and He overcomes it, makes it lead to new life, and He nourishes us with Himself so that we no longer look in the wrong places for nourishment.

And now Father John will say these intriguing words. He’ll say, “Your own of Your own we offer to You in all and for all.”

I said a little bit before that we offer back to God. We offer to Him what is already His own, and He will give it back to us transfigured, because we will partake of these gifts.

But we’re also offering—I will remind us—we’re offering up ourselves. And now our words are becoming very few, because the words that we chant when we say, “We sing to You, we praise You, we thank You,” are saying in very simple terms our gratitude.

Meanwhile, Father will be saying the words of the consecration, of the calling down of the Holy Spirit. So now we offer ourselves and our gifts for transfiguration.

Before the Our Father

We find ourselves right before the Lord’s Prayer. Father John will ask for all of us that we may be worthy to say, “Our Father.”

With whom are we saying “Our Father”? Who is the first to pray in this way with us? It was the God-man Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, who said “Our Father.” So in our midst, Christ prays “Our Father,” making Himself, as He did when He became flesh, one of us.

So we’ll be saying “Our Father.” And, of course, we’ll be saying a lot of sort of passive things in the Our Father. It’s not a prayer where we have a shopping list of “Give me this and that.” We’re saying a series of amens. We’re saying, “Let it be.”

What? Well, we’re saying, “Hallowed be Thy name.” God’s name is already holy, right? It’s already holy. But we’re letting it be hallowed. We’re saying, “Thy Kingdom come” and “Thy will be done.”

These are things that are helping us. The Lord teaches us to pray in this way not because He needs it. He says in that same chapter where He teaches us to pray, in Matthew 6, that God already knows what you need. But we’re learning to open ourselves up to Him by reaching out in prayer, and we’re learning to want those things that He says it’s good for you to want: His Kingdom and His will and that His name be hallowed.

So that’s what we’re going to do now. And we’re finally also going to, one more time, say, “Forgive us our trespasses”—maybe you’re a “trespasses” kind of parish, not a “debts and debtors” version of the Our Father parish.

But we’re going to open our hearts once again to forgiveness of ourselves and others, because the Lord also tells us that before you bring your gift to the altar, if there’s something you’ve got between you and your brother, you have to make peace.

So we’ve been preparing ourselves for that peace. Even if there are those amends that we’re not able to make for whatever reason—maybe with the deceased, if we have longstanding resentments or something like that—we are allowed to let it go here.

Then after the Our Father, we still have major actions that belong in every Eucharistic rite. There are different forms of the Eucharistic rite in East and West, but in all forms there are moments that happen because we’re doing this in remembrance of Him and doing most of those basic actions that He did at the Mystical Supper, like bless and give.

But He also broke the bread. That breaking of the bread of that one Lamb is still going to happen after the Our Father. There’s going to be also the putting of the holy bread, the Body of the Lord for our Communion, into the Holy Blood.

So that mixture also is happening, and it’s part of the basic shape of the Liturgy, although we don’t see those actions.

But it’s also important that the Lord allows His Body to be broken. Most of us, if we’ve lived long enough on this earth, are broken in some way. It’s okay to be broken. It’s a broken and contrite heart that God does not despise, and the Lord has His Body broken for us as well, because He’s in it with us on the cross-carrying journey.

So Father will say the introduction to the Our Father. We’ll pray together, and then I’m not going to interrupt anymore, so that we can approach the chalice and Holy Communion without any distraction.

Conclusion: Before the Prayer before the Amvon

I see we now come to the final prayer of the divine service, and when we gather together, we must always remember that the purpose for our gathering is the Eucharist itself, the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is the basis upon which we meet. We live and function together as a family, as a living body. This is the basis for which we celebrate the Eucharist, the Eucharistic Liturgy.

Often we forget that the Liturgy is not somehow self-referential. We have to ask the question: Why do we celebrate the Liturgy? We celebrate the Liturgy to manifest the fullness of Christ in our community, but also for the life of the world.

And so we prepare now to go back into that life and to be filled with the peace of Christ that comes to us through this Eucharistic bond that we share, and then to mediate that grace.

This is a very great responsibility as we move from the formal Liturgy into what has been called the mundane liturgy, the liturgy in the world. This is our responsibility: to bear these gifts which are within us now wherever we go. And where we go, bearing those gifts, we ought to keep in mind what our responsibility is, who it is that we are carrying with us, and whose grace should be working through us.

This essay is based on presentations I gave to both the Men’s and Women’s groups at Christ the Saviour parish in Anderson, SC.

There is no better purpose for wheat than to become bread. There is no better purpose for bread than to become an offering. And there is no higher purpose for that offering than to become, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ. The same is true of us. As with wheat, we were created good, but with the possibility and expectation of becoming something more: to be gathered, formed, offered, sanctified, and united to Christ. The journey of bread is therefore more than an interesting way of explaining the Divine Liturgy. The journey of bread is our journey.

This is more than just a metaphor. Orthodox worship is full of symbols, but its symbols are not illustrations of absent realities. They participate in the realities they reveal. The bread does not simply remind us of Christ. In the Eucharist, it becomes His Body. Nor does the gathering of the bread provide a convenient image of the Church. The bread is gathered, offered, sanctified, broken, and shared in the very action by which the Church is gathered and made manifest as the Body of Christ. These are capital-S Symbols: they do not just tell us what God is doing; they are caught up in how He does it.

Scattered Wheat

The journey begins before there is bread. It begins with wheat.

Our Lord uses the grain of wheat as an image of His own death and resurrection: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24). The grain goes into the earth; what looks like burial becomes the beginning of new life. This is one reason kutya or kolivo has such a natural place in Orthodox memorial customs. The grain points toward the mystery proclaimed at every Christian burial: death in Christ is not annihilation but passage toward resurrection. This is not just pointing to our eventual resurrection at the great remaking; but, mysteriously, to our baptism as well.

But there is another movement in the wheat. The grains are not only buried and raised; they are gathered.

One of the earliest surviving Christian Eucharistic prayers, found in the Didache, asks that just as the bread was once scattered upon the mountains and then gathered together and made one, so the Church might be gathered from the ends of the earth into God’s Kingdom (Schaff 1886, p. 193).

That is the beginning of our journey. We are scattered grains.

Christianity does not offer salvation as a collection of isolated spiritual projects. We are gathered. Individual grains become flour; flour becomes dough; dough becomes a loaf. Something new is made by bringing what had been scattered together. The Church is not an aggregation of people pursuing Christ individually in the same building. She is an assembly, a synaxis, gathered into one in Christ.

This gathering becomes visible in prosphora, the bread offered for the Divine Liturgy.

Prosphora is deliberately simple: wheat flour, water, yeast, and, according to some recipes, salt. Yet even this simplicity speaks. Leaven gives life and rise to the dough. Salt recalls both preservation and sacrifice (Leviticus 2:13), as well as Christ’s command that His disciples be the salt of the earth. The dough is formed into loaves and impressed with a seal bearing the sign IC XC NIKA: Jesus Christ conquers. Here again the bread’s journey resonates with our own. The prosphoron is marked as belonging to Christ, just as we are sealed in Chrismation with “the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.” We bear the name and mark of the One to whom we belong.

Traditionally, the prosphoron is formed from two layers of dough joined together with water. These signify the two natures of Christ, divine and human, united in one Person. The seal is pressed into the upper surface, and the loaf is pierced before baking so that it remains dense and suitable for its Eucharistic purpose. These are intensely practical actions: dough rises, air needs somewhere to escape, and the bread needs sufficient density to hold together when placed into the chalice. Yet the material and theological dimensions are not competitors. Christianity is a religion of the Incarnation: matter matters.

The wheat has now become bread, but its journey has barely begun.

The Lamb and the Cosmos

Before the public beginning of the Divine Liturgy, the priest says the appointed prayers, vests, and goes to the table of oblation. There he performs the Proskomedia, or Prothesis: the service in which the bread and wine are prepared for the Eucharist.

From the prosphoron he cuts the central portion bearing the seal of Christ. This is the Lamb. The actions are accompanied by the language of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53:7–8). The Lamb is placed upon the diskos and pierced with the liturgical spear while the priest recalls the soldier piercing Christ’s side and the blood and water flowing forth. Wine and water are then placed into the chalice.

Already the bread is taking us through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. But another story is unfolding simultaneously.

The diskos becomes an icon of the cosmos.

Christ the Lamb occupies the center. A portion is placed on His right in honor of the Theotokos. Then come the ranks of the saints: prophets, apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, ascetics, unmercenary healers, and the rest of the heavenly assembly. Greek and Slavic usages differ in some details, but the theological vision is the same. Christ does not stand alone. Around Him is gathered His glorified Church.

And then something particularly beautiful happens.

We are added.

Particles are removed for the living. Then particles are removed for the departed. The priest commemorates his bishop, clergy, parishioners, family, friends, those who have asked for prayer, and those who have fallen asleep in the hope of resurrection. One by one, names are spoken and particles are placed upon the diskos.

This is not private devotion tucked away before the “real” Liturgy begins. Look at the diskos and you see ecclesiology rendered in bread.

Christ is at the center. His Mother is there. The angels and saints are there. The living are there. The dead are there. Heaven and earth are there. The Church on earth and the Church in glory are not two Churches. The boundary of death has not divided the Body of Christ.

The scattered wheat has been gathered, and so have we.

From Manger to Tomb

The gifts are then covered.

The asterisk—the small metal star placed over the diskos—is set in place with the words recalling the star that came and stood over the place where the Child was. The veils are placed over the gifts. Symbolically, wheat now joins itself to Christ’s Incarnation at His Nativity. The table of oblation becomes Bethlehem; the diskos becomes the manger; the bread’s journey becomes a liturgical entrance into the Incarnation.

But the Church’s symbols are densely layered. They refuse to remain frozen in a single moment.

The next movement involving the journey of bread occurs during the Great Entrance. Before this, the Gospel is brought out among the people during the Little Entrance. This is followed by the reading of the Gospel and the preaching of the word. These rituals symbolize Christ’s proclamation of the Kingdom. Later, at the Great Entrance, the bread and wine begin moving again.

Historically, the entrance developed from the practical bringing of the people’s offerings to the altar. Theologically, however, it has become saturated with the mystery of Christ’s saving work and His entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The gifts pass among the people. The mood is reverent and joyful. The imagery almost invites the acclamation: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord!” In some traditions, people reach toward the gifts as they pass. This can evoke the woman who reached out and touched the hem of Christ’s garment seeking healing.

It is worth being very clear about the symbolism. The priest carrying the gifts is not representing Christ. Remember, the prosphoron representing Christ is on the diskos the priest—or deacon—is carrying. If we need to assign him a role in the Great Entrance, the safer comparison is the donkey: the priest carries Christ. That distinction matters. Liturgical reverence must never become clerical aggrandizement. The holiness belongs to Christ. The priest’s dignity consists precisely in bearing—and offering—what is not his own.

The mood of the Great Entrance then changes; the joy of the Lord’s Entrance becomes the solemnity of His death and burial. The gifts are carried through the church, up onto the amvon, and into the altar—the movement now evoking the ascent to Golgotha. As the priest sets the gifts on the altar and wraps them in the aer, he quietly intones a prayer recalling Joseph of Arimathea taking the Body of Christ down from the Cross, wrapping it in clean linen, anointing it with spices, and laying it in a new tomb. That which had been the cave of Bethlehem has become the cave of the Lord’s tomb.

The same bread has carried us from Nativity through the Passion. But it is still bread. Something more must happen.

Thine Own of Thine Own

Here we arrive at the center of the journey.

Human beings have a priestly vocation within creation. God creates, and what He creates is good. As the royal priesthood, we receive those things made good and cultivate them into better and more perfect forms. Wheat is good, but bread is a better form, with a higher purpose. Grapes are good, but wine is the fruit of the vine cultivated and transformed. We receive the goodness already present in creation and, through labor and skill, draw out possibilities placed within it by the Creator as He commanded us in the beginning.

This is part of what human beings were made to do.

We cultivate wheat, harvest it, grind it, mix it, knead it, seal it, bake it, and make bread. We cultivate grapes, harvest them, press them, ferment their juice, and make wine. Again, we take what God has made good and, cooperating with God and working with the possibilities He has placed within creation, move it toward something better and more perfect.

This is not creation from nothing. Only God creates ex nihilo. Nor is it the correction of a defective creation; God’s creation is already good. Our work is instead the blessed response to that goodness: receiving what God gives, discovering its possibilities, cultivating them faithfully, and bringing them toward fulfillment.

Nor does this only apply to bread and wine. God gives trees; human beings make tables and houses and churches and icons—the very best purpose of wood! God gives sound; human beings make music. God gives language; human beings make poetry and prayer. God gives human beings to one another, and through love, asceticism, repentance, patience, and grace He forms us into persons capable of the oneness He desires for us (John 17).

Our royal priesthood is exercised by receiving the world as gift, cultivating it faithfully, bringing what is good toward better and more perfect forms, and then offering it back to the Giver.

The Eucharist is the great exclamation point on that vocation; the archetype of our cooperation with God.

At the anaphora we remember the whole saving economy: the Cross, the grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and even the second and glorious coming. Then the deacon or priest elevates the gifts as the priest proclaims: “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.”

This is a good reminder: everything on the altar is already God’s. The wheat was His. The soil was His. The rain was His. The sun was His. The hands that cultivated the field were His gifts. The intelligence that learned to make bread was His gift. The community that gathered was His. Even our capacity to offer is His.

We give God what belongs to God. And God gives it back transformed.

The Church invokes the Holy Spirit upon us and upon the gifts. The bread becomes the Body of Christ; the wine becomes His Blood. Here the movement of human cooperation with God reaches a fulfillment that we could never accomplish by our own power. We cultivate the wheat God gives. We make bread from it. We tend the vine and make wine. We bring these gifts to the altar and offer them back to the One from whom they came. None of this is done apart from God; it is already a participation in His creative work. And now, in the Eucharist, God receives this human offering and brings it to a perfection that human labor could never give it.

This is why the movement of the bread reveals something essential about theosis. Grace does not replace or annihilate creation; it fulfills it. The wheat does not achieve its Eucharistic destiny by ceasing to be material. Material creation is taken up into a purpose beyond anything it could accomplish by itself. So too theosis does not destroy the human person. Grace does not make us less human. It makes us more fully what God created human beings to become.

And what were we created to become? Saints. We were created to bear the image of God and grow into His likeness; to become holy as He is holy; to live in communion with Him and with one another; to exercise our royal and priestly vocation within His creation; and ultimately to inherit His Kingdom. We were created not just to survive death or to receive forgiveness for the things we have done wrong, but to become, by grace, what God is by nature; to become participants in the divine life—to become the sort of human beings who belong in the Kingdom of God because His life has become our life.

This is theosis: not the replacement of humanity by something else, but humanity brought toward its proper perfection in Christ. A saint is not less human because he has become holy. He is more fully human. Christ Himself reveals what humanity is for, and the Holy Spirit forms us according to that revelation. In Christ we become sons and daughters of God by adoption, members of His Body, citizens of His Kingdom, a royal priesthood and a holy people. We become capable of the communion with God and one another for which humanity was made.

Here again the bread teaches us. Wheat is good as wheat. Bread is good as bread. Neither is despised or discarded. Each is received as gift and, through our cooperation with God, brought toward the fulfillment for which it was given. We cultivate the wheat, bake the bread, and offer it back to God, but at every stage we are working with what He has given and through capacities He sustains. And in the Eucharist, that cooperation reaches a fulfillment that remains entirely gift: the bread becomes the Body of Christ.

A similar pattern holds in the Christian life. Asceticism, discipline, education, moral effort, and participation in a healthy community are not techniques we use to improve ourselves until grace becomes necessary. Rather, they are forms of cooperation with grace through which we offer ourselves to God and become increasingly receptive to His work within us. Sainthood is never something we manufacture or earn. From beginning to end, it is the work of God in which He graciously allows—and requires—our participation. Once again, the Eucharist is the model and archetype of this process.

Broken but Not Divided

After the anaphora the Lamb is elevated with the priest proclaiming: “Holy things are for the holy.”

Then it is broken: the priest divides the Lamb into the portions marked by the seal: IC, XC, NI, KA. As he does so, he confesses one of the great mysteries of the Eucharist: the Lamb of God is broken but not divided, ever eaten yet never consumed. Christ continually gives Himself to us without ever diminishing. The five loaves that fed the five thousand were a preparation for our understanding this greater wonder.

The priest then takes the portion marked IC—Jesus—and makes the sign of the Cross with it over the chalice. As he places it into the Blood of Christ, he says:

“The fullness of the Holy Spirit.”

There is a powerful ecclesiological resonance here. The Eucharist celebrated on a particular altar is never the private possession of a priest or an isolated congregation. It is the one Eucharist of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

An ancient Christian practice makes the point especially vivid. As Christianity grew, it became impossible for all the faithful of a city to gather around their bishop for a single Eucharistic celebration. A portion of the Eucharistic bread consecrated by the bishop could therefore be carried to Eucharistic assemblies celebrated by his presbyters and placed into their chalices. This practice, commonly called the fermentum, made visible the unity of separated Eucharistic assemblies with the bishop and with one another. The many celebrations were not competing or independent Eucharists. They belonged to the one ecclesial communion.

While our ritual use of the IC portion may not be a direct descendant of that practice, the ecclesiological resonance is strong. There are many altars, many priests, many parishes, and many celebrations, but there is only one Eucharist because there is only one Christ and one Church. The bread’s journey is never only local. In this chalice, every parish participates in the catholicity of the whole Church in every time and place.

Hot water is then added, signifying warmth and life. The clergy commune, and the remaining portions of the Lamb are prepared for the Communion of the faithful.

Then the doors open.

This is one of the most powerful movements in the entire journey. What was prepared quietly at the table of oblation, carried solemnly through the church, placed upon the altar, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit now comes forth from the Holy Place.

“With the fear of God, faith, and love, draw near.”

Christ comes to His people as food.

The journey of the bread reaches its purpose only when the bread is eaten. Orthodox Christianity therefore resists treating the Eucharist as something to be adored apart from Communion. Christ commands us to eat and drink. Communion is communion because the gift is given and received.

And when we receive Christ, something happens to our journey.

The bread that began as scattered wheat has been gathered into one loaf, offered, sanctified, broken, and distributed among many. Yet the movement is simultaneously reversed: the many who receive the one Christ are made one in Him.

The journey of bread has become the journey of the ecclesia, the people of God, the Church.

All Together in Him

There is one more action involving the bread that is easily missed by those who are not in the altar. Remember the particles placed upon the diskos during the Proskomedia: the Theotokos, the saints, the living, the departed. They include the people whose names were handed to the priest: the parishioner undergoing surgery, the godchild struggling with faith, the grandmother who died twenty years ago, the bishop who ordained the priest, the founders of the parish, the people whose names we remember every week.

They have remained there throughout the Liturgy, each piece of bread representing someone who has been brought before God in prayer. After Communion, those particles are placed into the chalice as the priest prays, “Grant, O Lord, remission of sins to all those who are commemorated here, by Thy Blood, and the prayers of Thy saints.”

The movement begun at the Proskomedia now reaches its culmination. What had been arranged visibly around Christ is gathered together in the chalice with His Body and Blood. The image has moved from the Church gathered around Christ to the Church gathered in Christ.

At the beginning, we were scattered. Then we were gathered around Christ. Now we are gathered in Christ. The ancient Eucharistic instinct expressed in the Didache has flowered into an elaborate liturgical enactment: as scattered grain becomes one bread, the scattered Church is gathered into the Kingdom.

This also helps explain why Orthodox Christianity refuses to make death the ultimate boundary of communion. The departed remain in Christ. We pray for them because they belong to the same journey. Their particles rest beside ours on the diskos and finally enter the same chalice. All together in Him, through His Blood.

Be Exalted Above the Heavens

And still the bread moves.

The priest takes the chalice—containing the Body and Blood of Christ and now bearing this image of the whole ecclesia gathered in Him—and raises it before the people, saying: “Be exalted above the heavens, O Lord, and let Thy glory be over all the earth; always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.”

This is an image of the Ascension.

But seen in the context of everything that has happened to the bread, it reveals something more than Christ simply going up into heaven: Christ ascends and makes a way for us. He does not save humanity only by coming down to where we are. He takes our humanity into Himself and carries it where we could not go on our own.

This is the trajectory of the Incarnation itself. The Son of God descends and takes what is ours so that we may receive what is His. He assumes human nature, lives a human life, suffers a human death, rises bodily from the grave, and then carries that humanity into the heavens. The Ascension is therefore not Christ leaving humanity behind. It is humanity, in Christ, entering into the life of God.

And the journey of the bread has made that mystery visible.

At Proskomedia we were represented by particles gathered around the Lamb. Christ was at the center, and we were gathered around Him. After Communion those particles were swept into the chalice. Now we are no longer just around Him. We are in Him. And when the chalice is lifted before the people, the image is now of Christ ascending with His ecclesia gathered into Him.

The priest then carries the Holy Gifts from the altar, places them on the table of oblation, and censes them with reverence. The liturgical journey that has taken us through Bethlehem, Christ’s earthly ministry, Jerusalem, Golgotha, the tomb, and the Resurrection has reached the Ascension.

Christ ascends. And He makes a way for us all.

That last point is crucial. We are part of this process. The entire journey has been drawing us into Him. The scattered grains became one loaf. The scattered people became the ecclesia. The ecclesia was gathered around the Lamb. The ecclesia, represented by those particles, was gathered into the chalice. And now, united with Christ, the Church is caught up in His ascent.

Yet His Body also remains.

Again, that sentence has two meanings, and both matter.

The Eucharistic Gifts remain and must be consumed with reverence. Nothing is discarded. The chalice is carefully cleansed, and the journey of this particular bread reaches its end.

But the Body of Christ also remains in the communicants. We have received Him. We have participated sacramentally in the journey we have just watched unfold. And so the Ascension does not end the story any more than Christ’s Ascension ended the life of the apostolic Church. We came in scattered. We were gathered around Christ. We were united in Christ. And now we are sent back into the world bearing Christ.

There is a beautiful circularity here. The wheat begins scattered throughout the world. It is gathered and made into bread. The bread is offered to God. God gives it back as communion. The Church receives Christ and is united in Him. Christ ascends, opening the way into the Kingdom, and His people go forth again into the world bearing within themselves the One who has already carried their humanity into heaven.

The Journey Is Ours

The journey of bread is therefore the journey of salvation rendered in matter.

The grain falls into the earth and dies. It rises. Scattered grains are gathered. They are ground, mixed, leavened, formed, sealed, and baked. What God made good is cultivated into something better. The bread is offered. From it the Lamb is taken. Around the Lamb the whole Church is assembled: the Theotokos and saints, the living and departed. The bread enters the mystery of Bethlehem and the tomb, procession and sacrifice, offering and thanksgiving. The Holy Spirit descends. What has been received from God, cultivated through our cooperation with Him, and offered back to Him is brought by God to a perfection we could never produce for ourselves. The bread becomes the Body of Christ. The Lamb is broken without being divided and eaten without being consumed. Christ gives Himself to His people. Those who were gathered around Him are gathered in Him. Christ ascends, and the ecclesia united in Him is caught up into that ascent.

That is the journey of bread. And that is our journey.

We were created good, but we have not yet reached our end. God gathers us from our isolation, joins us to one another, seals us with Christ, works upon us through prayer and repentance, and forms us into something we could never become alone. We offer ourselves back to the One from whom we received everything. And He does not return us unchanged.

He sanctifies. He transforms. He unites. And He raises us up.

The Christian life is our participation in creation’s movement from the goodness God gave it toward its fulfillment and perfection in Christ. And for human beings that perfection has a name: holiness. We were made to become saints—to become by grace what God has called us to be, members of Christ’s Body and citizens of His Kingdom, living in communion with God and with one another.

Wheat becomes bread. Bread becomes offering. The offering becomes Eucharist. The scattered become Church. The Church is gathered into Christ. And Christ, ascending into heaven, makes a way for us all.

Then, having received Him, we return to the world bearing within ourselves the One in whom heaven and earth have already been united.

The journey of bread is our journey: from scattered grains to one Body, from what was made good toward its perfection, from the earth to the Kingdom, in Christ.

Selected Annotated Bibliography

Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Translated by J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960. Especially useful for the anaphora, offering, consecration, communion, and the way the Liturgy draws the faithful into Christ’s saving work.

Germanus I of Constantinople. On the Divine Liturgy. Translated by Paul Meyendorff. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984. Especially useful for the symbolic interpretation of the church, altar, liturgical vessels, entrances, and the relationship between the rites of the Liturgy and the saving work of Christ.

Gogol, Nikolai. Meditations on the Divine Liturgy. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014. Valuable for the devotional and narrative reading of the Liturgy as a movement through the life and saving work of Christ, especially where the essay follows the bread from preparation through Communion.

Linsenbigler, Harry. Orthodox Ecclesiology. United States: Amazon Digital Services LLC–KDP Print US, 2020. A useful resource on the ecclesia and the gathering of God’s people into one.

Schaff, Philip. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. 2nd ed. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886. Chapter 9 provides the image of bread once scattered and then gathered into one as an image of the Church being gathered into the Kingdom.

Taft, Robert F. The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. 2nd rev. ed. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200. Rome: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1978. One of the principal historical sources on the development of the Great Entrance and especially useful for distinguishing later mystical interpretations from the historical development of the rite.

Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985. Provides the broader communion ecclesiology: the Church as Eucharistic assembly, the movement from the many into one, and personhood as communion.

Zizioulas, John D. Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries. Translated by Elizabeth Theokritoff. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001. Especially useful for its teaching on the bishop, the local Eucharistic assembly, catholicity, and the relationship between the one Eucharist and the many local celebrations.

St. Matthew 19:16–26

You have made the most important decision of your life.

You have seen something of the wickedness of the world. Perhaps you have also seen something of the darkness that resides in your own heart. And you have rejected it. You have done the most important thing a human being can do: you have rejected the fallen way of the world and its diabolical ruler, and you have united yourself to Christ.

You have chosen the better way.

Glory to God.

It is a wonderful thing to become part of the Gospel—not simply to choose a life that eventually leads to salvation, as though Christianity were some kind of transaction, but to choose the Way itself: the way that leads not only to eternal life, but to everything good, everything holy, everything joyful, everything true.

But one of the things we hear in today’s Gospel is that even after we have dedicated ourselves to holiness, to being with God, to being in God and having Him in us, the struggle continues.

Our life in Christ is a process. We can call it theosis, deification, transformation—perhaps “two steps forward and one step back”; I like to call it the long slow slog of salvation. But however we describe it, part of that process is learning to see with new eyes the things in our lives that are still holding us back: things we have carried with us from the old life, perhaps giving them new names or dressing them up with theological language or perhaps just hiding them in some compartmentalized closet of our minds and lives.

As we grow in Christ, and as we receive the wisdom of the Church—through our conscience, through the Scriptures, through spiritual fathers and mothers, and through friends who genuinely love us—we begin to recognize that we are in need of continual change.

Continual repentance.

Saint John Chrysostom offers a wonderful image in his homily on this passage. He asks us to imagine someone who develops an absurd desire to fly through the air by his own power. How do you cure him? Do you start fashioning wings and inventing contraptions to accommodate the desire? Or do you persuade his mind that the desire itself is unreasonable and that he needs to let it go?

Now, if you are like me, your first thought is, “Well, Saint John, eventually we did figure out how to fly.”

That’s not the point.

The point is: let it go.

No, the way to freedom and salvation does not involve breaking into song and building your own private ice castle. That’s not the Gospel, that’s Disney.

But seriously: Let. It. Go.

Do not spend your life constructing elaborate machinery and justifications to preserve something that Christ is asking you to surrender. That is a misuse of your intellect, no matter what the algorithm of the world might say. Jesus Christ, the eternal Logos, says something different.

And as we come to today’s Gospel, there is something important to remember. When Jesus has these difficult conversations—with the rich young man, with the Pharisees, with the scribes—we should not stand at a distance congratulating ourselves for not being like them.

Exegetically speaking, we are them.

Their questions are our questions. Their temptations are our temptations. Their evasions are our evasions.

And yet God loved them.

Christ did not rebuke them out of irritation or self-righteousness. He loved them and wanted them to be saved. He loved this rich young man.

And He loves each of you.

So put yourself in this man’s place and hear what He has to say.

Saint John Chrysostom insists that we should not dismiss this young man as insincere. He really does desire eternal life.

Imagine asking Christ the same question.

“Lord, what must I do?”

Perhaps He begins with the things you already know.

Go to church on Sunday prepared to receive Holy Communion. Go to confession regularly and whenever needed. Fast according to the Church’s calendar. Pray every day. Celebrate the feasts. Give alms. Support the Church. Love your neighbor. Forgive.

There is a list. Much of it is already in your prayer book.

And perhaps many of us could say, with the young man, “Lord, I have been doing these things.”

Not perfectly, certainly, but sincerely.

And yet we know that we have not been completely transformed. We are not yet holy as He is holy.

So we ask again:

“What do I still lack?”

And He may answer us in essentially the same way He answered that young man:

Give it up.

Give up the thing you are holding onto.

Give up the thing you have allowed to define you.

Give it up, and follow Me.

It is tempting, especially for us as Americans, to reduce this passage to money. “Give until it hurts.” And certainly the man’s wealth matters. Christ explicitly tells him to sell what he possesses and give it to the poor. But this is not finally a lesson about financial management. It is about the man’s salvation. The poor do not need this man’s money in order to save him. Christ is not proposing a transaction in which the rich man purchases eternal life by transferring assets to the poor.

Something much deeper is going on.

His sorrow reveals that his possessions have a hold on him stronger than he realized. And Christ says: Let them go.

The same principle applies to us.

Yes, Christians should give generously. We should work toward tithing. We should support the life of the Church and care for the poor. But even there, the deeper issue is not that God needs our money. God does not need our money. The success of the Church does not depend upon our bank accounts.

This is about what possesses us. It is about removing whatever separates us from perfection.

And then Christ gives us this unforgettable image:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”

We have heard attempts to make that saying easier—to turn the eye of the needle into some narrow gate through which a camel might just barely squeeze. But don’t tame the image. Christ is describing something impossible. The disciples understand Him perfectly. That is why they immediately ask, “Who then can be saved?”

Exactly. Who can get a camel through the eye of a needle? Nobody. It can’t be done by ingenuity. It can’t be done by discipline. It can’t be done by constructing better wings. It can’t be done by becoming clever enough to preserve everything we refuse to surrender while squeezing it through somehow.

We cannot take everything with us. And the things we refuse to surrender may finally be the very things that keep us from passing through.

There comes a point at which Christ says:

Let it go.

Trust Me.

Pass through.

And this is where another saying of Christ becomes important:

“Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.”

That can sound frightening. Immediately we wonder: What will be on the other side? What happens to the people and the things I love? Will my family be there? People even ask, “Will my dog be in heaven?”

I don’t know. I haven’t been there. But I know this: if our dogs are not there, whatever God gives us will do more than suffice.

And that is the kind of trust Christ is asking of us.

When Christ asks us to surrender something, He does not promise that He will simply hand the same thing back to us, only better. He promises something greater: Himself and His Kingdom. Whatever is truly good in what we surrender cannot finally be lost in Him.

Again, the promise of the hundredfold is not some prosperity-gospel investment strategy—“Give God ten dollars and He’ll send you a hundred.” Or whatever the math works out to.

No. It is a description of the way reality has been structured from the foundation of the world. The way to life passes through surrender. There is an intersection between this age and the age to come, and at that intersection stands the Cross. The Cross is the narrow passage.

Christ says:

“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

So how are we saved? How do we enter into life in abundance? Again, the money is not finally the point.

Tithing really does involve our money. Prayer really does require our time. Worship really does require us to reorder our lives. But none of these is ultimately about the thing being surrendered. Through them, we are learning to offer ourselves.

Offering our marriages, our children, our friendships, our careers, our ambitions, our identities, our fears, and our desires to God is not primarily about creating better circumstances.

Those benefits may follow. But they are not the thing itself. The blessing is the thing—not what comes back to us, but communion with God.

This is the way of salvation. This is the way of eternal life. This is the way of abundant life here and now.

We surrender what we have because we trust the One to whom we surrender it.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

God does not ask us to walk a road He Himself has refused to walk. Christ, “being in the form of God,” nevertheless “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.” He humbles Himself. He gives Himself. He becomes “obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.”

And He tells us: Follow Me.

You have already done the most important thing you can ever do. You have rejected the way of the world and united yourself to Christ.

Now comes the walking.

And that means sacrifice. It means bearing the Cross. It means continual repentance.

It means allowing God, little by little, to show us what we are still clutching and then learning to open our hands.

We have all sacrificed for love. I know enough of many of your stories to know that. We all know that sacrificial love can hurt.

We also know that sacrifice is essential to our salvation.

But here is the great mercy of God.

He knows that we do not always have the strength to make the perfect sacrifice of ourselves. He knows that the way of humility and continual self-offering can sometimes seem beyond our strength.

So He gives us His own sacrifice.

What is the greatest sacrifice we offer to God? Is it our time? Our treasure? Those make a nice alliteration, but no.

The great sacrifice of the Church, the people of God, is what we are doing here.

At the Eucharist, Christ gives Himself to us, and we offer back to God what God Himself has first given us. “Thine own of Thine own.” Even our sacrifice begins with His gift. Christ gives Himself to us so that we may learn, in Him and by His grace, to give ourselves to God.

And the life waiting on the other side of that impossibly narrow passage is His own life.

That is why the disciples’ question—”Who then can be saved?”—receives the answer that completes the whole Gospel:

“With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”

We cannot squeeze ourselves through the eye of the needle. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot perfect ourselves. We cannot construct enough wings to fly into the Kingdom.

But Christ can bring us through.

And because He gives us His grace, we can let go. We can trust Him. We can take up the Cross. We can follow.

What is impossible with us becomes possible in Him. That is Christ’s final answer to the rich young man’s question. It is His final answer to our question.

So let it go. Trust Him. Take up your Cross. And follow Him through.

Glory to Him Who has given us this way.

In the encounter with the rich young man, Christ reveals that the great obstacle to salvation is not simply wealth, but whatever possesses us and keeps us from following Him freely. Drawing on Saint John Chrysostom, Fr. Anthony reflects on the futility of trying to preserve our attachments when Christ is asking us to let them go, and on the trust required to pass through the "eye of the needle." The Christian life is not a transaction but a continual surrender to Christ, who meets our weakness with His own sacrifice and makes possible what we could never accomplish on our own. Enjoy the show! For more content, to include the text of this homily, visit orthoanalytika.org.

Why is it so easy to divide the world into "us" and "them"? Drawing on today's Gospel and Epistle, Fr. Anthony argues that Christian love does not erase differences but helps each person become who God created them to be. The result is a vision of the Church, work, culture, and forgiveness rooted in freedom rather than coercion. Visit the revised OrthoAnalytika website for a full-text version. Enjoy the show!

For full show notes, see Sunday Essays.

St. Matthew 18:23-35
I Corinthians 9:2-12

We have lived through a difficult season, and we can be sure that things are not going to get easy any time soon. In fact, there will always be new temptations before us. One of our greatest social temptations is division. We live in a culture that increasingly encourages us to define ourselves over against one another, to assume the worst about those who disagree with us, and to believe that only our own side possesses what is good and true.

Today’s readings call us to something different.

One of the Lord’s constant commandments is that we love one another—even our enemies. Genuine love cannot exist where we are trying to dominate people, remake them, or judge them against our own image. The Christian life is not about making everyone alike. It is about helping one another become fully who God created us to be.

This is one of the greatest beauties of Christianity. God did not remake the world by stamping everyone into the same mold. He does not hand us a template and say, “Go forth, make disciples of all nations—and make them all look exactly alike.” Yet that is one of our constant temptations. We—or perhaps it’s just me—often imagine that holiness means making everyone into copies of ourselves, even the best versions of ourselves.

But that is not how God works.

When Christ comes to a people, He does not erase what is good in them. He fulfills it.

When the Gospel came to the Slavs, for example, the missionaries did not say, “Become Greeks.” They did not insist that everyone adopt the customs of Constantinople before they could become Christians. Instead, they recognized what was already noble, beautiful, and true in the culture. They purified what was false, baptized what was noble, and brought everything into Christ.

The result was not a copy of Byzantine (Roman) culture. It was the flowering of a distinctly Slavic Christian civilization that has, glory to God, filled the world with saints.

The same is true of every person.

Each of us bears the image of God in a unique way. The Christian life is not about becoming copies of one another. It is about becoming fully who God created each of us to be.

This is also true in parish life.

Every year I watch young men prepare for the priesthood. It would be easy to imagine that there is some specific mold—perhaps the mold made from my favorite priest, or perhaps an amalgam of all the best qualities I have seen in priests who have labored faithfully to the glory of God.

Regardless of the model, we could create one and try to force everyone into it. But that would be a terrible mistake.

Instead, at seminary, we try to recognize each man’s gifts and help him develop them. One may become known for preaching. Another will be given the gift of hearing confessions. Another for beautiful liturgical service. Another for pastoral care. Another may assume the mantle of prophecy. Another may be gifted in administration.

We cultivate those gifts while helping each man overcome—and protect against—his particular weaknesses.

The goal is not uniformity.

The goal is holiness.

And this applies to every Christian, not just clergy.

One of the responsibilities we have toward one another is to recognize the gifts God has placed in each person and help those gifts flourish. Of course, we also help one another recognize the temptations that threaten those gifts, so that together we may grow into the fullness of Christ.

This same spirit should shape the way we look at our neighbors—and even, yes, our enemies.

It is so easy for us to see only the faults of those who disagree with us. It is much harder to ask, “What good is that person trying to protect? What truth have they seen, even if imperfectly? How might Christ fulfill that good rather than simply destroy it—and the soul that bears it?”

That kind of generosity, brothers and sisters, is an act of love.

And trust me—it can be done without giving away the farm.

Saint Paul models this same generosity in today’s Epistle. Some people were criticizing him because there were those receiving material support while preaching the Gospel. Paul responds that those who labor for the Gospel have every right to receive such support.

The point is larger than that particular controversy.

Christians should be slow to condemn practices simply because they differ from our own preferences. The first question is not, “Would I do it this way?” The first question is, “Can this be done faithfully, to the glory of God, to the building up of the Kingdom, and in the service of our neighbor?”

This generosity also changes the way we think about work.

Think about our own society here in America. Some people look at our economic system and see only greed and corruption. Others see only opportunity—a way to make a buck.

The Christian sees something different and asks a different question.

Can this work become an act of love? Can this profession genuinely serve other people? Can I offer my labor to God and my neighbor in this way?

If the answer is yes, then our daily work becomes part of our vocation as members of the royal priesthood. Even the purchases we make become a way of blessing those who have provided them.

We are all members of that royal priesthood. Whatever honest work we do, if it truly serves our neighbor and is offered to God with thanksgiving, it becomes an offering of love.

This isn’t naïve. It’s simple.

I know there are problems with our economic system. I am not suggesting that everything the marketplace rewards is good. It is never acceptable to exploit people, deceive them, or profit from their suffering or their sin. Christian freedom always has moral limits.

But within those limits, our ordinary work becomes another place where we may love both God and neighbor.

Today we are reminded of the boundary that we cannot cross, given to us in today’s Gospel.

The servant who himself had been forgiven an unimaginable debt refused to forgive someone who owed him very little. He used the freedom he had been given not to show mercy but to dominate another.

That is the opposite of the Kingdom.

God possesses all authority, yet He does not tyrannize us. He gives us freedom because love cannot be coerced. He asks us to use our own freedom in the same way: not to manipulate, not to dominate, not to crush, but to forgive, to build up, to heal, and to love.

This calling is especially important in times of disagreement and division.

Every age presents us with opportunities to objectify people, to reduce them to categories, to see them as members of one group or another instead of as persons created in the image of God.

The Gospel calls us to a more difficult path.

It calls us, in the light of Christ, to discern what is truly good in every person, to encourage it, and to help it flourish, while patiently calling one another away from sin.

That is how saints are formed.

That is how cultures are transformed.

That is how families are healed.

That is how parishes become strong.

The Kingdom of God does not spread by manipulation or coercion. It grows through love working in freedom, one person at a time, as each of us becomes more fully who God created us to be.

May God grant us the humility to recognize His image in one another, the wisdom to cultivate what is good, the courage to confront what is sinful, and the charity to forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven.

For full show notes, see Sunday Essays.

Matthew 17:14-23

Faith is a wonderful thing—but only if it is faith in the right thing.

When I was a boy, I had an idea...[ the sword.]

At the time, it made perfect sense to me. I was convinced it would work. I probably defended the idea if anyone questioned it. But then reality got a vote. Wood doesn’t care what I believe about it. Physics doesn’t change because I’m sincere. The real world eventually reveals whether my idea was true or false.

Later, my friends and I had another great idea... [the boat.] This one was even more interesting because it wasn’t just my delusion—it was our delusion. We encouraged one another. We reinforced one another’s confidence. The more we talked about it, the more certain we became. And then reality got a vote. The boat either floated or it didn’t. Reality always gets a vote.

This isn’t just true of childhood adventures. It is true of every part of life.

Every one of us has what we might call a “good idea fairy” living in our head. Ideas occur to us. They seem plausible. We become attached to them. Then something even stronger happens. We begin to define ourselves by them. God created our minds to recognize truth, but after the Fall our minds became vulnerable to self-deception. Once we become attached to an idea, we naturally notice evidence that supports it and explain away evidence that challenges it. Even worse, once our identity becomes wrapped up in that idea, disagreement begins to feel like a personal attack. Our passions become inflamed. We stop asking, “Is it true?” and begin asking, “Is it ours?”

The Fathers of the Church had a name for this long before modern psychology existed. They called it prelest—spiritual delusion. Prelest is not simply believing something false. It is the condition in which our desires, our pride, and our passions distort our perception of reality itself. We begin trusting ourselves more than God. We mistake our own thoughts for wisdom, our own feelings for discernment, and our own will for truth.

This isn’t merely an individual problem. Communities suffer from it too. Families can reinforce one another’s delusions. Churches can reinforce them. Businesses can reinforce them. Nations can reinforce them. History is full of tragic examples. Nazism and Soviet Communism were not sustained merely by fear. Millions of people encouraged one another to believe obvious falsehoods. Loyalty was demanded not only to a government but to an entire false vision of reality.

Eventually... Reality got a vote. It always does.

When our delusions concern engineering, biology, economics, or politics, reality eventually exposes them. You can only pretend that gravity is optional for so long before bridges collapse. You can only deny economic realities for so long before societies begin to unravel.

Religion can be trickier. False religion—or even distorted religion—can survive much longer because the consequences are often less immediate. Spiritual delusion has a way of lingering. It can persist for years, even generations.

But eventually... Reality still gets a vote.

Many of us are Orthodox today because of that very fact. At some point the worldview we had inherited could no longer explain our experience. Perhaps it could not account for the reality of sin. Perhaps it could not account for the reality of grace. Perhaps it offered morality but not healing, rules but not communion, forgiveness but not transformation. Eventually something no longer fit. And God, in His mercy, used that discomfort to draw us closer to the truth.

That is all to the good. Because reality is not impersonal. Reality is God’s creation. Truth is not something we invent or negotiate. Ultimately, truth is not merely a thing to be discovered at all.

Truth is a Person.

As Christ Himself says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

And that changes everything. If Truth is a Person, then faith is not merely believing propositions about reality. Faith is entering into communion with the One who is Reality Himself.

Now, if I had preached this sermon twenty years ago, I probably would have ended there, encouraging you simply to trust God, receive the Holy Mysteries faithfully, and allow the life of the Church to heal you from the many delusions that constantly threaten the human heart.

But today I think I need to go further and give an additional warning.

We have created a world that cooperates with our fallen psychology in ways previous generations could scarcely have imagined. Our news is customized. Our entertainment is personalized. Our conversations are curated. Algorithms learn what we already believe—or what we are tempted to believe—and quietly feed us more of it.

The Fathers warned us that the passions naturally incline us toward prelest. Our modern technologies have learned to profit from those same passions. They reward outrage, reinforce tribalism, flatter pride, and encourage us to live inside carefully constructed worlds where our assumptions are rarely challenged. Never before has it been so easy to mistake a carefully curated illusion for reality.

But reality still gets a vote. Sooner or later the real world intrudes.

More importantly, God does.

This is one of the reasons the Church is such a gift.

Not because Orthodox Christians are incapable of error—we certainly are not. Not because priests are always right—we certainly are not. But because the life of the Church is designed, over time, to heal us of prelest. Scripture corrects us. The Fathers correct us. Confession corrects us. Fasting corrects us. The Divine Liturgy corrects us. Even our brothers and sisters in Christ correct us.

Every one of these is a gift from God, gently loosening our grip on illusion and teaching us to see the world as it truly is. The ascetic life is not punishment. It is therapy. God is patiently healing our perception until we begin to see, desire, and love what is truly good, beautiful, and true.

And let me say one more thing. If an algorithm brought you here, welcome. We are glad you’re here. But understand this: the internet cannot catechize you into Orthodoxy. It can introduce you to Orthodoxy. It can even inspire you to seek the Church. But every one of us—whether we were born Orthodox or discovered Orthodoxy yesterday—comes with misconceptions, ideological baggage, and our own forms of prelest. The Church does not simply confirm our expectations. She patiently purifies them. If you stay long enough, Orthodoxy will disappoint every false image you have of it—and thanks be to God for that. Every disappointment with our fantasies is an invitation to discover Christ as He truly is.

And this brings us back to today’s Gospel. The disciples could not cast out the demon.

Why?

Because faith is not simply believing harder. Faith is not positive thinking. Faith is not convincing ourselves that something is true. Faith is trusting Reality Himself.

Christ says that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains—not because faith is magical, but because genuine faith unites us to the One through whom all things were made.

Every one of us lives by faith. The question is never whether we have faith. The question is whether our faith is placed in something real. Every falsehood eventually collapses under the weight of reality. Every idol eventually disappoints. Every ideology eventually reaches its limits. Every delusion eventually hears reality cast its vote.

But Christ never disappoints. He is not merely someone who teaches us the truth. He is the Truth. He is Reality Himself.

So let us place our faith—not in ourselves, not in our tribe, not in our passions, not in the latest certainty of the age—but in Christ. Let us receive with gratitude the healing life of His Church, which patiently frees us from prelest and teaches us to see the world as God sees it. For in Him our faith never collides with reality, because in Him faith finally meets Reality Himself.