Photo: pikabu.ru
In the last talk, we finished parsing the text of the Litany of Peace. While the deacon recites this litany, the priest is in the altar, standing before the holy altar table, reading a prayer in a low voice. Those praying in the church don’t hear it—they only hear the final exclamation. This prayer is called the “Prayer of the First Antiphon.” Let’s read and analyze it:
O Lord our God, Whose dominion is indescribable, and Whose glory is incomprehensible, Whose mercy is infinite, and Whose love for mankind is ineffable: Do thou thyself, O Master, according to Thy tender compassion, look upon us, and upon this holy temple, and deal with us, and them that pray with us, according to Thine abundant mercies and compassions.
The Divine Liturgy is a conversation between man and God: The priest addresses God in his prayers, and God answers through the grace of the Holy Spirit He sends down, and this is how God and man meet.
The prayer begins with the words:
O Lord our God, Whose dominion is indescribable, and Whose glory is incomprehensible, Whose mercy is infinite, and Whose love for mankind is ineffable.
No matter what a man says about God, he can’t describe Him. We call God good, the lover of mankind, merciful, tender-hearted—you can give Him a thousand other names, but in the exact sense of these words, God is none of these things, since He can’t be limited by a human definition. If we can put it this way, God is both this way and not this way. For example, God is good, but He’s also not good, because He’s above the definition of goodness. Nevertheless, we feel and experience the boundless, incomprehensible, inexpressible presence of God in our hearts. And every one of us, from a newborn infant to a man on the verge of death, experiences the presence of God in his own special way, known only to him. That’s why the Church doesn’t exclude a single person from the liturgical assembly.
Sometimes we hear: “Why should I go to church if I don’t understand anything in the service?” Of course, it’s very good when we understand what’s happening in the service. But how can a baby understand? How can a deaf person understand? How can a foreigner understand? How can a child with Down syndrome understand? Don’t any of them need to come to Liturgy? Of course they do. After all, the Divine Liturgy isn’t some kind of intellectual activity. The significance of the Liturgy lies in the fact that we who are praying become partakers of the Divine grace that is poured out in church during the Liturgy. Infants, the mentally disabled, the sick, and those close to death can all become partakers of this grace, regardless of whether their brains are capable of understanding the external actions of worship and its mystical meaning.
Some understand the meaning of, for example, the expression: “Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by Thy grace,” and that’s very good. But those who don’t understand the meaning of this phrase don’t suffer any harm; misunderstanding doesn’t prevent them from becoming partakers of the grace of the mystery of Christ celebrated during the Liturgy.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we abolish rational worship, that we reject the need for understanding. Without a doubt, we should understand what’s said during the Liturgy—we receive much more benefit this way. But what can we do if our circumstances and situation are such that the services are beyond our comprehension?
We have a foreign monk here in the monastery. When he arrived, he didn’t know a single word of Greek. We communicated in French. This brother would stand in church for hours, praying, and participating in the services as if he knew everything by heart. It didn’t bother him at all that he didn’t understand the readings and hymns. We asked him:
“Do you understand anything?”
“No, nothing.”
I can say that he wasn’t harmed or damaged by his lack of understanding. He’s learned Greek now, of course, but back then he didn’t know a single word.
There’s a connection between God and man. In prayer, a man stands before God and speaks with Him face to face, revealing all his feelings to Him. We must pray with extreme attention and reverence, with the feeling that talking to God is some ordinary, commonplace thing. If you’ve read the life of St. Nektarios of Aegina, you’ll recall that in praying to the Mother of God, he addressed her formally: “Thou, Most Holy Theotokos…” He was prompted to pray this way by his feeling of reverence for the Mother of God.
In the Liturgy, the Church addresses God in a theological way, which expresses its inner disposition and speaks, for example, as in the prayer of the First Antiphon:
O Lord our God, Whose dominion is indescribable, and Whose glory is incomprehensible, Whose mercy is infinite, and Whose love for mankind is ineffable.
It might seem like we could omit all that and simply say: “You know, God, give me this and this and that,” like we’re in a grocery store: “A gallon of milk, two loaves of bread, a pound of tomatoes…” But we don’t talk that with God; we converse with Him differently. Yes, we can turn to God with boldness, as to a friend, brother, father, as to the One Who is most wonderful and dear to us, but at the same time, with extreme reverence, with the awareness that the One we’re addressing is God. This is of great importance to our soul. And what do we ask of God?
Do thou thyself, O Master, according to Thy tender compassion, look upon us...
We call on God to look upon us solely according to His tender compassion, without making any demands or claims upon Him, without asserting any rights of our own. Since You are compassionate and love mankind, since You love us, we ask You to look upon us with kindness and love, even though we don’t deserve it.
The priest ends the prayer with the exclamation: “For unto Thee is due all glory, honor, and worship: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.”
And the choir responds: “Amen.”
Everything belongs to God. And what belongs to us? What can we do? We can respond to God’s call; we can do what we can. Basically, we can say that every era, every time, every hour has its own needs. And every man either responds or doesn’t to the challenges of the times and circumstances. For example, St. John the Merciful lived at a time when there was a need for alms. What did he do? He responded to the call of his time and gave away his possessions; he became a philanthropist. St. Athanasius the Great lived at a time when true Christian teaching was threatened by various heresies. He gave himself to this need and to “rightly dividing the word of truth,” for which he endured persecutions, harassment, and suffered exile. But he stood firm in the struggle, preserved the faith of the Church, and handed it over to us in an undistorted form.
Today, in a period of economic crisis, when we’re faced with many difficulties, we’re called to help each other as best we can. Can’t God find a way to overcome the crisis? Of course He can. Can’t He feed the hungry, the miserable, the poor? Of course He can. He can turn a stone into bread to feed the hungry. God doesn’t need me to show mercy to my neighbor, because He Himself can help this man much better than me. To show mercy to my neighbor, to support him, to help him, to say a kind word to him—all of this is necessary for me.
There’s a wonderful example in the Old Testament. When the Persian king Artaxerxes issued a decree on the extermination of all Jews in his kingdom, one of the Jews, Mordecai, asked Queen Esther (to whom he was related) to beg her pagan husband not to harm the Jewish people. Esther hesitated: “How ought I to entreat the king? Death threatens anyone who dares to go into the king without being invited. The king hasn’t called for me for thirty days now.” (I have to say that in those times it wasn’t like it is now, when a wife easily turns to her husband with any request, and woe to him if he doesn’t hurry to fulfill her wish). Mordecai told Esther:
“If you go to the king and ask him and he hears you, then God will bless you and your whole house. But if you’re afraid and don’t go to the king, then God will save His people by other means, but you and your father’s house will perish” (see Esther 4:7-14).
What does this mean for us? God doesn’t need you to give alms. God can help the needy Himself, but you, who don’t give alms won’t receive a blessing from God because you have despised the need of your neighbor (whatever it was) that you were called to satisfy.
God calls us to confess our faith in one way or another every day. Sometimes we’re called to confess our faith by observing a fast, sometimes by giving alms, sometimes by guarding the dogmas of the Church, the truths of the faith. We must be faithful to God at all times, under any circumstances. I think man is capable of doing this, while everything else belongs to God. Therefore, it’s said that all glory, honor, and worship belongs to Him. And when God is glorified, we are glorified as well, for we are His children and participate in the blessing that God sends down to the entire world.
Now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.
Everything that happens in the Church reaches to the endless ages. The middle wall of partition of death is destroyed; death disappears, and our words, actions, and life—these all move into eternity. Therefore, there’s nothing secondary, useless, or irrelevant in our lives.
To be continued…
