Photo: ekzeget.ru
At the end of our previous talk, we mentioned that after the deacon’s exclamation, “Wisdom! Aright!” the clergy enter the altar. At this point, the choir sings:
“O come, let us worship and fall down before Christ. O Son of God, Who art risen from the dead, save us who sing unto Thee: Alleluia.”
The second part of this hymn varies depending on the day of the week and the feast. On Sundays, we sing “Who art risen from the dead,” since the day is dedicated to the Resurrection of the Lord. The other days of the week are dedicated to the memory of certain saints, so “Who art risen from the dead” is replaced with “Who art wondrous in Thy saints.”
“O come, let us worship…” Man has the great blessing of worshiping God. Everyone worships someone or something. Some worship themselves, with their passions and egotism. Others worship their knowledge, their mind, since they received a higher education, know a lot, write wonderful books, and have interesting conversations. Others worship money, land, bank deposits, investments. And others worship sins and pleasures. Absolutely everyone worships something. But we’re called to worship the true living God, Christ, our Savior.
“… and fall down before Christ.” What does it mean to “fall down?” It means to prostrate ourselves, to bend our knees (at this point in the service, we make a deep bow from the waist, while at home prostrations are appropriate). Movement and liveliness are inherent to the services of the Orthodox Church: “O come, let us worship and fall down.” We don’t go to church so we can sit through the whole service, watching the action, like at the movies. We Greeks made a mistake by putting stasidia in the churches and sitting during the services. We even say: “Let’s go listen to the Liturgy,” or, “Let’s go be at church,” when we ought to say: “Let’s go experience the Liturgy in our souls. Let’s go serve God.” But when we get to church, we sit down right away.
And yielding to this general weakness, rectors try to make the stasidia as comfortable and beautiful as possible and to provide enough of them that no parishioner has to stand. And for their part, the faithful make sure to go to the churches with the most comfortable seating… Fortunately for the entire Church and unfortunately for us, the Greeks are the only ones who do this. We’re truly pitiable if we don’t understand why we go to the Divine Liturgy and how to behave in church.
Other Orthodox peoples don’t have stools or chairs in church. If the Russians came to Cyprus and saw us sitting during Liturgy, they’d think they stumbled into some kind of heretical gathering. Go to Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, and you’ll see that no one’s sitting during the services there. You don’t find a single chair even in a large church! Perhaps in the very back of the church or along the sides you’ll find some small, low chairs for elderly or disabled parishioners, who, incidentally, often prefer to stand anywayanyway. But when we get to church, the first thing we do is take our place in a stasidion or a chair. Sometimes whole battles break out: “That’s my spot! Get out of here! I sit here!”
Recently, while I was hearing confessions (you hear all sorts of things in Confession—you learn about everything under the sun!), I was told that there are now nightclubs where there are no chairs or any kind of seating. People listen to music and drink standing up. When I heard this, I thought: “Well, at least people will learn to stand there, so they can stand in church.” I asked:
“Do you have to pay to get into these clubs?”
“Of course, and it’s not cheap.”
It’s amazing—when it’s entertainment, you can spend the entire night on your feet without a break, without getting tired, and you even pay to stand there;, but in church, you can’t even bear to stand for a little bit…
“… and fall down before Christ.” We’re not made up of just a soul and a mind—we have a body too. And we serve God not only mentally and spiritually, but also bodily. Therefore, when the Church calls us to worship during the services, we should make a deep bow, or rather, prostrate ourselves. We should all learn how to make prostrations. Prostrations are by no means just for grandmas, as some people think. A woman scolded me once,: “Who told you you could teach my son to make prostrations? Is he some ninety-year-old woman to be doing such a thing? My son’s in school. You really think he should be doing prostrations? It’s unacceptable!” She saw prostrations as something unacceptable, but actually, the chance to worship the true God is a blessing and a great privilege for us.
How do we make prostrations? We cross ourselves while saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” then kneel and bow our heads to the ground. By kneeling, we show that we have fallen through sin, and rising from our knees, we show that God has raised us up by His grace. By prostrating, we also show that, as mortals, we will die and return to the earth from which we were taken, and by rising from our knees, we show that God will resurrect us on the last day, when all the dead will rise.
Prostrations are very good for everyone, especially young people. Prostrations are physical labor, a physical form of prayer, and they’re quite beneficial for the soul. Therefore, let us shake off all laziness and softness and learn to love prostrations. Let us learn to make prostrations and do many of them every morning and evening. All Christians throughout history have made prostrations. On the Holy Mountain, I knew monks who did thousands of prostrations a day. I knew one elder—he’s over seventy now—who did 4,000 prostrations a day! But with us, just try persuading someone to make three prostrations a day! Not a chance…
I think it’s not just because we’re lazy and don’t want to trouble ourselves that we don’t do prostrations, but also because we lack humility. Our egotism protests: “You want me to fall down and worship God?” Is a man who prides himself on having a prestigious job and authority really going to fall to the ground to worship Christ? Is a woman who starts shouting at a single word from her husband really going to fall to her knees to worship God? Of course not. We lack the humility to worship God. And conversely, by training ourselves to make prostrations, we learn to be humble.
There’s this one Athonite anecdote. There was a famous spiritual father, Elder Gregory, who lived on Mt. Athos in the late nineteenth century, who had the gift of clairvoyance. At that time, Patriarch Joachim, a distinguished figure who had been deposed for refusing to compromise with the authorities, had settled on the Holy Mountain as a simple monk.
One day, the Patriarch met Elder Gregory and said to him:
“Elder, I’d like to visit you in your kallyvia.”
“It’s impossible for you to come here, Depsota.”
“Why’s that?”
“The door to my kallyvia is very low. There’s no way you’ll get through it, Despota.”
“Is that so? I’ll bend down and walk through.”
“If you knew how to bow your head, Despota, you would’ve remained on the Patriarchal throne,” the wise spiritual father concluded.
In other words, the ability to humble ourselves and bow our heads before others saves us from many troubles and misfortunes even in ordinary daily life. Imagine how much evil we could avoid and how much good we would gain if we trained ourselves in humility. And the habit of humility is developed in us through, among other things, prostrations. So don’t think that prostrations are something insignificant.
Let’s learn to pray with prostrations: let’s fall prostrate so our foreheads touch the floor. According to the Holy Fathers, a humble bodily posture brings the soul into a corresponding state. We pray differently when we’re standing, sitting, prostrating, lying in bed, or in a relaxed position. The position of the body influences the soul. Prostrations help the soul to humble itself, come to its senses, and pray better. They sanctify the body, mind, and spirit. So I’d like to emphasize again that we should all learn to make prostrations. You can start with just a few, but start. Pray to God, falling before Him.
“Save us, O Son of God.” To understand the feeling we should have when we pronounce these words, picture a man who’s been caught in a terrible storm, fallen into the sea, and is sinking to the bottom. A drowning man is filled with despair, with virtually no hope of salvation left. In such a hopeless situation, he cries out with all his might: “Help! Save me!” That’s what our prayer should be like—a powerful cry to God. Of course, this cry needn’t be external (no need to shout at the top of your lungs), but internal—meaning it comes from our whole heart, from our entire being.
We entreat God to save us. Save us from what? First of all, from the storm of sin, because sin is our first threat. Sin is the primary danger for us, because it deadens our soul and separates us from God, from others, and from ourselves. The destructive effects of sin extend into eternity. If we become separated from God, and separated forever, that would be an immeasurable evil and a great tragedy.
Sin affects the whole man, his entire being, not just one part. If you drink poison, it’s not just your stomach that gets poisoned and dies, but your whole body. It’s the same with sin: It encompasses, enslaves, and kills the entire man. The Fathers of the Church, knowing that the death of the soul and its separation from God is the greatest tragedy, conclude all their prayers with a petition for salvation: “Save us, O Son of God.”
“Who art risen from the dead.” Who saves us? The Son of God, Christ, Who became man for our sakes, defeated death and corruption, and rose from the dead. Faith in the Resurrection of Christ is of great significance because it’s also faith in our own resurrection from the dead. Unfortunately, Christians’ deep faith in the resurrection from the dead has weakened in our day. For if we had living faith in the resurrection, the death of our friends and relatives would be far less painful for our souls. We would also rightly perceive the many sorrows that befall us.
It’s fashionable today to believe in the reincarnation of souls, and many people claim that the Church (or at least the Gospels) teach reincarnation. But this is a monstrous, terrible delusion. What is reincarnation? A hundred years ago I was this person, and two hundreds years ago I was that person. And in a hundreds years I’ll be this person. Reincarnation means my “I” isn’t really me, but a mask that I’ll replace in a hundred years, and then again, and again… Then who will I be in the resurrection from the dead? Who I am now or who I was a hundred years ago? Or two hundred years ago?
Recently, a man approached me at the airport and said:
“We met 300 years ago. I was a military commander then.”
“My dear,” I said, “do you really believe all that?”
“Swami, don’t you remember me?!” (Swami is an honorific title in Hinduism. It comes from Sanskrit and means “master of oneself” or “free from the senses.”)
Then he started telling me about how his guru foretold our encounter.
“So I really wanted to meet you. My guru said: ‘You’ll meet him where you least expect it.’”
“What a great prophecy he gave you!” I said, laughing. “Did he by any chance mention that I’d be in a hurry at that moment?”
The Church rejects reincarnation because this teaching destroys the uniqueness of the human personality and turns a person into a guise, a mask. The Church has condemned the doctrine of reincarnation since the earliest centuries of its existence. If there is reincarnation, then there’s no resurrection from the dead. But if there’s a resurrection from the dead, then there can’t be reincarnation. The Apostle Paul says in his Epistle to the Hebrews: It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment (Heb. 9:27). That is, every man dies only once, after which he will face the judgment of God.
So, we believe that the hour will surely come when all the dead will rise. Everyone, without exception, from the first-created man to those who live in the last times. We will all be resurrected, and everyone will receive the body he had in life. However, this body won’t be aged, sick, corrupt, or subject to passions—it will be an incorruptible, new body, as was the body of the Lord Jesus Christ after His Resurrection. We’ll all receive such a body—those who died in childhood, those who died in infancy, embryos who were killed by their mothers, those who died in adulthood or old age, and those who suffered illnesses their entire lives or were paralyzed. It will be our body in a new dimension and a new form. If we believe that the day of our resurrection will surely come, we’ll find within ourselves the spiritual strength and courage to endure all sorrows and to perceive death—both the death of others and our own—in a completely different way.
