Deep prayer comes gradually. Body and soul adapt slowly. It is particularly important for the priest who celebrates the Divine Liturgy to transmute his entire life into prayer if he would live this great sacrament to the full. Preparing himself in awe, and approaching with reverence, by the very content of his office the priest is drawn into the domain of the Divine. He begins the Liturgy by invoking the dread Name of the Holy Trinity, and continues in spirit poised between the Creator and all created being. He remembers the Last Supper; Christ’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane; Christ accused before Pilate; the cross and burial; the three days in the sepulchre; the Resurrection and Ascension; the sitting on the right hand of the Father—as the Son of Man now; and, finally, the glorious Second Coming. The priest likewise traces the creation of man, his fall and its tragic consequences; and God becoming incarnate in order to save the world. Mighty waves of cosmic life sweep through him. He will recall the needs and suffering of all mankind. In offering this holy sacrifice of love which requires total surrender of self, the priest opens wide his heart to embrace a multitude of lives and aeons of time. Thus he partakes in the world-redeeming sacrifice of Christ Himself; and in the act of communion craves not only to receive the body and blood of Christ but to apprehend His Divine life, also, in so far as may be granted to him by the Holy Spirit.
An intellectual grasp of the purport of the Sacrament is not enough. The priest’s whole being— heart, mind, body—must unite in sorrowful prayer for the world. And the more he grieves, the mightier the healing power dispensed to the world through his prayer.
In essence there is no other Eucharist than the one that the Lord Himself performed. By his good pleasure the Eucharist, unique, is ever repeated; indivisible, it is constantly divided and shared, extending through time to the uttermost ends of the earth. The Upper Chamber grows, to contain the perpetual flow, gathering all people by the holy sacrament of communion into unity after the likeness of the Trinity.
‘Holy Father,’ prayed the Lord, ‘keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are ...Neither pray I for these alone’ [the disciples] ‘but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us . . . And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me’ (John 17.11,20-23).
According to the ancient theological tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, mankind is one being but multi-hypostatic, just as God is One Being in Three Persons.
The Liturgy in its eternal reality is the Lord’s Passover permanently present with us. Before the coming of Christ the Jewish Passover commemorated the historical event of the crossing through the Red Sea—the moment when the children of Israel were saved from the Egyptian hosts. But our Passover is Christ, and He bade us commemorate in His Name: ‘This do in remembrance of me’ (Luke 22.19). Thus He, the true Centre of the universe (not some historical event) is the focus of our attention. This radically alters the character of the Easter festival. The whole Eucharist consists in ‘remembrance’— understood not in the usual sense as a recalling to mind only but as an existential entering into Christ’s world, into His Divine and human dimensions. Our Passover, and therefore also our Eucharist, is a passage from earth to heaven, from death in sin to the holy eternity of the Father.
Taking part as fully as possible in the Liturgical Act gradually teaches the faithful to participate in Christ’s Gethsemane prayer. This is the pattern: when we are pierced by sorrow, pain, loss, we transfer our own hurt to the universal plane, and suffer not merely for ourselves but for all humanity. To the extent of our personal experience we can live everyman’s tragic lot, his dread and despair. We call to remembrance the multitude of dead and dying. It may be that our suffering will at some point exceed our powers of endurance. Then, when mind and body can no longer keep up with the spirit, the spirit continues to follow after Christ, to crucifixion, to the grave, into the anguished hell of His love for mankind.
This noble science of the spirit is not acquired in a few short years of academic study: it demands our whole being. There is no end to this learning, since we never attain the fulness of Christ’s love. By means of long ascetic struggle we gradually perceive the eternal meaning and especial character of His sufferings. We realise that they far exceeded, not only in quality but in spiritual strength, too, anything that the world knows. We do not measure up to Christ but all Christians must aspire to plenitude of knowledge of Him. To the extent of our perception of His redemptive sufferings, His eternal glory will repose on us. Through Him we become sons of the Father. Now we know that no man cometh unto the Father, but by Him (cf. John 14.6).
Such glory will not be given to us automatically, by virtue of Christ’s merit, as many believe. Though all our efforts are as nothing compared with this gift from on High which is always pure gift, we must labour to receive and appreciate it worthily. Knowledge of Christ and of His Divine and human universality is a ‘pearl of great price’ (Matt. 13.46). ‘And this is life eternal...to know...the only true God, and Jesus Christ’ (John 17.3). It is ‘that good part, which shall not be taken away’ (Luke 10.42) from us by the death of the body.
Concerned that the faithful be rooted and grounded in true knowledge of the things disclosed by God, Paul the Apostle in fervent prayer ‘bowed his knees unto the Father. . . that He would grant them, according to the riches of His glory . . . to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height’ of the Divine providence for us which ‘before the foundation of the world . . . predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself’ (cf. Eph. 3 and 1).
The same Spirit which inspired Paul to such prayer, to this day moves the hearts of priests and people to pray that every man may know with his whole self that God is our Father; that every soul may behold the Light of unoriginate Divine Being made manifest in the world.
The fulness of knowledge of the Most High God has not vanished from the face of the earth. The Church has preserved and from generation to generation hands on this knowledge and this spirit which are the quintessence of Sacred Tradition. The same Lord’s Supper is celebrated day after day. The same prayer is offered up to God by His priests.
In the Eastern Church, before receiving the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ the faithful pray, ‘Of Thy mystical supper, O Son of God, accept me this day as a partaker.’ This day —NOW—speaks of divine eternity, in which there is no past, no future, but only the now. It is a prayer to be accepted into the divine plan.
Lord Jesus Christ, Everlasting King;The one true High Priest;Who didst offer Thyself to God the Father upon the crossin atonement for the sins of the world;and in this searchless act of servicedidst give us Thine incorruptible Body for sacred food,and Thy most precious Blood for life-giving drink:Make us worthy of these ineffable mysteries,that we may be partakers of the Divine Nature,having escaped the corruptionthat is in the world through lust.We pray Thee, O Lord, hear and have mercy.
Source: Archmandrite Sophrony, "His Life is mine." Rosemary Edmonds, trans. (New York: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1977) 87-90
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