The Living Liturgy

How then can we be reminded of the constant theme of living out our Liturgy. Father Phillip LeMasters said it best:

The complete way of self offering to the father that is Jesus becomes our way. All of our life is to become Eucharistic, a Christ like offering of thanksgiving and praise to the father in the power of the Holy Spirit. As arch-priest Patrick Reardon has written “the goal of the holy Eucharist is not the consecration of bread and wine but the consecration of human beings”. Let us to attend to this sublime vision of the consecrated, Eucharistic life. First, think of bread and wine, the fruit of someone’s vineyard and the product of someone’s kitchen. Apart from the self-offering of Jesus Christ, bread and wine remain bread and wine. They are the product of God’s good creation, requiring both the fruits of the earth and the work of human beings. Yet they are limited to this world, this life of decay and corruption. When joined with the self-offering of the Lord, however, they become His Body and Blood, our Holy Communion in Jesus Christ, our participation in the Kingdom of Heaven and life eternal. 

The same is true of our lives. We bear the image of God but are corrupt and mortal because of the sinful path we have chosen, both collectively and personally. We have offered ourselves and our world to ourselves, being slaves of our own passions. But when by the power of the Holy Spirit we are united with our Lord’s self-offering to the Father, we are transfused and transformed by the Divine Energies. Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches. His eternal life becomes ours; we are deified, shining with the Light of a Kingdom beyond this world. Our vocation to become like God is fulfilled not by our own power but by that of the God-Man, Who has conquered sin and death on our behalf. Truly to commune with the Lord is to offer our lives to Him, to be united with Him in every facet of our existence, to participate in the life of the Kingdom of Heaven even now. Our lives become Eucharistic when, as those nourished by the Body and Blood of the Lord, we offer ourselves to God fully and without reservation. 

Father Phillip LeMasters

_____________________________________________ 

Liturgy, as the address of the created to the Creator; is the domain in which our Holy Fathers expressed the special relationship of the children with their heavenly Father; and the uprightness of their faith. They have lived this experience and expressed it in words cast in poems imbued with ascetic terms, resulting in prayers. These prayers reflect the life of the Church historically and theologically, the more we repeat them, the more we understand their depth and appreciate their sweetness. 

However liturgy is not a rigid thing to be repeated unconsciously. It is an expression of the human need to talk to the Lord, and to thank Him for His grace. Liturgy is spirit and life running through the veins of the body of the Church, and nurturing all its members. It revives the Church, the community and the individuals with the grace that is bestowed upon it. Hence, we are here before a precious gem. We should polish it and reveal its glorious face, stressing the essence of the liturgical practice which leads the believer to grow in Christ. It is therefore important to resort to all tools that enable the people to reach the depth of this inspiring liturgy, that they may take from it that which will help them attain salvation and understanding of the mystery of God. 

We are aware of the fact that ritual services and sacramental life are important in our parishes. Performing these services, unifying the forms and developing chanting play a special and basic role in harmonizing between the liturgical practice and the pastoral reality. Activating the pastoral aspect of Liturgy can increase the religious awareness and deepen the relationship between the created beings and the Creator. This is realized by making the language understandable to the people, and by restoring the pastoral liturgical order which takes into consideration the particular needs of parishes and the necessity of sanctifying time in a world of drastic changes. We should also restore the pastoral dimension of all sacramental practices in order that these practices may become the center of the life of the believing community, not merely as passing practices of individuals."

+ Patriarch John X, Vision for the Orthodox Church, On Liturgy.

The following was a meditation given by the Very Rev. Fr. Chad, Chancellor of St. Vladimir's ORthodox Theological seminary on Liturgy: