The Divine Liturgy: Heaven on Earth
The Center of Everything
In the year 987 AD, Prince Vladimir of Kiev sent envoys across the known world to investigate the great religions and determine which faith his people should adopt. They visited the Muslims of the Volga Bulgars, the Jewish Khazars, the Latin Christians of the West, and finally the Orthodox Christians of Constantinople. When the envoys attended the Divine Liturgy at the great Church of Hagia Sophia, they were overwhelmed. Their report to Vladimir has become one of the most famous sentences in Russian history: "We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth. We cannot describe it to you; only this we know, that God dwells there among men, and their service surpasses the worship of all other places."
Vladimir chose Orthodoxy, and the Rus were baptized. Whether or not the story is precisely historical, it captures something that every Orthodox Christian recognizes as true about the Divine Liturgy: it is not a religious meeting, not a moral lecture, not a program of spiritual edification. It is an encounter with the living God. It is, in the understanding of the Orthodox Church, a genuine participation in the worship of heaven itself, made present on earth in the gathered community of the faithful gathered around the altar.
The Divine Liturgy is the central and supreme act of Orthodox Christian life. Everything else in the life of the Church, from the calendar of fasts and feasts to the practice of private prayer to the whole edifice of Orthodox theology, exists in relation to the Liturgy and finds its meaning in connection to it. To understand Orthodoxy without understanding the Liturgy is like trying to understand a river by studying everything except the water. The Liturgy is where the Church most fully is what it is, where the Gospel is most completely enacted, and where the human person most directly encounters the God who became flesh, died, rose from the dead, and continues to give Himself to His people in the bread and the cup.
This article is a thorough exploration of the Divine Liturgy: its origins in the ancient Church, its theological meaning, its structure and major movements, the saints most associated with its development, and what it actually means to stand in an Orthodox church on a Sunday morning and participate in what the Church has always called the work of the people of God.
What Is the Divine Liturgy? Naming and Definition
The word liturgy comes from the Greek leitourgia, which in classical usage referred to a public work or service performed for the benefit of the community, sometimes at personal expense. Citizens of means would sponsor theatrical performances, equip warships, or fund festivals as a leitourgia to the city. When the early Christians adopted the term for their central act of worship, they were making a statement: this is the public work of the people of God, performed for the life of the world.
In Orthodox Christianity, the Divine Liturgy is the celebration of the Eucharist, the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. It is the service in which the Church gathers, offers bread and wine, calls upon the Holy Spirit, and receives in return the very Body and Blood of the risen Lord. But it is considerably more than a sacramental rite. It is a complete theological event, a dramatization of the entire economy of salvation from creation through incarnation through death and resurrection to the final Kingdom of God, all enacted and made present in the gathered assembly through word, chant, gesture, icon, incense, and the transforming action of the Holy Spirit.
The Divine Liturgy is called "divine" not because of the beauty of its earthly form, though that form is indeed extraordinarily beautiful in its developed Orthodox expression, but because its true celebrant is not the priest or the bishop but Christ Himself. The priest acts in persona Christi, as an icon of the Great High Priest who offered Himself once for all and who continues to offer and to be offered in the Eucharist of the Church. Every Liturgy, in every Orthodox church in the world, is a participation in the one eternal sacrifice of Christ, made present across time and space by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Origins of the Liturgy: From the Upper Room to the Ancient Church
The Divine Liturgy did not appear fully formed from the mind of a single theologian or liturgical committee. It grew organically from the Last Supper of Christ with His disciples, through the worship of the earliest Christian communities, through centuries of theological reflection and liturgical development, into the magnificent and theologically dense form it has today. Understanding this development illuminates both the continuity and the depth of what takes place at the altar.
The Last Supper and the Breaking of Bread
The night before His crucifixion, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying: "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way He took the cup after supper, saying: "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:19-20). This act, performed at a Passover meal in an upper room in Jerusalem, is the foundation of every Eucharist that has been celebrated in the Christian Church from that night to the present day.
The word translated "remembrance" in the Greek is anamnesis, and it carries a meaning considerably richer than the English word suggests. In Biblical usage, anamnesis is not merely a cognitive recollection of a past event. It is a making-present of that event, a bringing of it into the living moment so that those who participate are not merely remembering something that happened long ago but are genuinely encountering the reality that the past event accomplished. When Israel kept the Passover, they were not merely recalling the Exodus; they were present at it. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, it is not merely recalling the Last Supper and the Cross; it is present at the one eternal sacrifice of Christ, which transcends time and is made available to every generation through the sacramental action.
The Earliest Christian Worship
The Acts of the Apostles describes the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem as devoting themselves to "the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:42). The "breaking of bread" is widely understood by scholars and by the Orthodox tradition as a reference to the Eucharistic meal, the continuation of what Christ had done in the Upper Room. From the very beginning, the celebration of the Eucharist was the center around which the community organized its life.
In the first and second centuries, the Eucharistic celebration was typically embedded within a larger communal meal, the agape or love feast. Over time, as the communities grew and abuses crept in (St. Paul's sharp rebuke in 1 Corinthians 11 addresses such abuses directly), the Eucharistic rite was separated from the meal context and developed its own increasingly formal structure. By the time of Justin Martyr's description of Christian worship in the mid-second century, the basic shape of what would become the Divine Liturgy is already recognizable: readings from the apostolic writings and the prophets, a homily, prayers of intercession, the presentation of bread and wine, a prayer of thanksgiving and consecration over them, and the distribution of communion.
The Development of the Liturgical Families
As Christianity spread throughout the Mediterranean world, different regional centers developed their own liturgical traditions, each with its own character and theological emphases while sharing the same fundamental Eucharistic shape. The great liturgical families of the ancient Church include the Antiochene tradition (from which the Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil descend), the Alexandrian tradition (from which the Coptic and Ethiopian Liturgies descend), the Roman tradition, and the various Eastern traditions of Syria, Armenia, and Persia.
The Eastern Orthodox Church primarily uses the Byzantine liturgical tradition, which traces its developed form to the great theological and liturgical centers of Antioch and Constantinople. Within this tradition, three Eucharistic Liturgies are in regular use: the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, celebrated on most Sundays and feast days; the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, celebrated ten times a year including the five Sundays of Great Lent; and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts attributed to St. Gregory the Dialogist, celebrated on Wednesday and Friday evenings during Great Lent.
St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy That Bears His Name
The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is the form most Orthodox Christians encounter on a typical Sunday, and the name it bears deserves explanation. John Chrysostom, whose surname means "golden-mouthed" in Greek, was Archbishop of Constantinople from 398 to 404 AD and is one of the greatest preachers, biblical commentators, and pastoral theologians the Church has ever produced. He is also, along with St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory the Theologian, one of the Three Hierarchs venerated as the supreme teachers of the Orthodox Church.
The attribution of the Liturgy to Chrysostom does not mean that he composed it from nothing. Liturgical scholars understand that what Chrysostom did was take an existing Antiochene liturgical tradition and shorten and revise it, making it more accessible to the congregations of Constantinople while preserving its theological substance. The Liturgy that bears his name is thus a living document that condensed and crystallized the liturgical wisdom of the preceding centuries into a form of extraordinary theological density and beauty.
Similarly, the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great represents an earlier and in some respects more expansive version of the same tradition. The anaphora, the great prayer of consecration, in the Basilian Liturgy is considerably longer than in the Chrysostom Liturgy, and it is a masterpiece of trinitarian and soteriological theology, covering the entire sweep of salvation history from creation to the Last Day in a single sustained prayer of thanksgiving and supplication. When the Church celebrates the Basilian Liturgy, as it does on the Sundays of Great Lent and on the feasts of Basil, Christmas Eve, Theophany Eve, Holy Thursday, and Holy Saturday, the congregation is immersed in a theological meditation of extraordinary richness.
The Theology of the Liturgy: What Is Actually Happening?
Before walking through the structure of the Divine Liturgy, it is important to establish its theological foundations, because the rites and prayers that make up the Liturgy are not self-explanatory ceremonies. They are the outward expression of a profound theological vision, and understanding that vision transforms the experience of participating in them.
The Liturgy as the Kingdom Made Present
The most fundamental theological claim the Orthodox Church makes about the Divine Liturgy is that it is not merely a religious service that takes place within ordinary time and space. It is an irruption of the Kingdom of God into the present age, a genuine participation in the eternal worship of heaven. This is what the prince Vladimir's envoys experienced in Hagia Sophia and why they could not decide whether they were in heaven or on earth. They were, in the Orthodox understanding, in both simultaneously.
The Book of Revelation, which the Orthodox tradition reads as a liturgical text, describes the heavenly worship in terms that are strikingly similar to the Divine Liturgy: the altar, the incense rising as prayer, the elders prostrating themselves before the throne, the song of the angels, the Lamb who was slain standing at the center of all things. For the Orthodox, this is not coincidence. The earthly Liturgy is the participation of the Church in the heavenly worship, the joining of created voices to the uncreated song of the angels before the throne of God.
This is expressed directly in the Liturgy itself, in the Cherubikon, the hymn sung at the Great Entrance as the gifts are brought to the altar: "We who mystically represent the Cherubim, and who sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity, let us now lay aside all earthly cares, that we may receive the King of all, who comes invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts." The congregation is not merely an audience watching a religious drama. They are identified with the Cherubim, the highest orders of the angelic hosts, participating in the same act of worship that is eternally offered before the throne of God.
The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
Central to the theology of the Divine Liturgy is the Orthodox understanding of what happens to the bread and wine at the moment of consecration. This is one of the points of sharpest difference between Orthodox Christianity and most forms of Protestantism, and it is worth addressing with precision.
The Orthodox Church teaches that in the Divine Liturgy, the bread and wine truly and really become the Body and Blood of Christ. This is not a metaphor, not a symbolic enactment, not a spiritual presence alongside the bread and wine while the bread and wine remain unchanged. The Orthodox position is that of the entire ancient Church: the Eucharistic gifts are truly the Body and Blood of the Lord. Christ is genuinely, really, and substantially present in the Holy Gifts.
The Orthodox Church does not use the Western scholastic term "transubstantiation," which relies on Aristotelian philosophical categories of substance and accident to explain the change. Orthodoxy has historically preferred to affirm the reality of the change while declining to explain the precise mechanism of it, recognizing that what happens at the altar is a mystery in the deepest sense of the word: a reality that genuinely occurs and genuinely can be experienced, but that exceeds the capacity of philosophical analysis to fully account for. The Holy Spirit transforms the gifts. How the Holy Spirit does this is the business of God, not of human philosophy.
The Liturgy as the Work of the Whole People
Another crucial aspect of the Liturgy's theology is its corporate character. The Divine Liturgy is not a private devotion performed by a priest on behalf of a passive audience. It is the work of the entire gathered community, the laos tou Theou, the people of God. The priest leads and gives voice to the prayers on behalf of the community, but the community is not merely observing; it is participating, offering, and receiving together as one body.
This corporate character is expressed in the constant use of the first-person plural throughout the liturgical texts. "We offer to You," "grant us," "have mercy on us," "we praise You, we bless You, we give thanks to You." The Liturgy is never the activity of isolated individuals; it is always the action of the Body of Christ, assembled in a particular place and time but mystically united with the whole Church in heaven and on earth, with all the saints and angels and with the faithful departed whose memory is celebrated in every Liturgy.
The Structure of the Divine Liturgy: A Journey Through the Economy of Salvation
The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom has a complex and richly layered structure that has developed over centuries. It can be broadly divided into two major parts: the Liturgy of the Catechumens (also called the Liturgy of the Word) and the Liturgy of the Faithful (also called the Liturgy of the Eucharist). Before either of these begins, there is a preparatory rite called the Proskomedia, celebrated by the priest in the sanctuary before the Liturgy proper begins.
The Proskomedia: The Preparation of the Gifts
Long before the congregation gathers, the priest goes to the table of oblation in the northern part of the sanctuary and performs the Proskomedia, the preparation of the bread and wine that will be used in the Liturgy. The bread used in the Orthodox Liturgy is leavened, round, stamped loaves called prosphora (singular: prosphoron), meaning "offering." The leavened bread is theologically significant: it symbolizes the risen Christ, whose Body was not left in the corruption of death but raised to new and incorruptible life.
From the first and largest prosphoron, the priest cuts a square portion called the Lamb, which will become the Eucharistic bread consecrated during the Liturgy. As he cuts, he recites the words of Isaiah 53: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so He did not open His mouth." Portions are then cut from the other prosphora to commemorate the Theotokos, the ranks of angels and saints, the living and the departed. All of these portions are arranged on the diskos (the liturgical plate) around the Lamb. The result is a visual representation of the whole Church, living and departed, gathered around Christ at the center.
Wine mixed with water is poured into the chalice. Incense is burned. The gifts are covered with liturgical cloths called the aer and the asterisk (a star-shaped cover that holds the veil away from the bread). A prayer is read over everything, and the Proskomedia is complete. The congregation does not see any of this; it happens in the sanctuary behind the iconostasis before they arrive. But its significance is immense: the entire Liturgy that follows is the unfolding and culmination of what is prepared here in silence and hiddenness.
The Liturgy of the Catechumens: The Word Proclaimed
The Liturgy proper begins with the deacon's exclamation: "Bless, master!" and the priest's blessing: "Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages." This opening blessing is one of the most theologically loaded phrases in the entire service. The Liturgy does not begin with a call to worship in the ordinary sense or with an invocation of God's presence, as though God were absent and needed to be summoned. It begins with a proclamation of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is declared present. Everything that follows is an unfolding of what that proclamation means.
The Great Litany follows, a series of petitions offered by the deacon and answered by the choir and congregation with the response "Lord, have mercy" (Kyrie eleison). The petitions cover the full range of human need and concern: peace for the whole world, the welfare of the Church, the bishop, the clergy, those in authority, travelers, the sick, the suffering, and the faithful departed. The world is brought before God in its entirety, and the assembled people intercede for it with one voice.
The Antiphons follow, psalmic verses chanted by the choir, leading into the Little Entrance, in which the deacon and priest come out through the north door of the iconostasis carrying the Book of the Gospels. This procession, modest as it appears, represents the coming of Christ into the world, the manifestation of the Word of God to His people. The congregation sings the Eisodikon, the Entrance Hymn: "Come, let us worship and bow down before Christ. Save us, O Son of God, who rose from the dead, as we sing to You: Alleluia."
The Trisagion follows: "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us." This ancient hymn, sung three times, is addressed to the Holy Trinity and echoes the song of the Seraphim in Isaiah 6 and the four living creatures in Revelation 4. After the Trisagion, the Epistle and the Gospel are read, the latter preceded by an Alleluia and accompanied by the swinging of the censer. The priest or bishop then preaches a homily, and the Liturgy of the Catechumens concludes with the dismissal of the catechumens (those preparing for baptism who are not yet permitted to participate in the Eucharist itself), and the prayer for the faithful who remain.
The Liturgy of the Faithful: The Mystery Enacted
With the catechumens dismissed, the doors of the church were historically closed, and the most sacred portion of the Liturgy began. The Liturgy of the Faithful opens with two prayers for the faithful, asking that God will purify the souls and bodies of those who are about to draw near to the awesome mystery, and make them worthy of the gift they are about to receive.
The Great Entrance then takes place, the most visually dramatic moment of the Liturgy before the consecration itself. The priest and deacon take the prepared gifts from the table of oblation, process out through the north door of the iconostasis, and carry them through the nave of the church in a solemn procession, commemorating the living and the departed as they go. The congregation falls prostrate or bows deeply as the gifts pass. The choir sings the Cherubikon, in which the congregation is identified with the angelic hosts welcoming the King of all. The gifts are then placed on the altar and the royal doors of the iconostasis are closed.
The Creed is then sung by the entire congregation, a declaration of the faith into which the faithful are about to receive the sacrament. Then comes the central act of the entire Liturgy: the Anaphora, the great Eucharistic prayer of thanksgiving and consecration.
The Anaphora: The Heart of the Liturgy
The Anaphora begins with the ancient dialogue between priest and people that dates to the earliest centuries of Christian worship. "Let us stand well. Let us stand with fear. Let us attend, that we may offer the holy oblation in peace." The people respond: "A mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise." The priest calls the people to lift their hearts to God; they respond that they have lifted them up to the Lord. He calls them to give thanks; they respond that it is meet and right to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The priest then begins the prayer of thanksgiving, recounting the mighty works of God in creation and redemption, joining the earthly Church's song of praise to the song of the angels, and singing together with the congregation the Sanctus: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of Your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." These are the words of Isaiah 6 and of the crowds welcoming Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, united in a single acclamation that spans the Old and New Testaments.
The prayer continues through the account of the Last Supper, with the Words of Institution: "Take, eat; this is My Body, which is broken for you, for the remission of sins... Drink of it, all of you; this is My Blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins." After the Words of Institution, the Anamnesis is proclaimed: "Remembering, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious coming..." The priest lifts the gifts and offers them to God.
Then comes the Epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit, which is the consecratory moment in the Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist. The priest prays: "We offer to You also this reasonable and bloodless worship, and we ask and pray and entreat: send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here presented." He then prays separately over the bread and over the wine, asking God to make them the Body and Blood of Christ. A moment of deep and absolute silence falls. The priest bows in adoration before the transformed gifts. The bread and the wine are now the Body and Blood of the risen Lord.
The Anaphora continues with the commemoration of the saints, beginning with the Theotokos, and intercessions for the living and the departed. The Lord's Prayer is then sung by the entire congregation, and the faithful prepare to receive Holy Communion.
Holy Communion: The Purpose of the Liturgy
Before receiving Communion, the priest says a preparatory prayer aloud, and the congregation joins in a prayer of profound humility and longing. The royal doors of the iconostasis are opened, and the priest comes out with the chalice, in which the Body and Blood of Christ have been combined, and calls the faithful to approach: "With the fear of God, with faith and with love, draw near."
The Orthodox faithful receive Communion on a spoon, directly into the mouth, both the Body and the Blood together, having given their full baptismal name to the priest or deacon. After receiving, each person goes to a table at the side of the church to receive antidoron, blessed bread that is distributed to all present (including non-Orthodox visitors) after the Liturgy as a sign of fellowship and blessing.
The preparation for Holy Communion in the Orthodox tradition is serious and demanding. Those who intend to receive are expected to have attended Vespers the evening before, to have read the preparatory canon and prayers from the Orthodox prayer book the night before and the morning of Communion, to have fasted from all food and water from midnight (or from the time of waking, in some traditions), and to have recently made their Confession. This is not legalism; it is the Church's recognition that what is about to happen is of infinite significance and that it deserves the fullest possible preparation of soul and body. "Let a man examine himself," St. Paul wrote, "and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup" (1 Corinthians 11:28).
The Iconostasis: The Boundary Between Two Worlds
No discussion of the Divine Liturgy is complete without attention to the iconostasis, the screen of icons that separates the nave of the church (where the congregation stands) from the sanctuary (where the altar stands and where the clergy serve). To Western visitors, the iconostasis can seem like a barrier, a wall that hides the mystery from the people. The Orthodox understanding is precisely the opposite.
The iconostasis is not a wall that excludes but a boundary that reveals. It is covered with icons: Christ in the center, the Theotokos to His left, John the Baptist to His right, and ranks of apostles, prophets, and saints filling the remaining panels. These icons do not decorate the screen; they constitute it. The iconostasis is the assembled Church in its fullness, the cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12, gathered around the altar in their glorified form. When the faithful stand in the nave and look at the iconostasis, they are not looking at a wall. They are looking at the Church Triumphant, the saints in glory, standing at the boundary between the present age and the age to come.
The royal doors at the center of the iconostasis, opened and closed at various points in the Liturgy, represent the gates of the Kingdom. When they open for the Little Entrance or the Great Entrance or Holy Communion, the Kingdom is made present and the faithful are invited to approach. The liturgical choreography of opening and closing, of concealment and revelation, is itself a theological statement about the nature of the divine mystery: it is genuinely present, genuinely accessible, and genuinely beyond ordinary apprehension, all at the same time.
The Role of the Senses: Beauty as Theology
One of the most striking features of the Divine Liturgy for those encountering it for the first time is its engagement of every human sense. The eyes behold the icons, the golden vessels, the brocaded vestments, the candlelight, and the movement of the clergy. The ears receive an almost continuous stream of chanted prayer, covering a remarkable range of musical modes and emotional registers. The nose receives the incense that fills the church at numerous points in the service. The hands hold candles and make the sign of the cross. The mouth, at Communion, receives the Body and Blood of the Lord.
This full-sensory engagement is not an accident or an aesthetic preference. It is a theological statement about the nature of the human person and of salvation. The human being is not a soul temporarily imprisoned in a body. The human being is a unity of soul and body, and both body and soul are called to participate in the divine life. The Incarnation itself is the supreme statement of this truth: God did not appear as a pure spirit or as an idea. He took on flesh, was born of a woman, ate and drank, wept, was touched, died, and rose bodily from the dead. The material world is not an obstacle to the divine presence; it is the medium through which the divine presence makes itself known and available to embodied creatures.
The beauty of the Liturgy, therefore, is not a luxury or an indulgence. It is a theological necessity. The seventh-century father St. John of Damascus, defending the veneration of icons against the iconoclasts, wrote that matter had been sanctified by the Incarnation and could therefore be a vehicle of the divine presence and of divine grace. The same principle governs the whole liturgical environment: the icons, the gold, the incense, the music, the beautiful vestments are all ways in which the material world is lifted up, sanctified, and made to participate in the praise of God. This is a foretaste of the ultimate eschatological reality in which all of creation will be transfigured and made transparent to the divine glory.
The Liturgy and Time: Living in the Eternal Now
The Divine Liturgy does something radical with ordinary time. It does not simply occur within the flow of history as one event among many. It pierces through history and opens a window into eternity. Every Liturgy is the same Liturgy, because every Liturgy is the one Eucharist of the one Christ. The Liturgy celebrated this Sunday morning in a small Orthodox church in rural Ohio and the Liturgy celebrated in the same moment in a great cathedral in Moscow and a monastery chapel on Mount Athos are not three separate events. They are three participations in the one Liturgy that Christ eternally offers before the Father.
This understanding of the Liturgy's relationship to time helps explain several features of the Orthodox Liturgy that can seem strange to the uninitiated. When the deacon cries out at the Anaphora, "Remembering, therefore... the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven... and the second and glorious coming," he is making an "anamnesis" of events that span from the past to the future, including the Second Coming of Christ which has not yet happened in ordinary history. In the Liturgy, this is not an impossibility. The Liturgy stands outside ordinary temporal sequence. It is the eternal present tense of the Kingdom of God, in which past, present, and future are gathered into a single, comprehensive act of offering and thanksgiving.
The Orthodox liturgical calendar reinforces this understanding. Each year, the Church moves through a complete cycle of feasts and fasts that rehearses the entire economy of salvation: the Nativity of the Theotokos, the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Theophany, the Transfiguration, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost. These are not commemorations of events safely confined to the past. Each feast makes the event it celebrates genuinely present. When the Church sings on Pascha night "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life," it is not singing about something that happened long ago. It is participating in the Resurrection itself, which is the eternal and ever-present victory of life over death.
The Liturgy and Theosis: The Eucharist as Deification
The connection between the Divine Liturgy and the Orthodox doctrine of theosis is direct and inseparable. The Liturgy is the primary context in which theosis occurs, the principal sacramental means by which the divine life is communicated to the human person. Every element of the Liturgy, from the preparatory prayers to the final blessing, is oriented toward this end: the union of the human person with the living God.
Holy Communion is the sacramental act of theosis. When the faithful receive the Body and Blood of Christ, they receive Christ Himself, and in receiving Christ, they receive the divine life, the uncreated energies of God communicated through the humanity of the incarnate Son. St. Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on Christ's words in John 6 about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, wrote that the Eucharist is the means by which human nature is permeated with the divine nature, just as iron thrust into fire becomes glowing and full of fire's properties while remaining iron. This is precisely the language of theosis applied to the Eucharist.
The prayer after Holy Communion in the Orthodox prayer book makes this explicit. Among the post-communion prayers attributed to St. Symeon Metaphrastes is this extraordinary verse: "O Lord, who in Your tender love for mankind descended and became incarnate: I thank You that You have made me worthy to partake of Your most pure Body and most precious Blood. I implore You, O Lord: lighten the eyes of my heart, purify my conscience, sanctify my soul and body, make me worthy at all times to partake of Your divine, heavenly, life-creating and awesome Mysteries." This is the language of theosis: the human person transformed, body and soul, by the reception of the divine life communicated through the Eucharist.
Common Questions About the Divine Liturgy
Why Is the Liturgy So Long?
This is perhaps the most frequent question asked by those attending an Orthodox Liturgy for the first time. A full Sunday Divine Liturgy, preceded by Orthros (Matins), can last two hours or more. Many Western Christians, accustomed to services of an hour or less, find this challenging. The Orthodox answer to the question is both theological and practical. Theologically, the Liturgy is understood as a genuine encounter with the eternal, and it would be strange to treat such an encounter as something to be processed as quickly and efficiently as possible. Practically, the Liturgy requires time to unfold its full meaning, to allow the prayers and the chants and the silences to do their work in the soul of the worshiper.
There is also a countercultural dimension to the Liturgy's length. To stand for two hours in prayer, with no screens, no entertainment, no agenda other than the praise of God and the reception of His grace, is itself a spiritual discipline. The Liturgy teaches the faithful to wait, to attend, to remain present in the face of distraction and restlessness, which is itself training in the kind of sustained attention that the entire spiritual life requires.
Can Non-Orthodox Christians Receive Communion?
No. The Orthodox Church does not offer Holy Communion to those who are not baptized and chrismated members of the Orthodox Church. This is called closed communion, and it is sometimes perceived by visitors as exclusionary or unwelcoming. The Orthodox understanding is precisely the opposite. Holy Communion is not a gesture of welcome or inclusion. It is the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ, the most awesome and demanding sacramental act in the Christian life. To offer it to those who have not been prepared, who have not been incorporated into the Body of Christ through the sacraments of initiation, who have not made their Confession, would be to offer them something for which they are not yet ready, and to do so would potentially harm rather than help them. St. Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 11 about receiving Communion "in an unworthy manner" is taken with complete seriousness. Non-Orthodox visitors are warmly welcomed to be present at the Liturgy, to receive the blessing of the priest, and to receive the antidoron after the service.
Why Do Orthodox Christians Stand During the Liturgy?
In the ancient Church, kneeling was associated with mourning and penitence, and standing was associated with the joy of the Resurrection. The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD actually prohibited kneeling on Sundays and during the fifty days of Pascha, on the grounds that Sunday is the day of Resurrection and Christians should stand before God in the posture of those who have been raised from death. This tradition has been preserved in Orthodoxy, where the congregation typically stands throughout the Liturgy, kneeling only at certain penitential services. Many Orthodox churches have no pews; some have seats along the walls for the elderly and infirm. The posture of standing in prayer is both a physical act of respect before God and a theological statement about the status of those who have been raised with Christ.
What Is the Role of the Choir?
In the Orthodox Liturgy, the choir does not perform music for the congregation to listen to. It sings on behalf of and together with the congregation, giving musical voice to the people's response to God's word and action. Ideally, the entire congregation sings together, and in many Orthodox parishes this is indeed the practice: the whole gathered community chants the responses and the hymns together in unison or in simple harmonies. The richly complex choral settings familiar from recordings of Russian Orthodox liturgical music are a particular development within one strand of the Orthodox tradition; the Byzantine chant used in Greek Orthodox churches, the Znamenny chant of pre-Petrine Russian Orthodoxy, and the various other liturgical music traditions of the Orthodox world represent equally legitimate and ancient forms of the musical offering.
Go in Peace: The Liturgy After the Liturgy
The Divine Liturgy concludes with the dismissal, in which the priest turns to the congregation and blesses them, sending them out into the world. The deacon says: "Let us depart in peace." The congregation responds: "In the name of the Lord." And then they go: out of the church, back into the ordinary world of jobs and families and traffic and grocery shopping and everything else that makes up the texture of daily life.
But something has changed. The great twentieth-century Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, whose book For the Life of the World is the most accessible and penetrating modern exposition of Orthodox liturgical theology, argued that the dismissal is not an ending but a sending. The faithful are sent out to be what they have received: the Body of Christ in the world, the presence of the Kingdom in the midst of the present age, the bearers of the divine life into every corner of ordinary human existence. The Liturgy does not end at the church door. It continues in the lives of those who have been transformed by it, in their love for their neighbors, their care for the poor, their witness to the resurrection in the midst of a world that has not yet fully received it.
Schmemann called this "the liturgy after the Liturgy," and it is, in his understanding, the true purpose of the whole thing. The Divine Liturgy gathers the Church, transforms it, feeds it with the divine life, and sends it back into the world to extend the Kingdom. Every act of love, justice, mercy, and beauty performed by a Christian who has been to the Liturgy and received the Holy Mysteries is, in this sense, a continuation of what began at the altar. The Eucharist is not an escape from the world. It is the transformation of the world, one faithful person at a time, through the ongoing outpouring of the divine life received at the chalice.
To stand in an Orthodox church on a Sunday morning, surrounded by icons and incense and the golden light of candles, and to hear the ancient words of the Liturgy rise and fall in the chanted rhythms that have not fundamentally changed in over a thousand years, is to stand at the center of the universe. It is to be present at the event that gives all other events their meaning. It is to touch, however briefly and imperfectly, the reality that Vladimir's envoys glimpsed in Hagia Sophia over a thousand years ago: God dwelling among His people, and the worship of earth joining the worship of heaven in a single, eternal, unending song.
Kai Tutor | The Societal News Team
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