In order to better understand the meaning of the liturgy and its true, comprehensive dimensions, we must start from its concept as a relationship between God and man. Therefore, it is good to begin by answering two questions: the first, what is man’s view of God? That is, who is God in relation to man? The second, the opposite, what is God’s view of man? That is, who is man in relation to God?
God has two fundamental principles and characteristics for man. The first is that He is the Creator; He is the cause and reason of the universe and the One who brought it into existence. The second is that God is love; He is the caretaker, the shepherd, the advocate, the hearer, and finally He is the Father in the absolute Christian definition. Therefore, the Son came to be our brother so that we may call the Father Father with Him.
Man has two fundamental characteristics in relation to God. The first is that he is the master of this world, and it was given to him to use it “and to have dominion over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea…”. God created the whole world to place it at the disposal and service of man, “for him” God created everything. The second characteristic is that man, as he expects God, receives this gift – the world – from God with gratitude. Just as God is the Creator, so man is the User, and just as God is the Giver and the Lover, so man is the Giver and the Eucharist.
Therefore, we cannot understand the relationship between God and man or the relationship between man and God Platonically, philosophically and intellectually. Rather, the basis for understanding the relationship is the way they interact with each other through the world! How man interacts with the world is what determines the success or failure of his relationship with God. The world is not an entity independent of man’s relationship with God, but rather the exact opposite. It is the subject and material in and through which man expresses his concept of the relationship with God. Our faith is not metaphysical but liturgical. Man’s interaction with the world as a relationship with God makes him take on his Eucharistic priestly role, and this is the liturgy.
Liturgy is not rituals, rituals are means and expressions to bring liturgy to life. Liturgy is the exchange of the world with God in a “eucharistic relationship”! Therefore, if the word liturgy in the Greek linguistic root of the word means “the work of the people”, this means that, just as “the work of God” was and still is creation and love, “the work of the people” is thanksgiving for God’s gift in thanksgiving, i.e. Eucharistic.
Liturgy is the process of offering the world to God by man and transforming the entire universe and all its matters into a “sacrifice of praise.”
From this understanding of the liturgy, we can understand why the Orthodox tradition is liturgical, and could it be otherwise? The Church lives by the liturgy and in the liturgy. The liturgy is the “work of the people,” that is, the work and life of the Church, the purpose and nature of her existence. So, from this view of the liturgy, we say that all theology and all its parts are nothing but an expression and Eucharistic hymn, which wants to thank and explain divine love.
The change in the view of the relationship between God and man on the one hand, and man and God on the other hand, and the difference in the vision of the world due to contemporary philosophies and the dominance of secularization in the Church in the West, are all reasons that have led and are leading to the decline of Christian ideals in the world. The divine word and the presence of God in the world began to appear separate from life. An atmosphere of discrimination began to prevail, sometimes strongly, between what is in the world and what is in heaven.
The affairs of the universe were divided into two categories: the category of what is “sacred” and the category of what is “worldly”! It became as if life had to combine “religion” and “worldliness,” and sometimes this appeared impossible, either practically or also in principle, in that the contradiction does not sometimes take the form of competition but rather the form of doctrinal opposition many times. Hence, the liturgy was afflicted with a historical moral transformation during the Scholastic ages in the West. Its meaning approached the meaning of “some sacred rituals” isolated from the world.
Therefore, the church sacraments were divided into seven, including the sacrament of thanksgiving. Thus, these sacraments appear isolated from each other and from Christology and lose their ecclesiastical truth. It seems as if they are a set of sacraments, each of which carries its own grace (priesthood, marriage, anointing, etc.). While the true sacrament is a specific event, and it is the sacrament of using the universe as thanksgiving in a reciprocal relationship between God – grace and man – the rituals. And this is the liturgy. The liturgy is a way of work and life that means that man accepts the world and the universe positively from God. Therefore, the “Eucharist” – the sacrament of thanksgiving is the sacrament of sacraments, so to speak! It is the crown and end of the liturgy.
The rituals want to preserve this essence. The holy gifts that we offer in the Mass (the offerings) mean exactly that a person does not come to church and the Divine Liturgy carrying only his sins, his needs and even his repentance, but that each believer comes to the Mass carrying the whole world with him. This is what the offerings of “bread, oil and wine” mean. It is the movement of returning the world (in its symbols) to God in a hymn of thanksgiving. It is the liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is not the moment in which we forget the world, but exactly the moment in which we offer the world. Therefore we pray for moderate airs, fruitful fruits of the earth and a calm and peaceful climate.
Replacing these symbols of thanksgiving (offerings, oil, wine, etc.) with the passing of the “tray” to collect the offerings - material - attempts to preserve this movement and the spirit of thanksgiving but in a new practical way. We therefore present the world here with these symbols or offerings and then “go out and depart in peace” after the Mass to return in the next Mass and re-present this world. This is a movement of purification of the world, so that we may always receive and interact with it in the Eucharist. This is the general royal priesthood that every baptized person bears. Therefore, during the Great Entrance into the Mass, these offerings are ceremoniously transferred to be given to the hand of the bishop (or priest) to raise them from the people to the divine throne.
When we bring our whole world to the Mass to offer it, this means that we offer it to God as it is, that is, we offer our world, which is full of corruption, diseases and needs, and we offer ourselves with it, bearing our sins and weaknesses. God does not expect holy offerings from us, but rather our world itself. God accepts that we give Him our world as it is. Can we offer anything else? Does God want us to offer anything else? But the essential thing in the liturgy (as life and relationship) is that this world that we offer with our weaknesses becomes sanctified by God through the liturgy. God does not reject our offerings and our world, but He does not leave it as it is! When things are offered in the liturgy, they are offered as they are so that they do not remain as they are but to improve. We offer “what is” so that through repentance and grace it becomes “what it should be.” Thus in the liturgy “the world is revealed”! The world is God’s good, very good creation, and sin is the intruder.
The world is not renewed by destroying the old, but by sanctifying it. There is nothing unclean in the world. Everything can and must become an offering, since everything can be sanctified, and we are called to be priests of this holiness. Everything is a material for sanctification. Grace wants to descend upon everything. It is not required that we sanctify man’s life in the sense of freeing him from his body and from the elements of this world. Man’s holiness is achieved when he plays this priestly role in sanctifying the world. Holiness for man is not a utopian state in which he does not feel any spiritual or physical pain! Holiness means exactly that man becomes a priest and nothing more. Every non-priestly work is a loss and a bit of sin. Man’s basic work is to priest the world, and holiness is this state of priesthood in its splendor. Man’s holiness will not be achieved outside the world, exactly because the world is the only means and material that will achieve his holiness.
If we notice here and there in the world elements, situations and circumstances that are not sacred, this should not lead us to reject the world in order to go to another “utopian” world in which we find holiness! Our world as it is, is our tool and our material that we sanctify and which sanctifies us. Christianity does not accept any separation between what is “in front of us” and what is “behind us”, between here and there. Isn’t this the stumbling block of man today in the Church, when he thinks or sees it as concerned with what is “out there”, as if it were an institution concerned with what is “supernatural” and what is invisible, and therefore it is not for his life here? The liturgy, which uses nothing from outside this world except divine grace, saves us from the danger of separating what is “sacred” from what is “material”. Therefore:
1- The liturgy eliminates the danger that separates “time” from “eternity” these days:
Time and history were a necessary evil. That is why people have always wandered in search of good in another world outside this history. But time and eternity meet in the liturgy. Eternity is not a time before or after history, but its leaven. Eternity is history when God mediates it, when his divine will is fulfilled, that is, when the world becomes a sacrifice through man. Eternity is history leavened by the divine will. That is why we can be in history in between! That is, between time and eternity.
The time and place in which we live are exactly the world that awaits our sanctification! Christianity does not reject the elements of spatial and temporal life in anticipation of another time and place. Nor does it despise them! This is the material that man must priest in order to sanctify himself through this message and to sanctify it as well.
2- The liturgy removes the conflict between matter and spirit:
What torments human thought the most today is the separation between body and soul, and the exaggeration of the conflict between matter and spirit. It seems that the body is the enemy of the soul, and vice versa! We must conquer our body “in order to live in spirit.” This separation, or rather the conflict between what is spiritual and what is material, is increasing in our days. This is due to the increase in specialization and mechanization in work. The nature of most work has lost all human, aesthetic, or spiritual relationship. In the past, work connected man to nature (agriculture) and built relationships for him (trade), but today the enormity of work and its specialization often strips man of this spiritual atmosphere! Even the free time that was expected to be devoted to spiritual matters, to compensate for this loss, has in turn begun to lose, with its various forms of entertainment, everything spiritual, or sometimes turns into a time that kills all that remains of spirituality in man, who emerges from his exhausting work exhausted.
It seems as if there is no meeting place in the daily and ordinary life of man between the spirit and work, and between the spirit and the environment! And the feeling increases that the spirit requires us to distance ourselves and to leave the frameworks of these lives of ours!
The liturgy is the real meeting place between matter and spirit. The liturgy involves body and matter in sanctification with all that is of the spirit. The liturgy uses the materials of this world, which man is accustomed to seeing as material, and uses them so that they become holy. The bread and wine become the holiest things in existence, the divine body and blood. And not only this, but all the materials of daily life and work that seem to be in the service of matter, the rites of the liturgy take them to use in sanctification. That is why we use wood, water, branches, colors, and spices. Thus the liturgy proves that there is no sin in matter. Rather, sin lies in the use. Matter is an element of dishonor and sin as well as an element of holiness and righteousness. The world is not evil, quite the opposite! That is why in baptism we do not immerse the mind and the head, but the whole body! And in the mystery of the anointing with chrism we anoint all the members from the feet to the head. Everything becomes holy when it receives divine grace.
This liturgical tradition, with its rituals, makes worship happen with eyes open to the material world as it is before us and with its same elements that we use in our daily lives, and not as in the West, by closing our eyes and trying to withdraw from this place and time to meet God in a space that is not here and a time outside our time.
3- The liturgy eliminates the conflict between the individual and the group:
Although all social and civil trends go to deepen individual life, the liturgy is the opposite trend in life. There is nothing individual in the liturgy. Because the relationship with God is not between an individual and his God, but between God and his people. Man is not an individual who cares about his own affairs, but rather man who cares about man. The other is not an instrument of life that we consume, but the goal of our life that we place in his service. Thus man realizes himself in the liturgy.
The movement of the world, in its most developed and organized societies, seeks to secure systems that preserve man’s freedom, independence, uniqueness and individuality. Relationships find happiness in arranging the independence of the individual in his society and defining his duties and rights within the society in which he lives. Therefore, “society” in Western literature is a society and not a community as it is in our Orthodox tradition. The community is not society in general. The liturgy deals with man as a member of the communion of saints.
Although there are companies and social ties in our societies, they are, at their core, based on sorting and selection from among all (collection). This “individual” method at the level of groups and not the individual characterizes social life. This “elite” is necessary to the extent that it ensures the happiness of the individual and completes the aspects of his life that he lacks. Do we not notice this trend even in our church life? When elite groups appear that want to justify their uniqueness in their gathering, that is, their individualism and the narcissism of self-love and their beatification of “gatherings and groups” under names in the church. And they place these groups above the church. All of these are manifestations that indicate the influence of the social rather than the spiritual character and the absence of the effectiveness of the liturgy in the life of these “groups.” There is no justification for sorting in the Christian “communion” and in the communion of saints, neither on a social basis nor on a material basis nor even on a cognitive or faith basis. In the communion of saints we are all members of the body of Christ, and the weak member is supported by the strong. The most insignificant member is the most honorable. There is no member, no matter how sick or weak, that is not necessary for the whole body.
The way of expressing piety outside the liturgy is individual. But the liturgy expresses the worship of the whole Church with one another. It is not an individual act of each believer towards his Lord or even towards the Church. Therefore, the Orthodox tradition does not know a “personal Mass,” for a family, for example, or for a “community.” Nor does it know the practice of “adoration of the Eucharist” as in the West. Because worship is not personal piety at all, but rather an event of presenting the communion of the saints to the world and to God. The Eucharist is not a subject for individual contemplation. The Divine Eucharist is an event that realizes the communion of the saints as the living body of Christ. Therefore, with the exception of urgent cases of illness and the liturgical fast of the days of Great Lent, the Holy Eucharist is not received without celebrating the Divine Liturgy. The liturgy, and especially the sacrament of thanksgiving, are not only moments from which we draw strength for our daily lives, but rather an event that revives people’s communion with one another, repairs ties and restores their correct structure. The liturgy is not an individual act, but a communal event. For example, the priest alone cannot consecrate the gifts, even if he reads all the texts of the Mass ten times, and that is without the presence of “communion.” It is communion that derives grace in the liturgy.
What made Christian ethics weak and feeble is its isolation from the liturgy. This is when it is studied in isolation from it as a subject of “legislation” or Christian “ideals”. Christian ethics begins to be concerned with defining Christian virtues, and gives Christian education methods, examples and models of life for today’s man to imitate and adhere to, and on the basis of that he is evaluated and judged. There became fixed models of life that do not change over time or place… and this condemns the world, as this has become common in the West. Liturgical life does not allow the independence of ethics and Christian life, nor does it allow them to revolve around specific laws. The ideal Christian life is daily life after its liturgical “manifestation”.
The first Christian moral teacher in the Bible is the Apostle Paul. For Paul, moral teaching is liturgical. That is why we find liturgical formulas in all his famous expressions. “Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ…put to death your members which are on the earth…put off the old man and his deeds and put on the new man…” These are all liturgical formulas (the death and resurrection of Christ – baptism, taking off the garment and putting it on). Paul’s moral commandments – despite their abundance and strength – are causes and results of the sacrament of baptism, renewal and the sacrament of thanksgiving. Our ethics are the ethics of that liturgical communion when we entrust ourselves to the Mother of God and all the saints and dedicate our entire life to Christ God.
Our ethics are neither new nor old laws, but rather the living nature of a “holy company.” The Church does not, therefore, rely on a heavy moral “set of commandments” that it imposes on people, and which we sometimes do not keep, to lead people bound to specific moral behaviors. Rather, the Church “reveals” people as free “children of God” and purifies them and frees them from wrong ties and tendencies. Perhaps the main reason for the manifestations of atheism today is those Christian ethics isolated from the liturgy that were previously described. When they appear as “Christian” laws that a person has to memorize and apply for centuries and for many centuries without feeling that they really match his life and are necessary for it. Therefore, these moral frameworks and commandments seem like a “prison.” This is what makes these principles fall. Then the interested and zealous rush to find new solutions based on strengthening preaching, religious education, writing, and other similar things; as if they would be a deterrent to the deterioration of morals. While the real solution is to revive liturgical life. Where preaching and teaching… all of them constitute a tool and not an end. The “word” in Christianity is not the art of speaking but the “person” who will touch the heart of every person and unite with him. The word serves the event of the unity of God with man and this is what the liturgy achieves, where we meet it. Preaching and teaching lead us to realize the importance of being a “liturgical communion” and make us practice this liturgical life that makes the “transfiguration” a permanent event and ferments the whole dough with grace. Teaching must not take the place of the liturgy, which, in our tradition, leads to it. Our preaching is not preaching but an attempt to build a liturgical “communion.” The Church goes to the altar and not to the pulpit; the latter refers to the former. Meetings are good, but the liturgy is the true meeting. The community is not necessarily a church whenever it meets, but only when it is in Pentecost, in sanctification and in liturgy.
4- The liturgy abolishes the difference between eternity and eschatology (έσχατα):
If we believe that eternity is united to time through the liturgy, this should not lead us to believe in a movement towards a dream of an “earthly paradise”! The liturgy sanctifies history, yes. But it does not confine eternity to history. Therefore, just as the liturgy is at the heart of its sanctification of time, so is the spirit of vigilance and waiting for eternity. In the liturgy, the foretaste is achieved. But this foretaste does not cancel in advance the waiting for “the whole.” In the liturgy, the pledge of eternity is achieved. Therefore, the liturgy leads us to eternity and redemption, and prepares us for it.
The liturgy purifies the inner spiritual battle and nourishes it with the Spirit on the one hand. But outside its moments, a world awaits us that stirs up this battle and pursues it, on the other hand. Victory will not be achieved except “at the end of days.” Therefore, the liturgy does not develop in us the dream of a paradisiacal world here, but rather opens the way for struggle, striving and trying to leaven our world here with the leaven of the world to come, until the end comes and the whole dough is leavened.
Until then, the liturgy provides a semblance of victory, a taste and a pledge. Therefore, the liturgy, in its rituals, prayers and texts, preserves the highlighting of the reality of this struggle and the reminder of the ongoing battle between God and the devil. We strive in it and the expectation grows within us alongside the victory. There is a sanctifying dialogue that we establish in the liturgy between us and the world, and it ebbs and flows, but the final word will be in the “second coming” for which the liturgy wants to develop in us the expectation.
Conclusion
The crisis of spiritual life today, and the difficulty of man’s encounter with the Church today, are precisely these exhausting dualities, which create a kind of split personality. Some solutions and laws seek and attempt to reduce the gap between them, but in reality we see them increasing it. Religious life in the old style is no longer possible for man today, who rejects all authority of any principle or God that he does not see touching and nourishing his life! The world today has the right not to be religious (in the apparent sense of the word), as long as religion is a form of sociology or education and preaching. But it is our duty to revive liturgical life as a way of being and living an ecclesial “communion” that is not troubled by these contradictions, where man finds himself and his relationship with God and his neighbor in the freedom of the spirit.
The liturgy is the characteristic of the Orthodox Church and it is what will protect us from secularization, and it is ultimately the solution for humanity and the whole world.
Metropolitan Boulos Yazigi
Quoted from the old website of the Diocese of Aleppo
