The Heavenly Liturgy

The Lord’s great and unique work of atonement took place upon the cross, which had four corners, like the altar before the Holy of Holies, on which the life-giving blood was poured: he “loves us and washed us from our sins by his blood” (Rev 1:5; see Q376); and “almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins” (Heb 9:22; see Q376, Q423).

Christ’s heavenly intercession is not a second work outside his death: it is Christ presenting before the Father his one perfect and complete sacrifice. He is our High Priest, and the sacrifice he offers is himself, as he is our Advocate: “If someone does commit a sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the whole world” (1Jo 2:1–2; see Q240b, Q269).

Our worship on earth is a participation in this heavenly work, centered on the throne of God and of the Lamb, according to the pattern that has governed divine worship through the ages. Christians have become “a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Rev 1:6; see Q402), and as such are called to offer sacrifices: the living sacrifice of themselves (Rom 12:1; see Q043), the sacrifice of praise (Heb 13:15), and the sacrifice of their presence and gifts when God’s people assemble as church on the first day of the week. Because all is done in Christ and with Christ, the Church offers “better” and “spiritual” sacrifices (Heb 9:23; 1Pe 2:5).

The Eucharistic worship of the Church has therefore always been understood as a sacrifice, which is why St John sees the presbyters (elders) offering incense before the throne (Rev 5:8; see Q167, Q402), the true fulfillment of the prophecy: “from the rising of the sun to its setting my Name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my Name, and a pure offering; for my Name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts” (Mal 1:11; see Q043, Q328).

St Justin bears witness to the common understanding of the earliest Christian communities:

It is of the sacrifices offered to him in every place by us, the Gentiles, that is, of the Bread of the Eucharist and likewise of the Cup of the Eucharist, that God speaks through Malachi. (St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 41)

Divine worship is always performed according to the heavenly pattern, with the entire people facing the Lord together. Worship on earth is an imperfect but holy reflection of the glory and beauty on high (Exo 28:2; Heb 8:5; see Q390, Q043).

The bishop presides over the Eucharist as the consecrated representative of God’s priestly people, and is called to utter the very words of the Lord according to his command: “This is my body, which is for you: do this in memory of me… This cup is the new covenant in my blood: do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1Co 11:24–25).

As such, the bishop is the icon of the great High Priest and stands for God’s people, even as the high priest of the Old Covenant iconically represented the King of Glory, in the scene the Church has always loved to recall:

How glorious was the high priest when the people gathered round him as he came out of the inner sanctuary! Like the morning star among the clouds, like the moon when it is full, like the sun shining upon the temple of the Most High… When he put on his glorious robe… and went up to the holy altar, he made the court of the sanctuary glorious… with a garland of brethren around him… Finishing the service at the altars… he reached out his hand to the cup and poured a libation of the blood of the grape… Then all the people together made haste and fell to the ground upon their faces to worship their Lord… And the singers praised him with their voices in sweet and full-toned melody… till the order of the worship (leitourgias) of the Lord was ended… Then Simon came down and lifted up his hands over the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, to pronounce the blessing of the Lord (Sir 50:5–21).

The Divine Liturgy may take place anywhere authorized by the bishop, in his presence, or through the delegation of a presbyter.

Historically, the Divine Liturgy was often celebrated over the tombs of the martyrs, a practice expressed to this day by the relics sewn into the altar cloth called the antimension. The antimension, signed by the bishop, also represents his permission and blessing to celebrate the Divine Liturgy when he is not personally present.

Understanding Orthodox Worship

(Why is Orthodox worship so different from modern Western forms of Christian worship?)

The catechumen entering an Orthodox church for the first time often finds the worship strange: the iconostasis and processions, the incense and vestments, the chanted prayers, the seeming absence of anything designed to be casual, contemporary, or convenient. It is essential to understand from the beginning that this strangeness is not the strangeness of the exotic East, but the strangeness of heaven; and that of the two forms of Christian worship the catechumen may compare, the ancient liturgical form and the modern informal one, it is the modern form that is the innovation. Orthodox worship is not one style among many; it is the biblical and historical form of Christian worship, and every element of it can be given a scriptural account.

Worship, in the Bible, is revealed, not invented. When God brought Israel to Sinai, he did not leave the manner of worship to Moses’ creativity or the people’s preferences: “See that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain” (Exo 25:9, 40). Moses was shown a heavenly original, and the tabernacle was built as its copy, an interpretation the New Testament itself confirms, teaching that the Levitical priests serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, precisely because Moses was commanded to make all things according to the pattern shown him (Heb 8:5). From its very institution, therefore, true worship on earth has been the earthly image of a worship already occurring in heaven: this is the meaning of the tabernacle and the Temple, with their divinely mandated altar and lampstand, incense and vestments, priesthood and sacred space, the cherubim woven into the veil (Exo 26:31) because cherubim surround the throne, the Ark as the footstool of the enthroned Lord (1Ch 28:2; Psa 99:1, 5). The Old Testament knows nothing of worship as human self-expression; it knows worship as heaven’s pattern kept on earth, “on earth as it is in heaven,” as we still pray.

That heavenly worship is not a metaphor; the prophets saw it. Isaiah saw the Lord enthroned in the temple, the seraphim crying “Holy, holy, holy,” the house filled with smoke, and his own lips purified by a burning coal from the altar (Isa 6:1–7), and the Church has never ceased to sing that seraphic hymn at every Liturgy, nor to see in the coal that touched the prophet’s lips the very image of Holy Communion, as the priest’s words at the chalice still declare. Ezekiel saw the chariot-throne, the four living creatures, and the glory of the Lord (Eze 1). St John, taken up “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s Day, saw the same worship in its Christian fullness: a throne, the living creatures and the elders, lamps of fire, a sea of glass, an altar, incense, “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Rev 5:8), antiphonal hymns, prostrations, the Amen and the Alleluia, and at the center “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). The book of Revelation is, among other things, the New Testament’s picture of the Divine Liturgy of heaven; and the Orthodox Christian who reads Rev 4–5 recognizes his own Sunday morning. Vestments, incense, chant, altar, and doxology are not later “ritualism” encrusted upon a simple gospel; they are what worship looks like wherever the veil is drawn back.

From this follows the deepest principle: Christians do not invent worship; they enter it. The Epistle to the Hebrews, in the most sustained teaching on worship in the New Testament, tells the baptized both what they have entered and with what disposition they must stand there. The Apostle first recalls the terror of the old worship at Sinai:

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched, or that burned with fire… to gloom, darkness, storm, the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words which made those who heard it beg that not one more word should be spoken to them! Indeed, they could not endure what was commanded, ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned’… so fearful was the appearance that Moses said, ‘I am terrified and trembling.’ (Heb 12:18–21)

If even the shadow-worship of the old covenant was so dreadful that Moses himself trembled, what has the Christian come to instead? Not to something less, but to something immeasurably greater:

Instead, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling which pleads better than Abel’s blood. (Heb 12:22–24)

This is not a description of heaven after death; it is a description of what the Church enters now, whenever she assembles. The Apostle immediately draws the liturgical conclusion, the very conclusion Orthodox worship embodies: because the reality is greater, the reverence must be greater, not less. “See that you do not refuse to listen to the one who speaks! For if they did not escape when they rejected the one who warned on the earth, we will certainly not escape if we turn away from the one who warns from heaven… Therefore, since we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be grateful and so offer divine service to God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:25, 28–29). Nothing could be further from the modern assumption that, grace having come, worship may now be casual: the inspired argument runs in exactly the opposite direction, Sinai’s thunder was the lesser thing and drew trembling; the heavenly Zion is the greater, and demands a deeper awe. The Liturgy takes this seriously and literally. “Let us lift up our hearts,” the priest summons, the ancient sursum corda, and the faithful ascend; the Cherubic Hymn declares that we “mystically represent the Cherubim” and bids us “lay aside all earthly cares” as we sing with them the thrice-holy hymn; the deacon cries “Let us stand well, let us stand with fear!” at the very threshold of the Anaphora, and the priest approaches the Holy Gifts as Moses approached the bush that burned. This is why nothing in Orthodox worship is arranged for entertainment, relevance, or the tastes of the age: one does not redecorate the throne room, and one does not saunter into a consuming fire. The congregation is not an audience, and the priest is not a performer; all together are participants, “with reverence and godly fear,” in a worship that was proceeding before they arrived and continues when they depart, the eternal worship of the Kingdom, into which the Church is admitted (see S070).

The catechumen should also understand the inner movement of the Divine Liturgy itself. Its heart is the Lord’s own command, “Do this in remembrance of me,” and the Apostle’s interpretation: “as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1Co 11:26). The Liturgy is therefore the remembrance (anamnesis) of the whole saving work of Christ, “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,” as the Anaphora proclaims, and its ancient shape gives a central place to the memory of his Passion and burial. At the Proskomedia the priest prepares the Lamb with the words of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Servant led to slaughter, piercing the bread as the soldier pierced his side; at the Great Entrance the Gifts are borne in solemn procession as the Lord’s body was borne to the tomb; and when they are laid upon the altar, the priest says over them the very troparion of Great Friday: “The noble Joseph, taking down your most pure Body from the tree, wrapped it in pure linen with sweet spices, and laid it in a new tomb.” The altar is the tomb; the antimension beneath the Gifts bears the icon of the burial; the veils are the grave-clothes. This symbolism of burial, developed by St Germanus of Constantinople and by Nicholas Cabasilas, is one patristic reading of the rite and not the whole of its meaning; the Liturgy is celebrated on the day of the Resurrection and is never a mournful drama. In the epiclesis and Communion, the tomb is discovered to be empty, the Bread received is the risen and living Christ, and the Church sings “We have seen the true Light.” The solemnity that strikes visitors as heavy is the solemnity of Golgotha and the myrrh-bearers’ procession; the joy that follows is the joy of Pascha; and no worship that omits the first can honestly arrive at the second.

Finally, the catechumen should know that this worship is not only biblical but continuously historical, the normal worship of Christians “in spirit and truth” (Joh 4:23–24). The Lord’s words to the Samaritan woman are sometimes quoted against liturgical worship, as though “spirit” meant informality and inwardness; but the Lord, who himself kept the appointed feasts, worshiped in the synagogue “as his custom was” (Luk 4:16), and sang the appointed psalms on the night of his betrayal (Mat 26:30), was contrasting the true worship of the Father in the Holy Spirit and in himself, who is the Truth, with worship bound to Gerizim or to the soon-to-perish Temple; the EOB renders his words precisely: true worshipers “will express adoration to the Father in spirit and truth.” The historical record is unbroken: the Didache already speaks of the eucharistic assembly and the Lord’s Day; St Justin Martyr, about the year 155, describes Sunday worship in Rome, the readings from the apostles and prophets, the homily, the common intercessions, the kiss of peace, the offering of bread and wine with a great prayer of thanksgiving, the people’s Amen, Communion carried by the deacons (St Justin Martyr, First Apology, 65–67), an order any Orthodox Christian recognizes as the skeleton of his own Liturgy; and the ancient Liturgy of St James of Jerusalem, elder sister of the Liturgies of St Basil and St John Chrysostom that the Church serves to this day, carries the same worship back to the church of the Lord’s own city. For as long as there are records, Christian worship has looked like this. When the envoys of Prince Vladimir stood in the Great Church of Constantinople and reported, “we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth,” they were not describing a performance that impressed them; they were describing exactly what this section has described, worship according to the pattern on the mountain, joined to the worship of heaven. The catechumen’s task is not to acquire a taste for it, but to learn to see what is actually happening; and then no other worship will seem sufficient.