The Entrance with the Gospel

The Entrance with the Gospel recalls ancient times, when the divine Scriptures were kept outside and solemnly carried into the temple for the reading.

Today, the Scriptures normally rest upon the holy table, which gives the procession a symbolic and didactic dimension: at the Entrance, Christians should remember the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, who appeared in the fullness of time to preach the Gospel; and while the Gospel is read, we should attend with the same reverence as if we saw and heard Jesus Christ himself.

The Divine Liturgy is not a sequence of ceremonies but a single arc, a journey with a beginning, a turning point, and a summit, and it begins where every creature must begin: below. In its opening movement we stand simply as creatures and as sinners before the glory of God: the Great Litany begs peace “from above”; the antiphons place on our lips the psalms of creation’s praise, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name” (Psa 103:1), and the Beatitudes, the charter of a Kingdom we have not yet merited. The paradigm of this posture is the vision of Isaiah: the Lord high and lifted up, the temple filled with smoke, the seraphim crying “Holy, holy, holy,” and the prophet undone, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isa 6:1–5; see Q092, Q383). This is where the Liturgy locates us at its start: in the awe of the creature and the woe of the sinner, before the King (see On the heavenly worship; and the Study on the Cycles of Worship).

Into this awe breaks the Little Entrance. The doors open, and the deacon or priest comes forth bearing aloft the Book of the Gospels, a lighted candle carried before it, and cries: “Wisdom! Arise!”, stand upright, for the King himself comes. The Gospel book is no mere text: the Church adorns it like an icon, enthrones it upon the holy table, censes and kisses it, because it is the icon of Christ the Word himself; and its entrance is his entrance. Historically, this procession was once the actual beginning of the Liturgy, clergy and people entering the church together behind the Gospel; mystically, the Fathers see in it the coming of the Son of God into the world and his going forth to preach: “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled! The Kingdom of God is at hand’” (Mrk 1:14–15; see Q196). The candle borne before the Book is the Forerunner, “the burning and shining lamp” who goes before the Light (Joh 5:35; 1:6–9); and the priest’s entrance prayer asks that angels enter with us, “serving with us and glorifying”, for at this moment the two liturgies, of earth and of heaven, become one procession. The people answer with the only fitting response to an arriving King: “Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ.”

Here is the turning point of the arc, for the Entrance proclaims that the awesome holiness before which we stood undone has moved toward us, and moved toward us as good news. So it was in history: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isa 52:7; Rom 10:15; see Q046, Q307); “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isa 9:2; see Q167), the very prophecy the Evangelist cites at the moment Christ began to preach (Mat 4:16–17; see Q167); and the first announcement of the Gospel was made in precisely these terms: “Behold, I bring you Good News of great joy which will be for all the people” (Luk 2:10; see Q193, Q542). The entrance of the Gospel into the world was not the arrival of a heavier law upon frightened creatures, but the arrival of joy.

So it was, and is, in every believer’s own life. For each of us there was a day, remembered or unremembered, when the good news first arrived at our own door. The Little Entrance renews that arrival at every Liturgy: the Gospel does not wait for us upon the altar but comes out through the holy doors into the midst of the people, as Christ came out to Galilee, as the news once came out to us, and we, who a moment before were crying to God from below, find that God has crossed the distance himself, carrying joy.

The same movement, from holy fear to given joy, will be consummated at the arc’s summit, when the true and living Coal, the Body and Blood of the Lord, is brought forth through the same doors and touches our own lips from the tongs of the altar, of which Isaiah’s seraph was the figure (Isa 6:6–7). The Liturgy begins with creatures trembling before the Holy One; it turns on the entrance of his good news; it ends with the Holy One himself upon our lips. That is the arc, and the Little Entrance is the moment it bends toward us.