This post consists of the outline of a talk given at Emmanuel Orthodox Catholic Church (Western Rite) in Warren, MA. The parish is a member of the Western Rite Deanery of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America. This theme was also the topic of a workshop on Liturgy & Music given by this writer at the Blessed Virgin Mary of Czestochowa Polish National Catholic Church, Latham, NY. Material for these presentations was gleaned primarily from the writings of Fr. Alexander Schmemann and His Grace Bishop Kallistos Ware.

The Church as life and grace is realized through her worship.

1. 1.      LEITURGIA – is the corporate action, work, (offering) of the body of believers, in which all participate, and not just “attend”.
2. 2.      Corporate because we realize – in the unity of the Faith – the full reality of the Church – the presence of Christ.
3. 3.      Personal because the reality is conveyed to the individual believer, given for personal edification and growth in grace
4. 4.      In WORSHIP – the believer is both an active builder and a beneficiary of the treasury – the Divine Gift – the full life of Christ in His Body.

To study the Liturgy is to be to become aware how everything in the Liturgy concerns us as the Church of God, makes US the Body of Christ, and concerns ME as a member of that body.

1. 1.      The role of this study is to manifest how through participation in this “Corporate work” – the official worship of the Church – we become witnesses to Christ in our private and public lives. – There is no such thing as a compartmentalization of the Christian life – we become Christians in the fullest sense of the word.
2. 2.      This leads to an assimilation of Christian doctrine into our daily life and the practice of them.

Liturgy consists of prayers, readings, singing, and rites.

1. 1.      It has an order, a structure
2. 2.      It is like a building in which every single part is functional
3. 3.      To understand its function one must know and understand the whole.
4. 4.      Some people KNOW the services – ceremonial, music, rubrics, etc. yet fail to understand their meaning
5. 5.      This leads to blind observance, meaningless prescriptions – incompatible with Christ’s command to “worship in spirit and in truth”
6. 6.      Worship requires a spiritual and an intellectual effort for it to be complete and understandable – MIND IN THE HEART – we’ll return to this.
7. 7.      Rubrics, prescriptions, regulations are doors which lead us into the new life in Christ, not an end in themselves.

Liturgy should be “solemn” – beautiful”

1. 1.      But solemnity and beauty are not ends in themselves.
2. 2.      Beware of false beauty, false solemnity which disconnects them from their role in worship
3. 3.      Worship must be spiritual.
4. 4.      Pompous ceremonial, rigid rubricism, personal showmanship, can very well be manifestations of human pride, desire for self-satisfaction,

True worship needs humility, reverence, fear of God, the awareness of being unworthy, yet the freedom to STAND IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD in Spirit and in Truth.

THE CENTER-PIECE

St. Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894):  a concise yet far-seeing definition of worship:

The principal thing is to stand before God with mind in the heart, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of our lives.

1. TO STAND BEFORE GOD

The deepest and most powerful of all prayers is to wait upon God in silence – not necessarily to ask God for something, not necessarily to employ words, – but if we do these things our underlying attitude must be to “stand before God.”

1. Worship is an encounter – a meeting between persons – not to arouse emotions, or produce appropriate moral attitudes – or even to be intellectually stimulated – but to enter into a personal relationship with the Triune God – a friend talking with a friend.

St. Symeon the New Theologian ((949-1022) –

“We speak with God, and with boldness we stand before the face of Him who dwells in light unapproachable.”

1. There are two poles of Christian worship – two contrasting aspects of their personal relationship. God dwells in unapproachable light but we human mortals are able to draw near to Him with boldness and to speak to Him. He is the “Wholly Other” – but at the same time the God of personal love – every where present and filling all things.
2. We stand before Him conscious of the nearness yet also the otherness of the Eternal. The worshipper feels both mercy and judgment – both the goodness of God and His severity – we feel and know both assurance and awe – we are placed between hope and fear. – “We are deeply sensible of the mystery of the Transcendent, yet so childlike in its confident approach.” (EH)
3. In our liturgical texts, especially in Eastern Orthodox Worship we hear phrases like – hope and fear, confidence and awe. The Holy Gifts are “life-giving and terrible mysteries” – with the fear of God, with faith and love, draw near.
4. Rejoicing yet at the same time – trembling – our worship should be marked by a sense of reverence and compunction (anxiety arising from an awareness of guilt). In our worship we are both slaves before the Throne of the King of Heaven AND children who are happy to be in their Father’s house. – We are conscious of two things – joy and consolation AND trembling, fear, and mourning.  These feelings should simultaneously characterize our worship if we are to stand aright in the Divine presence.

WITH MIND IN THE HEART

1. 1.      St. Theophan uses these two words in the true Orthodox tradition – very different from the sense that we use them in our contemporary society. MIND or intellect (nous in Greek) is not only the reasoning brain, but also the power of apprehending religious truth through direct insight and contemplative vision. We don’t deny the ability to reason or repress it – but it is not the most important faculty we possess.
2. 2.      Likewise we have to be careful in our use of the word “heart” when thinking of Worship.  HEART (kardia in Greek) has to be understood in the Semitic and Biblical way – not just emotions and affections – but the center of our whole personhood – the deep self, the seat of wisdom and understanding, the place where our moral decisions are made, the inner shrine in which we experience Divine Grace, the indwelling presence of the holy Trinity.
3. 3.      So to speak of worshipping God with the mind in the heart is to worship Him with the totality of the human personhood. We don’t reject the rational faculties – we are as St. Clement of Alexandria once said, logical sheep – and our emotions are not excluded from our worship for they too are part of our personhood. Reason, emotions and affections are too combined with all the layers of our personality, and integrated into a living unity. Our worship is to be all embracing.
4. 4.      We stand before God with the conscious mind, and with all the aspects of our inner self: our instinctive feelings, our aesthetic sense, with the faculty of intuitive understanding, with direct spiritual awareness. All these have a part to play in our prayer. And when we do this, the flesh is transformed, it is exalted with the soul, – and we become the possession and dwelling place of God. (St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359)
5. 5.      And how do we do this – with words, music, the splendor of the vestments, icons, through sacred space, symbolic gestures such as the Sign of the Cross, bowing, kneeling, through the incense, candles, through the signs of our daily life : water, wine, bread, oil, fire. All of these are rich with beauty and symbolism.
6. 6.      Practically speaking, we could probably say we don’t need them – and many Christians do just this; odor destroying sprays instead of incense, neon lighting instead of candles, etc. But the human being is not simply a pragmatic and utilitarian animal – despite how much modern society tries to make him so. As we look more deeply into human nature we quickly appreciate how much we need this “useless” beauty.
7. 7.     Fr. Alexander Schmemann rightly said: The Liturgy is before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the Risen Lord and to enter with Him into the Bridal Chamber. And it is this joy of expectation, and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole “beauty” of the Liturgy, which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional,” or “useful.” And when, expecting we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table, and decorate the table with candles and flowers, we do al this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is heaven on earth, according to our Orthodox tradition: it is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world. In our adult, serious piety, we ask for definitions and justifications, and they are rooted in fear. Fear of corruption and deviation, “pagan influences,” whatnot. “But he that fears is not made perfect in love.” (I John 4:18) As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will “represent” it and signify it, in art and beauty. And the celebrant of the “sacrament of joy” will appear in a beautiful chasuble, because he is vested in the glory of the Kingdom, because even in the form of man God appears in glory. In the Eucharist we are standing in the presence of Christ, and like Moses before God, we are to be covered with his glory.” 

1. 8.      Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great 19^th Century writer, philosopher once said, “Beauty will save the world.” And the primary function of worship is to make manifest the saving power of this divine beauty. – (Story of the search for a faith by Vladimir of Kiev).
2. 9.      To pray and to worship is to perceive the spiritual beauty of the heavenly Kingdom; to express that beauty alike through words, through poetry and music, through art and symbolic acts, and through our whole lives. It is in this way that we extend and spread the Divine beauty in the world around us, transforming and transfiguring the fallen creation.

UNCEASINGLY DAY AND NIGHT

1. We are to “pray without ceasing.” (I Thess. 5:17) – Prayer and worship is not just one activity among others. It is the activity of our entire existence. Everything we do is done in God’s sight. We don’t “stand before God” at specific times, on certain days, or for certain occasions.  We should try – we are called to make every effort – to make our whole being into a continuing act of worship, an uninterrupted doxology, and unending LITURGY.
2. Nothing in our life is “secular”. Father Schmemann says: “A Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, finds Christ, and rejoices in Him.” To worship is to see God in everything, to encompass (enclose, include, envelop) the whole world and to offer it back to God – and this is what we do in the Liturgy.
3. Prayer and worship is not something that we do or say, but something that we are. St. Gregory Nazianzus puts it this way. “Remember God more often than you breathe.” Prayer is more essential to us than the rhythm of our breathing, or the beating of our heart. We were created to pray. It is not enough to say our prayers: we must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. It is not enough to celebrate LITURGY – we must be the Liturgy. In all of our actions we must be a living Liturgy – day and night – unceasingly.