The King of Glory Enters: A Journey through the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

 



It is a Friday evening during Great Lent. The church is muted, except for the rhythmic rush and jingle of the bells of the incenser as the deacon moves about the sanctuary. The cantor and people raise their voices in an opening hymn--a traditional Slavic Ruthenian chant, perhaps the heartbreaking "Now Do I Go to the Cross":

Now do I go to the Cross,

nowhere else shall I find You,

Jesus Lord, peace of my soul.

 

There I shall find the Mother of God,

sorrow and pain piercing her heart.

Sorrow now is all I feel.

 

The deacon strides out through the side of the icon screen, stands before the royal doors, and declares to the celebrant in the sanctuary, "Father, give the blessing!"

 

The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts has begun.

 

The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts--often referred to as "Presanctified Liturgy"--is a unique Lenten tradition among the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches. In form, it is essentially a Vespers service with the distribution of the Eucharist. Besides that, one important fact distinguishes it from a regular Divine Liturgy--it has no consecration. The reason, as the name of the service implies, is that the gifts of bread and wine are pre-sanctified--they have already been consecrated on the previous Sunday.

 

Roman Catholics should be familiar with this concept through their commemoration of Good Friday. Good Friday, in the Western Church, is an "a-liturgical" day--meaning it is not allowed to consecrate the Eucharist that day. But in the Eastern tradition, every weekday of Lent is considered a-liturgical. Thus, during the Great Fast, we celebrate Presanctified Liturgy with the already-consecrated Body and Blood every week--typically on Wednesdays and Fridays.

 

The service begins, as the normal Vespers service always does, with the chanting of Psalms. The words are utterly familiar, but the mournful Lenten melody lends them a special poignancy. Sorrow, joy, peace and longing strain forth in the flow of alternating verses. The Psalms finish with the singing of the Stichera, or propers for the day--liturgical poems often centering on a theme of Lenten struggle or repentance.

 

The service proceeds with the Hymn of the Evening, "O Joyful Light"--also a standard part of Vespers and one of the most ancient Christian texts. Traditionally, the church is dark or only partially lit up until this point; now, as we sing of the Light of Christ, the church is fully lit:

 

O Joyful Light of the holy glory of the Father Immortal,

the heavenly, holy blessed One, O Jesus Christ:

Now that we have seen the setting of the sun, and see the evening light,

we sing to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It is fitting at all times to raise a song of praise in measured melody to you,

O Son of God, the Giver of Life.

Therefore, the universe sings your glory.

 

Next come the Prokeimena--the equivalent of Responsorial Psalms--and the readings. Unless the service takes place during Holy Week or some other major feast day, the readings are always from the Old Testament--Genesis and Proverbs, Exodus and Job. These books encompass essential Lenten themes: returning to beginnings to discover who we are and ought to be; humility and desire to pursue wisdom; escape from sin; and the purpose of suffering and repentance.

 

After the readings, we chant the Solemn Evening Psalm: Let my prayer arise to you like incense, and the lifting up of my hands like an evening sacrifice. The people sing this refrain standing, then kneel as the priest chants each of his verses. The bodily gestures of repentance continue with the full prostrations performed during the reciting of the Prayer of St. Ephrem (see this post for the text of the prayer).

 

During a regular Divine Liturgy, the text sung after the readings is the Cherubic Hymn. As the clergy process around the church with the yet-unconsecrated gifts, we sing of the angels and of the mystical sacrifice in which we are about to participate. But in a Presanctified Liturgy, the bread and wine the clergy hold are already the Divine Body and Blood of Christ. Thus the text is slightly different. This, as the priest and deacon prepare in the sanctuary, is what we sing:

 

Now the powers of heaven are serving with us invisibly.

For behold the King of Glory enters.

They escort the mystical sacrifice, already accomplished.

 

When the clergy process out from the sanctuary--the priest holding up God and the deacon incensing Him--the church hushes. The people bend to the ground in a full prostration. In complete silence--the only noise being the slow tread of the clergy, and the jangle of the incenser--we adore Christ passing through our midst.

 

(To understand the full power of this moment, you have to understand the ethos of Eastern liturgies in general. Unlike in the Western Mass, there are few moments of silence and meditation during services. Literally everything besides the homily is sung, and the litanies, responses, and hymns follow one upon the other with hardly a pause. This fosters an atmosphere of holy exuberance and joy--a gorgeous and occasionally overwhelming experience, especially for newcomers! In contrast, quiet moments during liturgy, even accidental ones, are rare. Thus a period of prolonged, purposeful, and solemn silence--as during the Great Entrance of Presanctified Liturgy--is almost overwhelming. To close the eyes and touch the head to the cold floor and listen, in that breathless hush, to God walking by--I am no theologian, but in my own small experience, it is a pinnacle of love and existence.)

 

After the Great Entrance, the service moves fairly quickly towards Communion. The text of the Communion Hymn is the beautiful Psalm verse, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." And we do indeed taste and see. In the East, the Eucharist is received not in the separate forms of wine and an unleavened host, but combined--small pieces of leavened bread soaked in wine, dropped into the mouth by a spoon. On regular Sundays, the loaves of bread used are fresh, and soft wine-soaked pieces dissolve easily in the mouth. But for Presanctified Liturgy, the Body of Christ--being, after all, in the physical form of bread which has been sitting in the tabernacle since the previous Sunday--is, well, harder than usual. Hard enough to require chewing. There is nothing irreverent about this. Christ is our Nourishment, body and soul; why should He not come to us solid and physically filling, as well as spiritually saving?

 

After Communion the service concludes in a tone of solemn thankfulness and joy. In the Byzantine Ruthenian tradition, the short final hymn "Having Suffered" is sung three times, in English and Old Slavonic. Sometimes, during its passionate mournful phrases, the church is darkened again, leaving, once more, only the candles burning before the icon screen, in mystical darkness.

 

 

(For the extra-curious or musically inclined reader, below are some to videos I've hunted up, providing a sample of the music I've referenced in this blog post. For the full experience, of course, visit your nearest Eastern Catholic--or Orthodox!--church.)

 

Now Do I Go to the Cross ~ A slightly different version, melodically, from the hymn I'm familiar with, but with the same text and surging mournful spirit. Beautiful.

 

Let My Prayer Arise ~ A short clip from a liturgy celebrated in one of our own Byzantine Catholic Ruthenian parishes in the Midwest by our Bishop John Kudrick. The video shows the clergy in the sanctuary; you can see the congregation through the open royal doors in the icon screen. The video includes the recitation of the Prayer of St. Ephrem directly afterwards.

 

Let My Prayer Arise ~ A choral arrangement of the Solemn Evening Psalm by Russian composer Dmitry Bortniansky. A favorite of mine, and hauntingly performed in this recording.

 

 





The Arena of Virtues: Selections from Cheesefare Sunday

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

Yesterday, for Roman Catholics around the world, marked the official beginning of Lent. Ash Wednesday is a beautiful and solemn tradition in the West. But the Eastern lung of the Church offers its own unique set of services meditating on the beginning of (as we call it) the Great Fast. For us, the Fast began four days ago, on the evening of Cheesefare Sunday.

The name requires a bit of explanation. The Church, in her wisdom, realizes that the Fast has a tendency to sneak up on us all. So she lets us ease into the penitential season in stages--a sort of pre-preparation period. The Sunday Gospel readings for the weeks leading up to the beginning of the Fast features characters like Zaccheus and the Prodigal Son, who are called to repentance and reconciliation. The second-to-last Sunday before Lent is called Meatfare Sunday--for the very simple reason that it's the day we "say farewell" to eating meats until after Pascha. Similarly, the Sunday after that is labeled Cheesefare Sunday--the final day we can indulge in dairy products.

However, the focus of the liturgical prayers on Cheesefare Sunday is anything but food. Instead, the prayers for Vespers and Matins commemorate the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Through the plethora of hymns we enter into the character of Adam, weeping "over the memory of what used to be". The these verses from Ode 4 the Matins Canon bemoan the sorrow of separation from the Creator:

I was filled with honors when I was with you in Eden, O Master. Woe is me! How was I deceived by the envy of the Devil and rejected far from your face?

 

Choirs of angels, pour out your tears for me, and also you beauties of Paradise, the magnificent trees; for I was led astray by my misfortune and chased far away from God.

 

O pleasant meadows, O sweetness of Paradise, you trees planted by God, let your leaves, as so many eyes, pour out tears for my nakedness and my estrangement from the glory of God.

 

The poetry brims with the tone of a funeral dirge, and forces us to confront our own state of sin. But the Church hardly leaves us to drown in despair. By the second half of Matins, the verses during the Psalms of Praise offer a stern but joyful encouragement for the spiritual struggle to come:

 

The arena of virtues is now open!

Let all who wish to begin training now enter!

Prepare yourselves for the struggle of the Fast;

Those who strive valiantly shall receive the crown!

Let us put on the armor of the Cross to combat the Enemy,

Taking faith as our unshakable rampart.

Let us put on prayer as our breastplate,

And charity as our helmet.

As our sword, let us use fasting, for it cuts out all evil from our hearts.

Those who do this shall truly receive the crown

From the hands of Christ, the almighty One, on the day of judgement.

 

(Because I am an incurable romantic, that particular verse has always held a special place in my heart. Being patient and charitable and not taking that extra helping of breakfast cereal become more endurable when viewed in terms of an epic quest.)

 

The most distinctive service of Cheesefare Sunday--Forgiveness Vespers--takes place after the Divine Liturgy. (Although it's technically an evening service, many parishes, for the sake of convenience, celebrate it directly after the morning Liturgy.) Forgiveness Vespers marks the official beginning of the Fast. During the service, the altar cloths and clergy vestments are changed from gold to the penitential red. The ordinary melodies for the psalms and litanies switch over to the plaintive Lenten tones. Finally, we recite the signature prayer of the Great Fast--the Prayer of St. Ephrem--complete with full-length prostrations after each stanza:

 

The Prayer of St. Ephrem

 

Lord and Master of my life,

spare me from the spirit of indifference, despair,

lust for power, and idle chatter. (Prostration)

 

Instead, bestow on me, your servant,

the spirit of integrity, humility,

patience, and love. (Prostration)

 

Yes, O Lord and King,

let me see my own sins

and not judge my brothers and sisters;

for you are blessed forever and ever. Amen. (Prostration)

 

The beautiful words combined with the physical action of humility make for an unforgettable experience of the solemnity of the season.

 

Finally, the service concludes with the profound Ceremony of Mutual Forgiveness. In it, the celebrant and the congregation ask each other for forgiveness, and then each person comes forward to embrace and ask forgiveness of every other individual. It's a moving tradition, which forces us to step out of our personal shells and commit to the Fast as a community. All the while, the cantor quietly intones the Canon for Resurrection Matins--giving us a tiny glimpse of our Lenten goal:

 

Let us cleanse our senses

that we may see the risen Christ

in the glory of his resurrection

and clearly hear him greeting us:

"Rejoice!" as we sing the hymn of victory.

Christ is risen from the dead!

 

(But, shhh! Not quite yet!)

 

Indeed, let us cleanse our senses, body, mind, and soul. A blessed Great Fast to you all!



Four Advent Candles...Plus Two More

If a Roman Catholic walked into our dining room at dinnertime during the last week before Christmas, he might be a bit perplexed. Yes, there would be the familiar Advent wreath with its four candles...but there'd also be two additional candles lit, making a mysterious total of six. What's with the extra candles?! he might wonder.

My father was a practicing Roman Catholic for the first 40 years of his life. Then, when I was about 4, he discovered the Byzantine Catholic Church. Feeling God's call, our whole family switched to the Eastern rite. But with so many beloved Advent practices left over from our Western heritage, our preparation for Christmas became a unique amalgamation of traditions.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, the Eastern Church's Philip's Fast starts two weeks before the West's Advent. Thus our family keeps the Advent wreath, but adds two candles for the two extra weeks. At meals we sing Byzantine hymns during the beginning of the fast, but during the final week carol "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". We set up our Western-style nativity scene and tree, and then on Christmas Eve sit down to a traditional Slavic meal of sauerkraut and mushroom soup.

Personally, I love the hodgepodge. We breathe with both lungs of the Church and share the best of two worlds. Today--since I'm guessing most of my readers are more familiar with the Western side of things--I'd like to share a bit of Byzantine hymnography for this final week before Christmas.

Like Advent, the Eastern Philip's Fast is a time of preparation. Through our hymns, we remind ourselves of the miracle about to take place. Just read this text, from the prefestive troparion of the Nativity:

Bethlehem, make ready,

Eden has been opened for all.

Ephrathah, prepare yourself,

For the Tree of Life has blossomed from the Virgin in the cave.

Her womb has become a spiritual paradise

In which divinity was planted.

If we partake of it,

We shall live and not die like Adam.

Christ is born to raise up the likeness that had fallen.

 

In a single hymn, we cover the redemption of the old Adam, the prophecies about Bethlehem and Ephrathah, the Incarnation, and even a hint of the Resurrection at the very end. The prefestive troparion clearly places Christmas in the wondrous context of all salvation history.

 

This is also the theme of the Emmanuel Moleben, a short prayer service that can be said during Philip's Fast. Near the end of the service, the priest recites a long "kneeling prayer" (so called because it's one of the few occasions during the year when Byzantines actually kneel!). It too recounts the crucial place Christmas holds in the true epic of our salvation (emphasis added):

 

O God and Father, the Almighty One, you created the human race in your image and likeness, and when we fell through disobedience, you promised to send a Savior. When the fullness of time had come, your favor rested on your only-begotten Son, and he was born of the Virgin Mary. Thus, what Isaiah the prophet foretold was fulfilled: "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call him Emmanuel, which means 'God with us.'" His birth filled all creation with light; he gave us the baptism of repentance, and restored our ancient dignity. Now most compassionate Lord, you bring us to these honored days of the Christmas Fast that we may do battle with the desires of the flesh and draw strength from the hope of resurrection. Receive us, then, as penitents and forgive our wrongdoing, those done knowingly and unknowingly, through malice and through weakness. And may our prayers our fasting, and our works of mercy rise up before you as incense, as sweet spiritual fragrance, that in the company with the Magi and the shepherds we too, with pure hearts, may be found worthy to bow down before the Nativity of Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. To him, together with you and your all-holy Spirit, belong glory, honor, and worship, now and ever and forever. Amen.

 

Christmas is both an arrival and a turning-point, a culmination and a beginning. The long-promised Savior is now visible to the world, but His mission is only just begun. As for us, Eastern and Western Catholics alike, the Christmas Fast is not quite over. Keep battling, soldiers! The King is almost here.



The Cross In All Things

This past Sunday the Church celebrated the glorious feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. The story behind the feastday is an extraordinary one: on the fourteenth of September we commemorate the day St. Helen, mother of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great, discovered the True Cross on which Jesus Christ gave His life for the world.

I will not attempt today to plunge the profundities that such a feast holds. So many wiser and more beautiful things have been said about the Cross than I could ever write. I simply want to share a few tidbits of this literature on the Cross that have recently caught my attention.

First, a hymn from Vespers before the feast from the Eastern tradition. I love our prayers for Vespers and Matins on holy days. They dive into poetic and theological raptures on the feast, and we bring them to life again every year with voice and melody. Through these prayers we are truly immersed in the mysterious presence of the feast:

O Cross, you are the radiant sign among the stars.
In prophecy you have revealed the sign of victory to the godly king;
And when his mother Helena found you,
She displayed you in the sight of all the world.
Today the choirs of the faithful shout aloud as they raise you on high:
Enlighten us by your brightness, O life-giving and all-venerable Cross.
Make us holy by your might;
Strengthen us by your exaltation,
For you are raised up against our enemies.

Today the choirs shout; today make us holy. The emphasis on the present shifts the focus from a mere commemoration of the feast, to an actual participation in it. It reminds us that we are Christians today and galvanizes us to live as such.

Moving westward, I take my second piece of literature from the Elizabethan poet John Donne.



Although a contemporary of Shakespeare, Donne was not half as famous, probably because his poetry is so intellectually rigorous and not all easy to understand. Nonetheless he wrote some very profound and beautiful lyrics, particularly religious poems. His Holy Sonnets are deservedly called gems and I may well write on them in more detail in the future. But today I draw attention to a few lines from a longer poem that he wrote called, simply, "The Cross":

Who can deny me power and liberty
To stretch mine arms and mine own cross to be?
Swim, and at every stroke thou art thy cross;
The mast and yard make one, where seas do toss.
Look down, thou spiest out crosses in small things;
Look up thou see'st birds raised on the crossed wings;
All the globe's frame, and spheres, is nothing else
But the meridians crossing parallels.
("The Cross", lines 17-24)

In other words, we may as well embrace the cross--because we can hardly avoid it! "All the globe's frame" reflects the astounding and glorious sacrifice of our Creator.

May the Holy Cross protect and sanctify all of us this week in our minds and hearts.



Pillars of the Church: The Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

 

 

Occasionally on this blog I must share some of the "literature" of the Eastern Catholic tradition. The ancient texts that we sing for great feast days are poetic, scripture-steeped reflections on the theology of the feast, often written by saints. The services of Vespers and Matins are particularly chock-full of them. Beautiful imagery sung to ancient melodies in two- or three-part harmony, for the better part of an hour...a true immersion in the joy and solemnity of the day.

 

Peter and Paul is one of the bigger saints' feasts in the Byzantine Church, if the number of hymns for the services are anything to go by. As I sit here writing I am having a terrible time choosing just one to share. The Church has so much to say about these greatest of apostles! But if I must...here is a hymn from the Litija (pronounced lit-YAH), a portion near the end of Vespers celebrated on particularly important feasts:

 

The wisdom of God and the Word who is co-eternal with the Father

Has truly foretold in the Gospel, O all-praise-worthy Apostles,

That you are the two most fruitful vines;

For you bore in your branches the ripe and fruitful cluster

From which we believers are now nourished

And whose taste brings us both sweetness and delight.

Therefore, O Peter, rock of faith, and Paul, pride of the universe,

Strengthen the flock that became yours through your teachings.

 

I love the metaphor of Word of God being nourishing like wine. And now I can't help myself; here's another hymn from Vespers focusing in particular on St. Paul:

 

O glorious apostle Paul,

Who can describe your bondage and sorrow in the cities,

Your tribulations and hardships,

Your vigils and sufferings?

You have suffered hunger, thirst, and cold,

Nakedness and scourging with rods,

The crossing of wilderness, shipwreck and stonings.

You have both angelic and human character,

Bearing all with the help of Christ who strengthened you,

So that you might gain the world for Christ, your Lord.

We, who celebrate your memory in faith,

Beseech you to intercede for the salvation of our souls.

 

I have long been specially attracted by St. Paul; who wouldn't be, really? His is a story comparable to the most thrilling adventure novels, complete with close escapes, shipwrecks, and encounters with kings (although Paul usually shows up much better than the royalty). And such a protagonist, too! His zeal, wisdom, humor and faith shine out in every line of his letters. Who can forget his hearty boasting of his weaknesses? Or his awestruck words on beings "snatched up to the third heaven"? Or his unforgettable plea to the Corinthians, "I beg you, therefore, be imitators of me!"

 

I would if I could. As it is I've adopted him as my patron saint when it comes to my writing, though I admit I could be a lot more consistent in prayer. I tend to only ask for intercession when sitting down to a scene I've been dreading (and procrastinating) for days. But Paul's come through for me most of the time nonetheless!

 

The feast of Sts. Peter and Paul is one of the Church's major summer celebrations, and a special one to me as a writer. They have given such richness and wisdom to our Faith. Let us all try, as best we can, to be imitators of both of them--holy in life and insightful in word.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us!

 



Sorrowful Wonder and Joyful Impatience: Jerusalem Matins





One of my favorite services of the Church year in the Byzantine tradition is Holy Saturday morning, Jerusalem Matins. It's two hours long and is full of haunting melodies and beautiful texts that are never sung any other time. The highlight of the service is the three Stations, a series of short hymns sung in between verses of Psalm 118. The first theme, in these lines from the First Station, is the sheer strangeness of God in a grave:

In a grave they laid you, O my Life and my Christ,
yet the Lord of Death has been destroyed by your death,
and from you, the world now drinks rich streams of life.

Lo! how fair his beauty! Never was man so fair!
but how strangely death has changed that face that we knew
though all nature owes her beauty to him.

O my sweet Lord Jesus, my Salvation, my Light,
how are you by a grave and by its darkness hid?
How unspeakable the mystery of your love!

That last line--how unspeakable is His love--has been a major theme in my own reflections this Holy Week. The familiarity of the salvation story, I think, allows many of us, myself included, to take the whole thing for granted far too often. Why does God love us? I will not attempt to answer the question myself; but the simple fact of God's love still stands, like the "rich streams of life", incredible and alive and waiting to be drunk.

The second theme of the stations is the grief of the Virgin Mother:

When the Ewe that bore him saw them slaying her Lamb,
tossed by swelling waves of pain she sobbed for her woe,
and moved all the flock to join her bitter cries:

"Who will give me water for the tears I must weep,"
so the Maiden wed to God cried out in loud lament,
"that for my sweet Jesus I might rightly mourn?"

And from the Third Station:

"O my precious Springtime!
O my Son beloved,
O whither fades your beauty?"

This is some of the most emotional hymnity in the Byzantine Ruthenian tradition, at least in my experience. That last verse I especially love--"O my precious Springtime!" Spring has gone into the grave; winter has come instead of summer.

But by the middle of the Third Station we are already talking about the Resurrection again:

Rise, O Lord of mercy,
raising us up also
who languish deep in Hades.

"Rise, O life-bestower!"
said the one who bore you,
your grief-torn weeping Mother.

Hasten with your rising
and release from sorrow
the spotless Maid who bore you.

With typical Byzantine enthusiasm, we actually beg Christ to hurry up and rise from the dead so we can start celebrating!

Jerusalem Matins is a unique and gorgeous service and a wonderful meditation for the end of Holy Week. I hope everyone has a beautiful Holy Saturday and a glorious Pascha!

 

Christ is Risen (almost)!