Eucharist

Actions of Reverence at the Eucharist and the Design of the Table

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Christians in many worshiping traditions use a variety of ritual actions to indicate their reverence for the worship of God and participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist. This article explains what these actions of reverence look like and how the architectural design of the sacramental symbols can enhance their meaning.

We were well trained from our earliest childhood and had been so for countless generations. When we entered God’s House, after having made the sign of the cross with holy water, we genuflected toward the tabernacle (on or above the main altar) and then entered a pew where we knelt in prayer. In many cases, the ritual had become perfunctory, but we knew the etiquette of entrance into God’s presence. Whether coming into church for private prayer or Mass, we knew how to get started. We knew that the genuflection was a special mark of honor and greeting to Christ sacramentally present in the tabernacle.

Things have changed. Now Roman Catholics entering new and/or renovated worship spaces seem at a loss as they perceive that the tabernacle, the central focus of liturgical etiquette in the experience of Catholics more than 30 years old, has been relocated within or outside the main worship space. The altar, with the ambo and presider’s chair, has replaced the tabernacle as the visual center of the worship space. Rarely do we see, however, a new etiquette of entrance consonant with this rearrangement. It would seem that the sacramental presence of Christ in the tabernacle was so central to Catholic piety that its absence causes ritual confusion.

The confusion is a testimony to the loss of an ancient element of popular Catholic spirituality—devotion to the altar. The restoration of the altar to its former architectural prominence is not an exercise in archaeology. It is an attempt to give physical expression to the centrality of eucharistic celebration in our common life. The altar is not itself the center but is one of the elements which makes the eucharistic act possible.

The reformed Roman Sacramentary bears witness to that more ancient reverence for the altar which was once so integral to the piety of all the baptized. The Sacramentary directs the presider at the Eucharist to reverence the altar as part of the introductory rite. This the priest does by first bowing before the altar, then approaching it and kissing it. He also has the option of incensing the Holy Table. This is an etiquette of greeting. The Table of the Lord is perceived to be a symbol of Christ who is himself altar, victim and priest, table of fellowship, food, and drink, host and fellow guest.

Just as the etiquette of the dinner party continues through the event and does not come to end with the rituals of entry and greeting, so the ritual directives of the Roman rite reveal “good manners” which bear witness to a deep altar spirituality. Whatever is placed on the Lord’s Table is set aside exclusively for God’s service. The Scriptures may be placed there until borne in honor to the ambo for the liturgy of the Word. During the preparation of the gifts, the deacon assists the priest in setting upon the altar in clarity and simplicity the bread and wine over which the eucharistic prayer shall be proclaimed. The text of that prayer is the only object to be placed on the altar with the bread and wine.

What about an altar etiquette for all the baptized? In fact, the presider models manners for all the congregation. Just as we reverence Christ present in the tabernacle, so the tradition calls us to reverence Christ’s Table, the locus of the eucharistic place of identification between Christ’s act of self-offering and our daily Christian service.

Look at the altar. Bow deeply and deliberately to it before taking your place in the congregation. This is an act of attending to the presence of the One who has called us together to hear his Word and share his flesh and blood. It is good liturgical manners. It is a way for the whole person (body and spirit) to enter into contemplative prayer.

The ritual etiquette elaborates a spirituality:

  • This Table is honored by being allowed to stand free and unencumbered. Allowing space is an act of hospitality. The altar is to be allowed its space so that it may be an instrument of liturgical hospitality for the community.
  • This Table is honored by being in harmony with the other appointments which enable our worship. If sacraments are “visible words,” then the altar must allow the table of God’s Word, the ambo, its space and not be out of balance or in conflict with it or the presider’s chair. Much less should the size, shape, or visual impact of the Lord’s Table ever dwarf the presider and/or other ministers. The altar, like good ritual music, serves the church’s ritual prayer; it does not draw undue attention to itself.
  • This Table is honored by the vesting which celebrates its crucial role in our worship. Nothing cheap or poorly crafted should adorn it. Altar cloths are not foundation fabrics for words or theme statements. Altar cloths are vesture as much as the chasuble and alb.
  • This Table is honored by keeping it free of anything and everything which is not the focus of eucharistic prayer. It is no longer a shelf for the cross and candles, much less for flowers, statues, reliquaries, missalettes, songbooks, homily notes, parish announcements, mass intentions, or the list of deceased to be prayed for during the month of November. It is certainly not the repository for pumpkins (Halloween or Thanksgiving), toys (Christmas), rings (high school celebrations), or diplomas (graduation ceremonies at any and all levels). A good rule of thumb is: if it is placed on the altar, it is consumed in the celebration and reserved for the sick (the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood), a constituent of and reserved for liturgical celebration (vessels and books), or is placed in archives of religious communities (profession charters). Anything else belongs somewhere else.

The Table of the Lord, like our dining room and kitchen tables, is a bearer of memories. To this Table Christians bring their tears and their joys, their dying and rising with Christ. As such a vessel of individual and collective memory, it is an object worthy of contemplation as much as any icon or statue. Indeed, the more we see our lives joined to the ongoing paschal offering of Christ, the more we will see the altar as a symbol of that great communion. In time the altar becomes a partner in our dialogue of prayer. The Byzantine tradition admirably sums up this rigorous sort of devotion to the altar when it directs the priest to bid farewell to the altar as he is about to leave the sanctuary at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy:

Remain in peace, holy altar of the Lord, for I do not know whether I shall return to you or not. May the Lord make me worthy of the vision of you in the assembly of the first born in heaven. In this covenant I trust.

Remain in peace, holy and propitiatory altar. May the holy body and the propitiatory blood which I have received from you be for me for the pardon of offences and the forgiveness of sins and for a confident face before the dread judgment seat of our Lord and God for ever.

Remain in peace, holy altar, table of life, and beg for me from our Lord Jesus Christ that I may not cease to remember you henceforth and for ever.

Jewish Storytelling

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Christian storytelling is rooted in the ancient Jewish tradition of telling stories. In telling the story, its reality and power are made present to the hearers, so that by entering into the story they experience its significance and power to shape their perspectives and the living out of their own stories of faith.

The Old Testament Background of Jewish Storytelling

Jews have always loved a good story. The Old Testament itself embraces hundreds of stories of every kind, and, almost without exception, they are told well. Plots are carefully worked out, there are surprises and clever turns, there is a relish for description and for fine points of psychology and motivation.

The story of stories was the Exodus, Yahweh’s liberation of Israel from Egypt. Many books of the Old Testament (and the New Testament, for that matter) recount or allude to this central event in Israel’s constitution and self-understanding. The rescue from Egypt and the crossing of the Sea was the great saving act of God that made Israel a people. It was an event through which all subsequent acts of Yahweh would be understood and reflected on, and it would affect Israel’s own response to God as his covenanted people.

The story of the Exodus and what Israel’s response to such salvation should be was to be repeated from generation to generation with loving fidelity. No detail of the story was to be lost. “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them” (Deut. 4:9). “In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees, and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?’ tell him: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes, the Lord sent miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household’ ” (Deut. 6:20–22).

The Role of Anamnesis: The Remembered Story

Deuteronomy: A Biblical Paradigm of the Remembered Story. This retelling of the story constitutes one feature of anamnesis (Hebrew: zikkaron, “remembering”). There are many elements to anamnesis. The Exodus was not conceived of as only a past event. It was somehow an everlasting event that continued to operate in Israel’s history, and each succeeding generation was called on to “witness” for itself this event as a living reality.

The book of Deuteronomy is the best Old Testament example of this reality. In an atmosphere of growing despair, the Deuteronomist preached reform and renewal to the people. The book says, in effect, that the covenant made in Sinai with Yahweh after the passage through the Sea never really took hold, that the promises of the covenant had not been fulfilled by Israel. Instead of asking the people to return to remembrance of the Exodus and to the fidelity that should have sprung from that experience of Yahweh, the author brings his hearers directly into the events themselves, saying that it is now happening in their midst and that they must respond to an activity of God that is present, not past. The Deuteronomist takes his listeners up Mount Nebo in Moab, on the border of Canaan, side by side with Moses, looking down into the Promised Land and demanding a response.

The words he puts into the mouth of Moses are not necessarily meant to record Moses’ preaching to the Hebrews of old. They are his own preaching to these people about their own lives, and he means to strike a response deep in their hearts to stories that he and his people really believed were the words of Moses. When the Deuteronomist has Moses speak to his people about being eyewitnesses to the Exodus, he also means for the people of his own time to see themselves as eyewitnesses of, and participants in, this saving event, since for him the redeeming power of Yahweh in the Exodus remains a present and urgent reality (Deut. 11:2–5, 7).

Present and Future Reality of the Remembered Story. Part of anamnesis, then, is not just a recollection of the past, but a drawing of past events into the present as still effective. As Johannes Betz puts it, “Anamnesis [in the biblical sense] means not only the subjective representation of something in the consciousness as an act of the remembering mind. It is also the objective effectiveness and presence of one reality in another, especially the effectiveness and presence of the salvific actions of God” (“Eucharist I,” Sacramentum Mundi [New York: Herder & Herder, 1968], 2:264).

One sees something similar in Joshua 24. When Joshua meets the Hebrews in Shechem who had not been in captivity in Egypt, nor experienced the Exodus as Joshua and his people had, he draws them into the covenant by making them acknowledge that the Exodus is an event for them, too—not just a thing of the past that they must accept as part of their own history, but an ongoing event that they now profess to, and witness in, their own lives. They become, by free choice, the dramatis personae of the constitutive saving act whereby Israel draws its being as a people. “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes” (Josh. 24:16–17).

This pulling up of the past into the present takes on greater definition in Isaiah 40 and the following chapters. While bringing the people the message of consolation that there will be restoration after the terrible experience of the Exile, the author tells the people that they must not think about the Exodus as merely a remembrance of the past. No, they must realize that the power and reality of the Exodus is still present and working in their midst and is forging their restoration. The coming restoration is but an extension of the Exodus itself. “This is what the Lord says—he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland’ ” (Isa. 43:16–19). He is not telling the exiles to forget the Exodus—he is urging them to see the Exodus as still working in their present. Indeed, he goes on to describe the return and restoration precisely in terms appropriate to the Exodus.

The Incarnation of the Remembered Story. There is one final aspect of biblical anamnesis, the reenactment of the event, a bringing of the past into the present, not just in memory but also in ritual, a sort of reincarnating of the event in symbol—or better, allowing the event to continue its incarnation forward in space and time. “You shall observe this as a perpetual ordinance for yourselves and your descendants. Thus, you must observe this rite when you have entered the land that the Lord will give you as he promised. When your children ask you, ‘What does this rite of yours mean?’ you shall reply, ‘This is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord [Yahweh], who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt; when he struck down the Egyptians, he spared our houses’ ” (Exod. 12:24–26, nab).

This ritual reenactment of the Exodus was gradually built on an earlier agricultural festival, which was then given a new meaning—the idea of “transignification,” which is used in contemporary eucharistic theology. This ancient feast was called the pesach in Hebrew and originally, apparently, was an ancient celebration that marked the spring yeaning, or birthing, and in which a lamb was killed as a sacrificial act.

This ritual was taken over as a structure to celebrate all events of the Exodus, and the individual rites were modified and given new meaning such that their original meaning was lost from consciousness, and they became symbolic reenactments of different facets of the great story. They were made into an anamnesis of the Exodus. The word pesach, which seems to have meant “leaping” and which possibly referred to a liturgical dance, now was given the meaning of “leaping over,” the “passing over” by Yahweh of the houses of the Hebrews when he visited the firstborn of the Egyptians with death.

The killing of the lamb no longer was a yeaning sacrifice, but a symbolic substitution for the firstborn of the Hebrews, who were spared. Similar embodiments of the Exodus story were attached to the ancient symbols of the unleavened bread—“there was no time to make leavened bread in the flight from Egypt”—the bitter herbs, the wine, etc. Anyone familiar with the contemporary Passover service will instantly recall the questions “Why is this night different from every other night” and “The unleavened bread which we eat, what is its reason?”

The Passover service is called the Haggadah, “the prayerful recital,” or the Seder, “the ritual order.” The ritual is an anamnesis, a zikkaron. It involves not just a recital of a past event, the Exodus, but brings it into the present, symbolized through liturgical reenactment. We read in the Haggadah, “In each and every generation, it is a man’s duty to regard himself as though he himself went forth out of Egypt.… Wherefore we thank him who performed all these miraculous deeds for our fathers, but also for us. He brought us forth out of bondage.” At the raisings of the second cup, this is recited: “Blessed are you, Lord God, king of the universe, who redeemed us and redeemed our fathers from Egypt, and enabled us to reach this night whereupon to eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs.”

Thus the saving will of God, prototypically incarnated in the Exodus, reached into the present day as an ongoing saving reality. What is more, it will reach into the future: “So also, God of our fathers, may you enable us to reach holidays and celebrations to come, when we partake again of the Passover offerings.”

The Exodus reaches upward in history and expands its effect by further realizations in changing circumstances—the restoration after the exile, the rebuilding of the cities in the Promised Land, liberation in any struggle or darkness. These are all the Exodus at work in the midst of Israel. By ritual reenactment of the event and by the remembrance of it, the partakers of the Passover feast celebrate the continuance of Yahweh’s saving grace.

Jesus’ Use of Anamnesis/Remembered Story. In the New Testament, Jesus’ passage from death to life in his passion and resurrection are not only frequently described by means of Old Testament paschal typology, they are explicitly called an exodus. In the Transfiguration scene, Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and spoke of [Jesus’] exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem (see Luke 9:31). In the Last Supper, Jesus, of course, celebrates precisely the Passover service with the disciples. One by one he takes up the elements of the exodus-anamnesis and proclaims that his approaching passion, death, and resurrection are the renewed exodus, just as the return from exile was for Isaiah. As the earlier Hebrews transfigured an earlier rite, now Jesus takes the exodus-anamnesis and makes it his own story. The tale is not of what has happened; it is the story of what is now happening. He himself is the paschal lamb that is killed so that others might live. The wine is no longer the sign of the sprinkled blood to seal the Sinai covenant; it is his own blood in a new covenant.

This thanksgiving of Haggadah, or Eucharist, becomes for the covenanted people formed by Jesus’ death and resurrection the celebration of the Exodus from Egypt precisely as this grace from the Father was at work in Jesus, leading from bondage to freedom. But as the Jews celebrated the Exodus as a continuing event in their own time, so Christians celebrate the passion and death of Jesus not as a past reality, but as the Passover of Jesus, as a present reality, extending from Jesus to the believer through the power of Jesus’ Spirit. Those who partake of this paschal banquet celebrate Jesus’ exodus from death to life as working in their own lives, and they proclaim his death until he comes again in glory. They confess that it will reach its fulfillment even in the future when they sit with the Lord at the heavenly banquet.

An Anglican/Episcopal Theology of Worship

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Anglican worship emphasizes the incarnational and sacramental motifs of the Christian faith. God was embodied in Jesus Christ. Thus, in worship, the church incarnates in a visible and tangible form the embodiment of God in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world.

The Episcopal Church, like the other national and regional churches which comprise the Anglican Communion, does not have an official theology of worship. It does have an official practice set forth in The Book of Common Prayer in its various editions from 1549 until the present. Anglican theology of worship is derived from its official liturgical practice.

In The Book of Common Prayer of 1979 the American Episcopal Church says, “The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer … are the regular services of public worship in this Church.” (Book of Common Prayer, 13). The pattern of worship there set forth is daily prayer, preferably in common, and the weekly celebration of a service of Word and Sacrament.

Anglican theology has often been described as incarnational or sacramental and this is especially true of its theology of worship which uses the words and actions of an “outward and visible” rite as the symbol and the means of entering into an “inward and spiritual” relationship with God in Christ (Book of Common Prayer, 857). Worship is therefore embodied. It is something that we do, not only with our minds but with our entire being. We stand, we sit, we kneel, we bow, we lift our hands and our voices. We look, we listen, we sing, we speak, we remain silent. We smell and we taste. What often appears to be an undue concern with the external aspects of worship by Anglicans, however badly it may be expressed in particular cases, derives from this central theological conviction that it is by entering into the symbolic activity of the liturgy that we are drawn by the action of the Holy Spirit into the very center of the divine mystery, there to lay all that we have and are and hope to be before the throne of grace as members one of another in Jesus Christ.

It is in the coming together of the people of God to hear the Word and celebrate the sacraments that we become the body of Christ, that Christ our Head becomes present in our midst, and that we participate in his Paschal victory over death. Christ’s promise to be present in the midst of the assembly “where two or three are gathered in my name,” (Matt. 18:20, RSV) stands as the primary foundation of worship, which is a corporate activity of the Christian people in which we encounter the living God. Its principal parts include the reading and proclamation of the Word, prayer in Jesus’ name, and the celebration of the sacraments, of which baptism and Holy Communion are the chiefs.

In worship, we as a gathered community remember the mighty acts of God in Christ by which we are saved, in all their power, virtue, and effect, and offer our lives—“our selves, our souls and bodies” (Book of Common Prayer, 336) to God in praise and thanksgiving. This very act contains elements of penitence for sin, acknowledgment of our own unworthiness, and fervent petition and intercession for the needs of all humanity, including ourselves and those we love, for it is only as we are spiritually united to Christ in the power of his risen life and through the activity of the Holy Spirit that we are emboldened to make this response to the divine initiative.

In baptism we are reborn by water and the Spirit to a new life as the children of God, passing over with Christ through death to life, and in holy Eucharist, the anamnesis (commemorative celebration) of the sacrifice of Christ makes us partakers of the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection. As our bodies are fed by the bread and wine over which we have given thanks in obedience to Christ’s command, “Do this in remembrance of me,” (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24), so our souls are nourished by the body and blood of Christ and we are united with Him and with one another in his mystical body.

From this theological center, worship moves out to the celebration of this saving mystery in the daily praise of Morning and Evening Prayer and its application to the critical moments in the lives of individual Christians in pastoral offices such as marriage, ministry to the sick, rites of reconciliation, and burial services, drawing every aspect of life into unity with God in Christ through the church, so that all may be offered in union with the perfect self-offering of Christ. It is from this center that we receive, in turn, the power of Christ’s victory, so that we may become what St. Paul declares us to be (1 Cor. 12:27)—the body of Christ in the world.

Worship in the Byzantine Churches

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The churches in the Byzantine tradition are those with an historic relationship to the church of Constantinople (originally Byzantium); they are familiar to North Americans as the Orthodox churches (among them the Greek and Russian). The Byzantine rite is complex and proceeds as two interwoven liturgies, one conducted with the congregation and the other performed by the celebrants behind the icon screen (iconostasis) that separates the altar from the rest of the church. The dominant theme of this liturgical tradition is the presence of Christ, both in his incarnation and in his heavenly ministry.

The family of churches that follow the Byzantine rite is comprised of three groups: those directly linked to the see of Constantinople; those historically evangelized from the church of Constantinople, particularly Russia and the Slavic countries; and the contemporary national churches (e.g., the Orthodox Church in America, with links to the church of Moscow) which likewise claim the title Orthodox. Catholic Byzantine churches (in union with Rome) include Melkites, Ukrainians, Russian Catholics, and Ruthenians. Apart from very slight differences, both Orthodox and Catholics follow essentially the same liturgical rites. For the Eucharist three ritual forms are used: most commonly that attributed to St. John Chrysostom, occasionally that attributed to St. Basil of Caesarea (Cappadocia), and on some days during Lent a liturgy of the pre-sanctified gifts attributed to Gregory the Great. The liturgical texts cited here are from The Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (New York: Fordham University Russian Center, 1955).

The Liturgy

The Byzantine liturgy is a complex ritual form that evolved in several stages from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries. Structurally it has the form of two interwoven liturgies, that which is prayed in the sanctuary (holy of holies) by the bishop and priest concelebrants, with the assistance of the deacon, and that conducted by the deacon with the assembly in front of the icon screen. A third layer of prayers consists of private prayers of the priest who prays in support of the action of the deacon and the assembly. The icon screen, and indeed the iconic display throughout the church, are integral to the liturgical act. They provide a visual focus for contemplative prayer which itself is aided by the abundant mantra-style litanies which form the heart of the liturgical act of deacon and assembly. In some churches, a deacon is not regularly employed, though this obscures the structure and flow of the liturgy itself. The liturgy is an evolution of the West Syrian Antiochene tradition.

Introductory Rites. Two elaborate rites introduce the Byzantine liturgy: the proskomidia (preparation of gifts) and a collection of litanies, hymns, and prayers that are remnants of a liturgical office. The proskomidia is conducted by the priest and his assistants at a small table in the sanctuary; the three litanies are introduced and concluded by the priest and led by the deacon, with the assembly or the choir providing the antiphons and hymns.

The primary focus of the proskomidia is the round loaf of leavened bread bearing the letters IC XC NIKA (“Jesus Christ conquers”). The center square is cut and placed on the paten to represent Christ. From the rest, particles are cut and arranged in rows to honor Mary, the angels, the apostles, and the saints, and to commemorate the living and the dead. A particle is added for the priest himself. This whole represents the church: Christ, the Lamb, at the center gathering the church in heaven and the church on earth into one. The gifts are covered (the bread covered with the asterisk or “star of Bethlehem”), offered, and reverenced with incense. The sanctuary, the icon screen, the church, and the assembly are honored with incense as well.

The second introductory rite begins with the public prayer. It is introduced by the priest (“Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and always and forever and ever”) and consists of a long litany, with a prayer and antiphon, and two shorter litanies, also with prayer and antiphon. The hymn of the incarnation (“O only-begotten Son and Word of God … ”) is sung after the second antiphon.

The Liturgy of the Word. The liturgy of the Word once began with the entrance of the bishop. This is now the “Little Entrance,” with the gospel book representing Christ carried in solemn procession (“O come, let us worship and bow down to Christ. Save us, O Son of God, risen from the dead, save us who sing to You Alleluia”). Two seasonal hymns, the troparion and the kontakion, and the trisagion (the thrice-holy) precede the Scripture readings. After the Epistle and Gospel, the prayer of intercession (the insistent litany) and prayer for and dismissal of the catechumens bring the liturgy of the Word to a close.

Pre-anaphora. The pre-anaphora begins with a prayer of access to the altar (“We thank You, O Lord, Almighty God, for having allowed us to stand here now before Your holy altar … ”). This leads to the litany prayer of the faithful and the transfer of the gifts. Known as the “Great Entrance,” the transfer of the gifts is made in solemn procession while the choir sings the Cherubic Hymn (“Let us who here mystically represent the Cherubim in singing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, now lay aside every earthly care so that we may welcome the King of the universe who comes escorted by invisible armies of angels”). The hymn is stopped halfway through so that the commemorations of the day may be announced. The gifts are placed on the altar and incensed, the priest prays the offering while the deacon and assembly sing the litany of the offering.

Anaphora. The greeting of peace and the creed precede the eucharistic prayer proper. This latter, though more elaborate, follows the standard West Syrian structure: narrative of thanksgiving, including the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and narrative of institution; anamnēsis (“Remembering … we offer”); epiklēsis for consecration (“ … and make this bread the precious body of your Christ, and that which is in this chalice the precious blood of your Christ, having changed them by the Holy Spirit”); the commemorations and the final doxology.

The preparation for Communion consists of a litany of supplication, the Lord’s Prayer, a blessing of the assembly, the presentation of the Eucharist to the people (“Holy things for the Holy”), and a prayer of personal faith (“I believe, Lord, and profess that you are in truth the Christ … ”). Communion is distributed with a spoon or, in some churches where wafers are used, by intinction.

Concluding Prayers. The liturgy concludes with a thanksgiving, dismissal, and blessing. There are additional prayers as well, and frequently the Eucharist is immediately followed by one of the liturgical hours or other prayers. The liturgy thus concludes slowly and in stages.

Theology and Spirit

The theology and spirit of the Byzantine liturgy are as complex as its ritual form. Indeed the two evolved together, with perhaps a greater influence on each other than in any other liturgical tradition. It does have a single, strong theme: the presence of Christ. This presence, however, has many forms and many manifestations. It is at one and the same time the presence of Christ in the liturgical action and the presence of the liturgical assembly with Christ to the heavenly liturgy which is eternally enacted. The liturgical forms reveal this presence; so too does the iconic design of the liturgical space in which the liturgy unfolds.

Some sense of the evolution of this liturgy is required to understand its complex theology and spirit. Hans-Joachim Schulz (The Byzantine Liturgy [New York: Pueblo Publishing Co., 1986]) traces its successive stages from the time of John Chrysostom (a.d. 344–407) and Theodore of Mopsuestia to its fourteenth-century codification.

Chrysostom spoke of the liturgy as mystery, whereby heavenly realities are made manifest in human form. Theodore focused on the individual rites as imaging different aspects of the saving work of Christ (e.g., gifts on altar representing Christ in the tomb; epiklēsis as the resurrection). Special attention was given to Christ as “high priest” understood less in terms of “interceding” and more as “seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”

This theological (mystagogical) reading of the liturgical actions took a turn to the spiritual in Dionysius the Areopagite (sixth century), who “became the model for later Byzantine explicators” (Schulz, 25). Liturgical forms do indeed mediate salvation but they do so by unveiling a spiritual process that unfolds in a higher sphere. It is the reverse of Theodore’s stress on the actual liturgical forms making “present” Christ’s saving work.

Under Maximus the Confessor (d. a.d. 662) the church structure itself became “liturgical.” With the Hagia Sophia [in Constantinople] set as norm, the church building was envisioned as an image of the cosmos: two spheres, the earthly (the nave) and the heavenly (the sanctuary), not separated by, but bridged by the iconostasis. After the iconoclast controversy (eighth century) and the vindication of reverence to icons (Nicea II, a.d. 787), decoration of the icon screen and the church itself became part of the liturgical act. Schulz says of this middle Byzantine development:

In this decorative use of images, the Byzantine church structure shows itself to be what it had to be according to Dionysius’ vision of the world and what Maximus actually saw it as being: a copy of the cosmos that comprises heaven and earth, a cosmos ordered to Christ and filled with a cosmic liturgy. By reason of the images that adorn it the church itself henceforth becomes a liturgy, as it were, because it depicts the liturgico-sacramental presence of Christ, the angels, and the saints, and by depicting it shares in bringing it about. The iconography of the church also shows it to be the place in which the mysteries of the life of Christ are made present (p. 51).

The Byzantine liturgy exhibits this dual focus. The life-of-Jesus symbolism gives shape to the proskomidia which is interpreted as the birth, infancy and hidden life of Christ. It shows itself as the gifts are placed on the altar (“The venerable Joseph took down from the cross your immaculate body, and wrapping it in a clean shroud with sweet spices, he carefully laid it in a new grave”) and at the epiklēsis (“O Lord, who sent your most Holy Spirit upon your apostles at the third hour, do not, O gracious One, take him away from us, but renew us who pray to you”). The heavenly liturgy symbolism is expressed in the Great Entrance, with its Cherubic Hymn, and the prayer at the Little Entrance (“O holy God, who rests among the saints, whose praises are sung by the Seraphim with the hymn of the trisagion, who are glorified by the cherubim and adored by all the powers of heaven”). Both are integral to the iconic design of the liturgical space where, on the one hand, the Christos Pantokrator [visual portrayal of Christ Almighty], set majestically in the dome, looks down over all, and, on the other hand, the biblical events of Jesus’ life are set out in rich, visual display.

In several places, the Byzantine liturgy reveals itself as a public statement of Christian doctrine. The “Hymn of the Incarnation” (“O only-begotten Son and Word of God, though You are immortal, You condescended for our salvation to take flesh from the holy mother of God and ever-virgin Mary”) was introduced in the sixth century as a proclamation of the orthodox faith against the Nestorians. The wording of the epiklēsis (“ … having changed them by your Holy Spirit”) is a clear affirmation of the role of the Spirit as consecrator of the bread and wine, in contrast to the Western belief that it is Jesus’ own words, rather than the epiklēsis, that effect the consecration.

The liturgy conducted, mostly in silent prayer, by the bishop and priest concelebrants in the sanctuary is, by and large, the West Syrian liturgy. This liturgy is hidden from the assembly in silence, and occasionally by a drawn veil. The priest and his actions are part of the visual iconic display. The deacon is the primary link between these actions and the assembly, assisting the priest, announcing what is taking place, and leading the assembly in an appropriate litany prayer (e.g., during the offering: “For the precious gifts that are offered, let us pray to the Lord”). The experience of the assembly is not shaped by the intrinsic meaning of the various liturgical actions, but rather, as an aesthetico-religious contemplative experience, by the sensual environment composed of music, iconography, incense, and the various bodily movements (bows, signing oneself with the cross, kissing of icons, etc.) that are assigned to them. By entering into the assembly, they enter into a cosmos ruled by God and filled with mystery and are transported to that realm where the heavenly liturgy is eternally unfolding.

Worship in the West Syrian Churches: Syrian, Maronite, and Syro-Indian

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The liturgy of the West Syrian churches derives from Antioch, although some elements are believed to have come from the Jerusalem church of which James, the brother of Jesus, was the head. The tone of the liturgy is optimistic, and different parts anticipate the triumphal return of Christ.

The churches that follow the primitive West Syrian tradition are the primary heirs to the tradition of Jerusalem. Though these churches employ many anaphoral texts, the oldest and most treasured among them is that attributed to St. James, “the brother of the Lord.” The three churches, Syrian, Maronite, and Syro-Indian, need to be identified separately.

In the wake of the Council of Chalcedon, the West Syrian church of Antioch was divided between those who accepted the council’s decrees and those who tended toward monophysitism. The former, considered not only orthodox Catholics but also loyal subjects of the emperor, came to be called Melchites (also, Melkites, from Hebrew melekh, “king, monarch, emperor”); the latter, organized by the monk Jacob Baradai, came to be called Jacobites. In the centuries that followed, the Melchites came “more and more under the ecclesiastical domination of Constantinople, and by the end of the thirteenth century they had abandoned their own liturgies to the Monophysites and adopted that of imperial Byzantium” (Donald Attwater, The Christian Churches of the East, rev. ed. [Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1947], vol. 1, 55). The Syrian church was in effect the Syro-Jacobite church. In the seventeenth century, some of these sought union with Rome, and since that time there have been Syrian Catholics as well as Syrian Jacobites. It is questionable just how strongly monophysite these Jacobites are; the preferred term for them is non-Chalcedonian Syrians.

The Syro-Jacobite tradition came to the Malabar region of India as a result of resistance to the Portuguese missionaries, who tried first to Latinize the St. Thomas Christians but succeeded only in Latinizing their East Syrian liturgy. Some who resisted sought support from the West Syrian Jacobites, and these West Syrian Orthodox Christians continue to flourish today. In 1934, some of these sought union with Rome, thus forming the Syro-Malankara Catholic church.

The history of the Maronites is transmitted more by legend than by established fact. Legend has it that a fifth-century monk, Maron, founded a monastery in Syria and supported the positions taken at Chalcedon. Threat of persecution drove these “Catholic” monks to the mountains of Lebanon where, in the seventh century, under their first patriarch John Maron, the monastery of Maron became the Maronite church. Legend further has it that these Maronites were from their beginning loyal to the see of Rome and in communion with it. Available facts paint a much less precise picture, and suggest a probable Jacobite origin to this corporate entity that emerged only in the eighth century as a distinct Maronite church (cf. Matti Moosa, The Maronites In History [Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986]).

Over the centuries, the Maronite liturgy was heavily Latinized. In a post-Vatican II revision, it has been restored to its primitive West Syrian form. The text cited to examine the West Syrian liturgical tradition as it lives today is this revised Maronite text (Diocese of St. Maron, U.S.A., The Maronite Liturgical Year [1982]).

The Liturgy

Introductory Rites. The liturgy begins with a hymn sung during the entrance of the ministers and the preparation of the gifts. This latter is done simply at a side table. The introductory rites and Service of the Word are conducted at the bema. The opening doxology and prayer are followed by a general greeting of peace (“Peace be with the church and her children”), which is followed in turn by a seasonal psalm. The rites conclude with the hoosoyo, a penitential prayer of incense, which is unique to the West Syrian tradition. It consists of a proemium or introduction, which invites the assembly to “praise, glorify and honor the Lord”; the sedro, which is a rich, seasonal instruction as well as a prayer; a psalm to be sung or recited by the assembly; and the etro, or conclusion, asking the Lord to “be pleased with our service of incense.”

Liturgy of the Word. The Service of the Word begins with the trisagion, chanted in Aramaic, and the mazmooro, a psalm chanted by the assembly and priest. One or two readings precede the gospel, which is introduced by the characteristic “Let us be attentive to the gospel of life and salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ as recorded by … ” A brief seasonal response of the assembly, the korozooto, the homily, and the creed conclude the Service of the Word.

Pre-anaphora. The service of the Mysteries begins with the pre-anaphora, which consists of the prayer of access to the altar (“I have entered your house, O God, and I have worshiped in your temple. O King of glory forgive all my sins”), the transfer of the offerings to the altar, the prayer of offering, and an incensation of offerings, altar, cross, and assembly.

Anaphora. As in the East Syrian liturgy, the anaphora includes more than the eucharistic prayer itself. Strictly speaking, the term refers to the whole second part of the liturgy, right through its concluding prayer and blessing. It begins with the rite of peace, in which the “peace” is sent from the altar (which represents Christ) to the whole congregation. The eucharistic prayer follows the typical West Syrian structure: dialogue; thanksgiving narrative which includes the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and the narrative of institution; anamnēsis; epiklēsis; intercessions and final doxology. Even where the liturgy as a whole is celebrated in a local vernacular, it is customary, at least among the Maronites, to chant the institution words in Aramaic: not only the “words of Jesus” but the language of Jesus as well.

The bread is broken and signed with the precious blood. The Lord’s prayer follows. A brief penitential rite (priest touching the consecrated offerings with one hand, extending the other over the congregation and praying for forgiveness) leads into the invitation to communion (“Holy things for the holy, with perfection, purity and sanctity”). Communion is distributed by intinction.

Concluding Prayers. The conclusion of the rite is simple: a prayer of thanksgiving and the final blessings. The last prayer is a “farewell” to the altar: “Remain in peace, O altar of God, and I hope to return to you in peace … ”

Theology and Spirit

The dominant theme running through the West Syrian liturgy is that of anticipation. The Eucharist is celebrated in expectation of the Lord’s second coming. While the liturgical texts are generous in singing the glory of the Lord, it is a glory that is yearned for rather than already present in its fullness. The Eucharist is at one and the same time rabouno, a pledge of the glory to come, and zouodo, a viaticum [provision for future needs] which transforms us into citizens of the heavenly kingdom.

The typical prayer ending is both forward-looking and optimistic. Three examples: (a) “Then we will praise you, your only Son, and your living Holy Spirit, now and forever” (rite of peace, Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles); (b) “Make us worthy to live by your Spirit, leading a pure life, and we shall praise you, now and forever” (epiklēsis, Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles); (c) “We will glorify your Father who sent you for our salvation and your Holy Spirit, now and forever” (rite of incense, First Sunday of Epiphany). This ending reveals a subtle nuance, namely, a sense of confident hope in the future that is anticipated.

The anamnēsis is the eucharistic prayers is also typically a prayer that “looks forward.” Even where the note of offering is included as well, it remains secondary to the expectation and anticipation. This prayer combines both the pledge of glory to come and the purification that transformation into God’s kingdom requires. “We remember, O Lover of all, your plan of salvation, and we ask you to have compassion on your faithful. Save us, your inheritance, when you shall come again to reward justly everyone according to his or her deeds” (Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles).

The hoosoyo, the offering of incense for purification, always begins, in some form or other, “May we be worthy to praise, confess, and glorify the Lord who … ,” where a seasonal reference follows the word “who.” It is a prayer for purification, but it is not a self-conscious prayer that focuses on the sinfulness of those who pray. The emphasis is rather on the deeds of God recounted in narrative form and on the confidence with which we approach, even while the sense of unworthiness is strongly stated. Again, the conclusion anticipates the requested action of God which allows us (will allow us) to give God praise and glory.

As with the East Syrian liturgy, the West Syrian Eucharist is strongly Christocentric. Christ is addressed in prayer. After the institution narrative in the eucharistic prayers, Christ is first prayed to (“We commemorate your death, O Lord. We confess your resurrection. We await your coming”) and then asked in turn to pray with the church to the Father (“Your people beseech you, and through you and with you, the Father saying … ”—the prayer returns to direct address of the Father). The greeting of peace is given to all present from the altar which represents Christ. At the prayer of forgiveness before communion the priest places one hand on the consecrated bread and wine while praying blessing on the assembly: “Bestow your blessings upon your people who love you and await your mercy” (Anaphora of St. James); “O Lord, with the strength of your powerful right hand, come now to bless your servants who bow before you” (Anaphora of St. John the Evangelist).

The liturgy moves comfortably between the awesome language of mystery and the harsh realities of everyday life. This is nicely illustrated in the peace prayer of the Anaphora of St James: “O Lover of all people, through your redemption, free us from personal bias and hypocrisy, that we may greet each other in peace. Then, united in a unique bond of love and harmony by our Lord Jesus Christ we will glorify and praise you and your living Spirit, now and forever.”

The West Syrian liturgy captures the full scope of eschatological prayer. It is optimistic, prayed in hope against the horizon of a victory already achieved. Yet it is realistic, prayed in the face of ample evidence that the victory has not yet unfolded in its fullness in human life and human history. Finally, though it is indeed forward-looking in anticipating and yearning, it is nonetheless a prayer that recognizes the importance of the present. The eschaton is even now unfolding in the lives of those who pray. The announcement of the victory at one and the same time (a) proclaims a victory achieved, (b) unveils the historical incompleteness of that achievement, and (c) purifies those who yearn for the victory proclaimed.