Conversations on the Divine Liturgy

Contents 1. Where is God? 2. I am always with you 3. “Peace be with you!” 4. Thy will be done 5. For everyone and for everything! Where is God? This is how the human mind and conscience now asks itself in the face of what is happening in the world. If God exists, then how does He allow this? If He is love, then how can He not have mercy on the human race? If He is omnipotent, then why does He not abolish this with His power? If he is wise, then why doesn’t he show the way out of the dead end into which humanity has wandered? We remain alone in the horror of life without God. And there is no answer to our unanswerable questions, as if He does not exist or He has nothing to answer to them. If He exists, then it remains, like Job, to compete with God about His peace, which seems to be a terrible mistake of the Creator, or this state of His also testifies to His powerlessness. So we question each other maliciously and hopelessly, in the consciousness of some kind of right to do so and that we are right. However, let us ask ourselves why only now, in the face of all these horrors of war and all the lies in the world, did we become concerned about the existence of God, so that we began to question him? Why did we remain indifferent to Him while our life rolled along a smooth road, without dangerous shocks and potholes? Were we then so close to God that the current bewildered questions could not arise in us, and everything seemed clearer in the world than now? Or, on the contrary, was it then that we truly forgot about God, simply did not think about our relationship to Him, and were in carefree and unconscious godlessness? Yes, this is exactly how it was for many of us - if not for all, at least at certain times of our lives. And therefore, haven’t we now at least begun to think and remember more about Him? These questions powerfully arose before us about the world, about our life, about good and evil, about everything about which our soul is now troubled, tormented and exhausted. It was as if a ringing sound had burst into our ears from above. We rush around, listening to this ringing, not yet understanding where and what it is calling for, what it is talking about. However, we are still looking to understand this call. But where should we look for an answer if not from the Teacher, who Himself is the Way, Truth and Life, in His words and deeds: how did He Himself in His earthly life experience the terrible thing in the world, similar to what we are now experiencing? His life was filled with communion with God and prayer to the Father; He sought only to do His will, to be one with Him. Before His knowledge of God the malice of the evil world was powerless. However, there came a time in His life when He was silent, not answering the questions put to Him, even to the surprise of those asking (Matthew 26:63; 27:14). And after this silence he cried out with a great voice, dying on the Cross: Either, Or! Lama Savakhthani? - My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me? – and with this cry he let out (Matthew 27:46, 50). And He was given, along with the approach of death, to experience the irresponsibility, the silence of heaven. And for Him, life appeared in its God-forsakenness, in which death and the position in the grave appeared possible. However, without stopping there, our faith further teaches us: He trampled death underfoot, so that, having risen, He would ascend into heaven. However, is this so? What kind of abandonment of our world can we think about when He Himself, leaving us, assured us: behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20)? This means that He is with us in everything and always (except for our sins and crimes), with us now, and in this fratricidal human madness. He suffers with us and for us, but with us and for us he prays to the Father. No, we are not abandoned by Him, we are not alone on earth. He forever reunited the earthly with the heavenly. He abides on the throne of glory, not leaving our vale of death. If this is so, then nothing is afraid of the last fear, nothing is sorrowful of inconsolable sorrow. He knew about them because He Himself said when leaving us: Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, and believe in Me. (...) But if it were not so, I would say to you: “I go to prepare a place for you.” And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to Myself... (John 14:1-3). He will come to take us. And not only in the future he will come, but he will not leave here either: always, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. But this means that our meeting with Him can be felt and recognized already here and now. It is accomplished by the feat of our faith, our aspiration towards Him. He answers it with His coming. For this purpose He commanded to create His “Remembrance” in the Divine Eucharist. 1 In it Christ comes to us, and we to Him. She is the promised meeting and His presence with us. But for this we, first of all, need to vitally understand and assimilate what the Divine Eucharist contains, what it means, what we absent-mindedly pass by in ignorance and lack of comprehension. What exactly is, or rather, what the Divine Eucharist should be for us, as our prayer and worship, as our life in Christ and with Christ. We must ask ourselves about this in order to heed the call and promise of Christ given by Him through His disciples to the Church. Amen. When Christ was on earth, He walked through the country of Judea, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. (...) And a multitude of people followed Him... (Matthew 4:23, 25). In these blessed days of the life of the world, anyone who wanted could see and hear Him. The Lord Himself spoke to the disciples about this: Blessed are your eyes that they see, and your ears that they hear, for truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people wanted to see what you see, but did not see, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear (Matthew 13:16-17; Luke 10:23-24). Don’t many of us involuntarily remember this in these days of world sorrow: “Oh, if only we could see Him and knew where to meet Him! With what joy and hope we would join everyone who follows Him!” However, with these words the Lord did not want to belittle the prophets and righteous people, but, on the contrary, to exalt them. They, having neither seen nor heard Him on earth, now see in heaven, Whom they foresaw in the days of their lives, teaching about Him and prophesying even before His coming into the world. But like them, we are also not deprived of His closeness even after His departure from the world. For, as He departed, He Himself confirmed this: and lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20), and if always, that means now. How can we sense His presence, where can we look for Him? It can no longer be known by external senses. Certainly. But according to His will, the Lord can now appear, like Saul, who heard a voice from heaven: Saul, Saul! Why are you persecuting Me? (Acts 9:4). Let us hope that one day the other Sauls, who are now persecuting Him, will hear Him. However, the promise of joyful fellowship with Him does not refer exclusively to the appearance of judgment and wrath. Where can we look for Him? Isn't it in the church? Even in the Old Testament church, which during its consecration was filled with the Glory of God in the cloud (1 Kings 8:10), Solomon prayed there: Let Your eyes be open on this church day and night, on this place about which You said: “My name will be there” (1 Kings 8:29). And the Lord said to him: I have heard your prayer and your petition... I have consecrated this church that you built so that My name may dwell there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there always (1 Kings 9:3). But what is said about the Old Testament church has even greater force in relation to the New Testament. And not only in a man-made church, but also in the church of our hearts, our prayerful meeting with God takes place through the power of the Name of God, the sweetest Name of Jesus. According to the testimony of those who do the Jesus Prayer, Christ visits our hearts, and His Name is, as it were, the place of His spiritual presence. But He promised us even more, His direct presence, presence in the world through “memory,” not only mental or spiritual, but vital, filled with the power of reality. This is exactly what His presence in the Holy Mysteries is. Before the Chalice of Christ, those who swear to it confess their faith: “For truly you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who came into the world...” 2 Let our hearts and minds contain all the power of this confession and the truth of it. Don’t we have here the fulfillment of our innermost and ardent desire - a meeting with Christ and union with Him? True, this meeting is not obvious, but mysterious, accessible only to the eyes of faith. However, its reality is no less than Christ’s presence on earth, before and after the Resurrection. The mystery of the Eucharist is that the bread and wine here, by the power of transformation, are the Body and Blood of Christ, in them Christ dwells in the fullness of His Incarnation and Incarnation. This miracle of God’s love is performed at the Divine Liturgy, which through this becomes the place of Christ’s presence on earth. And before the Chalice, are we not united in Christ? About the early Christian Church, the image of which is the guiding one, this is what it says: And they continued constantly in the teaching of the Apostles, in fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayer (Acts 2:42). It is even said about their unanimity and mutual love: The multitude of those who believed had one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32), and: From outsiders, no one dared to pester them (Acts 5:13). And our communion in the Eucharist must also result in an internal rapprochement in which mutual alienation is overcome. If we have lost the feeling of such unity, then liturgical communion still leads us to it. Our heart involuntarily expands through participation in the sacrifice “for everyone and for everything,” both in its boundless breadth and in a specific aspiration, in the memory of a loving heart about the living and the departed. A glimpse of the joy of such unity is given to us during the days of common communion, during the weeks of Lent, on Great Thursday, on the very day of the establishment of the most holy sacrament by Christ. These feelings must be cultivated in us unceasingly, growing with the understanding of all the power of the great sacrament of Amen. Darkness thickens over the world, and a black melancholy falls on the heart. Such is the silent cry that spreads over the earth, such is the tearful complaint, the cry of a person for himself in the face of ongoing disasters. And it seems to him that what is happening in the destinies of the world happens unexpectedly, due to someone’s mistake and malice. Let this even be so in particular cases, but is not the general foreshadowing of Christ, addressed, without indicating time, to everyone, at least indicating such a possibility, forgotten? The Lord spoke thus to the disciples on the Mount of Olives about the “end of the age,” in other words, about all times of human life without limitation, until its very end: You will also hear about wars and rumors of war. See, do not be horrified, for all this must happen, but this is not the end yet: for nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in places; yet this is the beginning of diseases (Matthew 24:6–8). The main disaster will be the impoverishment of love in people: they will hate each other... and, due to the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24:10, 12). What does this “must be” mean? Should there be something that freezes the heart and empties the soul? What inevitability of all this, as if pre-established, is the Lord talking about? But He Himself did not give an answer to this, leaving it to our understanding. He only added one thing: He who endures to the end will be saved (Matthew 24:13), and then the end will come (Matthew 24:14), the end as a certain fullness of earthly accomplishment, after which there will be the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:27). With this, the Lord responds in advance to both complaints and exhaustion. He calls for the courage of patience. What kind of patience does the Lord want from us? Is it a slavish, powerless numbness in fear and despondency, hopelessness and despair in front of something and from something from which it is humanly impossible not to despair? Or is it something completely different, is the acceptance of God’s destiny in Christ and with Christ, Who prophesied it and Himself received it from His Father in exactly this way: If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; however, not as I want, but as You want (Matthew 26:39)? And He Himself repeated this prayer three times for patience in the struggle of Gethsemane. He then lifted the burden of the sorrow of the whole world in His humanity. He accepted it for all times and peoples, whose destinies he prophesied on the Mount of Olives, and in His humanity He shares it with us. For this is precisely what His prophecy meant. He would not have prophesied if He Himself had not known, accepted, and made all human suffering His own, through His compassion with him. But how can we bring His compassion, His closeness, His love, His saving help closer to us? But He Himself showed the way to this: Do this in remembrance of Me (Luke 22:19), in which He will remain with us all the days until the end of the age. This same “memory” is His own presence in His Holy Gifts, in the Divine Eucharist. We must know that through it we are approaching Christ Himself who suffers with us. We are not abandoned by Him in His Ascension into heaven; He remains with us co-human, just as He was on earth. His Gethsemane grief and saving passion seem to continue in the world, and, sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is with us, the God-man, but also a co-man with people. We are approaching Him, just as the crowds of people were approaching then, crowding around Him, each with his own torment, with his own temptation and weakness. He knows everyone who touches Him, how He felt the bleeding woman who touched Him and in this touch received strength and healing. But it should not remain as if accidental and only a bodily touch of the crowding crowd, but a free movement of faith and hope, our inner aspiration to Christ. We must seek a meeting with Christ, thirst for it. And if we remain cold and indifferent in days of prosperity, then our hearts open with suffering and are warmed by compassion with Christ. The Lord hears the cry of our heart, and we can hear this hearing of Him, even in any prayer through the invocation of His Name, especially in the sacrament of the Body and Blood, His saving incarnation. He gave us this meeting as a gift of “remembrance,” not only through the communion of His Holy Mysteries, but also in spiritual communion, prayerful presence at the Divine Liturgy. May our thoughts and sorrows, perplexities and questions, doubts and exhaustion be turned to Him, and may the storm of our hearts, fear and confusion be calmed by the mysterious, ineffable feeling of His closeness, which will become all the more palpable the more persistent our prayer: Lord! save us, we are perishing. And he says to them: Why are you so fearful, little faithful? (Matthew 8:25–26). The Divine Liturgy remains the same in its eternal immutability; only the human waves flowing to it change. But let it be known where to look for Divine strengthening, peace and consolation, and how to look for it: with a frenzy of faith, a cry of love, an effort of hope, and prayerful contemplation of the Mysteries of Christ. ...Jesus came and stood in the midst and said to them: Peace be with you! Having said this, He showed them His hands and feet and His side (John 20:19-20). Amen. Every person is destined to experience trials, “blows of fate”: injustice and human cruelty, separation and grief, loss and illness, and all sorts of other sorrows. And he is easily inclined to consider himself unjustified 3 and offended, as a victim of a cruel and incomprehensible lot. He carries this feeling in his heart and is poisoned by it. Indeed, it is not easy to accept what is incomprehensible and scary to us. Didn’t righteous Job himself cry out to Him: the terrible thing that I was terrified of befell me; and what I feared came to me (Job 3:25), and I spent my day (Job 3:1), although I myself had just said to my wife: Shall we really accept good from God, and not accept evil? ( Job 2:10 )? So hard was his lot, although the apostle blessed him for his long-suffering: You have heard about the patience of Job (James 5:11). But Christ Himself, having perceived the fullness of human nature, knew to the depths and all the burden of its test. And it is said about Him that in the days of His flesh, with a strong cry and with tears, He offered prayers and supplications to Him who was able to save Him from death (Heb. 5:7), and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44), so that an angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him, and, being in agony, prayed more diligently. What was the struggle and this prayer about? She was like this: Father! Oh, that You would deign to carry this cup past Me! (Luke 22:42). And He called his disciples to the same prayer: stand up and pray so as not to fall into temptation (Luke 22:46), for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak (Mark 14:38). Even for the God-man, the inevitable destiny was one that the holiest human nature opposed. However, the All-Good Father did not free His Son from this destiny. Only after going through the struggle of Gethsemane was it given to Him to overcome the “weak flesh” and in the fullness of love and submission, saying three times: if this cup cannot pass from Me, lest I not drink it, Thy will be done (Matthew 26:42). In the God-man, two wills, Divine and human, were united in agreement, inseparably and unmerged. The decision of the Divine will did not need to be sought through special effort; it was His own filial will. But she had to completely persuade the human will to agree with herself, which, “having diminished himself,” together with the flesh, the Son of Man took into himself. But He did not resist her with His Divine omnipotence. The latter was silent, leaving complete freedom of self-determination to the human will, until the latter itself bowed to the Divine will, which is also the Father’s will: I seek the will of the Father who sent Me (John 5:30). Together with the Son of Man, for every person there is the same struggle and choice, inevitable and saving: to accept or not to submit to our fate, in which the will of the Father is expressed for us. Such a decision is not often made in a brief moment, but can extend over many years, sometimes throughout a lifetime. The decision of Christ in the conflict of Gethsemane was expected by the Creator and creation, heaven and earth, the council of angels and the human race. However, when it was accepted for everyone, forever indestructible, now it is not so expected from each of us. But it is expected from us by Christ Himself, who once answered for Himself and for everyone: “Thy will be done!..” Now He Himself bends with His humanity to our exhaustion, He wants His answer to become ours, He will sympathize with us in the darkness of our Gethsemane night, expecting from us the most difficult victory - over ourselves: as He Himself endured, being tempted, so He can also be tempted help (Heb. 2:18). He extends a saving hand to the drowning man, which he must accept. But how? How can we truly call on Christ to unite with Him, to know His saving power? Of course, this happens in every heartfelt invocation of Him, but with exceptional power and reality in the saving “remembrance” of His incarnation, in the sacrament of Body and Blood, in the Divine Liturgy, in which He is sacrificed “for all and for all.” This universality contains our troubles and sorrows, struggle and exhaustion, but also victory over our weakness. The Lord becomes close to us in communion not only verbally, but also spiritually. Now and ever, as if descending from heaven, He suffers with us in His earthly stay and does not disdain our smallness. And we, with faith and boldness, must fall back to Him with sorrows and bewilderments, doubts and cowardice. Invisibly, in unknown ways, He approaches us, visits our soul, heals it, resurrects it, gives it peace and heavenly joy, like drops of dew refreshing it. New forces of life appear in us, a new will to bear our cross after Him and with Him. Therefore, Christians, bring your own crosses to Christ, who is present in His Holy Mysteries, and to His Cross, seek His grace-filled overshadowing and help in prayer, especially in the Divine Liturgy, in which “the death of the Lord is proclaimed, until Christ, our life and joy, will come.” Amen. In the liturgy, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is offered, “this is done in His remembrance.” This is not only the human memory of her, but she herself, mysteriously continuing through the offering by the hands of the priest, who in him reveals himself as “a Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord is “both the Bringer and the Bringer” (as they say in the secret prayer on Cherubim). God's love for the world and man, revealed in the Incarnation, continues to reveal itself to the world today in this universal sacrifice made for all people and for all human existence, on behalf of all creation, by the Son of God who assumed human nature. She is at the same time a sacrifice of His love for the Father in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity, as well as the Son of Man on behalf of humanity and all creation. In this sense, with Christ, in His God-manhood, we offer it to God. We must accommodate the fullness of this truth into our weak and limited consciousness. But can we talk about the universal power of this sacrifice if it is limited in space and time, and the members of the Church participating in it constitute only a small part of all humanity? Does this whole other part of Him belong to Christ, or does it remain alien to Him, ignorant or denying Him? From the outside it may seem that this humanity is not Christ’s, that it wants to belong to itself, and through this it is surrendered to the power of the “prince of this world,” although internally undermined, it still continues. However, despite this imaginary evidence, humanity remains united in its nature and destinies. It is undividedly accepted by Christ in His God-manhood. For us it is still a mystery, hidden in the beyond, how and when this unity of the human race will be revealed and realized, and the sacrifice is now made only by Christians on behalf of the Church. However, its power and effectiveness extends to all of humanity, which will also appear at the Last Judgment in this multi-unity. And just as in Adam’s original sin it all comes together, so in the Incarnation of God redemption is given to him, albeit in all its diversity. This is the joyful promise and hope of our faith. But there is also another bright side to him. Together with Christ we also participate in this sacrifice, we offer it with Him as a “mental and bloodless service.” And in this at the same time our love for both God and man is expressed prayerfully. This is praise and thanksgiving to God, combined with every offering related to our human life. However, it is beyond our strength to pray for peace and for all humanity, as was the prayer of Christ in the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane. Our heart is limited, as is our consciousness. It barely contains the prayerful memory of those few who are given to our prayerful love and care. We pray for them with every prayer and petition, realizing all our limitations, but also all the uniqueness of their meaning. We offer it to Christ himself, who is presented to us in His Holy Gifts. And this prayer - we know this from experience - ignites our heart with the special fire that Christ brought to earth. This need to capture our love in prayer is also expressed outwardly in named commemoration of both the living and the dead, which is given a special place in the rite of proskomedia. Thus, in the reverent memory of a prayerful heart, our entire life in all its diversity and events is united into some unity. Of course, at the same time, we should distinguish what is appropriate and worthy to pray for, so that we do not become like the pagans, praying and saying unnecessary things (Matthew 6:7), but with our prayer we also feed our love. Pray for those near and far, for those who love and those who are at enmity, and through this the secret fabric of our mutual love is woven before the face of the Lord. And this love of ours merges with the love of our Lord for us, for our sake the man who came down from heaven and became incarnate from the Holy Spirit. Amen. Compare: And he took the bread and gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them, saying: This is My Body, which is given for you; Do this in remembrance of Me (Luke 22:19). – Approx. ed. Prayer before Holy Communion. – Approx. ed. Most likely, what is meant is “unjustified” in the sense of “Unfairly accused, slandered.” – Approx. ed.