Receive One Another

O Master, Lord our God, Who hast appointed in Heaven the ranks and hosts of angels and archangels unto the service of Thy glory: With our entry do Thou cause the entry of the holy angels, serving and glorifying Thy goodness with us. For unto Thee are due all glory, honor, and worship: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Thus the priest prays as the clergy depart from the Altar and stand before the Royal Doors. In acknowledging the Heavenly bodiless hosts that serve the Lord, the priest affirms the vision of Prophet Micah, who saw the Lord “sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left” (I Kings 22:19) and that of the Prophet King David, who prayed that “Ye ministers” of the Lord “that do his pleasure” (Ps. 102 [103]:21) would bless the Lord. The procession is led by an Altar server carrying a candle, representing “the Word of God is light to our spirit, that the Law of God consecrates the path of our life, and that, we are expected to harbor the light of faith and the warmth of love” (Sokolof, 68). The deacon follows, holding the Gospel “precisely as the Scrolls of the Torah were and are held in synagogue worship” (Hatzidakis, 126), with the icon of the resurrection on the Gospel facing forwards, covering the deacon’s face, “to show that not he, but only Christ exists” (Archimandrite Eimilianos, 44).

The deacon then asks the priest: Bless, Master, the Holy Entrance and the priest blesses: Blessed is the entry of Thy holy ones, always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Note that the Greek for “holy ones” (agion) can be translated “holy ones,” “saints,” or “the holy.” All meanings are relevant here, for the Royal Doors through which the clergy are about to pass open into the Altar, the Holy sanctuary where the Gifts are consecrated and where angels and saints alike (the Church Triumphant) behold the wonder of Christ’s Incarnation, represented, according to St. Maximus the Confessor, in the Small Entrance, “the first coming into the world of the Son of God, Christ our Savior, in the flesh” (qtd. in Hatzidakis, 126). St. Maximus says that this appearance is “at the beginning of his life” is “obscure and imperfect,” whereas after His Resurrection it is “the perfect and supreme manifestation” (A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, 28).

The entrance as we do it today is really more of a procession, given that we process in a circuit from the Altar to the Altar. The meaning of the entrance is preserved in a Hierarchical Liturgy, when the Bishop will enter into the Altar for the first time at this point. It was also preserved in the Byzantine Church:

The meaning of this entrance appeared more readily in the days of St. John Chrysostom, when it actually was the initial entrance of all the clergy and faithful into the church building. In those days, the celebrant would come before the main outer doors of the church and pray the prayer of the entrance. Then he and his fellow clergy would enter the church and proceed straight into the altar as all the faithful entered the nave. (Fr. Lawrence Farley, Let Us Attend, 27)

In the fifth century Church that Fr. Lawrence describes, the clergy would actually be arriving from an entirely separate building that held the sacred vessels and Gospel; this building, Archpriest D. Sokolof notes, “was in a secret place” (A Manual of The Orthodox Church’s Divine Services, 68).

As the deacon stands before the Holy Entrance, he exclaims Wisdom! Aright (or Let us attend)! He then enters the Altar, followed by the remaining clergy. The Wisdom (Gr. Sophia) refers to the wisdom of God contained in the Gospel held by the deacon, who is about to proclaim its Holy words from the Ambo; it is wisdom that is encapsulated, St. Paul instructs, in the crucifixion of Christ: “hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe. Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling block, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men (I Cor. 1:20-25).

The command Aright (or Let us attend)! is an instruction to all the people to arise and stand and to listen attentively to the forthcoming words; words that are penned by men but written by God. In standing, we acknowledge that we are students in this Holy curriculum of Christ’s Church. The traditional posture for Jewish teachers (before the Second Temple’s destruction in 70 AD) was to sit while those who listened to them stood. This can be seen in the Gospel, where Christ sat while those who listened to him stood, listening attentively (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 5:1).

When the priest enters the Altar, the deacon hands him the Gospel and he places it upon the Altar Table. All the clergy and people sing “O Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ. O Son of God, Who didst rise from the dead, save us who chant unto Thee. Alleluia.” When we compare this to the Psalm from which it comes (Psalm 95 [95]), we can see that it explicitly refers to hearing God’s voice: “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker: For he is our God, And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, oh that ye would hear his voice!” Furthermore, the Lord is Yahweh, Whom the Church identifies with Christ in this verse. Interestingly, King David’s conjunction of “worship” and “bow down” is a literary use of repetition because the two words are nearly identical in Hebrew: “Worship,’ shachah in Hebrew, literally means to prostrate or fall down in a sign of respect and karah means ‘to bow over’ or ‘cause to bow over.’

The people then sing the troparia (called apolytikia when used at the end of Vespers) and kontakia commemorating the saint(s) or feast of the day. Which ones are sung depend upon the rank of the service and the day in question. Almost all ranks begin with the troparion of the resurrection in the tone of the week. By so beginning, we first emphasize the wisdom and mercy of Christ’s resurrection; it also returns us, no matter the season, to the Paschal season, when we so joyously celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection. The other hymns similarly glorify Christ by glorifying how he works through the lives of the saints.

Next: Part Nine, “The Thrice Holy Hymn”