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The Blessing and Litany of Peace

Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

—MATT. 25:34, NKJV

Our Divine Liturgy can be understood as a journey, and before we begin any journey, we need to know where we are going. Thus the Liturgy begins¹ with the announcement of our destination: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and forever, and to the ages of ages.”

It is true: our destination is none other than the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the Trinity. But our journey really begins the moment we leave the house. Without this sacrificial act of leaving the comfort of our beds and homes and coming to church, there can be no liturgy, and whether we have to travel many miles or just walk a few yards down the street, a sacrificial act of worship has already begun.

We come to church not simply to add a spiritual and religious dimension to our secular lives, nor simply to meet our fellow Christians and to socialize, but above all to become the Church, to become the Kingdom of God. The biblical word for Church, ekklesia, means “gathering,” or “assembly,” and for the early Christians, this is precisely what Church meant. We begin our participation in worship before we even arrive at the church—simply by making the decision to come. By all means, come!

The gathering at the Divine Liturgy is also what we refer to as Eucharistic. In other words, its purpose and fulfillment is to participate in the Eucharist, the most essential aspect of the Liturgy, in which the Lord’s Supper is accomplished. This cannot happen, under normal circumstances, at home. And it is the most important kind of meal—in fact, the only kind of meal—Christians are instructed to eat together in church. In his first epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul admonishes the Christians of Corinth for partaking of a meal other than the Eucharist while they were gathered together (1 Cor. 11:20–22).

There are many reasons to come to Church, but there is only one good reason: to meet Christ—to pray, to be in the presence of God, and to worship Him. This is the unique, incredible opportunity that we have with the Eucharist, and this is how and why the social life and every other activity of the Church flows from the Liturgy. We gather together to reveal the true nature of the Church—to become what we are: the Body of Christ. The Liturgy reveals the Kingdom of God because in it Christ Himself becomes physically present in the Eucharist. Thus we gather together to become what we refer to as the Eucharistic assembly.

Blessed Is the Kingdom

Before we gather together, we are part of the natural world, we are individuals and natural families; but when we come together in one place, we become something greater than what we are as individuals. We join together with the greater spiritual family that is the Church. We leave our individual world behind us and enter into God’s Kingdom.

The Liturgy therefore really begins with a separation from the world. This is something that Christians easily forget. In our attempt to make Christianity understandable and approachable to modern people, we often forget that Christ is not of this world, and therefore the Church, although in the world, is not of the world either. As the Lord said to the Apostles: “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world” (John 15:19, NIV). Christianity can really only be understood from within. In other words, one must become a Christian to understand Christianity. Christ said as much to His Apostles: “To you has been given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom, but to others I speak in parables” (Lk. 8:10, VP). Admittedly, this makes it difficult to debate with nonbelievers about the value of faith, or the validity of belief in God, but we should accept this natural limitation. It is also a profound blessing! Those who come in will see why.

The Divine Liturgy, like the gospel itself, is one of the mysteries of the Faith. It is, in fact, the “Mystery of Mysteries.” The Liturgy is, then, in a profound sense, not a public thing. You cannot grasp its meaning and importance from simply reading a written account of it any more than you could understand the love of a husband and wife for each other by viewing what they once wrote to each other. It expresses not human society, not our own individual personalities, concerns, and interests; rather, it reveals the heavenly Kingdom. It is, above all, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Therefore, it is for those who have, in a sense, already become a part of God’s Kingdom through baptism. And if Christians are to bear effective witness to Christ, they must remember that they are called to point beyond this world to the Kingdom of God, to lead and guide people to that Kingdom of the Trinity.

Thus the Liturgy begins: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” To bless something is to rejoice in it—to receive it in love, praise, and thanksgiving—to recognize it as a means of communion with God.

The Kingdom of God is the goal of our life and of our Liturgy. The acceptance of this truth, the assent of the whole Church to the blessing and acclamation of the Kingdom made by the priest, is then proclaimed by the people with one simple word, Amen.

We hear this word so frequently that we are inclined to overlook its importance. But don’t. The fact that this response, Amen, is usually made by the chanters on behalf of the people (in the vast majority of Orthodox churches there is no congregational singing) can also make us think that it is simply another extra or meaningless “churchy” word, which the choir sings simply to add a nice, big ending to the prayers and petitions. But no. Amen is the testimony of the whole congregation to all that is said and done by the clergy in the Liturgy. We should be fully conscious as we say it. Amen is usually sung by the chanters for aesthetic and practical reasons, but this word belongs to us all. Without this Amen of the people, literally nothing can be done in church.

The Liturgy is not a performance by the priest and chanters for the people to simply watch and listen to. Liturgy literally means “the work of the people.” Without the laity, there is no liturgy. A priest on his own cannot celebrate a liturgy at all. There can be no Church without priests, but there can be no priests without the Church, and as I said at the beginning, the real meaning of the word Church is not a temple, not a church building, but the gathering of the Faithful.

The Liturgy as just this kind of joyful, Eucharistic gathering has been well expressed by two of the most important Christian theologians from the last century, Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Romano Guardini:

The Liturgy is before all else the joyful gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and enter into His Kingdom. And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole beauty of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional” or “useful.” And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is heaven on earth.… It is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world.²

The Liturgy, then, “speaks measuredly and melodiously; it employs formal, rhythmic gestures; it is clothed in colors and garments foreign to everyday life.… It is in the highest sense the life of a child, in which everything is picture, melody and song.”³

Most of us, by contrast,

ask for definitions and justifications, and they are rooted in fear—fear of corruption, deviation, “pagan influences,” whatnot. But “he that feareth is not made perfect in love” [1 Jn. 4:18]. As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will “represent” it and signify it, in art and beauty. And the celebrant of the sacrament of joy will appear in a beautiful chasuble, because he is vested in the glory of the Kingdom, because even in the form of man God appears in glory. In the Eucharist we are standing in the presence of Christ, and like Moses before God, we are to be covered with his glory.⁴

The clergy at the Divine Liturgy wear vestments (garments worn specifically for this and other services). The chasuble is the outer garment worn by priests. Orthodox vestments are often elaborate, but this is not to be showy or to satisfy the priest’s vanity, though that can be a temptation for clergy! There are historical and theological reasons for these special garments, as well as aesthetic ones. There is nothing run-of-the-mill or mundane about the Liturgy, nor should there be!

The Litany of Peace

So we have gathered together in order to discover our true identity; we have announced our destination: the Kingdom of the Trinity. And the people have confirmed our journey’s end with the word Amen. Then the deacon, who usually stands between the priests and the people, between the altar and the main body of the church (divided by the iconostasis, or “icon screen”), commands us to pray in what is called the Great Litany, known also as the “Litany of Peace,” because in the first three petitions we ask for peace.

In peace let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace from on high and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace of the whole world, for the welfare of the holy Churches of God, and for the union of all, let us pray to the Lord.

That word, peace, is so very important throughout our worship, throughout our lives as Christians. “Peace,” writes Fr. Ephrem Lash,

a word which is used some thirty times in the Liturgy, is not simply an absence of conflict. It is to live in harmony with God, with oneself, with all mankind and with the natural world of which we are part. It is above all a gift from God, which, as St Paul writes to the Philippians, “is beyond all understanding.” It is the gift that comes with the birth of Jesus, as the angels’ hymn proclaims, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill among men.” It is how Jesus sends away those he has healed or forgiven, “Go in peace.” It is how he greets the Apostles after his resurrection and it is how the bishop and priest greet the people in all the services.⁵

Peace to you. Peace is necessary for prayer and worship. This is a most basic and necessary truth, and one that demonstrates how the originators of our worship, millennia ago, had a profound understanding of the human heart. If we are not at peace with God, with one another, and with ourselves, we cannot focus on prayer; and if we have hatred and animosity toward others, our prayers are not acceptable to God. This need for peace is reiterated time and again in the Divine Liturgy.

As we begin the Liturgy, then, we must put aside all our grudges; we must forgive one another; we must be at peace, that we may offer an acceptable sacrifice to God. Only then can we be made worthy to hear the Holy Gospel, to be forgiven by God, and to receive the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion for the remission of sins and eternal life.

And so, even though the Church is necessarily apart from the world, in but not of the world, this separation is not inspired by hatred or apathy, but by the exact opposite. We leave the world that we may return to it renewed and illumined, fit to bring light to those in darkness.