Melkite Greek Catholic Church

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Letter on the Liturgy
Of His Beatitude, Patriarch Gregorios III,
Of Antioch and All the East, of Alexandria and of Jerusalem
For the Melkite Greek Catholic Church

To all of you, dear brothers and sisters,
Your Graces the bishops,
Superiors General, Mothers General,
priests, deacons, monks, nuns
and all the sons and daughters
of our Melkite Greek Catholic parishes
in Arab countries, countries of emigration
and throughout the world.

Chapter One
The Theological Principles of the Divine Liturgy
The Eucharist is the Mystery of Mysteries as Pascha is the Feast of Feasts(1)

1. The community of the faithful lives by faith in the mystery of Christ. The sacraments are facets, transfigurations or appearances of the mystery of God who took human form to make humanity in his divine form. Since the Eucharist is the sacrament of all sacraments, it crowns all the various prayers and liturgical services. The Eucharist is like Pascha: it is not in the line of feasts, but the pinnacle, as our liturgical prayers say. Pascha is the “feast of feasts and the celebration of celebrations.” (Eighth Ode of the Paschal Canon)

Indeed there is an essential link between Pascha and the Eucharist, for it is the sacramental place, in which Christ’s Passover is extended to become the Church’s, as the fourth-century Saint Gregory Nazianzus described it, “The offering of the resurrection,” and the fourteenth century Nicholas Cabasilas wrote, “The icon of the Saviour’s economy.” For the eucharistic spirituality of the Liturgy is condensed and the liturgical year’s spirituality meet in their three main outlines:

1. The service of the Word corresponds to Theophany (Christmas, the Baptism and the preaching of the Gospel)

2. The service of the Anaphora corresponds to Pascha (the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection)

3. The service of Communion corresponds to theosis(2)The Eucharist allows humanity to enter the paschal mystery of Christ making every person a paschal being, by allowing them to participate in the passion, death(3) and resurrection(4) of Christ and a witness to the Holy Spirit, and a Spirit-bearer to the world.(5) So the Church, by celebrating the Eucharist, itself becomes a paschal presence of Christ the Lord in the world.

The Eucharist is the realisation of the mystery of the incarnation and redemption.

1. The aim and object of the Liturgy is Christ himself, who suffers as sacrificial redemption for us. We, through the Eucharistic Liturgy, offer our thanks for the gift of salvation and redemption. So the Eucharist sums up the New Testament.

2. The Acts of the Apostles tell us that Christians met together to hear preaching and to break bread, (Acts 2: 42, 20: 7) as the preaching is Christ himself, the Word (Acts 2: 22-24, 32-34) and the bread too is Christ, the food of the faithful. (John 6: 32, Matthew 26: 26, Mark 14: 22, Luke 22: 19, 1 Corinthians 10: 16, 11: 23-24)

3. The Divine Liturgy expresses this in symbolic fashion, by exchanging the Gospel book, (the beautiful proclamation of the Word, placed on the Holy Table, where it is the centre of the prayers and celebration in the first part of the Liturgy) for the chalice and paten, bearing the Blood and Body, which become the centre of the second part of the Liturgy.

4. So the Church thereby symbolically realises the mystery of salvation, which is the content of the holy books in both Testaments. It realises the promise of the Old in the reality of the New. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us, and we beheld his glory...” (John 1: 14) God gave us this mystery through the fact of his free love of us, as Saint John said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3: 16) Life is the Trinity’s great gift to humanity. That is why we proclaim at the end of the Liturgy, and the end of that realisation in us, “We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith, worshipping the undivided Trinity, for the same hath saved us.” So, the hymn comes spontaneously as profound longing, after the joy of meeting, the rapture of union and the bliss of participating in the real divine presence, fulfilling the Gospel verse, “We beheld his glory.”

5. That is why we say that the Divine Liturgy is the commemoration which mystically makes present in our lives the events of salvation, as we read in the prayer, “Now the divine powers serve invisibly with us.  Behold the King of Glory enters.” This is a mystical offering realised happening without our seeing it. “With faith and love, let us draw near, to become participants in eternal life.” (Hymn of the Great Entrance in the Presanctified Liturgy.)

The Liturgy as a Foretaste of the Kingdom

1. In the Divine Liturgy, we live in a special way, whilst still being on earth, the heavenly Liturgy, in which the myriads of angels, ascribe glory and praise to the Divine Trinity, one in essence, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.” (cf. Isaiah 6: 3) It is the heavenly song that we hear being repeated in the heart of the church. We have added to that the earthly hymn, in which Jerusalem welcomes the King coming to save, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.” (Matthew 21: 9b)

2. The Divine Liturgy translates us to heaven, for it opens up to us an eschatological dimension and “we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims.” (Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, no. 8)

3. The Divine Liturgy brings heaven to us too and allows it to enter our everyday life. The Church or Eucharistic community is the place of new birth through the Holy Spirit, the birth that our Lord Jesus Christ gave us in the mystery of his death and resurrection. It is a community of the Gospel and Eucharist. It is the Body of Christ is the place of Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit comes down and changes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, just as He changes the faithful to become other Christs, and transforms the whole of creation into the living temple of God, in which is repeated in its vaults, songs and hymns of thanksgiving and praise, for the whole of creation “groaneth ...waiting for the ...redemption...” (Romans 8: 22-23)

4. So the earth becomes heaven and life becomes in the Christian vision a universal, cosmic Divine Liturgy. That is why it is said that the Divine Liturgy is heaven on earth.

The Eucharist: starting point for new life

1. God created man and allowed him to share in his freely given love. If man stumbles on the way of that love, God remains faithful to his Covenant, unto death on the cross, that has transformed us by its power to resurrection and new life.

2. The Eucharist(6) is the celebration of that mystery, and our participation in it, means our acceptance of being renewed by God and changing our lives, and passing over(7) with the risen Christ to new life, thanking him for his divine economy.

3. The Holy Spirit that unites all the concelebrants makes them a united community, open to the love of God and love of others, beginning now on earth and coming to completion in the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus the Eucharist is the sign of union in the risen Christ and the link and unity of the community that seeks to change the face of the world and is obliged to prepare the day when the whole of humanity can accept the risen Christ at his second coming. (This is the eschatological dimension of the Eucharist.) With all the saved, we shout, “Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelation 19: 9)

From the Eucharistic Table to the table of poor brethren

1. These basic dimensions that we experience in Eucharistic celebration, Christians carry in the depths of their life. This is reflected in their daily relations with their surroundings, in the home, the family, the neighbourhood, school, university, or job; with their friends and companions, their subordinates and superiors, with all those they meet. So the faithful go out of church, charged with grace so that their day becomes, holy, perfect, guided by an angel of peace, and they spend their lives as faithful witnesses and keen apostles of the Gospel, living Christian lives of peace, preparing to stand blameless before the fearful judgment seat of Christ when they can give account of the talents they have received, which were entrusted to them. (Matthew 25: 14-30)

2. So the Eucharist does not finish in church at the end of the liturgical celebration, with the departure of the Christian faithful. That is where it begins, when the faithful are united to the Body and Blood of Christ and receive the Lord’s Spirit, they go forth as preachers, liberators and luminaries, as Christ himself said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4: 18-19) That is what the apostles affirmed in their writings, that “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.” (James 1: 27) That is what the holy Church Fathers taught. The fourth century Saint John Chrysostom said(8) that the mystery of the Eucharist was the mystery of Christ. Judgment will be according to the way in which we join the mystery of Christ present in the Eucharistic sacrament and his sacrament present in human brothers and sisters. (cf. Matthew 25: 31-46) Further on he asks, what use we find in adorning the Table of Christ with golden utensils if Christ is dying in our hungry brother?(9) “How can we respect the altar on which Christ’s Body and Blood are placed, yet remain indifferent to Christ himself who is incarnate in our brother in penury and who is dying of hunger? That temple is more important than the other.(10) ” The fifth century St Nerses the Syrian adds, “Holiness without your fellow man is not holiness, because you cannot enter the Kingdom alone.”