This last section of chapter three in part three covers The Conclusion of the Liturgy and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. The chalice is taken to the altar table, after communion is received, where previously the offering of the proskomedia was made for the living and departed at the beginning of Sunday liturgical services. A prayer of the priest reads, “Wash away, O Lord, the sins of those commemorated here, by the precious blood, through the prayers of thy saints.” On the level of people’s being and, in our nature, we enter friendships, clubs, groups, monasteries, and marriage to be in community with others. To be in community is to remember and to be remembered by others, especially through our relationship with the Most Holy Trinity and the Most Holy Theotokos. We commemorate all without leaving out the living or the departed, and remembrance runs as deep as eternity – our thoughts and prayers should live in the recesses of our heart. Our mental life tends to focus on the sensate world of analyzing the painful past or the fatalistic future; both concepts in fact tend to push us into living in a fantasy not the presence of Christ. And God is called “I am” and we proclaim “Christ is risen” to emphasize that it is right now that salvation is given, and love is possible. Christ’s blood at the Cross and simultaneously in the anaphora where we offer and give thanks for the Holy Eucharist cleanses us from sins, and not only Christ Himself but through the prayers of other holy and healed people we call saints. Prayers make present all people in the Church like an electrical conduit connecting everyone in an instant. Rather than asking why God cannot just forgive and do everything Himself directly without saints, which He can, it’s better to ask what it means that we are called to become holy and help others through Christ’s power, and how our commemorations during liturgical worship can heal others through Christ’s Precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist.
The source of all life is found in a relationship with the Holy Trinity and the Theotokos that isn’t dependent on chronological time – the past and future. The injustices of the past and the fears of the future are where the demons live, and they flee to the periphery in the presence of Christ and the Theotokos. But wherever we are and in whatever moment, Christ is with us here. His presence is neither what happened to us before or what will happen on earth in unforeseeable events. Remembrance pulls in everything to the presence of a person – it is an approach and attitude that isn’t affected by reactions or worries. Remembrance reaches out and takes all points of time into the face to face exchange of the person and people we love. To remember is to collapse all the boundaries of chronological order and allows us to enter loving relationships with everyone. So, the priest crosses his arms with the chalice toward the people and blesses saying, “Blessed is our God, always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.” These specific words aren’t accidental or coincidental. Remembrance is continuous without division or stopping points; we repeat ourselves to remember ourselves in Christ. We pray again and again the same prayers out loud so that what we say with our mouth goes into our ear and descends into the heart to complete the circuit of loving memory.
In an electric age full of flickering lights, a secular vigil is visible from airplanes above and across cities. But in response, the choir sings, “We have seen the true Light.” This Light we have beheld in the liturgy, and we have partaken of in the Holy Eucharist is the same Light that preceded the creation of the world written in the Book of Genesis before the existence of the sun or moon or stars. “Light came before the creation of the world.” The Light is pure vision. It is healing sound. It is the true spoken word of intimacy and identity. The prayer of St. Basil the Great sums up the meaning of the liturgy, and the priest reads it in the sanctuary, “The mystery of Thy dispensation, O Christ our God, has been accomplished and perfected as far as it was in our power … we have had the memorial of Thy death … we have enjoyed Thine inexhaustible food, which in the world to come be well-pleased to grant to us all …” The prayer doesn’t necessarily have to be understood as “food” that we haven’t yet eaten or not yet granted to us now like many Protestant Christians understand heaven to be – a place where they are waiting to eat and drink but have not any access to it now. In Holy Orthodoxy, we have already been granted it. We go into the “world to come” when we go to the liturgy to worship God. Some Christians have emphasized a “not yet” aspect, but it is maybe more accurate to emphasize it as not fully revealed to us what we have received already; we will see clearer after our departure. It is not like other Christian groups who understand it as a “not yet” at all but a “not yet” more to be enjoyed. Like Christ lived in the next world while in an earthly body, so we live in the next age with the same kind of an earthly body. The kingdom of heaven is the Heavenly King. We have already seen, we have already been filled, we have already enjoyed the food of heaven, and there is more heightened enjoyment after death. We learn to eat the food of heaven rightly here to receive more food in the heavenly kingdom. The true Light and the true Faith are connected to the Heavenly and Holy Spirit, in the anamnesis (remembrance) and in the epiclesis of the divine liturgy.
“Going to Church” isn’t only a private experience like reading alone in silence. Liturgical prayer is fully visible, and it happens bodily before other people’s presence, whether they are alive or have passed away. “Everyone exists because God never stops thinking about us; He always remembers us.” If that is true about God and about everyone’s existence, even after death, then “the damned” continue to exist only because God hasn’t stopped remembering them. God has one mind. If that kind of remembering is connected to feeding us and sustaining every person who has ever existed, then there is a great and bold hope in the ages to come. All other services such as vespers, matins or orthros, the hours – they all prepare and help us remember those who need our prayers in the liturgy. The next chapter discusses the Sunday Services and Daily Services in part four.