Marshall McLuhan is often quoted in The New Media Epidemic written by Orthodox writer Jean-Claude Larchet, which we read a few years ago here at St. John the Forerunner. McLuhan said, “I live right inside radio when I listen.” All forms of technological media have the power to change our orientation. Now the loss of perspective and the distortion of our sense of time and wakefulness are happening rapidly. The culture of print seems closer to the day when books will seem like scrolls to future generations. In the preface of Metropolitan Hilarion’s five volume series, he states that the Orthodox divine liturgy teaches theology. When we enter the liturgical texts and poetry with our heart and ears, and we look with our eyes at the icons during the chanting and praying, we live right inside of Christ and His life, which is commemorated in the Sunday and daily services. Prayer could be the most “subversive action” a Christian can take in this electric and economic age.
Many of the liturgical prayers are put into liturgical verses called stichera – a chanted poetic medium that is both oral and textual. Some of them originated in Constantinople and others in “the mother Church” of Jerusalem. Not only the stichera, but also the canons, sedalens/kathisma, troparia, and kontakia “reveal” the substance of the texts and prayers of the daily services in the Octoechos cycle that runs from the Sunday of All the Saints in Pentecost time to the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee in Triodion time. The first service of the week is Saturday vespers (evening), which is the eighth day of the resurrection – so, the verses often sing of the resurrection of Christ and its meaning for Christians and all humanity. Christ is sung as the “heavenly King.” Earthly kings that we’ve read about or have heard about tried to unite people based on politics, ethnicity, economics, nationality, or whatever else is convenient. Many rulers and emperors have used religion to unite countries and diverse groups. We intuitively understand that a ruler ought to have a divine character and to be able to transcend social structures to judge and protect. Often saints transcend society’s expectations and pressures like Perpetua and Felicity of Rome did under the imperial pagan state. We rally around leaders and inspirational individuals and rulers; we adorn kingly places and queens because we are trying to approach Beauty. All these cyclical patterns of history and human behavior can be answered adequately in the resurrectional stichera and “songs of ascent” during resurrectional orthros that were drawn from St. Theodore the Studite. The bishop and priest, the choir, and the people work in common toward this goal of the next life during this life. Universities and hospitals are wonderful ways of bringing the kingdom of God to those who are in need; to fulfill the commandment to love others. We also fulfill the commandment to love God when we pray and worship in the divine services, and it’s where “we are doing the work that no else in the world is doing.” Christ Himself is the Resurrection – the summit of divine and human beauty.