Saint John the Baptist Orthodox Christian Church
  • Home
  • Orthodox Christian Faith
    • What we believe
  • Parish
    • Our Patron Saint - Saint John
    • Our History >
      • Where we were and where we are...
      • "Remember your leaders..." (Hebrews 13:7)
      • What's in the name?
    • Administration
    • Saint John's Faith Formation: Christian Education
    • Chapel
    • Become a member!
    • Parish Library
    • Service request form
    • Donate
  • News
    • Sermons & Articles
    • Pictures & Videos
    • Weekly e-Bulletin
    • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Friends & Neighbors
    • Looking Ahead to Next Sunday (LANS) [archived]
  • Calendar
  • Contact Us
  • Useful Links
    • Choose Life!
    • Online Christian Bookstores >
      • St Vladimir's Seminary Press
      • St Tikhon's Seminary Press
      • Holy Trinity Bookstore, Jordanville
      • Eighth Day Books
      • Hermitage of the Holy Cross Monastery, WV
      • Nevsky's Books
      • Fr Daniel Sysoev Bookstore
      • Издательство Московской Патриархии
      • Магазин Сретенского Монастыря, Москва
      • Православный Книжный Магазин
    • Orthodox Intro
    • Orthodox Christian Radio

Commentary on the Divine Liturgy: The Anaphora

1/11/2018

0 Comments

 
Source: Fr Lawrence Farley's Blog, No Other Foundation
Picture
Anaphora, which in Greek means “offering” (the verb form is used in Leviticus 17:5, for example, where it describes the offering of sacrifice). Anaphora is a long prayer, punctuated by a number of “Amens”. It begins with the celebrant’s blessing - “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” - and does not conclude until the end of the words, “and grant that with one mouth and one heart we may praise Your all-honourable and majestic name: of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages”.
The congregational “Amen” which follows seals the entirety of the long anaphoral prayer. It is sometimes referred to as “the Eucharistic prayer”, since it constitutes the heart of the Eucharist and serves to consecrate the gifts of bread and wine, transforming them by the Spirit’s power into the Body and Blood of the Lord. A Eucharist can do without the antiphons if need be, or even without the Creed, but not without the Anaphora, for it is this prayer which makes the Eucharist to be the Eucharist. We may look at three of its characteristics, for they reveal something about who we are as Orthodox Christians and how we are to live.

First the prayer is dialogic. That is, it begins not with words addressed to God but with a dialogue in which the celebrant and the congregation address each other. The long prayer is prefaced with this back and forth: the priest first blesses the congregation in the name of the Triune God (“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all”), and they respond by blessing him in return: “And with your spirit!”

He then tells them, “Let us lift up our hearts!”, and they respond, “We lift them up unto the Lord!” In this second exchange he is not urging them to cheer up, encouraged possibly by the fact that the end of the long service draws near, but telling them to ascend. The Lord reigns in heaven, and in the Liturgy we ascend to where He reigns. Our Liturgy, therefore, is not served in a town where the church stands, but in the Kingdom; not on earth, but in Heaven. In the Liturgy time and eternity intersect, and Heaven meets earth. We serve and worship with the Mother of God, the saints, and the angels, for we ascend to where they are.

Picture
In a final exchange the priest says, “Let us give thanks unto the Lord”, and the people respond, “It is meet and right”. The meaning of this last exchange is easily missed: the priest is obtaining the liturgical assent of the gathered community to offer the Eucharist, for it is as part of that assembly that he speaks and acts. It is his signal to proceed with the anaphoral prayer.

It is not just in the opening preface that we find congregational response. Throughout the anaphora the congregational voice is heard, joining the priest, finishing his sentences. Thus, for example, when he rejoices in the heavenly song of the angels and says that they are “singing the triumphant hymn, shouting, proclaiming, and saying” the congregation joins in and completes his sentence: “Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord of Sabaoth! Heaven and earth are full of Your glory! Hosanna in the highest!”

And again, when the priest says, “Your own of Your own we offer unto You, on behalf of all and for all”, the people again join him, saying, “We praise You! We bless You! We give thanks unto You, O Lord!” It is as if they are so enthusiastic they cannot keep themselves from joining in. Yet these congregational interruptions do not reveal only their liturgical exuberance, but also their sacramental status. They join in with the priest because they are the royal priesthood, the body of the high-priest Jesus Christ, and it is this corporate priesthood to which the celebrant gives voice. Their dialogic participation reveals that they are not simply passive observers, but active offerers; not an audience, but a priesthood, not the great unwashed, but the holy people of God, made holy through the washing of holy baptism.
Picture
Secondly, the anaphora is an anamnesis, a word sometimes rendered “remembrance.” Thus in Luke 22:19 we read that Christ said, “This is My body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.” Such a translation can be a bit misleading, for we often tend to think of remembering in terms of mental activity - I can daydream about the future or remember the past, but in both cases words describe a purely cerebral happening taking place inside my head.

The word anamnesis is less misleadingly rendered as “memorial,” and in Hebrew thought a memorial is not a merely mental process but an action that is done. Thus in Numbers 10:1-10, Moses was commanded to make two silver trumpets which were to be blown over their sacrifices in times of war, and “and they will be a memorial for you before your God” (v. 10). In other words, when the trumpets are blown over the sacrifices, they will “be remembered before the Lord your God, and you will be saved from your enemies” (v. 9). In this memorial, it is God who does the remembering. And God’s remembering here is also not a purely mental act, but means that God takes action and saves.

That is the point of Christ’s words at the mystical Last Supper: the act of eating bread and drinking wine during their gathered assembly is Christ’s memorial, the means whereby God remembers Christ and His sacrifice and takes action to save us. Through this memorial, Christ’s saving sacrifice becomes present and active in our midst. The bread which we eat as His memorial is His sacrifice, His true Body, and the cup from which we drink is His Blood.

That is why the liturgical tradition everywhere speaks of the Eucharist as a bloodless sacrifice - it is not a fresh immolation of Christ, or a re-crucifixion, but an anamnesis (memorial) of His once-for-all offered sacrifice. There is no salvation without the Cross, and the Cross is not sacramentally saving in our weekly lives without the Eucharist. We are saved by His sacrifice, since we are the people of the Eucharist.

This means that the Eucharist is the most important thing we ever do, and we live from Eucharist to Eucharist, even as we live from breath to breath. Without the Eucharist, we have no life. One remembers the story recounted long ago by Gregory Dix in his classic "The Shape of the Liturgy," about the importance of the Eucharist in the early church: “A whole congregation of obscure provincials at Abilinitina in Africa took the risk of almost certain detection by assembling at the height of the Diocletian persecution in their town, where the authorities were on the watch for them, because, as they said in court, the eucharist had been lacking a long while through the apostasy of their bishop Fundanus and they could no longer bear the lack of it. And so they called on a presbyter to celebrate - and paid the penalty of their faith down to the last man.” The story reveals not only the courage of these obscure Christians, but also the importance of the Eucharist for all of us even today.

Picture
Finally the anaphora is an extended epiclesis or invocation of the Spirit. The epicletic (invocational) character of the entire prayer is summed up most succinctly in so-called epiclesis itself, in which the celebrant asks God to send down His Spirit upon the offering. But we must look more carefully upon the actual wording, for the Spirit is not simply invoked upon the gifts of bread and wine alone, but also upon us as well. Thus the celebrant prays, “Send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here offered and make this bread the precious Body of Your Christ and that which is in this cup the precious Blood of Your Christ, making the change by Your Holy Spirit.”

Note: “Send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts.” The final goal of the epiclesis and of the anaphora and the Eucharist as a whole is not to merely change the bread into the Body of Christ, but also to change us into His Body. Through eating the sacramental Body of Christ, we are incorporated afresh into Him as His mystical Body. The goal is not simply the transformation of the gifts, but our own transformation as well. Regarding the transformation of the Gifts of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood, St Cyril of Jerusalem once said, “Whatever the Holy Spirit has touched is sanctified and changed”. He might have said this about us also, for the goal of the Eucharist is to sanctify and change us as well. We walk into the church guilty, stained, weighed down with sins and heavy laden; we walk out of the Church after receiving the Eucharist forgiven, cleansed, liberated and light.

The Anaphora is the heart of the Divine Liturgy, for it is our liturgical thanksgiving. It reveals us as the holy people of God, baptized so that we may declare the wonders of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9).
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016

    Categories

    All
    9/11
    Abortion
    Adam's Rib
    Addiction
    Advent
    Akathist
    AmazonSmile
    American Saints
    Anaphora
    Announcement
    Annual Report
    Annunciation
    Apostles Fast
    Archbp Dmitri Royster
    Ark Of Salvation
    Asceticism
    Baptism
    Baptismal Liturgy
    Beheading Of Saint John
    Be Still
    Bible
    Bible Study
    Bishop
    Calendar
    Canaanite Woman
    Children And Life
    Christian Burial
    Christianity
    Christ Is Risen!
    Christmas
    Christmas Sermon
    Clay In The Hands Of God
    Clean And Unclean
    Coming Home
    Compassion
    Conception Of The Theotokos
    Confession
    Conform To Christ
    Conversion Story
    Converts
    Coronavirus
    Courage
    Creation
    Creed
    Cross
    Death
    Deny Yourself
    Depression
    Division Vs Unity
    Donate
    Donations
    Dormition
    Dormition Fast
    Doubting Thomas
    Drug Of The 21st Century
    Elected By God
    Eve
    Faith
    Fasting
    Father Alexander Schmemann
    Father Andrew Stephen Damick
    Father Chad Hatfield
    Father Lawrence Farley
    Father's Day
    Father Sergei Kosich
    Father Stephen Freeman
    Father Thomas Hopko
    First Light
    Forgiveness
    Forgiveness Sunday
    Foundations
    Freedom In Christ
    Fullness Of Faith
    Funeral
    God's Invitation
    Gospel
    Grace Of Christ
    Great Flood
    Great Lent
    Grief
    Halloween
    Health & Happiness
    Help Wanted
    Hollywood
    Holy Friday
    Humility
    Icon Of Nativity
    Iconography
    Infant Baptism
    Interview
    Jesus Christ
    Journey
    Joy
    Keeping Kids Christian
    Kids And Faith
    Kids And Porn
    Kids Vs Technology
    Kiss Of Peace
    Kitchen Upgrades
    Knowing God
    Lamb Of God
    Lesson
    Life After Death
    Liturgical Commentary
    Liturgical Year
    Liturgy
    Living Together
    Lost Sheep
    Love
    Love Your Neighbor
    Maintenance
    Marked By God
    Marriage
    Mary
    Memory Eternal
    Mission Of A Parish
    Mission Of Orthodoxy
    Moral Compass
    Nativity Fast
    Nativity Of Christ
    Nativity Of Saint John The Baptist
    Nativity Of The Theotokos
    Newsletter
    New Testament
    New Year
    New Year Resolutions
    Normal?
    No War
    Nudity And Movies
    Orthodox Christianity
    Orthodox Church
    Orthodox Community
    Orthodox History In America
    Orthodox Saints
    Orthodox Wedding
    Orthodoxy & Catholicism
    Orthodoxy In America
    Orthodoxy Is Life
    Orthodoxy Is Not Religion
    Orthodoxy & Lutheranism
    Orthodoxy & Protestantism
    Paralytic
    Pascha
    Patience
    Patron Feast Day
    PayPal
    Pictures
    Pilgrimage
    Podcast
    Polemics
    Porn
    Porn And Brain
    Porn Is A Lie
    Porn Kills Love
    Power In Weakness
    Pray At Home
    Prayer
    Prayer Of St Ephraim
    Prayer Rule
    Prayers To The Theotokos
    Procession
    Pro-life
    Publican And Pharisee
    Reading Bible
    Relics
    Religion
    Repentance
    Resist Porn
    Royal Priesthood
    Sacraments
    Sacred Space
    Saint Alexander Hotovitzky
    Saint Alexis Toth
    Saint Herman Of Alaska
    Saint Innocent Of Moscow
    Saint James The Brother Of The Lord
    Saint John Chrysostom
    Saint John The Baptist
    Saint Juvenaly
    Saint Nicholas
    Saint Patrick Of Ireland
    Saint Peter The Aleut
    Saint Raphael Of Brooklyn
    Saints Peter And Fevronia
    Saint Theophan The Recluse
    Saint Thomas Sunday
    Saint Tikhon Of Moscow
    Salvation
    Sanctity Of Life
    Seal Of The Holy Spirit
    Search For Christ
    Self-care
    Sermon
    Seventh Day
    Sexual Revolution
    Sharing Faith
    Silence
    Sin
    Skillful Children
    Sower
    Sunday Of Orthodoxy
    Sunday Of The Blind Man
    Sun Of Righteousness
    Teaching The Faith
    Telling The Truth
    Temple Of God
    Temptation
    Thanksgiving
    Theophany
    Theotokos
    Thorn In Flesh
    Tolerance
    Tree Of Life
    Triumph Of Orthodoxy
    Unchangeable Christianity
    Unity
    Weakness
    Why Confess To A Priest
    Woman
    Words
    Youth Ministry
    Zacchaeus
    Антоний Сурожский
    Архим. Ианнуарий Ивлиев
    Вера и знание
    Воспитание
    Дети
    Иоанн Златоуст
    Исповедь
    Молитва
    Новый Год
    о. Александр Шмеман
    о. Ианнуарий Ивлиев
    Пасха
    Подготовка к исповеди
    Подготовка к Причастию
    Подготовка к Рождеству
    Пост
    Причастие
    Проповедь
    Проповедь
    Пятидесятница
    Рождественский Пост
    Рождество
    Современное поколение
    Троица
    Христос Воскресе!

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016

Picture

Jesus said to the crowds about John, “I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John the Baptist.” (Luke 7:28)


Address

29 Weaver Street
​Little Falls, NJ 07424

Email

StJohn.Singac@gmail.com

Telephone

(973) 256-0314

Join our mailing list

* indicates required
Picture
Picture
Picture

Search our website

  • Home
  • Orthodox Christian Faith
    • What we believe
  • Parish
    • Our Patron Saint - Saint John
    • Our History >
      • Where we were and where we are...
      • "Remember your leaders..." (Hebrews 13:7)
      • What's in the name?
    • Administration
    • Saint John's Faith Formation: Christian Education
    • Chapel
    • Become a member!
    • Parish Library
    • Service request form
    • Donate
  • News
    • Sermons & Articles
    • Pictures & Videos
    • Weekly e-Bulletin
    • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Friends & Neighbors
    • Looking Ahead to Next Sunday (LANS) [archived]
  • Calendar
  • Contact Us
  • Useful Links
    • Choose Life!
    • Online Christian Bookstores >
      • St Vladimir's Seminary Press
      • St Tikhon's Seminary Press
      • Holy Trinity Bookstore, Jordanville
      • Eighth Day Books
      • Hermitage of the Holy Cross Monastery, WV
      • Nevsky's Books
      • Fr Daniel Sysoev Bookstore
      • Издательство Московской Патриархии
      • Магазин Сретенского Монастыря, Москва
      • Православный Книжный Магазин
    • Orthodox Intro
    • Orthodox Christian Radio