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LET US LIFT UP OUR HEARTS!
“Priest: Let us lift up our hearts. (Ἄνω σχῶμεν τὰς καρδίας. Горé имеим сердца.)
People/Choir: We have them (lifted up) to the Lord. (Ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν Κύριον. Имамы ко Господу.)“ (Eucharistic Prayer, Byzantine Divine Liturgy)
The Eucharistic Prayer is not only a text, read (mostly) by our priest. It is also an action and an event, “done” by the entire Church, all of us, as we gather by invitation of the Host of this event, our Lord Jesus Christ. And the place where we get to meet our Host, if we suit up and show up to this event, is “above,” in the Presence of God. This is an “above” that becomes accessible to us, in our (down) here and now, as we let ourselves be lifted up into communion with the God-Man Jesus Christ. It is He Who has elevated our humanity to the very Throne of God, having been seated at His Father’s right hand, – and yet remains in our midst, – by the grace of His ever-generous, ever-descending into our world, Holy Spirit.
For us, every prayer, not only the Eucharistic Prayer, is an ascent into the Oneness of God, and away from the fragmentation of merely-human being, with its oft-contradictory cares, wants, opinions, fears, and other God-less things that drag us down and cripple our growth. For God, meeting us in prayer is a descent into our here and now, in the sacramental “above” that is brought “down” into our world by His Son, and repeatedly made accessible to us by the generous Self-Giving of His Holy Spirit. Let me not miss out on this human-divine socializing going on in our world, also outside of church, letting my heart be “lifted up” and liberated, by God’s grace, into prayer.
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What Sister Vassa expresses here so well, reminds me of the liturgical theology of Fr. Alexander Schmemann. His vision for the Church entering into a post-Christian world, was to liberate the Liturgy and Eucharist from a formal ritualism or even a kind of "legalistic reduction," to what is "valid." Bringing the Liturgy to "life" is the legacy that Fr. Schmemann left to the Church. In one very real sense, that is not hard, because the whole text of the Liturgy - and its rites - are clearly designed to be life-giving! The Liturgy brings Christ to us. We simply had to uncover that vision and we have to consciously maintain it as we press forward into the future.
One of the great "breakthroughs" that allowed that rediscovery to happen, was the restoration of the ancient Church's practice of hearing all of the prayers out loud, chanted by the celebrant, so that the clergy and laity could together make that ascent to God by which are hearts are truly "lifted up." Hearing the prayers of the Liturgy as a Body - especially in the anaphora - has transformed the "ancient" Liturgy into such a lively service of worship to the triune God, that any "going back" to the "old days" would be a regression that would deaden the spirit of the Liturgy. I hope that the "rumors" of that actually happening are not true. We cannot allow such a "breakthrough" to recede into the past.
