Fr. Stanley Harakas: We are united with Christ in the Divine Liturgy

 

The Divine Liturgy... becomes the location where we are at the most intense level united with Christ and growing in the image and likeness of God. It is the place of "remembering" and actually sharing in the redemptive Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, as well as His whole incarnate life. It is that action which most of all characterizes us as the Church, emphasizing our real existence as members of God's Kingdom, beginning in this life and extending into eternity. It is the location where time past, time present, and time future are gathered up for us in ultimate meaning and significance.

+Fr. Stanley Harakas, from Living the Liturgy, Chapter 1, Liturgical Living

Fr. Alexander Schmemann: Our liturgical Church

 Our Church remains a liturgical Church par excellence not only in the sense of the uninterruptedness of her ancient tradition of worship, but also because of the place which worship occupies in the life of the faithful, because of the special love the faithful have for the church building and its services.

+Fr. Alexander Schmemann, from Introduction to Liturgical Theology 

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra: Christ in the midst

 What, then, is our gathering together in the Liturgy, our membership in the Church? When two or three of you are gathered together, you can become Christ, because "where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them" (Mt 18:20). It doesn't have the sense of some fourth person joining us, but signifies who we are together, it is what we become when we are together, because in the midst of you, where you are, is Christ. So you cease to be yourselves and together become Christ.

+Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra, from The Way of the Spirit, Reflections on Life in God, Chapter 6 Awaiting Pentecost

Panagiotis Trembelas: Prayer before the ambo

 What praise or what hymn or what thanks can we give You in repayment, our God who loves mankind? For when we were condemned to death and immersed in sins, You bestowed freedom upon us and gave us a share in the immortal and heavenly delight of the hoy Body and Blood of Your Christ. Therefore we pray to You, keep us and Your servants the deacons free from condemnation. Preserve with us the people here present in an honorable and reverent way of life; count us worthy until our last breath to partake at this mystical Table unto sanctification of soul and body, that we may be accounted worthy of Your heavenly Kingdom with all who have been well-pleasing to You: by the prayers of the all-holy, pure Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary and of all Your saints. For You are holy God and love mankind, and to You we give glory, to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and for ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

+Panagiotis Trembelas, an old prayer before the ambo, quoted in The Three Liturgies According to the Athenian Code

Panagiotis Trembelas: A 13th century vesting prayer

 O God, our God, invisible to the Cherubim and incomprehensible to the Seraphim and unapproachable to all the powers of heaven, who in Your inexpressible love for mankind and unfathomable goodness have united Yourself to our poverty and lowliness, and have bestowed on us Your sinful and unworthy servants the rule of priesthood: as You are good and bounteous in mercy, do You Yourself strengthen me, O Savior who loves mankind, as I prepare to make ready for the service of divine grace entrusted to me. For I come to stand before Your holy Altar which is fearsome and terrible, not trusting in my own power or purity, but trusting in the boundless ocean of Your compassion. For my sins will not triumph over the multitude of Your mercies.

Therefore I pray You, Master who loves mankind, clothe me, Your unworthy servant, with this priestly garment and grace of Your divine and All-holy Spirit. Enlighten the eyes of my mind that I may see the reflection of the brightness of Your grace; give clarity to my tongue to hymn You without fault; keep my intellect from wandering, free my mind from forgetfulness, preserve my entire in Your holiness and fulfil my petitions to You, holy Lord; receive my sacrifice as spotless incense and a divine burnt offering, and grant me the sweetness of Your beauty.

Send down an angel of light to concelebrate and strengthen me, that I may rightly proclaim the word of Your true wisdom and become worthy of receiving Your heavenly and immortal Mysteries; and that, enlightened through them in soul and body, I may be accounted worthy to enjoy Your eternal good things with those who have truly loved and followed Your ordinances. For You have said, O Master, that whatever anyone asks in Your name, he will receive it freely from God Your coeternal Father. Therefore I too, a sinner, beseech Your Deity as I put on my priestly vestment: Give to me unto my salvation whatever I have asked of You, O Lord.

For You love mankind, and are glorified together with Your Father who has no beginning, and Your All-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

+Prof Panagiotis Trembelas A vesting prayer from a 13th century manuscript, quoted by  in The Three Liturgies according to the Athenian Code

Nikolai Gogol: On the Proskomedia

On leaving the side table (prothesis), the priest bows as if to the incarnate Christ Himself and salutes in the form of the bread lying on the diskos the appearing of the heavenly Bread on earth. And he salutes it by censing it with holy incense, after blessing the incense and saying the prayer:

To Thee, O Christ our God, we offer incense as an odour of spiritual fragrance; accept it at Thy heavenly altar and send down upon us the grace of Thy Holy Spirit.

Transporting himself in thought to the time of Christ's birth and turning the past into the present, the priest regards the side table or prothesis as the secret cave in which heaven was then transferred to earth. Heaven became a case, and a cave became heaven. Having censed the the asterisk or star-cover and placed it over the diskos, he regards it as the star which shone above the Child, for which reason he says:

And the star came and stood over the place where the Child was.(Matt 2:9)¹

+Nikolai Gogol, from Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, The Office of Preparation

¹ Here Gogol is describing events toward the end of the preparation service, as the gifts to be offered are about to be covered by veils.