“The Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints” is the proper title given to the Orthodox Liturgy set by the text attributed to St John Chrysostom (Najim, 2025: 123). On special occasions a similar but longer text attributed to St Basil is used.

As the title indicates, the subject of or the actor in the Liturgy is God the Father Himself, who performs the liturgy for our benefit. He condescends toward us and serves us, so that we may ascend toward Him and serve Him in return. Thus, His sacrifice for us is joined by our sacrifice for Him rendered in His name and honor.

The Liturgy culminates in God giving his Son in sacrifice on the altar of the Eucharist. Just as God once demanded of Abraham to sacrifice his “only son Isaac, whom you love” (Gen 22.2), He Himself gives his “only begotten Son” (KJV) at Golgotha and on the altar of the Eucharist to save, redeem, purify, reconcile, nourish, and to give eternal life to the world (Jn 3.16). Just as Christ voluntarily offered himself once and far all in the garden of Gethsemane, He in his risen Body offers Himself eternally in sacrifice in the order of Melchizedek, interceding for us at the right hand of God (Heb 1.13, 4.14, 7.11-25, 8.1-2). The Liturgy symbolizes and effectuates all these polysemic sacrifice of Christ, as His earthly sacrifice is remembered and His heavenly sacrifice reenacted therein.

The Liturgy is a symbol (raza, mystery, σύμβολον) of God’s saving work (ἔργον) in which humans join as His coworkers (συνεργόι, I Cor 3.9). Without God’s action (ἔργον) the Liturgy becomes a mere ritualistic formality. Without human co-operation, it cannot happen.

Moreover, the liturgy is God-act (θεουργία), whereby we can draw near God in his presence/action, as Jacob did at Bethel and exclaimed upon seeing a vision of God: “Surely the LORD is in this place…. How awesome is this place!” ( Gen 28.16-17). Likewise, the Church is a place where God’s “will [is] done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is where the glory of God dwells, where the Word becomes flesh (Jn 1.14). Accordingly, the Liturgy must be glorious and majestic, as we draw near God with awestruck fear and reverence.

The word ‘liturgy,’ λειτουργία, originally referred to: “A public service.  At Athens, a burdensome public office or charge, which the richer citizens discharged at their own expense, properly in rotation, but also voluntarily or by appointment” (Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon). It entails running of a deficit incurred in rendering public service (e.g., road and building projects, commissioning temples and statues, funding festivals and feasts following animal sacrifices, etc.). It is a ‘burdensome’ work because it “required … a putting out of funds at a loss” (Levinas, 1996:50). The treasury gets emptied. This is the liturgy in its original Greek sense.

For God to perform the Liturgy (for us), then, is to spend prodigally, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, offering a lavish banquet at the homecoming of the lost son (Lk 15). The father’s prodigality exceeds the son’s. Likewise, in the Liturgy, there is excess and overflow of God’s expenditure and cost. As Dionysius might put it, God’s super-essential being and goodness emanates (πρόοδος) and overflows downwards. God’s abundant Light (Christ) that exceeds any other light illuminates the lower beings, enabling them to glow in His radiance and to become a light of their own, like Christ, in knowledge and being. Thanks to God’s abundant goodness and love emanating towards us, we too can in turn become God in His likeness—within our own respective capacities and befitting our own nature.

The Divine Liturgy is thus hierarchically (divinely) ordered so that we can be uplifted to the likeness of God: “Hierarchy is … a sacred order and science and energy—assimilated, as far as permissible, to the likeness of God, and conducted to the illuminations granted to itself from God, in due order, with a view to the Divine imitation” (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy (hereafter “CH”), Ch. III; 164D, translated by John Parker, 1894: 21). Without the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the Liturgy would not make sense. For we are (supposed) to be increasingly elevated and illuminated therein, as it progresses toward the climax prior to dismissal. The ritual (τελετή) is meant to bring about the participant’s “initiation in[to] the mysteries.” In the Liturgy we are thus entering into the reality of God’s Kingdom, whereby His will and His righteousness (δικαιοσύνην, justice,' Matt 6.33) is realized on earth as it is in heaven. (See below the footnote on ‘mystery’ or ‘mystagogue.’)

Baptism is not a separate rite from the Liturgy; it is part of it. Of baptism St Cyril of Jerusalem writes: “You became christs when you received the prefiguration [τὸ ἀντίτυπον, antitype] of the Holy Spirit… […] … when you ascended from the pool of the holy waters, you received chrismation [χρἲσμα], the prefiguration [τὸ ἀντίτυπον] of Christ’s chrismation [ἐχρίσθη]” (2017: 105; Johnson’s translation altered).

(‘Christ’ means ‘anointed,’ which in turn means ‘chrismated’ or ‘rubbed with chrism’ (“a consecrated oil, usually mixed with balsam or balsam and spices, used by certain churches in various rites, as in baptism, confirmation, and the like.” The root Greek word is χρίω: “to touch on the surface, to rub.”)

To become the prefigured image of Christ one must be entirely enwrapped by Him, as if immersed in the baptismal water, as if shaped by the hammer and anvil (ἀντίτυπος, formation of hammer and anvil).

What does it mean to imitate (or to undergo formation of becoming an image of) Christ more specifically still?

Christ offered himself as a sacrifice. He sacrificed himself and became a self-sacrifice. In so doing, he fulfilled God’s will (Jn 3.16). To imitate Christ is to offer oneself as a sacrifice, to self-sacrifice, and to become a self-sacrifice, like Him.

What does it mean to sacrifice, then?

To sacrifice is to give (προσφέρειν). To be a sacrifice in Hebrew (קרבן qorban, which the Septuagint usually translates as δῶρον, gift) literally means to “cause to come near” (Moffitt, 2022:163). Another Hebrew word that is usually (mis)translated as ‘atonement’ is כפר, kipper, which refers to “both ransoming and purifying effects” (Moffitt, 2022:109). (The word ‘atonement’ is William Tyndale’s invention in the 16th century. Furthermore, ‘sacrifice’ in English means ‘substitution,’ as in ‘sacrifice hit’ in baseball. Substitution is not the primary meaning of sacrifice but became such later, as in Isaiah 53. See below for more.)

The Levitical sacrifice, then, involves drawing near to God by bringing gifts as well as cleansing by performing purifying act with blood. In the context of the purification ritual, blood functions as a cleansing agent (hattā’t, Num 29.11 (“the purification offering of purification”), Exod 30.10 (“the blood of the purifying purification offering”); Milgrom, 1991:1062). Moreover, during the night of the Passover in Egypt, the blood of lamb was smeared on the doorposts and lintel, because it had the apotropaic effects, protecting the Hebrews from the angel of death (Exod 12). In Isaiah 52-53, furthermore, a suffering servant is depicted as substituting for sinners (“he was wounded for our transgressions…” 53.5). The suffering of the righteous, it is understood, renews the broken covenant with God—broken by transgression or inequity.

In Christ’s crucifixion, as narrated in the Gospels, all these diverse themes of sacrifice are invoked and combined, historically and symbolically. In his heavenly sacrifice, as referenced in the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ offers himself in perpetual sacrifice for our intercession (Heb 7.25). The sacrificial act of Christ—in all of its polysemic fullness— is symbolically brought forth and effectuated in the Orthodox Liturgy, especially in the eucharistic rite (Anaphora). The (mystery of) symbolism employed therein is such that, like Mary, it contains what cannot be contained.

Symbol (raza), then, brings forth the divine, ineffable reality in the visible and sensible. But symbol is not something mystical, exotic, primitive, irrational, or magical. For Neo-Platonists, symbols are not imitations (μιμητικὴ) (Proclus, Commentary on the Republic, I. 198.14-15); and they (σύνθήματα) “themselves, by themselves perform their appropriate work” (Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, II.11. 96, 13-97, 8, as quoted in Schibille, 2014:209; and 204 for Proclus reference). Symbols have intrinsic power, as in the ecclesiastic sense of the Latin word sacramentum. Furthermore, “symbol gives rise to thought” (Ricoeur, 1967: 347, 356). Theology is possible because symbolic is its language and power. See more in the footnote below.*

Finally, St Paul exhorts us to offer (παραστῆσαι) our bodies as a living sacrifice (Rom 12.1). Accordingly, in vespers, we pray, reciting Psalm 141.2:

Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as the incense;

And the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

To pray is to sacrifice; and to sacrifice is to pray.

But to pray, according to Hannah, is to pour out one’s soul (I Sam 1.15), to empty oneself completely and entirely. Likewise, to sacrifice is to completely empty oneself (kenosis, κενόω) and descent to the lowest, even to the point of death (Phil 2.7-8), offering oneself “to the least of these” (Matt 25: 40, 45)—in short, to be a grain of wheat that falls and dies so that it may bear much fruit (Jn 12.24).

Sacrifice, then, is infinite. Like His love, God’s sacrifice knows of no limits. He gave his precious Son. Following Him, Christ too gave his all. This is what we imitate if we are created in His image: giving and becoming a sacrifice completely, totally, and wholly, like a burnt offering whose smoke arises from the altar to God like prayer.

Accordingly, St Basil the Great teaches us:

This is how you pray continually, not by offering prayer in words,

But by joining yourself to God through your whole way of life,

So your life becomes a continuous and uninterrupted prayer.

So, we pray at the epiclesis:

Send down your Holy Spirit upon us, and upon these offered gifts, and make this bread the Precious Body of your Christ, and that which is in this chalice the Precious Blood of your Christ, changing [them] by your Holy Spirit… […] for fullness of [your] kingdom….**

Amen.

The archetype, Christ, after whom we are to imitate and to become His likeness is indeed a lofty goal. How can we really become like Him? Do we have the power to become a child of God and His brother/sister? Thank God, our imitation of Him does not depend on our ability. Rather, as Dionysius assures us, “God is the Cause of the [very] ability of all who partake in likeness to be alike and is the substance [ὺποστάτης] of likeness-in [and by]-itself [ αὺτοομοιότητος, auto-likeness]” (Divine Names (“DN”) IX 6, as quoted in Bychkov, 2012: 42).

God is the source of our imitative power and the cause of our desire and ability to become like Him. Praise be to God!

*I am using the word ‘symbol’ in the sense that Dionysius uses to refer to what the Latin Church means by the word sacramentum. But to translate ‘symbol’ as ‘sacrament’ would lose its rich meaning. In Syriac we find the appropriate equivalent: raza, meaning ‘secret,’ ‘mystery,’ ‘symbol’ all combined (Brock, 1985: 41). A divine symbol by definition then contains the ineffable, inscrutable reality/mystery of God that exceeds and defies human reason and comprehension. Our reason runs up against the wall of its aporia (ἀπορία), as in paradox. Such is the overwhelming, inscrutable reality/mystery of the divine symbols that Dionysius refers to in his discourse on the Divine Liturgy: Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. Everything is symbolic in Dionysius, therefore, including the names and adjectives by which we designate God and His attributes. Because ‘symbol’ has much broader and deeper meaning than ‘icon,’ which is included in the meaning of ‘symbol,’ the question concerning the difference between the sacraments and the icons does not arise in Dionysius. Both baptism and an icon, for example, contain the divine reality inscrutable to human reason or aesthetics. (An icon is not an aesthetic object, in the first place.) Another benefit of the word ‘symbol’ in the sense found in Syriac (its plural, raze, refers to the Mysteries, the Eucharist, as in Greek), in its strong sense, is that it avoids excessive symbolic representation or allegorization associated with, for example, priestly vestments, apse, ambo, bema, altar, skeuophylakion, eiliton, etc., as found in St Germanus’ Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation (translated with introduction and commentary by Paul Meyerdolff, 1984). If theology speaks in symbolic language, the semiotic associations employed therein should be tight, as we find in St Paul’s letters or in St Ephrem’s poetic theology. Lastly but not the least, by ‘mystery’ we do not mean unsolvable puzzle, magic, epistemic conundrum, or magical exoticism. The Greek word μύησις refers to ‘initiation;’ and its derivative μυσταγωγία means ‘initiation into the mysteries.’ In the mystagogy of the Liturgy, then, one enters into the divine reality (of/) the Mystery, into a new reality of the kingdom of God and His righteousness (δικαιοσύνη). Something divine happens in such a way that one’s being or existence is fundamentally changed. In other words, we become (initiated into being) “a new creation” (2 Cor 5.17, Gal 6.15). Otherwise, epiclesis (invoking the Holy Spirit to come down and to change us to be divine and the Elements to become the Body and Blood) has no power or meaning.

** Quoted from Taft, 2008: 105.