The Glory of the Procession

Although relatively late in its final development (circa late 6-century), the Great Entrance is arguably one of the most splendid parts of the Divine Liturgy.

The liturgy became more splendid, ceremonial took over the customs of the ceremonial of the imperial court, a conscious effort was made to provide in the liturgy a moving, symbolic, dramatic performance (Louth, 1989: 8).

The Great Entrance refers to the procession of the deacons and the priests carrying the Gifts to be transported to the sanctuary through the nave and to be laid upon the altar so that the Eucharistic rite (Anaphora) may begin.

The procession reflects the Byzantine sense of pageantry. The 10th century book on ceremonies, De caerimoniis, records the emperor participating in the Great Entrance procession as follows:

the sovereigns with lamps in hand march in front of the gifts, with the senators and chamberlains. The scepters and other accoutrements stand in their proper order and the sovereigns, going via the solea, stand outside the holy doors,…. The holy things, having arrived on the solea, pause, and the archdeacon comes and incenses the sovereigns, then the patriarch, and after him, the holy table. And thus all the holy things enter, and after all have entered, the sovereigns greet the patriarch and then go via the right side of the bema outside [the sanctuary] and enter the metatorion [a room in Hagia Sophia].

As quoted in Taft, 2004: 195.

Here in the procession the “King of Glory” (Ps 24.7-10) comes “in the disc and in the cup,” as Narsai of Nisibi put it, preceded by the emperor and his entourage holding lamps, and followed by the priests and other bearers of the liturgical implements.

Though seemingly a royal procession, the Great Entrance can be better understood, however, in terms of the Dionysian notion of the hierarchy (ἱερός + ἀρχή, ‘holy order’)—the term Dionysius invented, according to Andrew Louth (1989: 38).

Now, hierarchy has nothing to do with power or authority. Rather, it only pertains to assimilation (ἀφομοἰωσις, becoming like) and union (becoming one) with God by participation (μετουσία). The purpose of the hierarchy is strictly spiritual—imitation and illumination:

Hierarchy [ὶεραρχἰα] is … a sacred order [τἀξις ὶερὰ], knowledge [ἐπιστἠμη], and energy [ἐνέργεια] assimilating [ἀφομοιουμένη], as accessible as possible [ἐφικτὸν], to the likeness of God [θεοειδὲς] in connection with [ἀναλόγως] illuminations [ἐλλάμψεις]—illumination which itself is endowed [ἐνδιδομένας] from God—into upliftment [ἀναγομἐνη] toward God-imitation [θεομίμητον].

Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy (CH), Ch. 3; 164D, translation mine.

It is the deacons and the priests who transports the Gifts, starting from the sanctuary (prothesis), going through the nave, and returning to the sanctuary to hand over the Gifts to the awaiting bishop. The function of each celebrant in each of their respective roles within the hierarchy is important, as their ranking dictates what roles they are to play in the Liturgy. The movement in the Liturgy starts from the lower rank and gradually elevates into the higher rank. For example, at the time of Hagia Sophia, the non believers and the penitents cannot enter the church but stand outside the narthex in the atrium. The patriarch or the bishop enters the narthex, holding the Gospel (book), as the choir sings antiphones, and brings the Gospel into the sanctuary in the procession called “The Little Entrance.” The Epistle and the Gospel are read in the ambo by the deacon(s); whereas the Eucharist is performed in Anaphora and communed inside the sanctuary by the Hierarchs and the priests before it is brought out to the nave (syntax) to be distributed among the faithful. According to Dionysius, the deacon is to purify the believers or the catechumens; the priest is to illuminate the baptized; and the bishop or the Hierarch is to perfect the rite/initiation by performing the rite of myron (the fragrant mixture of olive and balsamic oil). God’s re-generative bestowal of loving kindness emanates from the altar in the sanctuary to the nave, pulling or uplifting the faithful back into the divine presence in the circle of procession (πρόοδος) and return (ἐπιστροφή). Both the Little Entrance (in the Liturgy of the Word) and the Great Entrance (in the Liturgy of the Faithful) symbolize and re-enact the Dionysian circle of going out (emanation) and return.

In the following short description, Archbishop Alexander Glotzin, to my knowledge, best describes the procession of the Great Entrance to be understood as part of the Eucharist:

It is thus during the Eucharist—exiting the altar to cense the entire temple, reentering the altar, and, later, inviting believers to partake of the Gifts—that the bishop provides us with an icon of the divine procession and Providence.

Golitzin, 2013: 141.

For Golitzin the Great Entrance is a symbol of God’s work of providence, the salvific work that, as Dionysius puts it, “preserves all things in their proper places without change, conflict, or deterioration…” (DN 897A). The orderly procession in hierarchy is the very movement of God’s way of redeeming/restoring the world, by which all things are put in place as they should be in their “proper virtues” (DN 897B). To participate in the divine reality (God’s providential work) within one’s own proper place is to effectuate God’s work of re-creation, so that God will be “above all and through all and in all” (Eph 4.6; cf., I Cor 8.6) within their hierarchy. We do not transgress above or below ourselves in the hierarchy to participate in God’s work/energy/operation. Remaining within our proper place, we participate in His operation to the fullest extent possible within our own capacity (ἐπιτηδειότης, κατ’ όικείαν άναλογίαν).

To be within one’s own capacity but to be so fully and maximally is to be virtuous. This is what it means to participate (μετουσία, participation, partnership, communion (CH 305C, 308A)) within the hierarchy of God’s operation. Participation in the hierarchy includes participation in the ecclesiastical hierarchy—the only order (τάξις) we have. We can imitate angels but cannot participate in the celestial hierarchy. To do so would be to transgress our created order. It would be to sin and to “stumble upon into error or disorder and suffer a diminution of the perfection of [our] proper virtues” (DN 897B). Participation within the hierarchy is the only way in which we can reap the benefits of God’s providential work.

The Pageantry of the Neo-Platonism

Steeped in the intellectual climate of Neo-Platonism, as many of the early church fathers were, it is tempting to argue that Dionysius conceived the idea of hierarchy with the following passage in mind, written by Plotinus, the father of what we now call Neo-Platonism. In the passage, Plotinus speaks of a royal procession as follows:

… just as in the procession of a great king, the lesser come first, and the greater and more dignified come after them in turn, and those who are even closer to the king are more regal, and those next even more honored. After all these, the Great King suddenly reveals himself, with the people praying to him and prostrating themselves, at least those who have not already left, thinking that it was enough to see those who preceded the king.

Plotinus, Enneads 5.5.3; 2018: 586.

Here, the revelation of the Great King happens suddenly after the gradual splendor and dignity are built up in the procession. The progressive revelation of glory is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the Great King, whose glory is incomparable—so much so that people fall down in prayer and in prostration at the sight of him. But some miss the King, because they thought “it was enough to see those who preceded the king.” Some others who remained did not see the King either, because they were “praying to him and prostrating themselves” before the King when he passed them by. The sudden appearance of the King in glory compels the onlookers to prostrate in prayer.

Plotinus here is explaining by analogy the soul’s encounter with the One, the Good, as she ascends to the height. At the top of the ascent, the encounter happens “suddenly.” Because the One transcends all being below. But when the soul sees the Good “without seeing how,” she is united with the Good, while unable to distinguish herself from the Good itself. The soul joins the Good by becoming other than herself, as she becomes “beside [her]self.” In becoming identical with the Good, the soul loses its own identity, as Plotinus explains:

For the cognition or touching of the Good is the most important thing….

[…]

Someone actually leaving all learning, up to then having been educated by instruction, settles in Beauty. Up to then he thinks, carried along in a way by the wave of the intellect, and in a way raised on high by it, puffed up in a way, he sees suddenly without seeing how. The spectacle fills his eyes with light, not making him see something else through it. The seeing was the light itself. For in the Good there is not one thing which is seen, and another thing that is its light; nor is there intellect and object of intellect, but the radiance, engendering these things later, lets them be beside itself. It itself is only the radiance engendering Intellect, without being extinguished in the act of generation, but remaining identical. Intellect comes about because the Good is.

Plotinus, Enn. 6.7.36.

Light sparks light suddenly and without distinction. The union (between the cause and the effect) obliterates the distinction and identity. Such is the Neo-Platonic ascension of the soul to the One and becoming one with the One. In this stage, the soul is “release[d] from everything here [in the world below], a way of life that takes no pleasure in things here, the refuge of a solitary in the solitary” (Enn. 6.9.11).

Although Pseudo-Dionysius heavily borrows from Plotinus, he makes a crucial break from him: that one’s ascent to God is not a complete abandonment of one’s identity or everything worldly. In becoming divine, we do not become disembodied souls like angels. Rather, we sanctify and divinize everything that we are: the world and ourselves therein, our body and soul. We do not leave our bodies, we divinize them, as we divinize our souls. This is why the following phrases Dionysius repeats throughout his writings are important: “as much as suitable” (ἐπιτηδειότης, fitness, suitableness), or (to translate literally) “in proportion to and in accordance with one’s own home base” (κατ’ όικείαν άναλογίαν, analogous). We do not become angels or gods in imitating God (θέωσις). Rather, we remain human—fully human in the way we are supposed to be within the divine order (τάξις) that God has set up for us, i.e., within the ecclesiastical hierarchy (in which both a king and a monk belong to the same order of laity).

The sudden brightness of the divine glory is associated with the Incarnation. In his Letter III, he writes:

‘Suddenly’ [ἐξαίφνης] is that which, contrary to expectation, and out of the, as yet, unmanifest, is brought into the manifest. […] … the Superessential proceeded froth out of the hidden, into the manifestation amongst us, by having taken substance as man. But, He is hidden, even after the manifestation…

Letter III, 1069B.

The glory of God manifests suddenly, beyond any expectation, beyond any understanding, beyond any knowledge. Christ makes a sudden appearance (though still hidden) at his birth (Lk 2.13), at the commencement of his earthly ministry (Matt 3.16), at Mt Tabor when he was transfigured (Matt 17.3, 5), and in his risen Body on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24.29-31). Likewise, He makes a sudden appearance (though still hidden) as He is carried “on the plate and in the cup.” Our partaking of the Eucharist symbolizes (thus makes it real) our seeing Christ, “the Light of the Father” (CH 121A). For this reason, at the first moment when the communion is completed, the choir sings: “We have seen the true Light…”

But seeing the Light is becoming the light oneself, like fire sparking fire. Here, the cause becomes indistinguishable from the effect. Once illuminated, one becomes herself the source of illumination for others. Like the spark of fire, illumination is sudden.

The Sudden Mystical Encounter

In Mystical Theology, Dionysius likens the sudden encounter with God with Moses’ speaking with God at Mt Sinai and hearing the voice of God “out of the darkness” (Deut 5.22-23; Exod 19.16-20, 34.29-35). “At the topmost pinnacle of the Divine Ascent,” Dionyisus writes, Moses “meets not with God Himself… but the place wherein He dwells” (MT, 1000D). It is here, however, where, according to Dionysius, Moses “plunges … unto the Darkness of Unknowing” (MT, 1001A). The plunge is sudden. Dionysius writes further:

… unchangeable mysteries of heavenly Truth lie hidden in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories which exceed all beauty!

MT, 997B.

Note the pairs of opposites here: “the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence,” the brilliance of the darkness, the “invisible fairness of glories which exceed all beauty.” The silence that dazzles, the darkness that is brilliant, the invisible beauty that exceeds physical beauty—words cannot do justice to the Mysteries of divine reality. But these pairs of opposites suggest suddenness of the encounter with the incomparable, with the Beyond. Still, however, we are capable of participating in this Mystical Reality, beyond our intellect and language—to the extend that we are capable. But I want to focus on the “secret Silence” and on “the intensity of … darkness” that Dionysius speaks of.

Golitzin notes a curious Syriac equivalent to Greek ἐξαίφνης (suddenly). Citing A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford, 1903, 1990), he observes that the Syriac word, men shelya—the equivalent of ἐξαίφνης—has meanings associated with ‘rest,’ ‘silence,’ and ‘stillness,’ which is “usually connected in Christian Syriac with the hermits, as in ἡσυχία [stillness] in Christian Greek” (Golitzin, 2013: 49). In Syriac, then, ‘suddenly’ is associated with ‘rest,’ ‘silence,’ and ‘stillness’ that is associated with the hermetic stillness in their experience with God. All three words (rest, silence, and stillness) are used one way or another to describe the state of the union with God in many patristic writings (including Palamas (d. 1359) and even in Augustine (d. 430) as well as in Plotinus, when he too describes the soul’s union with the One with the adjective ἐξαίφνης (suddenly) (Enn. 3.8.6, 5.3.6.15, 5.3.7.13-16, 5.5.3, 5.5.7-8). As we have seen above, the Great King appears “suddenly” in his procession accompanied by his entourage. When neither affirmation nor negation is adequate, silence befalls. Such is the mode in which one may encounter God, who comes nonetheless “on the plate and in the cup.”