Liturgy as Eschatology

The deepest access to the age to come is not speculation but worship. In the Divine Liturgy — and supremely at Pascha — the Church does not merely await the Kingdom but enters it: the Cherubic Hymn bids the faithful lay aside all earthly cares to receive the King of all, and the Eucharist is the age to come made present. This file sets out the Liturgy as eschatology, Pascha as the Church’s supreme eschatological act, the transfiguration of creation, and the sober hope in which the whole is held.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Kingdom Entered, Not Only Awaited

This collection began with the claim that Orthodox eschatology is inaugurated: the Kingdom is already present, and its concentrated presence is the Eucharist (see Inaugurated Eschatology and the Kingdom). Here that claim becomes lived practice. The Divine Liturgy is not primarily a memorial of a past event or a petition for a future one; it is the Church’s entry, in time, into the timeless reality of the Kingdom. It opens with the Kingdom proclaimed as already blessed — “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” — and it moves through word and offering to the point where heaven and earth are joined and the faithful receive the Body and Blood that are “the medicine of immortality” (Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians 20.2). Fr. Alexander Schmemann made this the center of his theology: the Liturgy is the sacrament of the Kingdom, the passage of the Church out of “this world” into the age to come and back again, so that the eschaton is not merely believed but tasted (Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. Kachur, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988; For the Life of the World, SVS Press, 1973; on the Liturgy generally, see The Divine Liturgy).

The Cherubic Hymn: Laying Aside Earthly Cares

The eschatological character of the Liturgy is nowhere clearer than in the Cherubic Hymn, sung at the Great Entrance as the gifts are brought to the altar: “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim, and who sing to the life-giving Trinity the thrice-holy hymn, now lay aside all earthly cares, that we may receive the King of all, escorted invisibly by the angelic orders. Alleluia” (the Cherubikon, Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom). Every phrase is eschatological. The faithful are told that they now image the cherubim and join the angelic worship of heaven — the earthly assembly is united to the heavenly liturgy that the Book of Revelation describes (Revelation 4–5). They are bidden to “lay aside all earthly cares,” to let go, for this hour, of the anxieties of “this world,” precisely as the memory of death teaches them to let go (see The Memory of Death and the Ascetic Tradition). And they do so in order to “receive the King of all” — the coming of Christ the King, the Parousia the whole tradition awaits, here enacted and received in the Eucharist. The Great Entrance is thus a small Second Coming: the King enters, escorted by the angelic orders, to be received by his people.

Maximus the Confessor read the entire Liturgy in this key: his Mystagogia interprets each movement of the rite as an icon and enactment of the whole economy of salvation, from creation through the Incarnation to the eschatological gathering of all things into God, so that the assembly at prayer is already participating in the end it awaits (Maximus, Mystagogia; see St. Maximus the Confessor). To stand in the Liturgy is to stand, by grace, within the age to come.

Pascha: The Supreme Eschatological Act

If the Eucharist is the age to come made present, Pascha is that presence at its fullest. The Paschal Vigil and Liturgy are the summit of the Orthodox year and the supreme eschatological act of the Church: the celebration of the Resurrection that has already defeated death and inaugurated the new creation. In the Paschal night the Church sings the victory over death as an accomplished fact — “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life” (Paschal Troparion) — and the Paschal Homily attributed to St. John Chrysostom taunts death and Hades as already overthrown: “Christ is risen, and life reigns; Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the tomb” (Paschal Homily, read at Matins of Pascha; see The Paschal Frame — Hope, Not Terror). Pascha is not only the memory of the first Resurrection but the anticipation and pledge of the general resurrection to come (see The Parousia and the General Resurrection); in it the Church stands already in the “eighth day,” the day beyond the seven days of this creation, the day of the Kingdom that has no evening. And so the Church carries the Paschal greeting even to the graves at Radonitsa (see Praying for the Departed): the dead too are told that Christ is risen.

The Transfiguration of Creation

Orthodox eschatology culminates not in the escape of souls from a discarded world but in the transfiguration of all creation. The material cosmos is not to be annihilated but renewed: “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5); the “new heaven and new earth” (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1) are the fulfillment, not the abolition, of creation’s purpose, which was always to be permeated by God’s glory and to become the dwelling of God with humanity (Revelation 21:3). The whole creation “groans” and “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God,” to be “set free from its bondage to corruption” and to share in “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:19–22). Maximus gives this its grandest expression: the end of all things is the recapitulation of the cosmos in Christ, the overcoming of every division that fractures creation, and the gathering of all things into union with God, “that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28; Maximus, Ambiguum 41).

This cosmic hope is already sacramentally begun in the Liturgy, where bread and wine — the fruit of the earth and of human labor — are taken up and transfigured into the Body and Blood of Christ, a first-fruits of the whole creation’s destiny to be filled with God. The blessing of waters at Theophany, the blessing of fields and fruits, the use of oil, incense, and the material stuff of the world in worship — all enact the conviction that matter is destined for glory, not for the rubbish-heap. The Eucharist is the pledge that the Kingdom is not the negation of the world God loves but its transfiguration.

Sober Hope

The last word of Orthodox eschatology, as of this collection, is sober hope. Sober, because the tradition takes with entire seriousness the reality of death, the weight of judgment, the possibility of a self-chosen hell, and the open questions it does not presume to close (the toll-houses, the scope of final salvation). Hope, because all of this is held from within the Resurrection, in the confidence that the God who “wills all men to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4) is faithful, and that the end of the story is the transfiguration of a beloved world and the fullness of communion with him. This hope is not optimism — not a favorable estimate of ourselves or of history — but a theological virtue grounded in the character and victory of God. The Church rehearses it every time she gathers: in the memory of death that clarifies, and in the Liturgy that anticipates; in the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom, and in the Paschal cry that is its end. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

References

Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Ephesians 20.2. In Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007.
Maximus the Confessor. Mystagogia; Ambiguum 41. 7th century.
Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Trans. Paul Kachur. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988.
Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1973.
Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom — the Cherubic Hymn (Cherubikon).
Pentecostarion — the Paschal Troparion; the Paschal Homily attributed to St. John Chrysostom.
Scripture: Revelation 4–5, 21:1–5, 22:20; 2 Peter 3:13; Romans 8:19–22; 1 Corinthians 15:28; 1 Timothy 2:4.