The Angelic Liturgy

Orthodox worship understands itself as a participation in the worship the angels render ceaselessly around the throne of God. This file sets out the three great points where the angelic liturgy enters the earthly: the “Holy, holy, holy” of the Sanctus, taken from the Seraphim of Isaiah’s vision; the Trisagion, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal,” received (by tradition) from the angels’ own song; and the Cherubic Hymn, in which the faithful “mystically represent the Cherubim.” It closes with the tradition of the angels concelebrating unseen at the altar.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Worship Joined to the Angels

The governing idea of Orthodox liturgical theology is that the Church on earth does not worship alongside heaven from a distance but is taken up into the one worship of heaven — the ceaseless praise the angels offer around the throne. This is the theme the Dionysian tradition draws out: the earthly liturgy is the image and the prolongation of the heavenly hierarchy’s ceaseless doxology, so that in the Liturgy the visible and invisible Churches are one worshipping assembly (see The Dionysian Hierarchy; Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy). The angels’ worship, glimpsed by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and John, is not a distant spectacle but the very worship the Church joins. Three moments in the services make this explicit.

The Sanctus — “Holy, Holy, Holy”

The heart of the eucharistic prayer, in every Orthodox liturgy, is the Sanctus: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.” These are the words of the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision of the throne: “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up… Above it stood the seraphim… And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:1–3); and they are the words of the “four living creatures” of the Apocalypse, who “rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” (Revelation 4:8). In the anaphora the priest recalls precisely this angelic worship — “the Cherubim and the Seraphim… singing the triumphant hymn, shouting, proclaiming, and saying” — and the whole assembly then sings the Seraphic hymn itself, so that the congregation’s voice becomes, at the climax of the Liturgy, the voice of the Seraphim (the anaphora of St. John Chrysostom; and see The Divine Liturgy: The Eucharistic Prayer). The Sanctus is thus the plainest instance of the principle: the Church, at the altar, sings the angels’ own song, and heaven and earth are made one choir.

The Trisagion — “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal”

Distinct from the Sanctus is the Trisagion (“Thrice-Holy”): “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us,” sung near the beginning of the Liturgy and woven through the daily services and the prayer rule. The tradition of its origin makes its angelic character explicit. [§3.5: The received account, transmitted in the Byzantine synaxaria and chronicles, attributes the Trisagion to a revelation at Constantinople during the reign of Theodosius II and the patriarchate of St. Proclus (c. 434–446), in a time of earthquakes: as the people processed in supplication, a child was caught up into the air and heard the angels singing "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal"; brought back, he reported the angelic hymn, the people took it up adding "have mercy on us," and the earthquake ceased. The narrative is hagiographic tradition, not a contemporary documentary record, and is reported here as the tradition the Church commemorates (the account is preserved in the synaxarion; the hymn's antiquity and liturgical use are secure, whatever the historical kernel of the origin story).] The Trisagion’s “have mercy on us” is the Church’s added human petition joined to the angels’ pure praise — a small emblem of the whole: the angels give the doxology, the Church adds her plea for mercy, and the two are sung as one. (The Trisagion later became the flashpoint of a christological controversy when Peter the Fuller added “who wast crucified for us,” which the Orthodox rejected as confusing the Persons — the hymn being addressed to the Holy Trinity, not to the Son alone; treated in the christological literature and not pursued here.)

The Cherubic Hymn — “We Who Mystically Represent the Cherubim”

The most explicit naming of the faithful as icons of the angels comes at the Great Entrance, in the Cherubic Hymn (Cherubikon): “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim, and who sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity, now lay aside all earthly cares, that we may receive the King of all, who cometh invisibly upborne by the ranks of angels. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” The hymn names the worshippers themselves as those who “mystically represent” (or “image forth,” Greek eikonizontes) the Cherubim, singing the thrice-holy hymn to the Trinity — and it looks ahead to the coming of Christ in the Holy Gifts, “invisibly upborne by the ranks of angels.” The Cherubikon was introduced into the Byzantine Liturgy under the Emperor Justin II in 573–574, a datum preserved by the Byzantine chroniclers and established in the standard liturgical history (Taft, The Great Entrance, Pont. Or. Inst., 1978; and see The Divine Liturgy: The Cherubic Hymn and the Great Entrance). Its theology is the theology of this whole file: at the Liturgy the faithful become icons of the Cherubim, laying aside earthly care to join the angelic escort of the King — the assembly bound to the bodiless powers who accompany the Gifts to the altar.

The Concelebration of the Angels

Beyond the hymns, the tradition holds that the angels are present and active at the Liturgy — that they concelebrate, unseen, with the priest. The classic witness is St. John Chrysostom, who in his treatise On the Priesthood reports the vision of an aged and trustworthy man: at the moment of the Eucharist “he saw a multitude of angels, clothed in shining robes, and encircling the altar, and bending down, as one might see soldiers standing in the presence of their king” — and Chrysostom adds that he believes it (Chrysostom, On the Priesthood VI.4; trans. NPNF I/9). The image is exact and sober: the angels stand around the altar as a royal guard, in awe before the descent of the King in the Mysteries. Elsewhere Chrysostom presses the awesome dignity of the priesthood precisely by this angelic attendance — that the priest handles at the altar what the angels tremble to behold (Chrysostom, On the Priesthood III.4 and VI.4). The prayers of the Liturgy themselves ask that the offering be received “into Thy heavenly and spiritual altar” by the ministry of the angels — the “let there enter with our entrance the entrance of the holy angels” of the entrance prayer, and the petition that God “make with our entrance an entrance of holy angels concelebrating with us” (the liturgical prayers of the Little Entrance).

This concelebration is the practical form of the whole doctrine of the angelic liturgy: the Church does not imagine the angels’ worship from afar but stands within it, guarded and joined by the bodiless powers who fill the sanctuary. The Cherubic Hymn asks the faithful to become the Cherubim; the vision Chrysostom reports shows the Cherubim themselves already present; and the Sanctus lets the two choirs, angelic and human, sing at last with one voice. The angels are not the subject of the Liturgy — Christ is — but they are its unseen co-celebrants, and the worshipper who grasps this stands, at every Liturgy, in the company of heaven (see The Bodiless Powers in the Calendar for the times the Church sets apart to honor them explicitly).

References

Scripture: Isaiah 6:1–3; Revelation 4:8.
The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: the Trisagion; the anaphora and the Sanctus; the Cherubic Hymn; the prayers of the Little and Great Entrances. (Received liturgical texts.)
John Chrysostom. On the Priesthood, VI.4 (and III.4). Trans. NPNF I/9. (The vision of the angels encircling the altar; the angelic dignity of the priesthood.)
Taft, Robert F. The Great Entrance (A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. II). Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1978. (The introduction of the Cherubikon under Justin II, 573–574.)
The Byzantine synaxarion, for the traditional origin of the Trisagion under St. Proclus of Constantinople (c. 434–446). (Reported as received tradition, §3.5.)
Pseudo-Dionysius. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, in The Complete Works. Trans. Luibheid–Rorem. New York: Paulist Press, 1987. (The earthly liturgy as image of the heavenly worship.)