The Enarxis and the Little Entrance

The Divine Liturgy opens with the blessing of the Kingdom and the Great Litany of Peace, moves through the three antiphons with their small litanies, and rises to the Little Entrance — the solemn procession of the Gospel book — followed by the troparia and the Trisagion. This file walks that opening movement and notes how much of it was prefixed to a Liturgy that once began simply with the entrance.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

“Blessed Is the Kingdom”

The Liturgy proper begins not with “Blessed is our God” — the opening of every other Orthodox service — but with a unique proclamation: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.” From its first word the Liturgy declares its destination: the Kingdom of God, into which the assembly is to be gathered. Fr. Alexander Schmemann built his whole eucharistic theology on this opening: the Liturgy is not a set of rites performed in the world but the Church’s journey into the Kingdom, and this blessing announces the goal to which the entire action moves (Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, SVS Press, 1988, ch. 2; For the Life of the World, SVS Press, 1973, ch. 2). The people answer “Amen,” ratifying the direction of the whole Liturgy.

The Great Litany

There follows the Great Litany, or Litany of Peace (Slavonic velikaya yekteniya), intoned by the deacon (or the priest): “In peace let us pray to the Lord,” with the people answering “Lord, have mercy” (Kyrie eleison) to each petition. The litany prays in widening circles — for peace from above and the salvation of souls; for the peace of the whole world and the unity of all; for the holy churches; for this holy house and those who enter it with faith; for the bishop, the clergy, and the people; for the civil authorities; for the city, for travelers, the sick, the suffering, and captives; for deliverance from affliction, wrath, and need — and concludes by commending “ourselves and one another and all our life unto Christ our God,” with the commemoration of the Theotokos and the saints (Divine Liturgy, the Great Litany; Hapgood, Service Book). The form is ancient: this kind of diaconal litany with the people’s “Lord, have mercy” is the descendant of the common prayers of the faithful attested from the earliest centuries (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, Liturgical Press, 1992, ch. 3; cf. Justin, First Apology 65).

The Antiphons and the Small Litanies

Three antiphons follow, each closed by a Small Litany (“Again and again, in peace let us pray to the Lord…”). On ordinary days the antiphons are psalm-verses with refrains; on Sundays in the Slavic tradition the “typika” psalms are used — Psalm 102/103 (“Bless the Lord, O my soul”) as the first antiphon and Psalm 145/146 (“Praise the Lord, O my soul”) as the second — while in Greek parish practice the older daily antiphons with their refrains are more usual (Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy; Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992). After the second antiphon is always sung the hymn “Only-Begotten Son and Word of God” (Ho Monogenēs), a compact confession of the Incarnation and of Chalcedonian Christology — “who art immortal, and didst deign for our salvation to be incarnate of the holy Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary… one of the Holy Trinity” — traditionally ascribed to the Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) and datable to the sixth century (Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, SVS Press, 1990, ch. 5; hub essay). The third antiphon is, in Slavic Sunday use, the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–12), sung with troparia interspersed.

Here it must be said plainly that the whole enarxis — these three antiphons with their litanies — is a later prefix. In the older shape of the Byzantine Liturgy, the service began with the entrance of the clergy and the Gospel; the antiphons were the psalmody of stational processions through the streets of Constantinople to the church, and only when those outdoor processions ceased were the antiphons absorbed into the beginning of the Liturgy inside the church (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992, ch. 3; Mateos, La célébration de la parole dans la liturgie byzantine, Pont. Or. Inst., 1971). This is why the Little Entrance, which now seems a mid-service procession, is in origin the entrance with which the Liturgy began.

The Little Entrance

At the Little Entrance (Small Entrance) the clergy come out through the north door of the icon-screen bearing the Gospel book aloft, pause before the Royal Doors, and enter through them into the sanctuary. The deacon, lifting the Gospel, cries “Wisdom! Attend!” (Sophia, orthoi — “Wisdom! Stand upright!”), and the people sing the entrance-hymn: “Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ. Save us, O Son of God… who art risen from the dead, [we] who sing to thee: Alleluia” (Divine Liturgy, the Little Entrance; Hapgood, Service Book). Interpreted in the mystagogical tradition, the entrance signifies the coming of Christ into the world to preach the Gospel — the Word going forth — and, as the Gospel book is an icon of Christ himself, the procession is the appearing of the incarnate Word among his people (Germanus, On the Divine Liturgy, trans. Paul Meyendorff, SVS Press, 1984, §§24, 30; Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. Hussey and McNulty, SPCK, 1960, chs. 20–21). The prayer of the entrance, said quietly by the priest, asks that the holy angels may enter with the clergy to concelebrate and glorify God — a reminder that the earthly Liturgy is joined to the heavenly (Divine Liturgy, prayer of the entrance).

Troparia, Kontakia, and the Trisagion

After the entrance the troparia and kontakia of the day, the church, and the feast are sung — the short proper hymns, appointed by the Typikon, that voice the theological theme of the celebration (their arrangement can be intricate when several commemorations fall together). Then comes the Trisagion: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us,” sung thrice with the lesser doxology. This is among the most venerable of the Church’s hymns; its earliest firm attestation is at the Council of Chalcedon (451), where the assembled fathers acclaimed it, and Byzantine tradition connects its “revelation” to a child caught up during an earthquake at Constantinople in the time of the Emperor Theodosius II and Patriarch Proclus (c. 438–439) (hub essay, Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, 1990). On certain feasts the Trisagion is replaced — by “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27) on the great baptismal feasts (Nativity, Theophany, Pascha, Lazarus Saturday, and others), and by “Before thy Cross we bow down in worship, O Master” on the feasts of the Cross (Divine Liturgy, rubrics of the Trisagion). During the Trisagion the priest and deacon move to the high place behind the altar, and the reading of Scripture is at hand (see the readings and the homily).

References

Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988. (The opening blessing of the Kingdom.)
Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992. (The enarxis as a later prefix; the stational origin of the antiphons; the Little Entrance as the original beginning.)
Mateos, Juan. La célébration de la parole dans la liturgie byzantine. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 191. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1971. (The Liturgy of the Word and the entrance.)
Germanus of Constantinople. On the Divine Liturgy. Trans. Paul Meyendorff. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1984. (The Little Entrance as the coming of Christ to preach.)
Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. Hussey and McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960. (The antiphons, the entrance, and the readings.)
Wybrew, Hugh. The Orthodox Liturgy. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1990. (“Only-Begotten Son”; the Trisagion.)
Hapgood, Isabel Florence. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church. (The texts of the enarxis and the Little Entrance.)
Scripture: Matthew 5:3–12; Galatians 3:27; Psalms 102/103; 145/146.