The Cherubic Hymn and the Great Entrance

The Liturgy of the Faithful opens with the Cherubic Hymn and the Great Entrance — the solemn procession in which the gifts prepared at the proskomedia are carried to the altar. This file treats the Cherubikon and its history, the transfer of the gifts and the commemorations made during it, and the meaning of the entrance as the Church’s offering of itself and of all creation, following Schmemann’s correction of the “funeral procession” misreading.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Cherubic Hymn

As the Liturgy of the Faithful begins, the choir sings, slowly and at length, 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 is a bridge: it names the faithful as icons of the Cherubim who sing the Sanctus, so binding the assembly to the angelic liturgy of heaven and pointing forward to the “Holy, Holy, Holy” of the anaphora (the Eucharistic prayer; Isaiah 6:3). It was introduced into the Byzantine Liturgy by the Emperor Justin II in 573–574, a datum preserved by the Byzantine chroniclers and established by Robert Taft’s history of the Great Entrance (Taft, The Great Entrance [A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. II], Pont. Or. Inst., 1978; hub essay, Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy). On certain days it is replaced: on Holy Thursday by “Of thy mystical supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant,” and on Holy Saturday by “Let all mortal flesh keep silence” (Divine Liturgy, rubrics of the Cherubikon).

While the choir sings, the priest reads quietly the prayer of the Cherubic Hymn, one of the most profound priestly prayers of the rite, which confesses that Christ is at once the one who offers and the one offered: “For thou art the offerer and the offered, the receiver and the distributed, O Christ our God” (prayer of the Cherubikon, Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom; Hapgood, Service Book). The prayer expresses the whole mystery of the Eucharistic sacrifice: it is Christ himself who, through the priest, offers the Church’s gifts, and it is Christ who is offered and received (Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. Hussey and McNulty, SPCK, 1960, ch. 24; Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, SVS Press, 1988, ch. 6).

The Great Entrance

At the middle of the Cherubic Hymn the singing pauses for the Great Entrance. The clergy go to the table of oblation, take up the veiled diskos and chalice — the gifts prepared at the proskomedia (the preparation of the gifts) — and carry them out through the north door, pausing before the Royal Doors (and, in some usages, processing through the church), then bearing them through the doors to the holy table, where they are set down and covered with the aer, the great veil. During the procession the priest (or deacon) makes the commemorations: “May the Lord God remember in his Kingdom” the bishop, the priesthood and diaconate, the civil authorities, the founders and benefactors of the church, and “all you Orthodox Christians” — a solemn naming of the whole Church for whom the offering is about to be made (Divine Liturgy, the Great Entrance; Taft, The Great Entrance, 1978, on the history and content of the commemorations; on the diptychs and commemorations more broadly, Taft, The Diptychs [vol. IV], Pont. Or. Inst., 1991). The people bow as the gifts pass, and after the entrance the Cherubic Hymn is completed with its concluding “Alleluia.”

Historically the Great Entrance is the transfer of the gifts from the place of their preparation to the altar — originally a functional act (the bread and wine were kept in a side chamber, the skeuophylakion, and brought in at this point) that grew, like the Little Entrance, into a solemn procession as the Byzantine ceremonial developed (Taft, The Great Entrance, 1978; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, SVS Press, 1990, ch. 6). The gifts at this moment are still bread and wine — not yet the Body and Blood, which they become only in the anaphora — a point of some importance, since the honor shown to the gifts in the procession is honor to what they are about to become and to the offering they represent, not yet the worship due to the consecrated Mysteries (Cabasilas, Commentary, ch. 24, cautioning against confusing the moments; Taft, The Great Entrance, 1978, on the theological interpretation).

The Meaning of the Offering

What does the Great Entrance mean? The mature Byzantine mystagogy read the procession as an image of Christ’s burial — the gifts borne to the altar as the body of Christ borne to the tomb, the aer as the shroud (a reading found in Germanus and elaborated later; Germanus, On the Divine Liturgy, trans. Paul Meyendorff, SVS Press, 1984, §§37–41). Fr. Alexander Schmemann sharply challenged this “funeral procession” interpretation as a misplaced and enfeebling symbolism. The Great Entrance, he argued, is not a mournful reenactment of the burial but a royal procession: the King of all, “upborne by the ranks of angels” as the Cherubikon says, entering to be offered and to give himself. It is the Church’s offering — the bringing to God of the bread and wine that stand for the whole creation and for the whole self-oblation of the assembly, “our life and the life of the world” — so that God may receive them and give them back as the Body and Blood of Christ (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 6, “The Sacrament of Offering”). On this reading the entrance is the moment at which the Church takes up the priestly vocation of humanity: to offer the world back to God in thanksgiving, as Adam was made to do and failed to do, and as Christ the new Adam does perfectly (Schmemann, For the Life of the World, SVS Press, 1973, ch. 2; The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 6).

The two readings need not simply cancel each other — the tradition holds many layers — but Schmemann’s correction is important for the Orthodox reader, because it keeps the Great Entrance oriented forward, toward the Kingdom and the offering, rather than backward toward a mere dramatization of the past. The gifts are carried in not to be mourned but to be offered and transfigured; the procession is the Church rising to bring its life, and the whole world’s life, to the altar of God (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 6). Once the gifts are set upon the holy table, the litany of supplication and the kiss of peace prepare the assembly for the great prayer itself (the Creed and the kiss of peace).

See Also

References

  • Taft, Robert F. A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Vol. II, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Preanaphoral Rites. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1978. (The Cherubikon under Justin II, 573–574; the history and commemorations of the Great Entrance.)
  • Taft, Robert F. A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Vol. IV, The Diptychs. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1991. (The commemorations and diptychs.)
  • Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988. (The Great Entrance as offering, against the “funeral procession” reading.)
  • Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1973. (Humanity’s priestly offering of the world.)
  • Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. Hussey and McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960. (The prayer of the Cherubikon; the gifts not yet consecrated.)
  • Germanus of Constantinople. On the Divine Liturgy. Trans. Paul Meyendorff. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1984. (The burial symbolism of the entrance.)
  • Wybrew, Hugh. The Orthodox Liturgy. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1990. (The development of the Great Entrance.)
  • Hapgood, Isabel Florence. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church. (The Cherubikon and its prayer.)
  • Scripture: Isaiah 6:3.