The Creed and the Kiss of Peace

Between the Great Entrance and the anaphora, the Church is made one in love and in faith. This file treats the litany of supplication, the summons “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess,” the kiss of peace, the deacon’s “The doors! The doors!”, and the congregational confession of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed — the immediate preparation for the great prayer.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Litany of Supplication

Once the gifts rest upon the holy table, the deacon leads the Litany of Supplication (“Let us complete our prayer unto the Lord”), whose petitions ask for the acceptance of the offered gifts, for the day to be perfect, holy, peaceful, and sinless, for a guardian angel, for pardon and remission of sins, for what is good and profitable for the soul, for peace in the world, and for “a Christian ending to our life, painless, blameless, and peaceful, and a good defence before the dread judgment-seat of Christ” — the people answering, by turns, “Lord, have mercy” and “Grant this, O Lord” (Divine Liturgy, the litany of supplication; Hapgood, Service Book). During it the priest prays quietly the prayer of the proskomedia/offering, that God would make the assembly worthy to offer “this reasonable and bloodless service” (cf. Romans 12:1) and to draw near to the holy altar with a pure conscience (Divine Liturgy, prayer after the setting-down of the gifts).

“Let Us Love One Another”

Then comes the great hinge between offering and anaphora, the summons to love as the condition of true confession: the priest exclaims “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess”; and the people complete the thought with the object of that confession: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and undivided.” The order is deliberate and theologically weighty: love comes first, and only out of love can the Church confess the Trinity “with one mind,” for the God confessed is himself a communion of love, and the confession of the Trinity is possible only to those who love one another (cf. 1 John 4:8, 20; Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. Hussey and McNulty, SPCK, 1960, ch. 26; Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, SVS Press, 1988, ch. 7, “The Sacrament of Unity”). The Lord’s own teaching stands behind the moment: “if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee… first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matthew 5:23–24).

The Kiss of Peace

At these words the kiss of peace is given. In the ancient Church all the faithful exchanged the holy kiss at this point — the men among the men and the women among the women, in the practice of the early centuries — as the seal of the reconciliation and love required before the offering (Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 5.3, on the kiss of peace as a sign of the souls’ union and the putting-away of all remembrance of wrongs; Justin, First Apology 65, “we salute one another with a kiss”). In most modern Orthodox practice the kiss is exchanged only among the concelebrating clergy at the altar, who say to one another “Christ is in our midst” — “He is and shall be,” though the restoration of a wider exchange of peace is found in some places (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, Liturgical Press, 1992; hub essay, Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy). The kiss of peace is thus the ritual enactment of “let us love one another”: the Church cannot confess the one faith or offer the one sacrifice while divided against itself.

“The Doors! The Doors!”

The deacon then cries “The doors! The doors! In wisdom let us attend!” In antiquity this was a literal instruction to the doorkeepers to guard the doors of the church now that the mysteries were about to be celebrated and the catechumens and unbelievers had departed — a survival of the disciplina arcani (the discipline of the secret) by which the Eucharist was shielded from the uninitiated (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992; see the readings and the homily on the dismissal of the catechumens). Today the doors are not guarded, but the exclamation remains as a call to attention and reverence at the threshold of the anaphora, and, in the mystagogical reading, as a summons to guard the doors of the mind against distraction so that the assembly may “attend” to the mystery (Cabasilas, Commentary, ch. 26).

The Symbol of Faith

The whole congregation then confesses the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed — “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…” — the Symbol of Faith defined at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325) and completed at the Second, Constantinople (381), and received by the Church as the standard of the apostolic faith (The Seven Ecumenical Councils; Orthodoxy: The Nicene Creed). Its place here is exact: the Church, made one in love by the kiss of peace, now confesses the one faith with one voice before offering the one sacrifice. In Slavic practice the Creed is sung or recited by the whole assembly — one of the few moments, with the Lord’s Prayer, when the entire church prays aloud together (hub essay). The Orthodox recite the Creed in its original conciliar form, without the Latin addition of the Filioque (“and the Son”) to the article on the Spirit’s procession — the article that “proceedeth from the Father,” which the Eastern Church confesses as the councils defined it and regards the Western interpolation as an unauthorized alteration of an ecumenical symbol (on the dispute, Orthodoxy: The Nicene Creed; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, Fordham, 1979).

That the Creed is confessed at precisely this point — immediately before the anaphora — expresses the deep Orthodox conviction that faith and worship are one: the Church offers the Eucharist as the confession of the true faith, and confesses the true faith as the offering of the Eucharist (lex orandi, lex credendi; see lex orandi, lex credendi). With the Creed the immediate preparation is complete; the priest calls the assembly to stand for the offering — “Let us stand well, let us stand with fear” — and the great Eucharistic prayer begins (the Eucharistic prayer).

References

Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. Hussey and McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960. (Love as the condition of confession; the kiss of peace; “The doors!”; the Creed.)
Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988. (The sacrament of unity; love and the confession of the Trinity.)
Cyril of Jerusalem. Mystagogical Catechesis 5.3. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7. (The kiss of peace before the anaphora.)
Justin Martyr. First Apology 65. Trans. ANF, vol. 1. (The kiss in the early synaxis.)
Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992. (The kiss of peace in later practice; “The doors!” and the discipline of the secret.)
Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology. New York: Fordham University Press, 1979. (The Creed and the Filioque.)
Hapgood, Isabel Florence. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church. (The litany, the peace, and the Creed.)
Scripture: Matthew 5:23–24; 1 John 4:8, 20; Romans 12:1.