The Presanctified and the Other Liturgies

The Divine Liturgy stands within a family of liturgies and a daily round of prayer. This file treats the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts served on the weekdays of Great Lent, the ancient Liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem, and the daily cycle of services that surrounds and prepares the Eucharist — closing the collection with a sober assessment of the Liturgy as the heart of Orthodox life.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

Great Lent alters the whole rhythm of Orthodox worship, and one of its most striking features is the suspension of the full Eucharistic Liturgy on weekdays. The ancient discipline, codified at the Quinisext Council (in Trullo, 692, Canon 52), forbids the celebration of the full, joyful Liturgy on the fasting weekdays of Lent, judging the Eucharistic feast incompatible with the penitential character of those days; yet the Church did not wish to leave the faithful without the Body and Blood of Christ (Quinisext, 692, Canon 52; Alexopoulos, The Presanctified Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite, Peeters, 2009). The solution is the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts (Liturgia Praesanctificatorum): the Gifts consecrated at the preceding Sunday’s full Liturgy are reserved and, on the Lenten weekdays, distributed to the faithful at a service that has no anaphora and no consecration — it is not a Eucharistic liturgy in the full sense, but a solemn communion service grafted onto Lenten Vespers (the liturgies of the Orthodox Church; Schmemann, Great Lent, SVS Press, 1969, ch. 3).

The Presanctified is served on Wednesdays and Fridays of Great Lent and on the first three days of Holy Week (and on a few feasts falling on Lenten weekdays). Its structure joins Vespers to communion: the opening psalm and Litany of Peace, the Lenten “Lord, I have cried,” the Old Testament readings (Genesis and Proverbs through Lent, Exodus and Job in Holy Week), and then the transfer of the reserved Gifts to the altar in a solemn but simplified “great entrance,” made in profound silence and prostration, followed by the Lord’s Prayer and Communion (Alexopoulos, The Presanctified Liturgy, 2009; Schmemann, Great Lent, 1969, ch. 3). Its most beloved hymn is “Let my prayer arise as incense before thee” (Psalm 140/141:2), sung with prostrations. In Slavonic books the service bears the name of St. Gregory the Dialogist (Pope Gregory I of Rome, d. 604).

[Disputed: the attribution of the Presanctified Liturgy to St. Gregory the Dialogist is traditional and late. The rite is in origin anonymous and Constantinopolitan (probably seventh-century), first clearly attested in the Paschal Chronicle for the year 615, and it circulates in Greek manuscripts anonymously or under other names; the attribution to Gregory becomes established only in the second millennium, reflecting the tradition that Gregory knew the rite during his years as papal legate at Constantinople (Alexopoulos, The Presanctified Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite, 2009; Taft, The Byzantine Rite, Liturgical Press, 1992). This collection reports the traditional attribution and the source-critical account of the rite’s anonymous Eastern origin, and adjudicates neither.]

The Liturgy of St. James

The Liturgy of St. James, brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem, is the ancient Eucharistic liturgy of the Hagiopolite (Jerusalem) tradition — the fullest surviving representative of the West-Syrian/Jerusalem family and, in its structure, among the oldest liturgies known (from the Upper Room to the Byzantine rite; Fenwick, The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James, Pont. Or. Inst., 1992; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, SVS Press, 1990, ch. 2). It fell out of ordinary use as the Byzantine rite of Constantinople spread, but it was never wholly lost and has been revived in modern times; it is served in some places on the feast of St. James (23 October) and occasionally on the Sunday after the Nativity. It preserves several archaic features that the Byzantine rite has left behind: a fuller set of proper prayers and litanies, the older practice of Communion in which the faithful receive the Body in the hand and drink from the chalice separately (rather than from the spoon), and its own distinctive anaphora, whose relationship to the Basil anaphora has been closely studied (Fenwick, The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James, 1992). As a name, “of St. James” honors James as the first bishop of the mother church of Jerusalem rather than asserting his documented authorship of the text (Fenwick, 1992; see the liturgies of the Orthodox Church).

The Daily Cycle Around the Liturgy

The Divine Liturgy does not stand alone but is set within the daily cycle of the Church’s prayer — the round of services that surrounds and prepares it. The liturgical day, reckoned from evening, runs through Vespers, Compline, the Midnight Office, Matins (Orthros), and the Hours (First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth), with the Divine Liturgy at its summit (see Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle). These offices are not lesser Eucharists but the Church’s sanctification of time — the offering of the whole day in prayer, psalmody, and hymnody, ordered by the eight tones of the Octoechos and the calendar of feasts and fasts (vestments, chant, and language). The Third and Sixth Hours are read before the Liturgy, during the proskomedia (the preparation of the gifts); Matins immediately precedes it on Sundays and feasts. The Liturgy is thus the crown of a whole life of prayer, not an isolated event — the point at which the Church’s daily offering of time opens into the eternal offering of the Kingdom (Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, SVS Press, 1966, on the Eucharist and the daily cycle; Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle).

An Assessment

Seen whole, the Divine Liturgy is the center of Orthodox Christianity — not one devotion among many but the act in which the Church becomes what she is, the Body of Christ, and receives what she is, the Body and Blood of her Lord (what the Divine Liturgy is). Around it are ordered the family of liturgies (the everyday Chrysostom, the festal and Lenten Basil, the Lenten Presanctified, the ancient James), the daily cycle of prayer, the Mysteries, the temple and its icons, and the whole theology of the Church, for which the Liturgy is the primary source (lex orandi, lex credendi). The honest scholarship of the last century — Taft’s meticulous history, Schmemann’s liturgical theology, the source-critical study of the anaphoras — has not diminished the Liturgy but clarified it: it is genuinely traditional, the Spirit-guided crystallization of the Church’s worship around the unchanging core given by the Lord, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Its authorship is communal and its development long, and the Church names its liturgies for the Fathers whose faith they carry. What it offers is not a reconstruction of the past but an entrance into the Kingdom that is coming — “heaven on earth,” where the faithful, Sunday by Sunday, “have seen the true Light” and “received the heavenly Spirit,” and are sent back to live, in the world, the life they have received at the altar (Schmemann, For the Life of the World, SVS Press, 1973; The Eucharist, SVS Press, 1988).

References

Alexopoulos, Stefanos. The Presanctified Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite: A Comparative Analysis of its Origins, Evolution, and Structural Components. Leuven: Peeters, 2009. (The Presanctified: anonymous Constantinopolitan origin; the late Gregorian attribution; the Paschal Chronicle of 615.)
Schmemann, Alexander. Great Lent: Journey to Pascha. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1969. (The Presanctified Liturgy and the Lenten cycle.)
Schmemann, Alexander. Introduction to Liturgical Theology. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1966. (The Eucharist within the daily cycle.)
Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World; The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1973, 1988. (The Liturgy as entrance into the Kingdom.)
Fenwick, John R. K. The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 240. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1992. (The Liturgy of St. James and its anaphora.)
Wybrew, Hugh. The Orthodox Liturgy. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1990. (The Hagiopolite Liturgy of St. James.)
Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992. (The Presanctified and the daily cycle in Byzantine development.)
The Quinisext Council (in Trullo), 692, Canon 52 (the Presanctified on the fasting days). The Rudder (Pedalion), trans. D. Cummings.
Scripture and liturgical texts: Psalm 140/141:2 (“Let my prayer arise”); the Paschal Chronicle (Chronicon Paschale), s.a. 615.