Spiritual Conversations

1. On Divine Services

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

Not long ago we celebrated the feast of the Most Holy Virgin, Her entry into the temple, and, as the Holy Church teaches us, this entry was made in order for Her to be raised honestly in the temple.

This entry into the temple, this participation in a life other than our life here on earth, in the life of the world, was once accomplished by the Mother of God, and each of us, everyone who lives in this world and believes in Christ, was brought into the temple in due time precisely for the same reason that the Most Holy Virgin entered – in order to in order to be brought up in it honestly, in order to leave this life and join the pre-worldly, to come out of the temporal, to enter into the eternal.

When we talk about divine services and participate in them, we forget about its two sides: we think that we have come to church in order to remember this or that event from the life of the Lord, from the life of the Mother of God or the saints. And yet the Holy Church tells us that our divine service, our celebration, is not only a remembrance, but the most real, authentic, possible participation in these events only through divine services.

And not only do we take part in them, but the divine services are of the greatest importance for the whole world, for the entire universe.

In addition, in every church feast, for example, in the celebration of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, other members of the Body of Christ also participate.

These two moments: the moment of the divine service's inseparability from the Universe, from the whole world, and then our copulation with the heavenly world – these are the two foundations on which it is possible for us here, in the world below, to partake of the pre-worldliness, of eternity.

When in divine services, in our hymns, we address not only the faithful, not only to people, but to the entire universe, then, according to the Church's understanding, this is not only words, but the true meaning of communion in God.

If the first man sinned, if by doing so he brought sin into the world, into God's creation, which was so full of beauty and goodness that the Creator Himself admired it, then, having brought sin into the world, he himself bound himself to the world and now constantly binds himself by bringing sin into the world again and again.

Therefore, the Holy Church does not separate man from the world, constantly reminding him that he is connected with this nature, which he has infected and continues to infect with sin.

At the moment when we perform the burial of the Lord, at the moment of standing before His tomb, when it is impossible to talk about images and verbal adornments, when it is a matter of weeping over the Lord Himself, when we forget that we do not live at the moment when Joseph and Nicodemus buried the Lord, but, being in the temple, spiritually perform this burial with them, then the words of the troparion resound with special force: "O mountains and hills, and multitudes of people, weep and weep with Me, your God, Mother."