It is this connection between us and the heavenly world, this merging of the heavenly and the earthly, that gives us that great power which is contained in the prayer of divine services.

And for us, who approach prayer from these two sides, who believe that, on the one hand, we participate in the divine services as part of the visible world, not alone, but with all of nature, and, on the other hand, that the angelic world also copulates in celebration with us, it is clear to them how bold the Church is; it does not say: "Let us remember how it was—how Christ was born, how He was baptized, how the Lord was transfigured, crucified, betrayed, and buried." True, sometimes it says about this: "Today we have gathered together let us sing this and that," or: "Today let us praise this or that saint," is sung in some stichera, canons, troparia, but the Church says something else for the most part: "Today is the transfiguration of God's favor...", "Today the Virgin is brought into the temple." Now all are filled with light, heaven and earth, and hell: let all creation celebrate the rising of Christ, in Him it is established," says the Paschal canon.

Today, and not sometime then, no, at this time, at this minute, when the divine service is being performed.

The Church has this boldness because in herself she is not temporary, but eternal, she is outside the world, above it, she is pre-worldly.

The Church is bold because it is not only we who perform divine services, we who have gathered here who are (as people) the highest part of the visible world, but we believe and hope that the powers of heaven serve with us invisibly, we believe and hope that through divine services we in the twentieth century have the opportunity to come into contact in divine services and prayerful illumination with events that have long passed, to come into contact and participate in them as in eternity.

It is this connection with the heavenly world and the visible world that is the greatest thing that makes the divine service not a remembrance, not a simple experience, it may be very good, but temporary and individual, but eternity, which unites everyone and everything – the visible and invisible world – and here, in the Church, those people who did not live when those great events took place, now they participate in them, join them as eternity.

This communication is carried out (to a greater or lesser extent) depending on whether a person has "honestly" undergone his upbringing. We must be brought up here, educate our hearing, sight, smell, touch, taste, bring up in conditions of pre-worldliness, temporality.

I will speak to you about these conditions next time.

Amen

2. On Life in Divine Services and on Communion with Eternity

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

The Holy Church teaches us that, living here in the world, we should prepare ourselves for eternity, while still here in temporal life, we should partake of eternal life.

And this preparation for eternal life is first of all for us, believers, accomplished in church, accomplished in divine services, for in divine services we, leaving the temporal, partake of eternity, leaving all that we live by in the world, partaking of that which has existed from eternity, was then given in time, and is now given to us again in time, but as eternal.

If we recently celebrated the feast of our church, then perhaps it is useful to understand the peculiarities in which we are performing here, or rather, under Father (Fr. Alexei Mechev – ed.) our preparation for eternity.