Liturgy of the Presanctified

Date: 14 March 2007 10:22:57

Another beautiful Liturgy of the Presanctified this evening.

There is something about this Lenten service: it is very different from the usual Eucharistic service we have each Sunday. Special Vesperal Psalms and prayers; readings from Proverbs [among other books], chanting of verses from Psalm 141 with the refrain from the congregation, "Let my prayer arise in Your sight as the incense and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice." (cf Psalm 141:2), while the priest censes the altar; the hymn sung while clergy commune, "O taste and see how good is the Lord." And the melodies used for the hymns, such as the beautiful O Gladsome Light (said to be the earliest Christian hymn outside the Bible):
O Gladsome Light of the holy glory of the Immortal Father, heavenly, holy, blessed, O Jesus Christ. Now that we have come to the setting of the sun and behold the light of evening we praise God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How right it is at all times to worship You with voices of praise, O Son of God and Giver of Life. Therefore all the world glorifies You.

are different: giving a whole new insight into them and causing me to ponder the words therein, and their beauty, anew.

Thanks be to God indeed for such a beautiful service, full of wisdom to impart to us. As Fr Alexander Schmemann writes in Great Lent, at the end of the chapter on "The Liturgy of the Presanctified":

By then it may be dark outside, and the night into which we must go and in which we have to live, to fight, and to endure, may still be long. But the light which we have seen now illumines it. The Kingdom, whose presence nothing seems to reveal in the world, has been given to us "in secret"; its joy and peace accompany us as we get ready to continue "the course of the Fast."

p. 61, SVS Press, 2001