“THE HOUSE OF GOD AND THE CHURCH SERVICES”  

By the Priest N. R. Antonov  

Vespers

Continuation , 1

THEN, on the Great Feasts, on the dedication festival of the church and other more important celebrations, there is inserted a short rite celebrated at the back of the church, which augments the solemnity and celebratory character of the divine service. This is called the Liti or Litia, or sometimes the Blessing / Breaking of Bread or Artoclasia. The first name means Supplication and it indicates the fervent prayer which is a distinctive part of this rite, - the “Lord, have mercy” is chanted many times to press this truth home for us. During the hymns appointed for this part of the service, the priest and deacon leave the sanctuary and come and stand near the back of the church in the narthex. Sometimes, when the weather permits, they even stand outside the church, in front of the west doors under the open sky. During the supplications that are made, we pray for all Orthodox Christians, the Church pastors, for the Sovereign and those who govern for us, for those souls which are wearied and afflicted and seek the mercy of God and His aid, that we might be delivered from famine, pestilence, earthquake, flood, fire, the sword, the invasion of aliens and from civil war. To the first petition, the choir respond with forty “Lord, have mercies;” to the second with fifty and to the third with thirty, and to the rest of the petitions they make response with a threefold “Lord, have mercy.” The Supplication itself ends with the priest’s prayer “O Master, plenteous in mercy.” Then all move further into the church, closer to the sanctuary, and stop before a table prepared there on which there is placed a special stand with five loaves of bread, and three vessels, containing wine, oil and wheat. As they move towards this table, the choir chants the Aposticha or Verses on the Verses, which are so called because they consist of Scriptural verses interspersed with hymns composed for the festival being celebrated. These verses are chanted at Vespers whether or not we have a Liti, and they are to inspire within us a deeper trust in the Saviour, for in essence they exalt His redeeming ministry for us, or, that which reflects this - the virtues of the saints. The Aposticha are chanted according to the eight tones and are in practice arranged very much like the verses on “Lord, I have cried,” or on the Lauds.

After these verses, the Prayer of St Simeon the God-receiver (“Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, O Master”) is either read or chanted. Through the recitation of this prayer, the Holy Church is desirous to put St Simeon before us as an example for spending our life, so that we also might be ready at every moment to appear before the dread Judgment Seat of God with a peaceful conscience, aware that we have fulfiled our duty and with faith in the Saviour, as Simeon the God-receiver himself did, and so to complete our earthly life. The Prayer, “Now lettest,” is read near the end of Vespers every day, and in the person of the Righteous Simeon, we have drawn for us a symbol of the closure of the Old Testament period, the fulfilment of the awaiting of the Messiah, Christ. After it and the Holy God to Our Father, we chant the dismissal hymn or troparion of the festival. In Russian churches on Sundays and some other days, which do not rank highly, they often chant the “Theotokos and Virgin” in place of this. This hymn derives from the Angelic salutation with which the Archangel Gabriel greeted the holy Virgin at the Annunciation, and thus betokens this event which also serves as the crossing-over point between the Old and the New Testaments. The chanting of these hymns also generally reminds us that the Old Testament righteous, for example St Simeon himself, through their faith in the yet to come Saviour approached death peacefully and undisturbedly, whereas, in the New Testament dispensation, faith in the Saviour Who has come inspires the righteous to a life which is a martyric and ascetical struggle. During the chanting of these hymns, they cense round the table with the loaves, wheat, wine and oil, three times. When the chanting ends, the priest takes one of the loaves, and with it makes the sign of the Cross over the other loaves, and then reads a prayer in which he commemorates Jesus Christ’s miraculous feeding of the five thousand with but five loaves. He beseeches the Lord that he bless “these loaves, wheat,wine and oil,” and as he says this he indicates each of these so making the sign of the Cross over them. This blessing of the loaves recalls the ancient custom whereby loaves, wine and oil were blessed and imparted to the worshippers to strengthen them during the course of their all-night Vigil of prayer. Then the chanters sing “Blessed be the name of the Lord, from henceforth and forevermore,” three times, and Psalm 33 (“I will bless the Lord at all times”) is read, after which, in the same way as at the end of the Liturgy, the priest gives a blessing, saying, “The blessing of the Lord be upon you, by His grace and love for man, always, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.” Then the second part of the Vigil begins, which is Mattins.

When there is no Great Feast, church dedication festival or other major celebration, but simply a normal Sunday Vigil, after the supplicatory litany, we omit the liti and all the parts which pertain to it particularly: the special verses, the procession to the narthex, the petitions, and later the blessing of the loaves. In such cases we simply have the aposticha, the “Now lettest Thou Thy servant,” the Holy God to Our Father, the troparia, and “Blessed be the name.” In fact in this instance the fact that the Vespers is a depiction of the Old Testament dispensation is somewhat more manifest and easy to follow.