The Divine Liturgy is a Gift of the Holy Spirit

The Divine Liturgy is truly a gift of the Holy Spirit to humanity. It is an initiation into the mysteries of the Spirit, a mode of the revelation of God and of all things heavenly. There is nothing in the Liturgy which is not revelatory of the Godhead and of the energies of the Holy Trinity.

Because we know and believe that God is our Father, we view the church, especially when we celebrate the Liturgy, as our true home. We come in and go out freely, we are happy to be here, we make the sign of the cross, we light our candles, we speak with our friends, and it is easy to see that the Orthodox feel that the church is their home… The Liturgy is our family our gathering, our house. And what a spacious house it is! Together with us are those who are absent, along with sinners, and with the wicked, and the dead, indeed, even those who are in hell, but who may yet remember something about God….

So we come to church, to our true home, and we are truly glad. This is the greatest privilege which a Christian can have. Here we experience the grace of God. We experience our salvation, the results of the redemptive work of our God, of Christ, the great “High Priest.”… Christ lives for us, he prays for us, and raises his hands to the heavenly Father… He has not ceased to urge our saints — and particularly His Mother of God — to intercede for us to the heavenly Father, for our hearts, for our sins, for our pains, for the disappointments of our life…. So don’t think that when we go to church, we are simply entering and exiting an ordinary building. Instead, we go up to, and make our entrance into, the Holy of Holies, into the heavens themselves…

When we enter church, then, we are traversing the distance from church to heaven… We see the bread and wine, but who among us does not believe they are Christ? We inhale the fragrance of wine and bread, but who among us does not believe this to be the body and blood of he Savior?…This is a sacrament. This is what a “mystery” of the church means…

Our liturgy is an exceeding great gift. No one is worthy of such greatness. No one can do anything without God. He alone makes these magnificent blessings real, and places them in our hands and hearts.

…And for this we say: Thank you, Lord our God, because you have brought down the ranks of angels and raised us up to heaven. We are found worthy to stand before the heavenly Father. What blessedness! What happiness!

But let each of us ponder how great and rich God has made us; how highly he has exalted us, dispite the fact that we are sinners! “Woe is me,” said Isaiah the prophet, for God himself has descended upon me, and I am afraid I will die. And this is what we should also say when we come to church. We should be afraid, but we should also rejoice. We should tremble, but our hearts should also leap for joy, because we are embracing God, and God is embracing us.

So we have come to church, to the Liturgy! Let nothing disturb the tranquility of your soul. God is present. Wherever we look, God is before us! If we don’t see Him, this doesn’t mean He isn’t there, but only that our eyes are not used to seeing Him…

With the eyes of our mind, let us see the king for whom we sinners opened the way, and let us say with the Psalmist: “Come let us worship and fall down before Him and cry to the Lord… for He is our God.” (Ps 94.6-7) Let us open the depths of our hearts to the Lord, who is present here with us, and let us advance more each and every day, so that we will be able to discover everything that God, our redeemer, has done for us.

Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra

An address give in Larnaca, Cyprus, 23 October 1988

Found it The Church at Prayer p67-72