Litirgical Worship

Liturgical Worship

The word liturgy comes from the Greek leitourgia meaning “work of the people,” and describes the celebration of a specific rite by the faithful led by a celebrant. In the historic Christian context this means the celebration of the Divine Liturgy or Mass, or the other Divine Offices or Services, celebrated to worship the Holy Trinity, participate in the Sacraments and grow in the faith. Historic Christianity possesses a number of liturgical rites, most based on common early Church liturgical practice, and liturgies that follow the form of these rites.

OVERVIEW

The early Christian Church came into being as a liturgical church, because Jews worshipped liturgically. The New Testament records numerous instances of “liturgical” worship, which range from pure Jewish practices (such as Peter and John going to the Temple because it was the hour of prayer) to Christian liturgical worship (which document that the early Christians met and worshipped following Jewish liturgical practices and added to them the rite of the Eucharist).

Worship in the early Christian Church was “liturgical,” in that like Judaism, it followed a specific order, or form, and this "order" has its very roots in the Scriptures. In fact all of Christianity worshipped liturgically for 1500 years; the Eastern Orthodox and Western Roman Churches have been worshiping this way - more or less unchanged - for almost their entire life of nearly 2000 years.

Two words principally characterize historic Christian liturgical worship. The first is origin. Early Christian worship had an origin: Jewish worship form and practice. The early disciples did not create new worship practices; they all prayed as Jews and worshipped as Jews. They were Jews who recognized and accepted Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah, and the worship that they practiced was liturgical because Jewish worship was liturgical. For this reason we see in the New Testament that the early Christians continued their Jewish worship practices even while they added some uniquely Christian components. The fact that there was origin and continuity, in fact a living continuity from Temple to Synagogue and into the early Christian Church, is why there is a highly developed Christian liturgical order in use within sixty years of Christ's resurrection.

The second word is changelessness. Perhaps one of the most striking and unique things about liturgical Christianity is its permanence and changelessness. This has been true of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the Western Roman Church until the 20th century when the reforms of Vatican II significantly altered the liturgical form of the Roman mass. Illustrating this is the observation by Bishop Kallistos Ware in The Orthodox Church (p. 27) that one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Orthodox Church is its determination to remain loyal to the past, its sense of living continuity with the church of ancient times—that church began in the first century, and "there is a sense in which all Christians must become Christ's contemporaries…the twentieth century is not an absolute norm, the apostolic age is.”

Christian liturgical worship is a sung service, that is, the majority of the service is praise to God that is sung or chanted. This may be collective or antiphonal. In the case of the Divine Liturgy (Mass), it is comprised of two main parts: The Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The former includes preparatory hymns and Scripture readings; the latter includes preparation for and reception of the Eucharist. Central to Christian liturgical worship is participating in the sacrament life of the Church, and especially partaking of the Eucharist (Holy Communion).

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Liturgica.com offers the following additional content on this subject:

1. Worship in the early church

2. Early Eastern Orthodox Liturgics

3. Heavenly Worship

4. The Royal Priesthood

5. The Byzantine Typikon

6. Early Western Liturgics

7. The Byzantine Synthesis

The Liturgica.com Web Store offers:

1. Over 500 CDs of Chant spanning all Eastern and Western forms

2. A wide range of books on the development of liturgical worship