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Holy Catechism

Nikolaos Voulgaris, tr. Daniel, 1893

Of the Little Entrance

62. Ex. Let us proceed in our plan. After the Typica and the Antiphons which you explained as predictions of the Prophets, what else follows?

C. After the Typica and the Antiphons (these, I observe, are yet sung on the Festivals of our Lord for the people to hear the sayings of Scripture which contribute to assert and confirm the Mystery then celebrated; but on ordinary days other shorter antiphons are sung for brevity’s sake: in the first, the Virgin is set out as a mediator; in the second, the Saints; in the third, strengthened by such effective mediation, we make direct entreaty to the Son of God to save us, Save us, O Son of God,) very fittingly comes and follows the Entrance which is made with the holy Gospel as’symbolizing the coming of the Son of God and His holy entrance into this world. Thereupon at once with music and hymn-singing, the High Priest beginning the Triumphal Pæan and the Praise, comes the invitation, “O come let us adore, and fall down before Christ. Save us, O Son of God,” according to that saying of the Vessel of Choice, Heb. i. 6, “And when He bringeth in the Firstborn into the world He saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him;” and Ps. lxvi. 4, “Let all the earth worship Thee, and sing to Thee; yea, let them sing to Thy Name, O most Highest.”

Here comes in Germanus of Constantinople. “First let us bow the knee to Him, as being His subjects, and next let us ask of Him pardon for all which we owe Him.” Prostration and this falling down, as the great Maximus explains in his Scholia on Dionysius, is nothing else than bending the knee; but bending the knee, such as is commonly called a prostrate reverence. So the Patriarch Methodius (as is seen in the 4th title of the 5th section on the punishments of the Lapsed) making a Canon on the deniers of Christ who had wilfully deserted, “enjoins them to fast for two years, and to make a hundred or two hundred genuflections each day, then to be anointed thus with the holy Unction.” And the Holy Euchology in the Order of the Lesser Size has “and he maketh three genuflections or reverences.”

Christians in great Moscow, as likewise the Emperor himself we know, when in the church they sing the Come let us worship and fall down, fall quite prostrate on the ground; and this evidently is what the great Basil, ch. 27, wrote to Amphilochius: “By each bending of the knee and rising up we actually show how through sin we are brought down to earth, and through the love towards man of our Creator we are summoned back to heaven.” And Balsamon: “Howbeit genuflections are not without meaning to us, for the bowing to earth signifies to us that in sinning we are brought down to earth, or have fallen; and the getting up from the earth again and rising signify that after our fall we are recalled through the grace of God Who showed kindness concerning us.” Let this be a lesson to us who, whilst at such a time we say only with our mouth the words, Come let us worship and fall down to Christ, yet neither worship nor fall down, simply with sheer lies in intolerable insolence (that I should have to say it!) stand bolt upright the whole time and without bending.¹

The same blessed Germanus alleges also another signification of the Entrance. “For I think that the showing and manifestation of Christ and our God at the Jordan is represented by the entrance of the High Priest.” And for this reason the Priest as forerunner gives place to the High Priest, saying as John said of Christ, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” John iii. 30. He makes room for the High Priest to celebrate the greater rites. So he thereupon pronounces the ascription

“For holy art Thou, our God.”

And he blesses the people.² “Now this blessing, the great Illuminator himself explains, is the outward mark in token of fulfilment, and as it were a sealing of the Prophetic sayings predictive of Christ; for His coming in the flesh was a seal ratifying what they had predicted as true;” as we showed with quotation of Scripture.

The Double and Triple Tapers, with which the High Priest blesses the people, signify, the former the two natures of Christ in one Person. “And the celebrant blesses the people with the Double Taper (says Symeon of Thessalonica in his book on the Temple and Liturgy) showing the beam of light shed by the two-natured Jesus in heaven and earth by His Incarnation: for by His taking flesh He not only illuminated men but angels too. And the latter signifies the Trinity and the oneness of the Godhead; and how Christ, having re-ascended the heavens, awarded us the brightness of the Trinity, which the light means, and the Blessing.”

Here I note with the blessed Paul his maxim, Heb. vii. 7, “Without any dispute the lesser is blessed of the better,” and the superiority which it is fitting Priests should undoubtedly have as a royal priesthood, and anointed of God, over every other worldly rank, be the other as eminent and glorious, as you will. Theodosius, that most august Emperor, should be our pattern and example, who in everything obeying Ambrose would have the Emperor’s throne in the church at Milan to be lower than the priests, and the priesthood to be in front. Thus Sozomen in the 7th of his Histories, c. 24. “It was the custom for the Emperors to take their place in church in the sanctuary, separated to mark their dignity from the place assigned to the Laity. But considering this savoured of flattery or of insubordination he fixed the position before the Screen of the Sanctuary as the Emperor’s place in church,—(you observe then that in those times curtains were usual at Milan which divided off the holy Tribune, such as we orthodox Greeks use at the present). So that the Sovereign should have the foremost seat of the Laity, but that the priests should sit in front of him;” a thing which Nectarius of Constantinople wondered at and was much pleased with, as Nicephorus Callistus showed in the 12th Book of his Ecclesiastical History, ch. 41.

I pass by the great reverence shown by Constantine the Great to the Fathers, because of the venerable dignity of the priestly character which they bore, calling them Gods, “as eminent above all men,” writes Gelasius of Cyzicus in his account of what was done at the holy council at Nicæa. The precedence is manifest which Constantine assigned to the Fathers of the world because of the wonder-worker Spyridon. He out of numberless High Priests whom he summoned to Antioch according to the vision which he saw, was alone found worthy to bestow the gift of health in a moment, by simply touching with his hand the Imperial head. “Both you and your slaves (the Golden Bull was written to the Priests, and Baronius refers it to the year 330 A.D.) shall no one bind to new contributions; but you shall have exemption, and not entertain guests; and if any belonging to you desire to carry on business for maintenance, they shall have exemption. Given on the 27th August, in the Consulship of Placidus and Romulus.” That is to say, the Priests and their servants and all who are in business about them, both in peace and in war, are to be free from all tribute and exaction on the part of the Empire. Hence each may easily judge what a fault it is when one does not pay the honour and reverence due to the Priests.

63. Ex. I have no doubt of it. Explain why at the Entrance, when the Holy Gospel is publicly lifted up, the words are pronounced “Right wisdom.”

C. Wisdom right and true is none other than Christ Himself; and forasmuch as the holy Gospel contains His holy teaching, it is spoken of as being the right and true wisdom. The public Elevation of the Gospel symbolizes the victory of Christ’s doctrine, which though it endured so many and great persecutions from so many princes and governors, overran the whole universe and conquered the world. “This is the victory which overcame the world, even our Faith,” 1 John v. 4, without which all other knowledge is foolishness and error. So the great Paul, Col. ii. 8, “Take heed lest there be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

Although the divine Chrysostom, 1 Tim., Hom. 15, appears to wish for and to welcome as necessary likewise external wisdom, particularly to High Priests and presbyters; yet nevertheless this is not absolutely, only relatively, as the Schoolmen say, of advantage to the knowledge of God, if it have an end which helps the soul and pleases God. Chiefly as S. Justin Philosopher and Martyr too writes, in refuting Aristotelic doctrines, as often as the actual aim of the mathematical man would merely be “to endeavour vigorously to make men better, nothing is thus acceptable to God: howbeit the eighth of the esoteric doctrines of the Peripatetic is strenuously to be avoided, as full of blasphemies, and hostile to the works of God and the Creator.” And according to the salutary exhortations of Gregory of Nazianzum, listen to the treatise of Aristotle on the Soul, not to his arguments.³

Others write the words σοφία ὀρθοί in the plural: or that we should stand upright, and forsaking the carelessness of indifference, that we should wake up and attend. And concerning this Entrance, it is noted by George Coresius of Chios, the Doctor of the great Church, that “the Priest has his chasuble let down,” or lets it fall entirely, signifying thus that Christ put on entire humanity, and showing His utter humiliation, since in this Entrance, as we said, the coming of the Son of God is announced, and His holy entrance into this sublunar world.

And therefore after the Troparia of the Feast and of the Day, at once is sung the Hymn Trisagion: because the actual mystery of the Consubstantial Trinity was manifested from the time of the preaching of the Forerunner and Baptist, who heard the Father bearing witness to Christ as His beloved Son, and saw the Holy Ghost descending and abiding on Him.

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