HEARKEN, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house;
So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.
With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king’s palace.
Psalm 44(45):10-11, 15.
HOW does the Liturgy begin?
Blessed be the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Why does the priest begin like this? What does he want to say?
Christ opens before us a marvelous sight.
Before us lies a heavenly vision. Before us Christ opens his Kingdom.
Much as when you go to a shop and the shopkeeper opens up for you the bolt of cloth and you look at it, pick it up, test its strength, see at its beauty, and say “I’ll buy that”, so Christ does at this moment.
He opens his Kingdom before your eyes, so that we will look at it, feel it, take our fill of it, and say: “I too choose this for my life”.
Can our soul feel this? The priest understands this in that moment at the altar.
His heart beats loudly, he makes as if to go blind, as Paul went blind on the road to Damascus, when he saw Christ (Acts 9:3-9).
“His heart beats loudly, he makes as if to go blind, as Paul went blind on the road to Damascus, when he saw Christ.”
His spiritual eyes see the dazzling light of God.
Thus full of ecstasy, he bursts out:
Blessed be the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Thy glory in thy Kingdom, my Christ, fills all things.
You’ve seen, when they dress the bride so they can photograph her, how her great veil takes up the whole room and the hem of her dress covers the floor, to show her glory and her beauty?
In just this way, at that moment the Church of Christ is spread throughout the whole space before our eyes.
What is this Kingdom, blessed, glorified, honored, higher than everything?
It is the Kingdom of the heavens, the Kingdom of God: it is Paradise, in which Christ has set us: it is our holy Church.
Its King is God, the triple-sun, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Elder Aimilianos