“THROUGH THE LITURGY THE CHURCH BECOMES COMMUNITY AND ACQUIRES ITS IDENTITY” HIS HOLINESS ARAM I
22/7/2012
Addressing the fourth conference of the Society of Oriental Liturgy, His Holiness Aram I stressed the pivotal importance of liturgy for the life and mission of the church. Catholicos Aram elaborated his reflections by highlighting the following points:
1) Through the liturgy, the church manifests and realizes itself, it becomes koinonia and receives God’s offer of salvation in Christ.
2) The local church is the eucharistic community; hence the eucharist is the heart of the liturgy and through the eucharist the church acquires its very being and expresses its catholicity and unity.
3) Liturgy is the source and expression of the church’s faith. Church fathers have given a particular importance to liturgy in their theological reflections and biblical exegesis.
4) Liturgy is divided into two main families: Eastern and Western. The Eastern family consist of Byzantine, Syriac and Alexandrian liturgical traditions. The Latin liturgy is the major liturgical tradition of the West. The Eastern liturgy emphasizes the vertical, transcendental and eschatological aspects, theosis being at the heart of liturgical spirituality. While Western liturgy is more simple, realistic and action-oriented.
5) The Armenian Church’s liturgy belongs to the Eastern liturgical tradition. It includes elements from Byzantine, Syriac and Alexandrian traditions. The Armenian cultural norms and forms, suffering and martyria constitute significant features of Armenian liturgy. A characteristic aspects of the Armenian liturgy is that it embraces the whole cosmos in its horizontal and vertical, human and ecological dimensions and manifestations.
After elaborating these points, His Holiness drew the attention of the conference to three points which have been on the ecumenical agenda. These are:
a) Divergences pertaining to eucharist-centered liturgy, and pulpit-centered liturgy. He said that generally speaking the Orthodox and Catholic churches lay the emphasis on the first, and the Protestant family on the second. According to His Holiness, these two approaches need to be taken as one whole in their interconnectedness. He believes that the celebration of the eucharist and the preaching of the Word of God condition and complement each other.
b) Catholicos Aram reminded the professors of liturgy, that often the Orthodox Churches are criticized that they are liturgy-centered and that they do not give priority to the missionary vocation of the church. His Holiness challenged such a bias view. He said that the Orthodox Churches have always been faithful to their missionary calling, according to the historical circumstances. Furthermore, for the Orthodox Churches the liturgy is a missionary reality. Through the liturgy the faithful receives God’s gift of salvation to share it with others. In fact, “let us go forth in peace” said by the celebrant, at the very end of church service, is sending the people to the world to proclaim the Word of God. This is what Orthodox call “liturgy after liturgy”.
c) His Holiness also emphasized the need of maintaining the interconnectedness between liturgy, mission and diakonia not only in theological reflection but also in self-affirmation and self-articulation of the church. Therefore, any approach of departmentalizing or drawing lines of demarcation between liturgy, diakonia and mission is contrary to the self-understanding and the missionary vocation of the early church.
