In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost.
Perhaps in these days that follow the feast of
the Resurrection of Christ more than ever can one perceive
clearly, passionately, that all the life of the world is one,
and all the life of the Church is held in that mysterious
communion of saints and sinners, which is the world in becoming.
The Liturgy, the common prayers of the Church cannot be
understood, apart from this communion of saints and of sinners.
For us who gather week after week in a church,
the prayers which we hear appear so often as ready-made prayers:
others have composed them, and we have inherited them; but if we
give some thought in the way in which they were born, then they
are no longer ready-made prayers. Every prayer which you hear
was wrought out of a human soul at moments of ecstasy, of
distress, at moments of deep repentance, of immense gratitude.
Every prayer beginning with those which we have inherited from
the Old Testament, with the newest prayers that have come to us
from prisons or concentration camps, are born of living souls in
their meeting with God, or in their desperate need for a God
Whom they grope for, and cannot find.
At times we find it difficult to be at one with
the prayers which are sung, recited, with all this flow of
prayers. And indeed, it is not surprising, because in one
service, in one liturgical sequence, in the simple prayers which
we read in the morning and in the evening, the Church has
gathered tens of prayers that correspond to the experience, to
the life, to the death, to the joy, to the suffering, to the
anguish and the gratitude of the saints throughout history. How
can we expect that we will receive in our soul, share
completely, one after the other, the experience of centuries, of
Saint Basil and Saint John, Saint Mark and Saint Symeon? But we
could share them in a life-giving way, if we realize that we,
small as we are, in the making as we are, groping as we are for
a plenitude which is not yet ours, and which they possess to a
greater degree than we, that we stand in a vast crowd of men and
women at prayer, and that we overhear the great saints of God
praying their prayers.
We could stand like children among adults, we
could stand in the awareness that here is Saint Basil bringing
forth his prayers, from the depth of his experience of God and
of life. And here is Saint John, here is another saint, and
another again; and we could simply listen attentively, asking
ourselves questions at times, say, ‘How is it that he says these
words? From what depth of an experience alien, strange to me, do
these words come?’ And then of a sudden say with joy, ‘And here
I am at one with him, what he says is what I already know or
have dimly perceived; oh, how wonderful, I am at one with men
who are so great with God!’
And if we treat this way the morning prayers
which we read, or the evening prayers, and the various sequences
which take place in church, then we would not feel, as we often
do, a sense of distress, that all this passes us by, that we do
not find ourselves in these words, in the imagery, in these
phrases. How could we, in one soul, perceive all the complexity
of the Church's two thousand years of divine and human
experience? But how easy it would be to stand listening with an
open mind, an open heart, ready to respond to what is already
ours, ask questions about other things, exclaim in our souls,
‘How could you say that, o, Father Basil, how could you speak
these words, John?’ And then we would gradually grow into a much
greater understanding, because the seed of prayer, which already
is in our souls, the understanding of the saints which we share
with them already if we were true, simple, direct, will grow in
us; we would be real to the extent to which we are real already
and we would grow into a fuller reality than before.
And then we would discover that this communion
of saints of which we think as something so invisible and so
distant — saints in heaven and we on earth, — is something
infinitely more familiar and simple. Then their prayers are in
our midst, their experience being shared, in every word of
prayer, in every melody of liturgical singing, they are in our
midst, not only invisibly praying for us, but making us
partakers of their deep, tragic, glorious experience; of God and
of the world, of men as much as of God. And then we could turn
and see our neighbour also a part of this very mysterious
communion of saints and sinners, because our neighbour also
partakes, as we do, perhaps by the fringe of his soul, perhaps
with the most superficial layers as yet of his heart, in the
same mystery for which we grope. We would feel that we are
companions, that we are together, on our way, but more than this
— that together we drink from the same source, that together we
share with greater ones than ourselves, a wider, deeper
life-giving life.
Let us try, in liturgical services, in private
prayers, to learn to partake in this simple, true and direct way
to the experience and the life of those who have proceeded us
and who are greater than we are. And the communion of saints
will become reality and the communion of sinners will become
something meaningful to us, a real brotherhood of people who
are, who recognise themselves as sinners and yet feel that God
has come to them also, that they have elder brothers and sisters
who are concerned with them, at one with them, sharing with them
the most precious gifts of their lives. And we will then be able
to grow into a brotherhood, into a sisterhood, to become a body,
and one life together with them in God.
Amen.
