The Kingdom to Come
In our western rite, we’re used to the notion of proper prefaces. That is, the preface (the prayer of thanksgiving) prior to the singing of the Sanctus will lift up one or another aspect of our salvation to thank God for, changing with the progress of the Church’s year of grace. During these Advent days, for instance, we thank our God above all sending us St. John the Baptist both to witness to the Lamb of God and to urge us sinners to repent and so escape from the wrath to be revealed when He comes again in glory.
The eastern liturgies, however, have invariable prefaces and so they tend to gather up a bit more of the cause for thanksgiving (and so to be longer) than our brief and to-the-point western prefaces. If you will, they sum up all the Church Year each Sunday. My all time favorite of these is from the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Ponder these words:
It is meet and right to hymn Thee, to bless Thee, to praise Thee, to give thanks to Thee, and to worship Thee in every place of Thy dominion; for Thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same, Thou and Thine only-begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit. Thou it was who brought us from non-existence into being, and when we had fallen away didst raise us up again, and didst not cease to do all things until Thou hadst brought us up to heaven, and hadst endowed us with Thy Kingdom which is to come. For all these things we give thanks to Thee… (The Divine Liturgy According to St. John Chrysostom: With Commentary and Biblical References by Theodore Bobosh, p. 42).
Where does one even begin to unpack all that joy? Notice that this God who is so far beyond our ability to grasp, is the one who brought us into being out of non-being. Ex nihilo, as we’d say. He is our Maker, our Creator. And as such, He’s not about to let us simply be lost to Him…echoes of St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. No, when we had fallen away from Him, when we were spiritually dead and lost, He raised us up and did not cease doing all things (echoes there of Isaiah 26:12?) until He had (past tense!) brought us up to heaven and endowed us with the coming Kingdom.
The verb tenses explode the mind, but yet they are running with St. Paul, who speaks in Ephesians 2 not only of us being raised with Christ, but even being seated with Him “in the heavenly places” (Eph 2:6). So the writer of Hebrews would maintain: “But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God.” (Heb 12:22) None of us has to wait till we die for the enjoyment of the heavenly Kingdom! Baptism has already given you the gift of that death. Heaven is a reality He gives to you even here and now: in the Church, at the Altar, you’re already given participation in “Thy Kingdom which is to come.” Unseen, but there.
Past, present, future? They meet and dance together for joy whenever we come to the Eucharist, for there we taste the invincible Love that has conquered all. How beautifully the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom captures all this. Indeed, even as we pray “Thy kingdom come” (the true epicleptic prayer for the Spirit!) we know already that this prayer is answered mystically and truly in the very gift of the Eucharist itself, for indeed: “ I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.” (Luke 22:29, 30). We gather in the Divine Service to the table of the Kingdom, to feast with our Lord, His angels and saints, and yes to reign with Him in His own omnipotent love.
