Mystical Supper
While the entire congregation is professing belief in God as Trinity, the priest begins a prayer which continues our profession of faith. He prays:
It is proper and just to sing hymns to You, to bless You, to praise You, to thank You, to worship You in every place of Your kingdom. FOR You are God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing yet ever the same, You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit. You brought us forth from nonexistence into being and raise us up again when we have fallen and left nothing undone until You brought us to heaven and bestowed upon us Your future kingdom. For all this we give thanks to You and to Your only-begotten Son and to Your Holy Spirit – for all that we know and that we do not know, the manifest and the hidden benefits bestowed upon us.
As you can tell, the priestly prayer twice professes belief in God as Three-In-One and enumerates His qualities which profess Him to be a being that is far-beyond any other possible being in the universe. It also professes our belief that He created us and all things out of nothing, a very important idea. It also professes the belief that He has done, and is doing, everything in His power to bring us to His Kingdom which is in a different dimension of existence. It also again reiterates our “thankfulness” for all that He has done for us. Thankfulness is truly the theme of our worship. Our communal prayer calls us to think about why we are thankful and for what are we thankful. We are not just thankful for the “good” and “pleasurable” things which we receive in life. We are thankful for life as it is presented to us, with all of its struggles, challenges and pleasures. We are not just thankful for the things that we find enjoyable!
This is one of the real challenges that we face. We must be thankful for all of the events and experiences of life. I cannot stress this enough. We must remember that, like love and forgiveness, our thankfulness must also be unconditional and without reservations. It is only then that our thankfulness is genuine and real.
The problem is that we only have one communal service a week – the Divine Liturgy. If we had Vespers and Matins, which don’t have the theme of “thankfulness” for their focus, people could come to a different service and worship. Sometimes, I know, it is hard to be thankful for life, especially when it is presenting significant challenges and struggles to us.