The Anaphora
How the Single Most Important Prayer in Christian History Reaches Back Through Twenty Centuries to Touch the Throne of God
Please note, this is article 5 in a 6 part series. It is somewhat important that you read them in sequence.
I want to start with a confession. This is the article I have been most afraid to write. Not because the argument is hard - by this point in the series, four articles in, the argument is mostly built. Article 1 showed you that the early Church was already doing the Divine Liturgy by 155 AD. Article 2 showed you that the architecture of every Orthodox parish is the Jerusalem Temple fulfilled in Christ. Article 3 showed you that the first half of the Liturgy is the synagogue service Jesus attended every Sabbath of His life, and that the second half - the part we are about to walk into - is the fulfillment of Temple sacrificial worship. Article 4 showed you that all of this is documented in the Didache - a manual older than parts of the New Testament, including the explicit reading of Malachi 1:11 as the prophecy of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
So the argument is laid. The framework is built. What is left is to walk you into the room itself. And that is what scares me, because the room I am about to walk you into is the most sacred space in Christian worship, and I am not an ordained priest, I’m not even a seminarian, so I’m trying to tread extremely carefully, because I don’t fully feel qualified to write this, despite copious amounts of checking materials, conferring with AI assistants, etc.
This is the prayer the priest prays at the altar. The prayer the Seraphim sing. The prayer the Apostles handed down. The prayer that calls bread and wine and turns them, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, into the Body and Blood of the Risen Christ.
It is called the Anaphora.
And to write about the Anaphora is to attempt to describe, in human words, the prayer that joins heaven to earth.
I am going to do my best. I am going to try to be precise. I am going to be very careful. I am going to keep my hands open and my voice quiet, the way you should when you walk into a holy place. And I am going to ask, before we begin, that you read this article slowly. Not because the argument is complicated - though it is - but because what we are walking into deserves slow reading.1
Any errors in this document are mine and due to my own human limitations.
Let’s -a- go. (like from mario kart)
What the Word Means
The Greek word anaphora (ἀναφορά) comes from the verb anapherō, which means “to carry up” or “to offer up” or “to bring up.” It is the same root from which we get the English word “metaphor” (literally “carrying across”). Ana means “up.” Pherō means “to bear” or “to carry.”
The Anaphora, then, is the carrying up.
It is the offering. The prayer that lifts the bread and wine, and with them, the whole Church, and with the Church, the whole world, up to God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Holy Spirit.
Every ancient Christian liturgy on earth has an Anaphora. The Roman Mass has one (called the Eucharistic Prayer in modern English). The Coptic Liturgy has one. The Armenian Liturgy has one. The Ethiopian Liturgy has one. The Syriac Liturgy has one. The Maronite Liturgy has one. The various Byzantine Liturgies have several (we will examine the major two in Article 6). Every single one of these traditions, now separated from each other by centuries and continents and the theological controversies that shattered communion between them, all retain an Anaphora at the center of their Eucharistic worship.2
And every one of these Anaphoras has the same essential shape.
This is not a coincidence. It is evidence. The shape of the Anaphora goes back to the apostolic period, before any of these traditions had separated from each other. They all preserved the same prayer because they all received the same prayer. From the same Apostles. Who received it from the same Christ.
I want you to sit with that for a second. There is no other prayer in the world that has this property. The Anaphora is, structurally, theologically, liturgically, the most cross-traditional prayer in Christian history. Eastern and Western, Greek and Latin and Syriac and Ge’ez (Ethiopian) and Coptic and Armenian. All of them, doing the same thing, in the same order, with the same essential words.
That is what the apostolic deposit looks like when it is preserved across two thousand years.
The Eleven Movements
The Byzantine Anaphora - the one prayed in every Greek, Russian, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Antiochian, and other Orthodox parish on earth - has eleven distinct movements.3 I am going to name all eleven now, briefly, so you have a map of where we are going. Then we will walk through each one. I have included the Greek terms where possible.
The Opening Dialogue/The Eisodos - sometimes referred to as the Prooímion (Προοίμιον.) “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ...”
The Próphasis/Preface - “It is meet and right...”
The Pre-Sanctus/Eulogētikḗ - The transition into the angelic hymn, the prayer leading to the triumphal hymn
The Epinikios - The triumphal hymn. “Holy, Holy, Holy...”
The Post-Sanctus/Prayer of Thanksgiving - The remembrance of God’s saving acts
The Institution Narrative (Words of Institution) or Sýstasis - “Take, eat... Drink ye all of it...”
The Anamnesis - “Remembering, therefore...”
The Epiclesis/Epíklēsis- The calling down of the Holy Spirit
The Intercessions/Diptycha - “Remember, O Lord...”
The Doxology/Doxología - “And grant us with one mouth and one heart to glorify...”
The Great Amen - The congregation’s response sealing the prayer
Eleven movements. Each one doing specific theological work. Each one inheriting specific elements from synagogue, Temple, Apostles, or all three. Each one preserved across two thousand years and across every ancient Christian tradition.
Let’s walk through them.
Movement One: The Opening Dialogue / The Eisodos
The Anaphora begins with a dialogue between the priest and the people.
Priest: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
People: And with your spirit.
Priest: Let us lift up our hearts.
People: We lift them up unto the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks unto the Lord.
People: It is meet and right. (my parish uses a slightly different translation that says it is proper and right.)
You have already heard part of this. The opening blessing is taken almost word-for-word from 2 Corinthians 13:14 - the apostolic benediction Paul wrote to the Corinthian church around 56 AD. The Christian liturgy did not invent this opening. It received it from Paul.
But the rest of the dialogue is even older than Paul.
“Lift up your hearts.” In Latin: Sursum corda. This is the most ancient surviving liturgical formula in Christian history. It is attested in Hippolytus of Rome’s Apostolic Tradition (around 215 AD), which is the earliest detailed description of a Christian liturgical service we have. It is identical in every Christian tradition - Eastern, Western, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Syriac, Maronite. Every. Single. One.
Which means Sursum corda must be older than any of these traditions had separated from each other. It must be apostolic.4
And what is it doing?
It is calling the congregation out of this world.
Lift up your hearts. Not your eyes. Not your hands. Your hearts. The center of your being. The seat of your will. The place where you actually live. Lift them up. Lift them out of the city outside. Lift them out of your job, your worries, your relationships, your phone, your bank account, your children, your marriage, your fears about the future and your regrets about the past. Lift them up unto the Lord.
Because what is about to happen cannot happen at the level of your everyday consciousness. What is about to happen is that the priest is going to step into the place of the High Priest, the bread and wine on the altar are going to become the Body and Blood of Christ, and the entire assembly is going to be carried up - anaphora, carried up - into the heavenly throne room where the Seraphim are singing. You cannot do that with your heart still doom scrolling on your phone. Lift up your hearts.
The people respond: We lift them up unto the Lord. This is not a formality. It is a vow. The congregation is committing actively and verbally to be present for what is about to happen.
And then: Let us give thanks unto the Lord. Eucharistesomen. Let us eucharist. The verb form of the noun. The prayer is named for what it is doing.
It is meet [proper] and right. The people agree. The thanksgiving begins.
Movement Two: The Preface / Próphasis
The priest now begins the great prayer of thanksgiving.
It is proper and right to hymn You, to bless You, to praise You, to give thanks to You, and to worship You in every place of Your dominion. For You, O God, are ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, existing forever, forever the same, You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit. You brought us out of nothing into being, and when we had fallen away, You raised us up again. You left nothing undone until you had led us up to heaven and granted us Your Kingdom, which is to come.
Quoted From the the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America’s website, you can read it yourself here:
Stop and listen to what just happened.
This is thanksgiving on the cosmic scale. The priest is not thanking God for nice weather. The priest is thanking God for creation (you brought us out of nonexistence into being), for salvation (when we had fallen, you raised us up again), and for eschatology (you brought us up to heaven and granted us your Kingdom which is to come).
The whole of salvation history, compressed into three clauses. Past, present, future. Created, fallen, redeemed, glorified.
This is the architecture of all Eucharistic prayer. The Eucharist is not just a meal of remembrance. It is a recapitulation a calling-back of the entire arc of God’s saving action so that the offering about to be made participates in all of it. The bread and wine on the altar are not isolated objects. They are about to become the focal point of the entire cosmic drama.
You can hear, in this Preface, the structure of the Jewish berakhah - the blessing-prayer that names God as Creator, as Redeemer, as the Holy One of Israel. Article 4 showed you the birkat ha-mazon, the Jewish grace after meals, with its three-part structure of blessing for creation, blessing for the land, and prayer for restoration. The Anaphora’s Preface is the Christian fulfillment of that pattern. Same structure. Same theological architecture. Filled with Christ.
Movement Three: The Eulogētikḗ or Pre-Sanctus
The Preface flows directly into the Pre-Sanctus, which is the transition into the angelic hymn:
We thank You also for this Liturgy, which You have deigned to receive from our hands, even though thousands of archangels and tens of thousands of angels stand around You, the Cherubim and Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, soaring aloft upon their wings,
singing the triumphal hymn, exclaiming, proclaiming, and saying: Singing the triumphal hymn, exclaiming, proclaiming, and saying…
The priest is now naming what is happening in the heavenly places at this exact moment.
The earthly assembly is not alone. The earthly assembly is being joined - is already joined, is in fact already singing with - the angelic hosts who stand around the throne of God. The Liturgy on earth is not a separate event from the Liturgy in heaven. They are the same Liturgy, one performed in time and the other in eternity, and at this moment in the prayer they converge.
Soaring with their wings. That is a direct allusion to Isaiah 6:2 - the Seraphim Isaiah saw, who “each had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.”
Many-eyed. That is an allusion to Ezekiel 1:18 - the four living creatures Ezekiel saw, whose rings were “full of eyes round about.” And to Revelation 4:8 - the four living creatures John saw around the throne, who were “full of eyes within.”
The Anaphora is now doing something extraordinary. It is naming, by their biblical descriptions, the angelic beings who are present in the room. Not metaphorically present. Liturgically present. The Pre-Sanctus is the priest saying, in effect: we are about to sing with them. They are here. They are singing. We are joining their song.
And what is the song?
Movement Four: The Epinikios (Ἐπινίκιος’) - the triumphal hymn, aka the Sanctus
The congregation now sings the most ancient and universal hymn in the entire Christian liturgical tradition.
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth (Lord of the Angelic Hosts)!
Heaven and earth are filled with Your glory!
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!
This is the Epinikios. And I want to take my time with this one, because it is the moment in the Liturgy where every thread of this entire series ties together.
The first half of the Sanctus - Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth! Heaven and earth are full of Your glory! - is taken directly from Isaiah 6:3. It is the song the prophet Isaiah heard the seraphim singing in the Temple in the year that King Uzziah died. ⁵
The second half - Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! - is from Psalm 118:26 and from the crowds’ acclamation as Christ entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in Matthew 21:9.
And here is what I want you to see.
The Epinikios is not a Christian invention. It is an inheritance.
The Jewish synagogue prayer called the Kedushah (Hebrew for “holiness” or “sanctification”) combines exactly the same Isaiah 6:3 hymn with a verse from Ezekiel 3:12 - “Blessed be the glory of the LORD from his place.” The Kedushah is the moment in synagogue worship when the congregation joins the angelic praise of God. The community stands. They sing the seraphic hymn. They join the worship of heaven.
The Christian Epinikios is doing the same thing. With one critical change. The second half of the Epinikios is no longer Ezekiel’s “Blessed be the glory of the LORD from his place.” It is the crowd’s “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The blessing is no longer of an abstract glory. It is of a Person. The One who comes.
And the One who comes - the One whose coming the crowd was acclaiming when they sang this in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday - is Christ.
The Christian Epinikios has taken the Jewish Kedushah and Christified it. The angelic hymn of Isaiah 6 still calls the congregation into the worship of heaven. But the second half of the hymn now identifies, by name, the One whose coming makes that worship possible. The He who comes in the name of the Lord is the One whose Body and Blood are about to be made present on the altar. The Epinikios is announcing His arrival.
In Article 3, I told you that the Liturgy of the Word inherits the synagogue service, and the Liturgy of the Faithful fulfills the Temple. The Epinikios is both at once. It is the synagogue’s Kedushah, drawn from the prophet’s Temple vision in Isaiah 6, sung by the congregation joining the angels’ eternal song around the throne of God, identifying by name the Christ whose body is about to be offered as the pure offering Malachi prophesied. Synagogue, Temple, Christ. All three. Converging in one hymn.
The hymn that is now being sung this very Sunday morning, in every Orthodox parish on earth, by congregations who may not even realize what they are doing.
They are joining the seraphim. They are praying the Kedushah of their elder brothers in the synagogue. They are standing in the Temple where Isaiah stood. And they are welcoming Christ, the One who comes in the name of the Lord, into the bread and wine on the altar in front of them.
Lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer is the law of belief.
The Christian Epinikios has been sung continuously, by every ancient Christian tradition on earth, for at least 1,800 years - and probably longer. It is referenced in Clement of Rome’s letter to the Corinthians (around 95 AD), in Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Ephesians (around 107 AD), in Tertullian (early 200s), and is a fixed element of every surviving fourth-century liturgical text. The Epinikios did not develop late. The Epinikios is the prayer of the apostolic Church.
Which means that when you stand in an Orthodox parish on Sunday morning and hear the choir begin “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth!” - you are hearing the song the Apostles sang. You are hearing the song their Jewish ancestors sang in the synagogues of Galilee and Judea. You are hearing the song Isaiah heard the seraphim sing in the Temple in the year that King Uzziah died.5 And you are hearing the song that has not stopped being sung, in some place on earth, every Sunday for two thousand years.
The hymn does not break. The hymn cannot break. The hymn is the song of the angelic worship of God in heaven, and that worship has been continuous from before time and will be continuous beyond time.
The Liturgy is letting you join it.
