St. Dionysius the Areopagite describes the order and hierarchy that exists in the world, the order by which God rules over His creation. For the creation is orderly. We read in the beginning of the book of Genesis that the world was shapeless and void, but God brought it into increasing order through the process of creation, working through His uncreated, ever-existing Word. As St. Dionysius teaches, before God made the world, He created the Angels in three ranks of three orders each: the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones; Authorities, Dominions, and Powers; and Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. The chief angels – the Cherubim – stand directly before God, although even they cannot see Him in His true being, since He cannot be comprehended by any created being. Each rank conveys God’s grace and instructions to the next rank, order by order, until they are brought down to our created world. And similarly, our prayers ascend up to God through the ranks of angels, each rank purifying and transmitting the prayers it has received.
This is not to suggest that we have no contact with God; on the contrary, we ourselves fit into this blessed hierarchy, in which everything is done decently and in order [I Cor. 14:40]. For the rank below the Angels is mankind itself. And as the Angels are divided into three ranks, so mankind is also divided into three ranks: the clergy (divided into bishops, priests, and deacons), the sacred people (monastics, divided into novices, professed, and schema-monks), and those being purified (divided into the initiates – the Baptized and believing Christian laity; the repentant – those preparing for Baptism or those who have fallen into serious sin after Baptism; and the possessed – those outside the Church of God). Grace is mediated from God to the created world through these ordered hierarchies, showing us the beautiful and elegant structure which sustains the world. Each of us has a place in the hierarchy, a place which God has given us. Think how different this view is from that of modern science. In St. Dionysius’s understanding of the universe God’s guiding hand is everywhere, mediated in an orderly and loving manner. There is no blind chance at work; there are no mindless “natural laws”; there is no purposeless evolution. Rather, there is meaning and purpose in every single act, because every one of our acts is either a proper participation in the process of passing on God’s grace through our order and returning our prayers to Him through the Celestial Hierarchy, or it breaks the link in the hierarchy and damages the whole creation. For the point of the hierarchy is that each member must play his assigned role for it to work properly. Some of God’s grace may fail to reach the repentant and the possessed, if the initiates do not transmit it. And the prayers of the initiates and those below do not ascent upward as well if the monastics and the clergy are themselves careless and impure. The significance of a hierarchy is precisely this: it only works properly if each rank performs its functions correctly. Satan’s fall removed some members of the higher orders, and in a real sense weakened God’s creation. Man’s fall disrupted the hierarchy even more, since there are now no human beings who truly meet their calling in the Divine Hierarchy. If we look at the state of the world around us today, we cannot fail to see the disastrous results of the failure of Christians to fulfill their assigned functions. And the horrors of our world are substantially our fault, because we do not even see our role in sustaining God’s creation, much less fulfill it…
The Divine Liturgy in the Church is the fullest expression on earth of God’s hierarchy. At the Liturgy you can see the orders of the earthly hierarchy present before God’s throne. The clergy stand at the front, immediately before the Throne of God, the Holy Table. The initiates stand in the body of the temple, the nave. The repentant stand outside the nave in the narthex. And the possessed are completely outside the temple of God. The Liturgy is offered with beauty and order, raising our prayers to the Celestial Hierarchy to convey to God’s throne, and in return bringing down God’s grace to us on earth. At the Liturgy we join with the whole Divine Hierarchy in Heaven and on earth, and we truly see our place in God’s creation. When the Liturgy is over, we must not lose sight of God’s order for the world. We must continue to send our prayers upward to His throne in everything we do; and we must look for His grace to continue to descend to us through our private prayers at every moment during the day. This is our calling as Christians. How different this is from what the world wants us to believe! We are not little lumps of meaningless flesh that live for a few years, seeking maximum pleasure, then die and cease to exist. Rather, we are God’s creatures [we even see the Divine order and hierarchy in body, soul, and spirit], made by Him for a specific purpose and assigned a place in the order of the universe. Only you can fulfill the spot for which you were created. And if you fail to fill it, you detract from and damage all of God’s creation. How awesome our role! How frightening to look at the world around us and realize that our failure to be what we were made to be is the root cause of many social and moral evils we see! One day our eyes will be opened and we will see God’s creation as it is. I pray that day may be now, where there is still time for each of you to begin to take your place in it. But, if it is not now, it will be at the dread judgment seat of Christ, when it will be too late to do anything but gnash your teeth and cry out in rage, frustration, and grief. Learn to see the world as it truly is. And take your place in God’s order with obedience, love, and joy.
From a talk given by +Fr. Seraphim Johnson, my spiritual father of blessed memory.
[This view of God’s order as revealed in the creation and function of the Angels and in the order of the Church is lost in a “Christianity” that seeks to hold on to Adam and Eve’s autonomy of the individual – the original sin – and perceives Christianity as essentially just “God and me”, and the Church as whatever everybody wants it to be.]
