The Lord's Prayer and "Holy Things Are for the Holy"

What you'll notice

Another short litany, "Grant it, O Lord," and then the priest says something that sounds like a dare: "And vouchsafe, O Lord, that boldly and without condemnation we may call upon thee, God the heavenly Father, and say:"¹

And the whole room says the Our Father. In a Greek parish it may be said in Greek and then in English; in a Slavic parish it's sung, by everyone, to a tune every child knows. The priest finishes it: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory…" Then "Peace be with you all," and "Let us bow our heads unto the Lord,"² and everyone does.

Then the curtain closes. From behind it comes "Let us attend," and the priest calls out, "Holy things unto the Holy," and the choir answers, "One only is holy, one only is the Lord, Jesus Christ, in the glory of God the Father. Amen."³ The choir starts a psalm. Behind the curtain, something is happening that you can't see.

What it's called

The Lord's Prayer, which Orthodox usually call the Our Father (Greek Pater hemon, Slavonic Otche nash). The bow is the Prayer of Inclination. "Holy things are for the holy" is the old translation of Ta hagia tois hagiois. What's happening behind the curtain is the fraction (breaking the Lamb), the commingling (putting a piece in the cup), and the zeon (the hot water poured into the chalice). The psalm is the Communion hymn; on Sunday it's "Praise the Lord from the heavens" (Psalm 148).

What's actually happening

First, the dare. The priest doesn't assume we can call God "Father"; he asks for the nerve to. The prayer that follows is the most familiar words in the building and also the most dangerous, since it asks to be forgiven exactly as much as we forgive. Tertullian, around the year 200, called it a summary of the whole Gospel. In the early Church it was handed to catechumens only at the very end of their preparation, so that the first time they said it in church was as new Christians.⁴

Then the bow. Everyone, priest included, stoops before the thing they're about to receive.

Then the warning. The priest lifts the Lamb and says the holy things are for the holy. The choir's answer is the only honest one: nobody here is holy except Jesus Christ. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem says we are holy too, not by nature but by sharing in Him.⁵ That's who the warning is for: the people who heard it and didn't leave. Hear it as the host standing up from the table, not checking names at the door.

Behind the curtain the priest breaks the Lamb in four, saying that the Lamb of God is "broken, yet not disunited," "ever eaten, yet never consumed."⁶ He puts one piece in the chalice and pours in hot water, "the warmth of faith, full of the Holy Spirit."⁷ Then the clergy receive, first.

Why it matters

The Didache ends its Eucharistic prayer with this: if anyone is holy, let him come; if anyone is not, let him repent.⁸ That's "holy things for the holy" in its first-century form, and it's both halves of the Gospel: come, and turn around. Saint Paul's version is "examine yourselves" (2 Corinthians 13:5).

The fraction is the breaking of bread in Acts 2:42, the thing the first Christians were known for. One loaf, one body (1 Corinthians 10:17). The hot water is the Byzantine Church's way of insisting that the Christ we receive is living and risen; it isn't in the oldest service book and was added around the twelfth century.⁹ And the water mixed with wine, Saint Cyprian said in the third century, is the people mixed with Christ, fused so they can't be separated.¹⁰

Saint John Chrysostom's Paschal sermon, read aloud every Easter night, says the table is full, so let no one go away hungry. The warning and the welcome are the same voice.

Where it came from

The Our Father has been in the Liturgy since at least the fourth century; Cyril of Jerusalem explains it line by line right where it sits now, before Communion,¹¹ and Getcha notes that Cyril is the first writer to put it there.¹² "Holy things for the holy" is in the same lecture,¹³ and in the old rite it was the call to come up and receive, the moment the people came forward.¹⁴ The zeon is a Byzantine custom the Latin West never took up, and after the schism it became one more point of argument between them.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: say the Our Father out loud, with everyone; it belongs to the whole assembly, not the choir.¹⁵ Bow your head and keep it bowed until the priest finishes the prayer. At "Holy things unto the Holy," cross yourself and say the response. Then, if you're receiving, start moving toward the front during the Communion hymn; don't wait for the doors to open and then shove. If you're not receiving today, stay where you are and pray the pre-Communion prayers along with the people who are.

If you're visiting: say the Our Father; it belongs to you as much as anyone. Bow when they bow. When the curtain closes and the choir sings, nothing is required. The next stop explains what happens when it opens.

Field Note: the ending. If you're Protestant, you've always said "for Thine is the kingdom" yourself. If you're Catholic, you say it after an interruption. In the Orthodox Church the priest says it, as the exclamation that ends the prayer, and the people say "Amen." Same words, three customs, one prayer. Nobody is wrong.

Field Note: the zeon. A small ladle of hot water, blessed and poured into the chalice right before Communion. It's there so that what you receive is warm, the way blood is.

Go deeper

• Matthew 6:9–15; 1 Corinthians 10:16–17.
• The Didache 9–10 (ANF 7).
• Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 5 (NPNF2 7).
• The Paschal Liturgy, for Saint John Chrysostom's Paschal Homily read aloud.

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