Page 110 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
St. Basil the Great expresses this with remarkable depth.
For him, Sunday is not merely a commemoration of the past,
but an image of the age to come:
We pray standing on the first day of the week… because
that day seems to us in some sense an image of the age
which we expect… the day which knows no end or evening,
and no successor.
Thus, even the posture of prayer becomes theological. The
refusal to kneel on Sunday is not simply a liturgical custom,
but a proclamation: we are already risen with Christ, already
standing in anticipation of the Kingdom. The Church teaches
her children, through this gesture, to orient their existence not
toward the present, but toward the future—the endless day.
This eschatological orientation transforms everything. The
Eucharist is not a nostalgic return to the past, nor a symbolic
ascent to a timeless heaven. It is movement—an opening to-
ward what is to come. It is the anticipation of the Kingdom
breaking into history.
Both Basil and St. Maximus the Confessor converge here:
the Liturgy is not static contemplation, but a dynamic par-
ticipation in the future.
This same orientation is expressed in the ancient practice
of praying toward the east. The east is not only the place of
paradise; it is also the direction of expectation. As St. John of
Damascus explains, Christians turn eastward because they
await the coming of the Son of Man, who will appear “as light-
ning comes from the east” (Mt 24:27). Prayer itself becomes
an act of longing, a gesture of hope.
Within this horizon, the character of the Eucharist be-
comes clear: it is radiant, luminous, filled with glory.
The Church, in the celebration of the Eucharist, is bathed
in light and adorned with splendor. This is not an aesthetic
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