This is one reason I thank God for the liturgy. The liturgy does not target any age or cultural subgroup. It does not even target this century. (It does not imagine, as we moderns and postmoderns are tempted to do, that this is the best of all possible ages, the most significant era of history.) Instead, the liturgy draws us into worship that transcends our time and place. Its earliest forms took shape in ancient Israel, and its subsequent development occurred in a variety of cultures and subcultures—Greco-Roman, North African, German, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and so on. It has been prayed meaningfully by bakers, housewives, tailors, teachers, philosophers, priests, monks, kings, and slaves. As such, it has not been shaped to meet a particular group's needs. It seeks only to enable people—people in general—to see God. Read the whole thing here.
I think, other than the fact that this is the way God wants us to worship him (Even the pagan wisemen knew this.) the thing I love about the Divine Liturgy is that it is the same liturgy that is served in the poorest palm brach covered parish in Borneo and the grandest Cathedrals of Russia, to say nothing of the heavenly throne room of God. The poorest and the richest, the pure together with the vile, the strong and the weak, get to worship God the same way. This is grace: All are invited to serve and love God in the Liturgy. Oh heck, here is one more quote from the article...
"The liturgy, from beginning to end, is not about meeting our needs. The liturgy is about God. It's not even about God-as-the-fulfiller-of-our-need-for-spiritual-meaning. It's about God as he is himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not about our blessedness but his. The liturgy immediately signals that our needs are not nearly as relevant as we imagine. There is something infinitely more worthy of our attention—something, someone, who lies outside the self."
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