Enter the Joy of Your Lord

For the Life of the World
Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983)

 

“Joy, however, is not something one can define or analyze. One enters into joy…And we have no other means of entering into that joy, no way of understanding it, except through the one action which from the beginning has been for the Church both the source and fulfillment of joy, the very sacrament of joy, the Eucharist…the Eucharist is the entrance of the Church into the joy of its Lord. And to enter into that joy, so as to be a witness to it in the world, is indeed the very calling of the Church, its essential leitourgia, the sacrament by which it ‘becomes what it is.’”