Priest: Remembering our most holy, pure, blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever virgin Mary, with all the saints, let us commit ourselves and one another, and our whole life to Christ our God.
People: To You, O Lord.

Priest: (in a low voice) Lord our God, whose power is beyond compare, and glory is beyond understanding; whose mercy is boundless and love for us is ineffable: look upon us and upon this holy house in your compassion. Grant to us and to those who pray with us Your abundant mercy. (aloud) For Yours is the dominion, the kingdom, the power, and the glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.
People: Amen.

(The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, pp. 4-5)

The short dialogue above is the conclusion of the Great Litany, and we will see that all litanies end in a similar fashion. It consists of three steps:

1. enlisting the help of the saints, especially the Mother of God;

2. renewing our commitment to offer everything we have to Christ our God and Lord, and encouraging one another to do so;

3. praising God as Holy Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The first step is to bring to mind the Lady Theotokos and all the saints. Theos is the Greek word for God, and tokos indicates giving birth, hence Theotokos means the one who gave birth to God. We know that Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, was born of the Father without a Mother before all ages and was born as a man of a mother—-the Virgin Mary-—without a human father. By virtue of being His mother, the Theotokos is closer to God than any other created being. She is therefore venerated above all saints and even above the angels. She preserved her purity not only before she gave birth to Christ, but throughout her life, hence we call her ever-virgin. She is the first saint we run to in times of need and our greatest intercessor-—she is in the best position to plead with Christ for our salvation.

Besides the Mother of God, we also bring to mind all the saints, in particular our patron saint-—the saint whose name we bear. The saints are people like us who truly offered their whole life to Christ and were therefore cleansed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. They form the backbone of the Church, and serve as examples for all of us. We try to imitate the saints in offering our lives to Christ, and we enlist their help along the way.

The commitment to offer our whole life to Christ should not be taken easily. It sets for us a very high ideal of life, an ideal we cannot always measure up to, but towards which we should always resume our movement.

The God that we worship, the One true God, is indeed a wonderful God! His power is beyond compare, His glory beyond understanding, His mercy is boundless, and His love for us is beyond words! In the mystical prayer that the priest recites in a low voice, he invokes God’s mercy upon the congregation and the church. No prayer is complete without a doxology-—giving praise to God. The doxology of the Great Litany ascribes to God what rightfully belongs to Him: all glory, honor and worship, both in the present age, to all eternity, and in any ages one might envision. The whole creation worships God—material and spiritual, dead or alive, from the stars to the most insignificant creature.

We all respond with an Amen—so be it!