People sing Entrance Hymn, while the Priest carries out the Book of the Gospels escorted by altar boys with candles.

Priest: (in a low voice) Master and Lord our God, You have established in heaven the orders and hosts of angels and archangels to minister to Your glory. Grant that the holy angels may enter with us that together we may serve and glorify Your goodness. For to You belong all glory, honor and worship to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

(blessing towards the Royal Doors) Blessed is the entrance of Your saints always, now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

(aloud) Wisdom. Arise!
Come, let us worship and bow down before Christ. Save us, O Son of God, who arose from the dead,

People: to You we sing: Alleluia.

(The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, pp. 7-8)

The third antiphon is a single hymn preceded by its psalm verse. This hymn changes according to the most important celebration of the day. On most Sundays, the entrance hymn is the resurrectional apolytikion. We will discuss the apolytikia in much greater detail next week.

The Little Entrance marks the proper beginning of the Liturgy of the Word. The petitions and antiphons that we studied until now are really preparatory prayers, but this is the moment when the bishop holding the Gospel was entering the church, accompanied by the priests, the deacons carrying the offering prepared by the people (in Greek prosphora, the special bread for the Divine Liturgy, as well as the communion wine), and all the faithful. It is called Little Entrance in order to distinguish it from the Great Entrance, which is the beginning of the Holy Eucharist—the specifically Christian part of the Liturgy that we will study after Christmas.

The deeper meaning of this entrance is revealed in the priest’s silent prayer: he is invoking God as the Creator of the unseen world of angels, and asks Him to send down His angels so that they enter with us at the same time and join their prayers and doxologies (praises) with ours. Hence the Divine Liturgy that we experience in church is intimately linked to the continuous liturgy of the angels around the Throne of God.

This invocation is not merely symbolic—we saw last time that whenever two or three gather in the name of Christ, He always fulfills their requests. This is why the priest never does the Divine Liturgy alone. Even the word liturgeia means public work, the work of the people. Therefore, we firmly believe that God actually sends down His angels at every Divine Liturgy, even if we cannot see them. This is why we need to behave in church with the utmost respect and dignity, because we worship together with the angels who are always in God’s presence.
The modern tradition calls for the priest to carry the Book of the Gospels in solemn procession from the side door to the Royal Gates (so called because at one time the Byzantine Emperor and Empress were the only lay people allowed to enter through these doors). As a reminder that this was once the common entrance of the entire assembly of the faithful, the priest blesses the entrance of the saints. Indeed, all Christians were called saints, because they all aspired to be perfect, just as the Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

When the entrance hymn is finished, the priest raises the Book of the Gospel, crying out Sophia, orthoi. Sophia is a well known Greek word that means wisdom. We are called to be wise and to focus our minds on what is about to happen. Orthoi means arise, be upright, even “be on your toes.” Indeed, what is about to happen is exciting: we are going to enter into God’s presence, surrounded by the angels and the saints. This is precisely the meaning of the appeal that the priest is singing: “Come, let us worship and bow down before Christ.” He then repeats the second antiphon as he enters the sanctuary through the Royal Gates, and the people pick up the ending, to give the priest a chance to prepare for singing the next hymn. We will come back to these hymns next week.