The Anaphora, the great consecration prayer in the Divine Liturgy, contains a commemoration of the saints, beginning with a listing of ten kinds or categories of saints. The catalog starts out with the Old Testament saints, “ancestors, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, …” These are the righteous men and women who lived before Christ’s first coming. As we approach the feast of our Lord’s birth, we especially remember these figures of the distant past, our earliest predecessors in the Faith. Commemorations of the prophets fill the calendar for the last days of November and the first weeks of December. The two Sundays before Christmas are dedicated to all the Old Testament saints and to those in particular who were Christ’s ancestors according to the flesh.
We remember the first of these four groups mentioned in the Anaphora, the ancestors, on the Sunday before the Nativity. As their name implies, they are the people on our Lord’s “family tree,” those from whom He physically descended. They include such great figures from the early period as Adam, Enoch, and Noah. Especially important, however, are King David and his descendants, the royal family of the Jewish nation. The Scriptures tell us that God promised David that his family would enjoy an eternal reign (II Samuel 7). This promise was not meant and was not kept in worldly terms; David’s line eventually ceased to rule in Jerusalem and even their kingdom, Judah, no longer exists. But a descendant of David continues to reign in a more profound and permanent way: the promise is fulfilled in David’s greatest descendant, Jesus Christ, “whose kingdom shall have no end.”
The third category, patriarchs, are a particular group among the ancestors. This title was applied by the Jews to founders of their nation: Abraham, his son Isaac, his grandson Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel), and Israel’s twelve sons, who were the ancestors of the twelve tribes which made up the Hebrew people. Their stories are told in the book of Genesis.
The fathers, in this context, are all the rest of the figures of the Old Testament. This group includes the other great men and women who lived before Christ – Job, Joshua, Deborah, Samuel, Ezra, Esther, and especially Moses, through whom God gave the Law to the chosen people.
The fourth group, the prophets, is a special circle among the fathers. The prophets fulfilled two functions. Firstly, they reminded their contemporaries of God’s way when external dangers or moral laxity threatened to weaken the people’s faithfulness to God. Secondly, they foresaw and announced God’s will for the future, most importantly the salvation which was to come through Christ. Some of the prophets (such as Isaiah and Jeremiah) themselves wrote down their exhortations and prophesies, and their books are preserved. Others (including one of the greatest of the prophets, Elijah) did not write books, but their teachings and exploits are preserved in the historical books of the Old Testament such as Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.
What significance do these people have in the work of salvation? What is their importance to us as Orthodox Christians today? After all, they lived centuries before our Lord’s birth. They are important to us for two reasons: (1) as examples to enlighten and strengthen our faith, and (2) as guides to fulfilling our own role of preparing the world for the Second Coming.
A phrase in New Testament epistle to the Hebrews gives us the key to understanding the significance of these ancient saints: ” … all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised …” (Hebrews 11:39). They lived by faith as we do. But their faith did not rest on a living experience of Christ, as ours does, but upon the promise that He would someday come. Promise is a theme which ties the whole Old Testament together; its books are full of covenants (pledges) between God and His people. Two promises are especially important, however. God chooses Abraham to be the founder of a chosen people and promises that His grace will enter the world through Abraham and his posterity: “I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing … . All the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3). The second promise is the one mentioned above made to King David: “I will raise up your seed to succeed you …. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (II Samuel 7). By this second pledge God narrows the scope of the first promise. With Abraham He chooses a people from among all the peoples of the earth. With David God chooses a particular family from the chosen people; from this house will come the Savior. To find the climax and the goal of these narrowings we turn to the New Testament, to the Annunciation, when God chooses one woman and announces to her through His angel that the Redeemer has come. The Old Testament saints did not see this act of fulfillment, however. Their faith rested only on promises. Their vocation was to prepare the world for something and Someone that they would never see. Yet we see from the pages of the Old Testament how strong that faith was and how faithfully they fulfilled their role.
We have seen Christ’s coming; we have experienced the grace that flows from His death and Resurrection. But we still await His Second Coming, and our Lord has gathered us into His Church in order to prepare the world for that return. In a sense, we hold the same place with regard to the Lord’s Second Coming that the patriarchs and prophets did toward His first appearance. For this reason they can be an example and an inspiration to us. We must remember that we have a duty and responsibility to warn the world of the Judgment and to announce the glory of the Kingdom. We must ask ourselves, Have I been as faithful to my vocation as they were to theirs? Will anyone be more ready for Christ’s return because of what I have done or said? Have I been a faithful witness to the work of the Holy Spirit now and to the coming Judgment? Have I even prepared myself, much less others to receive Him? If we take the faith and devotion of the Old Testament saints as our incentive as we follow their example, we will be able to answer a joyful “yes” to all these questions.
***
