The Church’s road leads from the earthly to the heavenly Jerusalem; from the city of the Jews to the city of angels and saints. The Church lives out its life between the earthly and the heavenly cities, and this determines its nature. The marks of the Church are conditioned by the fact that Christians have left the earthly Jerusalem behind them, and, having no enduring city upon earth (Heb. 13:14), follow Abraham’s example and seek a city which is to come, whose builder is God (Heb. 11:8-10). “But you are come to mount Sion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels, and to the Church of the firstborn who are written in the heavens, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new testament….” (Heb. 12:22 seq.). The Church which approaches the heavenly city is gathering for a festival in which a countless number of angels, citizens of the heavenly city, and the souls of just men made perfect, take part. They assemble in heaven to worship, for the heavenly Jerusalem is not only a city, “an immovable kingdom” (Heb. 12:28), but is also temple and sanctuary into which Christ has entered as the heavenly High Priest (cf. Heb. 9:24-25).
Another description of the contrast between the earthly city and the heavenly city is found in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. Abraham had two sons, one by a bond-woman, the other by a free woman. This is an allegory, considered by St. Paul to apply to the two testaments. Agar is the mother of bondmen, of the Jews who profess allegiance to the earthly Jerusalem; Sara, on the other hand, represents the Jerusalem which is above, the free Jerusalem which is our mother (Gal. 4:21-27). In Philippians 3:20, St. Paul describes with great depth our membership of the heavenly city when he says, “we find our true home in heaven. It is to heaven that we look expectantly for our Soter [Savior], the Lord Jesus Christ.” St. Joh is on the same level when he gazes upon the heavenly city with that of the heavenly temple. While, for example, chapter 24 of the Apocalypse describes the heavenly Jerusalem coming down to earth, chapters 4 and 5 describe the worship of God in heaven. Political and liturgical images are thus intermingled in exactly the same way as in Hebrews. We see clearly that the earthly Jerusalem with its temple worship has been the starting-point for these ideas and images of primitive Christian literature; but the starting-point has been left behind and it is no longer upon earth that Jerusalem is sought as a political power or centre of worship but in heaven, whither the eyes of all Christians are turned. It might be said that as the secular ecclesia of the ancient world is an institution of the city, so the Christian ecclesia is an institution of the heavenly city, of the heavenly Jerusalem. As the secular ecclesia is an assembly of the full citizens of an earthly city, met to carry out juridical acts, so we could define the Christian ecclesia by analogy as the assembly of full citizens of the heavenly city, met to carry out specified liturgical acts—the juridical acts of the Christian ecclesia being liturgical acts also. Thus we see the distinction between the heavenly city and the ecclesia and that the sacraments and the cultus connect the heavenly Jerusalem with the ecclesia. When, for example, St. Paul says that we are children of the free Jerusalem which is above, we are to take this to mean that through Baptism we become children, citizens indeed, of the heavenly city. And when the Epistle to the Hebrews declares that we approach the festive assembly in which countless angels, the citizens of the heavenly city, and the souls of just men made perfect take part, we are to think of this approaching the solemn celebration in heaven in such a way that the liturgy which is celebrated by the ecclesia on earth is seen as a participation in that worship which is offered in the heavenly city by the angels. Only when viewed in this light do the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews come alive with meaning.
Enough has been said to show that the conception outlined above of the relation between the ecclesia and the heavenly city is important for our understanding of the essence of Christian worship; for if the Church has left behind the earthly Jerusalem with its temple, then of necessity it enters, through the mediation of public worship, into a relationship with the inhabitants of the heavenly city. And from Hebrews we learn who these inhabitants are: angels, the citizens of heaven, and the souls of just men now made perfect. All acts of worship would have to be seen, therefore, as a participation by the angels in earthly worship, or conversely, all the worship of the Church upon earth would have to be seen as a participation in that worship which is offered to God in heaven by the angels. Can this view be put forward with assurance? Is such a thesis supported by the evidence of Scripture and the tradition of the Church? The arguments which follow seek to answer this question.
*From Eric Peterson,
The Angels and the Liturgy, trans. Ronald Walls (New York: Herder & Herder, 1964), pp viii-xi.
