MEDITATIONS ON THE DIVINE LITURGY By N. B. GOGOL

A MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE RITE OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST AS CELEBRATED IN THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCHES

TRANSLATED BY L. ALEXÉIEFF

Companion volume to "The Eucharist in the East." A book for the use of English worshippers in Orthodox Churches (Mowbrays)

PUBLISHED FOR THE ANGLICAN AND EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCHES UNION

A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LTD. LONDON: 28 Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, W. OXFORD: 9 High Street E.V.

CONTENTS

PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR

INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

           MEDITATIONS

ON THE DIVINE LITURGY

ON THE FIRST PART: THE OFFICE OF OBLATION

ON THE SECOND PART: THE LITURGY OF THE CATECHUMENS

ON THE THIRD PART: THE LITURGY OF THE FAITHFUL

CONCLUSION

Preface

(BY THE TRANSLATOR)

In a note on the first page of the Liturgikon, printed in Berlin in 1902, and consisting of the Chief Offices and Liturgies of the Orthodox Catholic Church of the East, translated into German by the Archpriest Alexis Malzoff of the Russian Embassy Church in Berlin, he thus prefaces the Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, by Nicholas Basilovitch Gogol, which he gives in both German and Russian, printed in parallel columns. "For some wholly incomprehensible reason, in none of the so-called complete editions of the works of the famous Russian author, Gogol, has the beautiful treatise Meditations on the Divine Liturgy found a place except in that of Marx, the Editor of the journal Neva. It was first published in 1857 (five years after the death of the author at the age of 43), in St. Petersburg, by P. A. Kulisch, in the form of a pamphlet which has long since become a bibliographical rarity; later it was issued by the Holy Synod. It has not, so far, been translated into any foreign language, while the ironical description of the same Liturgy, written not long ago by Count L. N. Tolstoy, is known all over the world. It therefore seems to me not superfluous to include here, not only in Russian, but also in a foreign European tongue, this almost-forgotten work on the same subject, by our no less famous author, the immortal Gogol, forming, as it does, such an entire contrast-so that readers who have a prejudice against works of the kind by exclusively religious writers, might learn the views and conclusions of a secular writer, and of one so highly gifted.

"If in regard to such an author, every correction, or varying reading occurring in his works is considered of interest and importance, should we not hold as of worth a complete dissertation inspired by his genius? And let it not be said that this production belongs to the mystical epoch or his activity to the period of the overclouding of his talent, for who can define the exact boundary in the life of the spirit. If he is dear to us in all he wrote, in every expression of his power, in every subject touched upon by him-how much more so in one concerning the Faith, the Church, and salvation."