Din rânduiala cea de taină a preotului (II): „Rugăciunile luminii“ din cadrul Vecerniei și semnificațiile lor teologice, liturgice și duhovnicești
The "Prayers of Light" of Vespers and their theological, liturgical and spiritual meanings

Summary/Abstract: In Christianity, time is a reality which, through liturgical worship, is offered as a sacrifice to God, along with other materials: bread, water, oil, incense, myra, wax. The years, months and days of man's life, down to each moment, are gifts that we return to the Giver, as in the Liturgy, in the name of the community, the priest offers the bread and the wine to the Lord, saying: „Whatever is Yours, what belongs to You, we offer to You in everything and for everything“. As a basic temporal liturgical unit, the liturgical day, marked by the seven Praises, is dedicated to God beginning with Vespers and ending with None, the Holy Liturgy being the culmination of prayer. In the Liturgy, as in the seven Praises, the priest has an essential contribution to make, as a celebrant who performs a visible ritual, but who also carries out certain liturgical movements or reads certain prayers “in mystery”. Often, when the faithful and the protopsalts sing and chant hymns and prayers in unison, some might ask: „What is the priest doing, at that moment, beyond the iconostasis, in the Altar?“ . The present study provides one more answer to this “curiosity”, to a certain legitimate extent: while the people pray, the priest – also – prays! This is why, if in a previous study I carried out a detailed theological-liturgical and spiritual analysis of the 12 prayers of Matins, in the following pages, this approach will be continued by the analysis of the seven “Prayers of Light”, Vespers. On these prayers, in Romanian theology, only a few remarks have been made from a typiconal and historical-liturgical point of view. A careful and detailed analysis of the theological, liturgical and spiritual content of these prayers was lacking, a contribution made by the present study.

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