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light and darkness, creation and resurrection, reminding us that at one and the
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same time we celebrate the old and the new creation. Interestingly, this
preface is perhaps eschatological in the truest sense as it points to the end of
ends – the unfading light of Christ and ‘the never-ceasing Sabbath of the Lord’,
‘the endless light’ to which we are called. There are certainly echoes of
Maximus’ vision here, and the Church Fathers generally, of the final goal of our
eternal rest and contemplation in God.
Where we see a clear link to a more Orthodox world-view, especially the
close connection between eschatology and creation, is in Eucharistic Prayer F.
This is perhaps unsurprising as its origins lie in the Eucharistic Prayer of St
Basil. Unlike the other Eucharistic Prayers, Prayer F begins with creation itself
and tells of our fall, emphasizes God’s faithfulness through the prophets, and
then moves to unfold the fullness of his plan of redemption through the sending
of his Son. Another interesting feature of this Prayer, also unlike the others
with the exception of Prayer G, is the inclusion of intercessions, which had
been previously absent from Church of England liturgy since 1552. The
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presence of the intercessions certainly accords with the Divine Liturgy in this
respect, which contains numerous cycles of prayer for the whole world, the
sick, and all the living and departed. Accordingly then, the first of these
invocations for God to ‘Bless the earth’ talks of the created cosmos and of
God’s plan to restore it to its original glory, whose deification occurs through
the fruitfulness and procreation of all living things on the earth, so that they
might continually be offered to man for his work of spiritualization. Taken
together with the words leading to the doxology, ‘to feast with all your saints at
the table in your kingdom, where the whole new creation is brought to
perfection’, the Orthodox world-view becomes more apparent as the
understanding behind these phrases. Firstly, a direct link is made between
being ‘at the table in your kingdom’ (which, as Schmemann showed, we ascend
to heaven in the Eucharist), as the place of the renewal of all creation.
Secondly, the understanding that the new creation has broken into the world,
but that we still wait for the moment when it will be perfected at the end of all
times, is also made explicit through these intercessions and the words leading
up to the doxology.
Although it cannot be adequately explored here, some reference must be
made to the Eucharistic rite and the Holy Spirit, especially as ‘everything in the

23 Paula Gooder and Michael Perham, Echoing the Word (London: SPCK, 2013), p. 52.
24 Paula Gooder and Michael Perham, Echoing the Word (London: SPCK, 2013), p. 88.

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