Like many, I had not heard of St. Gregory of Narek before the 2015 declaration by Pope Francis elevating him to the title of Doctor of the Church. Some saw this move as politically motivated, since St. Gregory of Narek is Armenian and the acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide of the early 1900s was still relatively controversial (for context, the United States officially recognized it as a genocide only in 2021). However, when the Church makes statements on her officially sanctioned teachers, it does so not with an eye toward passing public opinion but with an eye toward the unchanging reality of eternity.
In the same way that every Doctor of the Church is the product of a particular time, addressing the specific needs of the Church in a given period, while also highlighting some particular aspect of the timeless Christian faith, so too does one see this same union of the temporal and the eternal in St. Gregory of Narek’s writing on the liturgy.
In the tradition common to many spiritual writers, St. Gregory of Narek produced biblical commentaries, notably on the books of Job and Song of Songs. However, it would be his own Book of Lamentations, also known as The Book of Prayer and The Book of Narek, that would present his unique mystical insights into the despair of sin and the hope of God’s mercy, often presented through liturgical language and imagery.
Book of (Sacrificial) Acts
Gregory begins The Book of Lamentations, and the prayer itself, by making his act of prayer an “offering” to God, evoking sacrificial, liturgical language (Prayer 1). This forms every prayer going forward as a similar act of sacrifice not unlike those offered in the Old Testament, the fulfillment of all sacrifices offered by Christ, and the continued participation in that Sacrifice by the Church today through the hands of her priests. The significance of this sacrificial conception of prayer, especially for modern Christians, is that while sacrifice is often associated with liturgy and prayer, it is another thing to recognize the act of prayer itself as sacrificial. Narek even calls his prayers a “sacrifice of words” and compares them to the “fragrant offerings” of incense like those in the Old Testament (Prayer 1).
The connection between prayer and sacrifice, and prayer as sacrifice, has deep scriptural roots. St. Gregory would surely have been influenced by Psalm 141:2, in which the psalmist implores God, “Let my prayer be incense before you.” Another formative scriptural reference from the New Testament that draws from this Psalm is Revelation 5:8, where the elders offer incense as the “prayers of the holy ones.” In both references, the incense is offered as prayers but also as sacrifice. This follows the traditional use of incense dating back into Judaism, prior to Christianity. The smoke of the incense not only represented the rising of the prayers to God, but the fragrant smell was also meant to symbolize the spirit in which these prayers were offered by the priest and received by God. When St. Gregory of Narek wants his prayer to be a “sacrifice of words” and “fragrant offerings,” he wants them to similarly rise up to God and be received in the same way.
Another use of the fragrance of a sacrifice is found in Prayer 33, where St. Gregory hopes his writings can be used in the same way that the oil was used to anoint the body of Jesus before his Crucifixion (John 12:3). While it was not the body of the sacrificial victim itself that was anointed in the Old Testament, “the altar” and the “utensils” used in preparing and making the sacrifice would have been (Exodus 40:10; Numbers 7:1). The significance regarding the body of Jesus is that he is both the sacrifice and the altar (cf. Hebrews 13:10). Jesus’ body is not only the thing being sacrificed, but it is where the sacrifice takes place. This is true in the initial offering of the Crucifixion, but it is also true in the re-presentation of the sacrifice at Mass, where the true place of sacrifice is the Body of Christ, which is now present in the Eucharist. Our prayers, like St. Gregory’s, are meant to be united to that sacrifice and we too are made holy by that union, just like the altar was made holy through anointing in the Old Testament. This holiness is not only meant to affect our body, but every part of us when we willingly offer ourselves.
Willing Sacrifice
In Prayer 88, Gregory writes that, “I pour forth the water of my will” in giving himself over to God, comparing this sacrifice of his will to the libation that was poured out by Samuel (1 Samuel 7:6). Commentaries of this verse describe this action as a ritual of repentance. This pouring out by Samuel is done in response to the repentance of Israel for worshiping false gods as a preparation for renewed, right worship. It is also noteworthy that this sacrifice continues during a brief skirmish with the Philistines, from whom God protects Israel while Samuel is performing this sacrifice. Similar to Prayer 1, Gregory does not simply see repentance as part of a larger ritual including a sacrifice, but that the repentance, the pouring out of his will, is the sacrifice itself. This alludes to the famous line from Paul that Christians are to make of themselves a “living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
If divorced from a proper ecclesiology, both St. Paul’s and St. Gregory of Narek’s words would seem idolatrous given the “once for all” sacrifice of Christ (see Hebrews 10:10). However, St. Paul recognizes the Church as the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12–27; Colossians 1:18) and it was the body of Christ that was offered as a sacrifice. Baptized Christians are members of the mystical body of Christ. This makes us participants in that sacrifice. This union with Christ’s sacrifice of his body is strengthened in our reception of Holy Communion precisely because what we receive is the Body and Blood of Christ.
There is certainly much more to be found in the mystically rich, theologically dense 95 prayers of St. Gregory of Narek that gives even greater reason for his recognition as Doctor of the Church. The blessing of this declaration is that new attention and long-term study will be given by the great minds already at work in the Church, as well as those surely to come, to mine the treasures hiding within these writings. St. Gregory’s life as a priest and monk was heavily formed by prayer, sacrifice, and worship. As we seek to make our own lives more heavily focused on these three essential elements of the Christian spiritual life according to our unique vocation, may we benefit from this relatively yet-to-be-heard voice within the Church.
