The Cherubic Hymn is the hymn we sing during the Great Entrance of the Divine Liturgy, when the priest carries the bread and wine from the table of preparation to the altar. It’s the moment when we’re invited to set aside our everyday worries and join the angels in worshiping God.
You’ll hear it about halfway through the Liturgy. The choir begins singing while the priest quietly prays at the altar, then the procession happens, and the hymn concludes as the gifts are placed on the holy table. If you’ve been to a Sunday Liturgy at St. Michael’s, you’ve heard it, it’s one of the longer hymns, and there’s a reason for that length.
The Words
Here’s what we sing: “We who mystically represent the Cherubim, and sing to the life-giving Trinity the thrice-holy hymn, now lay aside all worldly care, that we may receive the King of all, Who comes invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”
Read that again slowly. It’s packed with theology.
We’re saying that in this moment, we mystically represent the Cherubim, those angelic beings who surround God’s throne. Not that we become angels, but that we’re joining their worship. The liturgy isn’t just something happening in Beaumont on a Sunday morning. It’s happening in heaven too, and we’re participating in that heavenly reality right here.
Why We Sing It
The hymn does something specific. It reorients us.
Maybe you walked into church thinking about the hurricane forecast or your next shift at the plant or whether your teenager’s going to pass algebra. That’s normal. We’re human. But the Cherubic Hymn says: set that aside for now. Not forever, you’ll pick those concerns back up after Liturgy. But right now, the King of all is coming to the altar, carried invisibly by angels, and we need to pay attention.
This isn’t about guilt or pretending our lives don’t matter. It’s about proportion. For these few minutes, we’re standing in the presence of something bigger than our immediate anxieties. We’re joining a worship that includes not just the people in the pews around us but the saints who’ve gone before us and the angels who never stopped praising God.
What’s Happening During the Hymn
While the choir sings, the priest is praying quietly. His prayer is honest and a bit startling: “No one who is bound with the desires and pleasures of the flesh is worthy to approach or draw nigh or to serve Thee, O King of Glory.” He’s acknowledging his own unworthiness to offer the Eucharist. Then he asks God to make him worthy anyway, because that’s how grace works.
The Great Entrance itself is the priest carrying the prepared bread and wine to the altar. In the early Church this was when people brought their offerings forward. Now the gifts have already been prepared on the table of oblation earlier in the Liturgy, but this procession still marks the transition to the Eucharistic prayer. We’re about to offer these gifts to God, and God will transform them into the Body and Blood of Christ.
The hymn makes clear what’s really happening: Christ the King is coming to us. He’s both the one who offers and the one who’s offered. That’s the mystery we’re entering.
A Practical Note
If you’re new to Orthodoxy and you find your mind wandering during the Cherubic Hymn, don’t beat yourself up. It takes time to learn how to pray the Liturgy. But try this: when you hear “lay aside all worldly care,” actually do it. Pick one worry you walked in with and consciously set it down for the next few minutes. You can pick it back up later if you need to. Just practice letting it go for now.
That’s what the hymn is teaching us. We can’t always control our circumstances, the job, the family tension, the medical bill, the weather. But we can choose, for this moment, to turn our attention fully to God. The Cherubim never stop doing that. We’re learning how.
The hymn ends with three Alleluias, which means “Praise the Lord.” It’s the only response that makes sense when the King of all is coming to meet us. After the Great Entrance, the Liturgy moves into the Anaphora, the great Eucharistic prayer, and we’ll continue what the Cherubic Hymn started: offering ourselves along with the bread and wine, asking God to make us holy.
Come to Liturgy next Sunday and listen for it. You’ll recognize it now.
