Antiphons
ἀντίφωνον — antiphonon · an-TEE-foh-non
In brief
The antiphons are the three psalm-hymns that open the sung part of the Divine Liturgy, separated by short litanies, with the Little Entrance made during the third. The name means "sounding in answer": they were anciently sung by two choirs — or people and chanters — responding to one another. Their content varies by day and by local use, but the pattern is constant: the Church begins the Liturgy not with requests but with praise.
Three psalms to begin
After the opening blessing and the Great Litany, the Divine Liturgy settles into a rhythm of song: first antiphon, little litany, second antiphon, little litany, third antiphon — during which the clergy make the Little Entrance with the Gospel book. Antiphonon means "answering voice": psalm verses sung alternately, choir answering choir or people answering chanter, a style of psalmody the Church has loved since the early centuries.
On an ordinary Sunday in much Slavic and monastic use — the practice of the Orthodox Church in America among others — the first two antiphons are the "typical psalms": Psalm 102 (103), "Bless the Lord, O my soul," and Psalm 145 (146), "Praise the Lord, O my soul" (the double numbers give the Septuagint and Hebrew numbering), and the third antiphon is the Beatitudes, sung with the refrain "In Thy Kingdom remember us, O Lord, when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom." In prevailing Greek parish practice the antiphons are shorter: a few psalm verses each, sung with refrains — "Through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Savior, save us" at the first, "O Son of God... save us, who sing to Thee: Alleluia" at the second — with the troparion of the day at the third. Neither use is more "correct"; both are received forms of the same structure, and parishes generally follow their jurisdiction's service books.
Festal antiphons and where the practice came from
On the Great Feasts of the Lord — Pascha, Nativity, Theophany, and the rest of the Twelve Great Feasts that are feasts of Christ — special festal antiphons are appointed: verses from the psalms the Church reads as prophecies of the feast, each answered by a refrain. So at Pascha the choir sings resurrection verses answered by "O Son of God, Who didst rise from the dead, save us, who sing to Thee: Alleluia." Weekdays outside feasts have their own simpler daily antiphons where the fuller psalms are not appointed.
The antiphons are a fossil of an older, more mobile way of worship. In Byzantine Constantinople the Liturgy was often stational: clergy and people processed through the city from church to church, singing psalms with refrains as they went, and entered the church together only when they arrived — the original Little Entrance. When the processions ceased, the traveling songs settled inside the service as its opening block. This is why the antiphons still feel like a gathering rite: the Church assembling herself, street by street as it were, before the readings begin.
What they teach
The order of the antiphons is a small catechism. Praise comes first — "Bless the Lord, O my soul" — before a single request beyond "Lord, have mercy" has been made; the Liturgy trains us to begin with God, not with ourselves. The hymn Only-begotten Son, sung with the second antiphon everywhere — a sixth-century composition traditionally connected with the Emperor Justinian — is a creed in miniature: "Only-begotten Son and Immortal Word of God... Who without change didst become man and wast crucified... trampling down death by death." And the Beatitudes, where they are sung, are prayed under the refrain of the thief on the cross — "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom" — so that the congregation approaches the Little Entrance asking to enter the Kingdom on the only terms anyone ever has: mercy.