Plants: Creation Before Transformation
Every autumn, when the feast of Sukkot returns to Jerusalem, one first notices neither theology nor symbolism but fragrance. The perfume of the etrog mingles with the fresh scent of the myrtle and the willow. The tall lulav rises above them all. These are not liturgical ornaments placed beside the prayer. They are themselves carried in prayer. Held together in the hand and turned towards the four directions of the world during the hakafot (circling around), they proclaim with remarkable simplicity that creation itself has entered the act of worship (Lev. 23:40–43; Neh. 8:15; Mishnah, Sukkah 3–4; b. Sukkah 37b–38a).
Nothing has been altered. No craftsman has reshaped these plants.
This is perhaps the first lesson of the Feast of Booths. Before humanity transforms creation, creation already blesses God. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” sings the Psalmist, long before human beings begin to speak of cultivation or sacrifice (Ps. 19:1–4; Ps. 104; cf. Gen. 1:29–31).
Rabbinic tradition never treated the four species as an arbitrary collection of plants. Their diversity became an image of Israel itself, whose members differ in knowledge and deeds yet remain inseparable in covenant (Lev. Rabbah 30:12). Other commentators saw in them the fertility of the Land, the dependence of humanity upon rain, or the praise offered by the whole created order (Mishnah, Rosh Hashanah 1:2; b. Ta’anit 2a). Yet beneath these rich interpretations lies an even simpler intuition: these living plants participate in worship without ceasing to be themselves.
For Christians, this raises an unexpected question. The Church inherited the Scriptures of Israel and never abandoned this biblical landscape of trees, vineyards, harvests and gardens. Palm branches accompany Christ’s entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:8–9; John 12:12–15). At Pentecost, churches throughout the Byzantine world are adorned with fresh branches, flowers and grasses, recalling both the descent of the Holy Spirit and the renewal of creation (Acts 2; Pentecostarion, Vespers of Pentecost, Kneeling Prayers). Entering such a church is to step into something resembling a garden rather than a monument of stone. Worship acquires colour, fragrance and the quiet language of living creation.
Yet Christianity also introduces something new. At the centre of its liturgical life stand bread and wine. Unlike the four species, they no longer appear in the form in which they were gathered from the earth. Wheat has been harvested, ground and baked. Grapes have been pressed and fermented. Human hands have worked patiently with the gifts of creation (Matt. 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25; Luke 22:14–20; 1 Cor. 11:23–26).
This difference is so familiar that we seldom pause to consider it. Yet it may be one of the most significant questions shared by Jewish and Christian liturgical reflection.
Why does biblical worship preserve both realities? Why are the four species offered in the simplicity of their created form, while the Eucharist is celebrated with gifts that have already undergone cultivation and transformation? Why does the liturgical economy embrace both the untouched fruit of creation and the fruit of the earth shaped by human labour?
The four species remind us that the world possesses a dignity before it becomes useful to humanity. They neither nourish as bread nor gladden as wine. Their role is different. They stand before God simply because they exist as living works of creation. They are not raw materials waiting to become something else. Their presence in worship proclaims that the created order possesses its own vocation, its own praise and its own blessing (Gen. 1–2; Ps. 148; Rom. 8:19–22).
The Church receives this same conviction. Before the Eucharistic gifts are placed upon the Holy Table, the Byzantine tradition blesses the fruits of the earth in many different ways throughout the liturgical year. Palm branches, flowers, herbs, grapes and first fruits all enter the rhythm of worship according to the feasts and local traditions. Among the most eloquent examples is the Artoklasia, where five loaves are blessed together with wheat, wine and olive oil. Here the Church gives thanks not only for nourishment but for the abundance of creation itself, recalling both the multiplication of the loaves and God’s enduring providence (Matt. 14:13–21; Euchologion; Great Vespers, Rite of the Artoklasia).
A remarkable movement begins to appear. The four species reveal creation received. The Artoklasia reveals creation cultivated. The Eucharist reveals creation offered back to God, fulfilled and only received by faith in Jesus Christ.
Modern discussions of ecology usually begin with crisis. Scripture begins elsewhere. It begins with blessing. Humanity is placed in the garden “to till it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15), not as owner but as servant. The liturgy teaches this lesson long before theology attempts to explain it. One carries the branches, smells the fragrance of the etrog, blesses the wheat, the wine and the oil, and only then begins to understand that the history of salvation unfolds not apart from creation but through it.
The answer, however, is not that the Eucharist replaces the four species or renders them obsolete. On the contrary, the liturgical life of the Church presupposes the same reverence for creation that already permeates the worship of Israel.
Bread and wine are never presented in Scripture as ordinary food alone. They already belong to a long biblical history. Melchizedek brings bread and wine to Abraham (Gen. 14:18). The prophets speak of grain, wine and oil as signs of divine blessing (Joel 2:19, 24; Hos. 2:21–22). The Psalms praise the God who gives “bread to strengthen the human heart” and “wine to gladden it” (Ps. 104:14–15). When Jesus of Nazareth chooses bread and wine at the Mystical Supper, He does not invent new symbols. He gathers into Himself the entire biblical memory of creation, harvest, covenant and thanksgiving (Matt. 26:26–29; Luke 22:14–20).
Yet the question remains. Why are these gifts already transformed by human hands? Why not fresh grapes rather than wine? Why flour and baked bread rather than ears of wheat? Why not, indeed, the fragrant branches and fruits of Sukkot themselves?
The biblical narrative quietly suggests an answer. Humanity was never placed in creation merely to contemplate it. From the beginning, Adam is entrusted “to till it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15). Human labour is therefore not an intrusion into creation but part of humanity’s vocation. Cultivation does not deny the goodness of the earth; it manifests a cooperation with it. Bread and wine are not artificial products detached from nature. They are the fruits of the earth brought to maturity through human work, patience and communal life.
The Byzantine liturgy preserves this understanding with remarkable precision. During the Latin rite Mass, the gifts are offered as “the fruits of the earth and the work of human hands.” The same intuition appears in the blessing of the Artoklasia. The five loaves, together with wheat, wine and olive oil, proclaim that creation and human labour are never rivals but companions in thanksgiving (Euchologion; Great Vespers, Rite of the Artoklasia).
This movement helps explain why the four species remain indispensable. They remind us of something that neither bread nor wine can say by themselves. Before humanity cultivates creation, creation already glorifies God. The branches of Sukkot praise simply by existing. They require neither mill nor winepress nor oven. Their liturgical dignity lies precisely in remaining untouched. They bear witness to what St Maximus the Confessor describes as the divine logoi present within every creature, each called to fulfil its own vocation in the praise of the Creator (Ambigua; Mystagogia).
Elizabeth Theokritoff has observed that the liturgy teaches us to perceive “the Godwardness of all things.” Creation is not spiritually neutral, waiting for humanity to assign it meaning. The transformation celebrated in the Eucharist therefore never suppresses the integrity of creation; it reveals its deepest destiny (Elizabeth Theokritoff, Living in God’s Creation; “Liturgy, Cosmic Worship, and Christian Cosmology”).
George Theokritoff approaches the same mystery from another direction by asking a deceptively simple question: “What is bread? What is wine?” His answer traces the entire history of the Eucharistic gifts through soil, rain, sunlight, grain, vineyards and human labour. The Eucharist is never detached from the earth; it gathers together the whole material history of creation into thanksgiving (George Theokritoff, “The Cosmology of the Eucharist”).
Yet the biblical liturgy still preserves another mystery. Before grain becomes bread and grapes become wine, before human hands cultivate, mill, bake and press, Israel already enters worship carrying branches, leaves and fruit that remain exactly as they came from creation. The four species therefore reveal not the transformation of creation but its original liturgical vocation. The plants lead the human being to praise the Lord. The Eucharist does not abolish that first blessing; it gathers it into the offering of “the fruits of the earth and the work of human hands.”
Between Sukkot and the Holy Table lies not a rupture but a profound continuity.
Alexander Schmemann expressed this continuity by insisting that the world is first received as thanksgiving before it becomes an object of use (For the Life of the World). The vocation of humanity is fundamentally Eucharistic: to receive the world gratefully and to offer it back to God in blessing. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, approaching the mystery from another perspective, saw the whole cosmos moving towards its fulfilment in Jesus Christ, in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:15–20; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu; The Phenomenon of Man). Whatever differences remain between their theological approaches, both reject the notion that grace and creation stand in opposition.
Perhaps this is where Jewish and Christian liturgical traditions continue to illuminate one another. The four species preserve the memory of creation as gift. The Artoklasia reveals creation cultivated. The Eucharist reveals creation offered back to God and showing the resurrected Messiah as a pure act of faith never imposed. Creation received. Creation cultivated. Creation transfigured. These are not three unrelated realities but three movements within the same history of redemption.
Our ecological age urgently seeks new programs, new technologies and new agreements. These are necessary. Yet the biblical and liturgical traditions remind us that no lasting care for the earth can exist without gratitude. A civilisation protects only what it has first learned to bless.
Perhaps this is the deepest lesson shared by these old-new liturgies. Before humanity is called to transform the world, it is called to recognize that the world has never ceased to praise its Creator. Only a creation first received as blessing can become an offering; and only the fruits of the earth and the work of human hands lead us into the Eucharistic reality.
