Eucharist and Church.

The ecclesiological significance of the Eucharist, though challenged by the Hellenistic world-view which tended to interpret it as a system of “symbols” visually contemplated by the individual, was always maintained by the Byzantine lex orandi and reaffirmed by those who followed the mainstream of traditional theology. In the controversy on the azymes, the implication on the Byzantine side was that the Eucharist is indeed a paschal mystery, in which our fallen humanity is transformed into the glorified humanity of the New Adam, Christ: this glorified humanity is realized in the Body of the Church.

These anthropological presuppositions of Byzantine Eucharistic theology necessarily had to include the concepts of “synergy” and of the unity of mankind.

It is against the background of the Greek patristic doctrine of “synergy” that one can really understand the significance of the Byzantine insistence on the epiclesis in the Eucharistic liturgy, another issue debated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by Greek and Latin theologians. The text of the epiclesis, as it appears in the canon of John Chrysostom and in other Eastern liturgies, implies that the mystery is accomplished through a prayer of the entire Church (“We ask Thee...”) — a concept which does not necessarily exclude the idea that the bishop or priest pronouncing the words of institution acts in persona Christi, as Latin theology insists, but which deprives this notion of its exclusivity by interpreting the ministerial sacerdotal “power” to perform the sacraments as a function of the entire worshipping Body of the Church.

In well-known passages of his Commentary on the Liturgy, Cabasilas, defending the epiclesis, rightly recalls that all sacraments are accomplished through prayer. Specifically, he quotes the consecration of the chrism, the prayers of ordination, of absolution, and of the anointing of the sick.²⁴ Thus, he writes, “it is the tradition of the Fathers, who received this teaching from the Apostles and from their successors, that the sacraments are rendered effective through prayer; all the sacraments, as I have said, and particularly the holy Eucharist.”²⁵ This “deprecatory” form of sacramental rites does not imply however a doctrine of validity ex opere operantis, i.e., dependent upon the worthiness of the celebrant. “He who celebrates the sacrifice daily,” Cabasilas continues, “is but the minister of the grace. He brings to it nothing of his own; he would not dare to do or say anything according to his own judgment and reason... Grace works all; the priest is only a minister, and that very ministry comes to him by grace; he does not hold it on his own account.”²⁶

The mystery of the Church, fully realized in the Eucharist, overcomes the dilemma of prayer and response, of nature and grace, of the divine as opposed to the human, because the Church, as the Body of Christ, is precisely a communion of God and man, not only where God is present and active, but where humanity becomes fully “acceptable to God,” fully adequate to the original divine plan; prayer itself then becomes an act of communion, where there cannot be any question of its not being heard by God. The conflict, the “question,” the separateness, and the sinfulness are still present in each individual member of the Church, but only inasmuch as he has not fully appropriated the divine presence and refuses to conform to it; the presence itself however is the “new testament in my Blood” (Lk 22:20), and God will not take it away. Thus, all Christians — including the bishop, or the priest — are individually nothing more than sinners, whose prayers are not necessarily heard, but when gathered together in the name of Christ, as the “Church of God,” they are a part in the New Testament, to which God has eternally committed Himself through His Son and the Spirit.

As a divine-human communion and “synergy,” the Eucharist is a prayer addressed “in Christ” to the Father, and accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit. The epiclesis, therefore, is the fulfilment of the Eucharistic action, just as Pentecost is the fulfilment of a divine “economy” of salvation; salvation is always a Trinitarian action. The pneumatological dimension of the Eucharist is also presupposed in the very notion of “synergy;” it is the Spirit which makes Christ present in the age between His two comings: when divine action is not imposing itself on humanity, but offering itself for acceptance by human freedom and, by communicating itself to man, making him authentically free.

At all times, Byzantine theologians understood the Eucharist as the centre of a soteriological and triadological mystery, not simply as a change of bread and wine. Those who followed ‘Dionysian symbolism approached the Eucharist in the context of a Hellenistic hierarchical cosmos, and understood it as the centre of salvific action through mystical “contemplation,” which still involved the whole destiny of humanity and the world. Those who held a more Biblical view of man and a more Christocentric understanding of history approached the Eucharist as the key to ecclesiology; the Church, for them, was primarily the place where God and man met in the Eucharist, and the Eucharist became the .criterion of ecclesial structure and the inspiration of all Christian action and responsibility in the world. In both cases the Eucharist was understood in a cosmological and ecclesiological dimension affirmed in the formula of the Byzantine oblation: “Thine own of thine own, we offer unto Thee in behalf of all and for all.”

One of the ideas, which constantly appears in Byzantine “symbolic” interpretations of the Eucharist, is that the temple in which the Eucharistic liturgy is celebrated is an image of the “new,” transfigured cosmos. The idea is found in several early Christian writers, and reappears in Maximus the Confessor²⁷ and, later, in Symeon of Thessalonica.²⁸ Undoubtedly, it inspired the Byzantine architects who built Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the model of all temples of the East, with the circle as its central geometrical theme. In the Neo-Platonic tradition, the circle, the symbol of plenitude, is the standard image of God; God is reflected in His creatures, once they are restored to their original design: “He circumscribes their expansion in a circle and sets Himself as the pattern of the beings which He has created,” writes Maximus, adding immediately that “The holy Church is an image of God, since it effects the union of the faithful, as God does.”²⁹ The Church, as community and as building, is, therefore, a sign of the new age, the eschatological anticipation of the new creation, the created cosmos restored in its original wholeness. Clearly, a theologian like Maximus uses the models and categories of his age to describe the fullness of the world to come. His interpretation of the Eucharistic liturgy is “less an initiation into the mystery of the liturgy than an introduction to the mystery with the liturgy as a starting point;”³⁰ but the very idea that the Eucharist is an anticipation of the eschatological fulfilment is affirmed in the canon of the Byzantine liturgy itself, which recalls the second coming of Christ as an event which has already occurred: “Remembering this saving commandment and all the things which have come to pass for us, the cross, the tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, and the second and glorious coming, we offer unto Thee...”

This eschatological character of the Eucharistic mystery, strongly expressed in the liturgy, in the religious art which served as its framework, and in the theological commentaries, whatever their school of thought, explains why the Byzantines always believed that in the Eucharist the Church is fully “the Church,” and that the Eucharist is the ultimate criterion and seal of all the other sacraments. Following pseudo-Dionysius, who spoke of the Eucharist as the “sacrament of sacraments,”³¹ as the “focal point” of each particular sacrament,³² Byzantine theologians affirm the absolute centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the Church: “It is the final sacrament,” writes Cabasilas, “because it is not possible to proceed further and to add anything to it.”³³ “The Eucharist alone of the mysteries brings perfection to the other sacraments..., since they cannot complete the initiation without it.”³⁴ Symeon of Thessalonica applies this idea concretely to individual sacraments. Concerning marriage, for example, he writes that the bridal pair “must be ready to receive communion, so that their crowning be a worthy one and their marriage valid;” and he specifies that communion is not given to those whose marriage is defective from the point of view of Church discipline, and is, therefore, not fully the sacrament, but simply a “good fellowship.”³⁵

Any local church where the “divine liturgy” of the Eucharist is celebrated possesses, therefore, the “marks” of the true Church of God: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. These marks cannot belong to any human gathering; they are the eschatological signs given to a community through the Spirit of God. Inasmuch as a local church is built upon and around the Eucharist, it is not simply a “part” of the universal people of God; it is the fullness of the Kingdom which is anticipated in the Eucharist, and the Kingdom can never be “partially” one or “partially” catholic. “Partiality” belongs only to the individual appropriation of the given fullness by the members, who are limited by belonging to the “old Adam;” it does not exist in the Body of Christ, indivisible, divine, and glorious.

Liturgical discipline and Byzantine canon law try to protect this unifying and catholic character of the Eucharist. They require that on each altar no more than one Eucharist be celebrated each day; similarly, a priest, or bishop, is not allowed to celebrate twice on the same day. Whatever the practical inconveniences, these rules aim at preserving the Eucharist at least nominally as the gathering “of all together at the same place” (Ac 2:1); all should be together at the same altar, around the same bishop, at the same time, because there is only one Christ, one Church, and one Eucharist. The idea that the Eucharist is the sacrament uniting the whole Church remained alive in the East and prevented the multiplication of Masses of intention and of low Masses. The Eucharistic liturgy always remained a festal event in Byzantium, a celebration involving, at least, in principle, the whole Church.

As a manifestation of the Church’s unity and wholeness, the Eucharist served also as the ultimate theological norm for ecclesiastical structure: the local church where the Eucharist is celebrated was always considered to be not merely a “part” of a universal organization, but the whole Body of Christ manifested sacramentally and including the entire “communion of saints,” living or departed. Such a manifestation was seen as a necessary basis for the geographical expansion of Christianity, but it was not identical with it. Theologically, the sacrament is the sign and reality of the eschatological anticipation of the Kingdom of God, and the episcopate — necessary centre of this reality — is envisaged primarily in its sacramental function, with the other aspects of its ministry (pastorate, teaching) based on this “high priestly” function in the local community, rather than on the idea of a co-optation into a universal apostolic college. The bishop was, first of all, the image of Christ in the Eucharistic mystery. “O Lord our God,” says the prayer of Episcopal ordination, “who in Thy providence hast instituted for us teachers of like nature with ourselves, to maintain Thine Altar, that they may offer unto Thee sacrifice and oblation for all Thy people; do Thou, the same Lord, make this man also, who has been proclaimed a steward of the Episcopal grace, to be an imitator of Thee, the true Shepherd...”³⁶

Thus, according to pseudo-Dionysius, the “high priest” (archiereys) possesses the “first” and the “last” order of hierarchy and “fulfils every hierarchic consecration.”³⁷ Symeon of Thessalonica also defines the Episcopal dignity in terms of its sacramental functions; the bishop for him is the one who performs all sacraments — baptism, chrismation, Eucharist, ordination; he is the one “through whom all ecclesiastical acts are perfected.”³⁸ The Eucharist is, indeed, the ultimate manifestation of God in Christ; and there cannot be, therefore, any ministry higher and more decisive than that which presides over the Eucharist. The centrality of the Eucharist, the awareness that the fullness of Christ’s Body abides in it and that the Episcopal function is the highest in the Church will be the principal foundation of the Byzantine opposition to any theological interpretation of supra-Episcopal primacies: there cannot be, according to them, any authority “by divine right” over the Eucharist and the bishop who heads the Eucharistic assembly.

The practice of the Byzantine Church was not always consistent with the inner logic of this Eucharistic ecclesiology. The historical development of the Episcopal function — which, on the one hand, after the fourth century delegated the celebration of the Eucharist to presbyters on a permanent basis, and, on the other, became de facto a part of wider administrative structures (provinces, patriarchates) — lost some of its exclusive and direct connections with the sacramental aspect of the life of the Church. But the essential theological and ecclesiological norms were reaffirmed whenever they were directly challenged, and thus remained an essential part of what, for the Byzantines, was the tradition of the Catholic Church.³⁹

Notes

1. Horn, in Π Tim. 2, 4; PG 62:612.

2. Catechetical oration, 37, ed. Strawley, p. 152.

3. Letter 93, ed. Deferrari, II, 145.

4. Sec Chapter 1. For a good historical review of Byzantine Eucharistic theologies and practices (with earlier bibliography), see H. J. Schulz, Die byzanunische Litnrgie — vom Werden ihrer Symbolgestalt (Freiburg: Lambertus-Verlag, 1964).

5. Eccl Hier., III, 3, 1-2; PG 3:428AC.

6. Ibid., III, 13; 444c; see our comments on these texts in Christ, pp. 79-80.

7. R. Roques, L’univers dionysien. Structure hierarchique dtt monde selon le pseudo-Denys (Paris: Aubier, 1954), pp. 267, 269.

8. See particularly Quaestiones et dubia 41; PG 90:820A. On the liturgical theology oЈ Maximus, see R. Bornert, Les commentaires byzantins de la divine liturgie du Vile au XVe siecle, Archives dc lOrient chrétien, 9 (Paris: Institut francais deludes byzantincs, 1966), pp. 82-124.

9. Mansi, XIII, 261D-264C.

10. Aniirrh. I; PG 99:340AC.

11. Aniirrh. II; PG 100:336B-337A.

12. Contra Eusebium, cd. J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense, I (Paris, 1852), pp. 440-442.

13. Nicephorus, ibid., p. 446.

14. Ibid., pp. 468-469.

15. De sacramentali cor pore Christi, edd. L. Petit and M. Jugie, I (Paris: Bonne Presse, 1928), pp. 126, 134.

16. “The Problem of the Iconostasis,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 8 (1964), No. 4, 215.

17. Dialexis et antidialogus, ed. A. Michel, Humbert und Kerullarios II (Paderborn: Quellen und Forschungen, 1930), pp. 322-323.

18. This aspect of the controversy on the azymes is brilliantly shown in J. H. Erickson, “Leavened and Unleavened: Some Theological Implications of the Schism of 1054,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 14 (1970), No. 3, 155-176.

19. De vita in Christo, IV, 9:PG 150:592D-593A.

20. Erickson, Op. cit., p. 165.

21. De vita in Christo, IV, 4, 585D. See also Gregory Palamas, Confession of Faith; PG 151:765, trans. A. Papadakis, “Gregory Palamas at the Council of Blachernae, 1351,” Creek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 10 (1969), 340.

22. Ibid., 11; 596C.

23. Ibid., 10; 593.

24. Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, 29, edd. R. Bornert, J. Gouillard, and P. Perichon, Sources ChMennes, 4 bis (Paris: Cerf, 1967), pp. 185-187; trans. Husscy and McNulty (London: SPCK, 1960), pp. 74-75.

25. Ibid., p. 190; tr. pp. 75-76.

26. Ed. cit., 46, p. 262; tr. pp. 104-105.

27. See the references in R. Borncrt, Op. cit., pp. 93-94.

28. De sacro tcmplo, 131, 139, 152; PG 155:337D, 348C, 357A.

29. Mystagogia, 1; PG 91:668B.

30. R. Bornert, Op. cit., p. 92.

31. Eccl. Hier., III, 1; PG 3:424C.

32. Ibid., col. 444D.

33. De vita in Christo, IV, 1; PG 150:581B.

34. Ibid.. IV, 4; 585B.

35. De sacro templo, 282; PG 155:512iv-513A.

36. Jacobus Goar, Euchohgion sive Rituale Graecorum (Venice, 1730; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1960), p. 251; trans. Service Book, of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. I. F. Hapgood (New York: Association Press, 1922), p. 330.

37. Hier. Eccl. V, 5; PG 3:505A, 6:505c, etc.

38. De sacris ordinationibus 157; PG 155:364B.

39. De vita in Christo, IV, 8; PG 150:604B.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 587