O
Christ! Great and most holy Pascha! Wisdom, Word and Power of God! Grant that
we may more perfectly partake of You in the never ending day of Your Kingdom!
(Liturgy of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom)
What does it mean to participate in the celebration
of the Eucharist?
As a eucharistic community, we gather on the day of
Resurrection (Sunday) and feast days to celebrate the heavenly banquet. The
fact that the Eucharist is an on-going celebration for Orthodox Christians and
not something limited to certain times of the year points to its essential
place in the life of the Church as a community and in the life of each member
of the community. For centuries, the frequency of receiving Holy Communion was
reduced to once a year, usually during Great Lent. This practice was firmly
established until about 25 years ago when the normal practice of the Church
which encouraged receiving Communion several times a week was recovered.
From one perspective we can say with certitude that
receiving the Eucharist frequently is an indication of a positive restoration
in the life of the Orthodox parish. Yet any positive restoration in the life of
any Orthodox parish implies that the people making up the local community are constantly
being influenced and formed by the living Tradition of the Church. Father
Dimitri Staniloae, an Orthodox theologian of the Church in Romania, develops
this idea: "one can say that the personal spiritual life does not develop
in isolation from the eucharistic community. In turn, the eucharistic community
does not stand outside the influence of the spiritual state of those persons
who compose it... granted that it is Christ who acts in the liturgy of the
community and in the spiritual life of those who compose it."
This statement of Father Staniloae is very helpful in
examining our own approach to the celebration of the Eucharist both corporately
and personally. The dynamic between community and person sets the tempo and
standard for how we live as Christians. This implies that if the life of the
parish involves virtually the entire community receiving Holy Communion on any
given Sunday or feast day, there should be a corresponding spiritual
development or maturity of the communicant and the parish.
The interrelationship between the Christian community
and the Christian is a reality that is often overlooked or downplayed. When
this happens we grow accustomed to thinking that "my" relationship
with God is a private matter and has no connection to those with whom
"I" pray. Starting with the Old Testament we see that God forms a
community (a clan, a tribe or a nation) whose very purpose for existing is to
carry out His will corporately and personally. Taking into account the
eucharistic community, the life of the community affects the life of each
person and the life of each person affects the life of the community. No one
stands as a solitary individual. The interrelationship and interpenetration of
one life into another can be either for mutual spiritual growth or for the
spiritual stagnation and ultimately spiritual disintegration.
When we speak or hear about the "spiritual
life," there is often the misunderstanding that spiritual things are
opposed to material things. For those of us who participate in the Eucharist
the "spiritual life" is the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Quoting St. Macarius of Egypt, Ss. Callistus and Ignatius (14th c.) in advising
those who practice the Jesus Prayer write: "As wine penetrates all the
members of the body, so that the wine is in man and man is in the wine; so
likewise he who drinks Christ's blood is filled with the divine Spirit who
spreads through the whole soul, so that the soul is totally in Him and, thus
sanctified, becomes worthy of Christ our Lord. For the Apostle says: '...all
were made to drink one Spirit' (1 Cor 12:13). In the same way those who truly
partake of bread in the Eucharist are granted participation in the Holy Spirit
and these worthy souls have eternal life."
These words, found in the Philokalia, express the
profound spiritual reality that when we participate in the Eucharist, God
includes us in His divine life. By the divine initiative, the celebration of
the Eucharist forms the context in which the Holy Spirit enters our lives and
fills us with the eternal and divine life of the Father. The Holy Trinity
shares this divine life with us corporately and personally, and likewise we are
to share this life corporately and personally with each other.
But if our life is to be in harmony with the divine
life, i.e., if our wills are to conform to God's will and our energies to God's
energies, the Eucharist cannot be conceived as an end in itself. The Eucharist
does not stand by itself. Our celebration of the Eucharist presupposes that we
have died and risen with Christ. The link between Baptism, Chrismation and the
Eucharist is not accidental. Conversion, prayer and repentance (which must
include Confession) clearly occupy an essential place in the eucharistic life
of the community and each person.
Without prayer and repentance being part of the communal and
personal life, a false spirituality develops, a spirituality which keeps a
certain form or style but has at its core an antagonism to God's will. The
living Tradition of our Church teaches us that our antagonism to God's will is
overcome when we die and rise in the baptismal waters. From these waters and
our participation in the Eucharist, the words of St. Paul reach their maturity:
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed
away, behold the new has come" (2 Cor 5:17).