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ARCHIVE April, 2003 |
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Note: This is the fourth article in an eight-part series on the Sacraments of the Orthodox Church. In the first article, we began with an article on the Consequences of Man's Fall away from God. The second article focused on the Sacrament of Baptism. The third sacrament is Chrismation. The term, "sacrament," means literally a "mystery." A sacrament is a way in which God imparts grace to His people. Grace is the gift of God's own presence and action in His creation. Through grace, God forgives sins and transforms the believer into His image and likeness. Sacramental grace, therefore, is necessary because man fell away from the natural state of grace imparted to him by God at his creation. [Note: All previous articles may be viewed from the "Articles Archive" page.] |
In the Orthodox Church |
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The Holy Eucharist With these words - quoting the same words of Christ in Luke 22:19, 20 - St. Paul instructs the Corinthians concerning the Eucharist, the giving of thanks. Some two thousand years after Jesus gave Himself "for the life of the world" (John 6:51), there are in Christendom at least three different interpretations of His words. |
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| How do we view the Eucharist? For the first thousand years of Christian history, when the Church was visibly one and undivided, the holy gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ were received as just that: His Body and Blood. The Church confessed this was a mystery: The bread is truly His Body, and that which is in the cup is truly His Blood, but one cannot say how they become so. The eleventh and twelfth centuries brought on the scholastic era, the Age of Reason in the West. The Roman Church, which had become separated from the Orthodox Church in A.D. 1054, was pressed by the rationalists to define how the transformation takes place. They answered with the word transubstantiation, meaning a change of substance. The elements are no longer bread and wine; they are physically changed into flesh and blood. The sacrament, which only faith can comprehend, was subjected to a philosophical definition. This second view of the Eucharist was unknown to the ancient Church. Not surprisingly, one of the points of disagreement between Rome and the sixteenth-century reformers was the issue of transubstantiation. Unable to accept this explanation of the sacrament, the radical reformers, who were rationalists themselves, took up the opposite point of view: the gifts are nothing but bread and wine, period. They only represent Christ's Body and Blood; they have no spiritual reality. This third, symbol-only view helps explain the infrequency with which some Protestants partake of the Eucharist. The Scriptures and the Eucharist (2) In the New Testament, those who received Christ's Body and Blood unworthily are said to bring condemnation upon themselves. "For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep" (literally, "are dead"; 1 Cor. 11:30). A mere symbol, a quarterly reminder, could hardly have the power to cause sickness and death! (3) Historically, from the New Testament days on, the central act of worship, the new apex of spiritual sacrifice, took place "on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread" (Acts 20:7). The Eucharist has always been that supreme act of thanksgiving and praise to God in His Church. From The Orthodox Study Bible To: Previous Orthodox Articles
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