David M. Petras
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
3605 Perrysville Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15214
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THE EUCHARIST AND EVANGELIZATION
Our Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, declared to his followers:
"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)
Here we have the mission statement of the Church, not as formulated by committees nor by any human being, but by God. And this statement gives everything to us, for “all power in heaven and earth has been given” to Jesus our Lord, because of his death for love of us all, and his victory over the ultimate enemy, the power of death. St. Paul writes:
“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:56-57)”
To speak about the eucharist and evangelization, it is necessary to begin with baptism. It is here that Nicholas Cabasilas begins in his commentary on baptism, “The life in Christ originates in this life and arises from it. It is perfected, however, in the life to come, when we shall have reached that last day.” (The Life in Christ, 1 § 1) Baptism and the Eucharist are one mystery, not, of course, in the sense that we can enumerate seven sacraments, but in the sense that God is One, and his giving of himself to us is one, and in him we become one. Baptism begin our journey of faith, and the eucharist continues and confirms it each step of the way, as we reject the evil one and commit ourselves to Christ “again and again.” For this reason, both baptism and the eucharist are acts of evangelization, as Jesus tells us in his mission statement, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” This is “all power in heaven and on earth.”
The Eucharist and Baptism
I will hold that the eucharist has three movements, and that these three movements are instances of the three stages of the spiritual life, by which the gospel, the good news, is truly proclaimed and received by people of faith. Indeed, these three stages are present throughout our journey and overlap in many ways. The first movement of the Divine Liturgy may be called the Liturgy of the Word. It corresponds to the first stage, that of repentance. Here I would understand repentance not in the sense of ascesis, of redemptive struggle, of pain and tears, penance and “godly sorrow produces a salutary repentance without regret, (2 Corinthians 7:10)”, though such spiritual struggle is necessary as a pre-condition for repentance. I refer to repentance here as metanoia, a change of heart from what is evil to the good, the point where Jesus begins his good news, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:15)” This metanoia - repentance was manifest in the mystery of baptism, which for the prophet John had been only a sign, but with the coming of Jesus was infused with the fire of the gift of the Spirit with the power to change human lives. This idea of fire arises from Luke 3:16, the Messiah will baptize in “fire and the Spirit,” and was especially prominent in the Syrian tradition, where the fire of the Spirit, “sets the waves [of the Jordan] on fire before [Christ} descends.”
1 This in turn leads to the concept of baptism as illumination and also purification, the characteristic of the first stage of the spiritual life. In baptism the message of God’s salvation is preached to us, we accept it with our minds and hearts and we turn to the Lord. We repeat this, therefore, in every Divine Liturgy. To return briefly to the idea of ascesis, we note that baptism for adults requires a period of penance as preparation, and that, likewise, every eucharist requires some act of penance as a preparation as the liturgical instruction of 1996 notes, “[The eucharistic fast] expressed and continues to signify the concern for a proper spiritual preparation for receiving the eucharist, life-giving Bread come down from heaven.”
2The Liturgy of the Word reflects well the metanoia - repentance of baptism. In this part of the ancient Liturgy the non-baptized catechumens were present with the baptized as both heard the proclamation of God’s Word to us, particularly in the Epistle and the Gospel, as we again appropriate into our souls the divine call to follow Jesus, to “lose our lives for his sake and for the sake of the gospel that we might find life. (Mark 8:35)” For awhile in the Church, the “learners,” the “catechumens” were permitted in the Church only for this part of the Liturgy, though this was not because the revelation of Christ was a secret message, but in order to underscore the awesomeness of the mystery that was about to be received. However, the faithful together with the catechumens profit from this proclamation, just as the faithful also profited from observing the season of penance in the Great Fast together with those preparing for baptism. The faithful, together with the catechumens, are evangelized by the words of God and the preacher’s commentary on these words. In the liturgical celebration, these words must be attended to with great respect. There should be a period of tranquillity in which the reading from Scripture is proclaimed with clarity, and all, from the presider to the most humble of brothers or sisters listens attentively. Pastors should take care that there are good readers, perhaps even people dedicated to this task, and that a proper homily is preached, at least on Sundays and feast days.
3May I note in passing, in each of these sections I will make concrete suggestions for how liturgical practices may manifest the theology of the Liturgy. This is meant only as a resource. It is not my intention, in any way, to legislate for the churches, since that is the proper role of the bishops, in the proper traditions of their churches and for the spiritual welfare of the people they serve. Each Eastern Church must renew itself according to its own tradition, I am confident, though, that the general principles I propose are valid for each jurisdiction.
The Gospel Proclaimed to the Enlightened: the Anaphora
All churches have a clear transition from what is called “the Liturgy of the Word,” to the “Liturgy of the Eucharist.” Of course, there are no official “division points,” and some emphasize a liturgical piety in which everything done in the Divine Liturgy, precisely because it is “divine,” is of the same value. However, there was in ancient times a dismissal of the catechumens, penitents and others after the proclamation of the Gospel and before the gifts of bread and wine were brought in. An actual dismissal took place only for a short period of history. In the earliest church, apostolic and post-apostolic the Liturgy was quite open - there was nothing secretive about the Christian rites, even though they were frequently misinterpreted by pagan observers
4 and polemicists. When the mass of the population became Christian, the dismissal of the remnants of catechumens was ignored. The ancient invitation to Communion, “Holy things to the holy,” is a sign that “non-baptized” were present, since only the “holy,” the “baptized,” could receive Communion.
After the gifts of bread and wine were brought to the Holy Table, then the Anaphora, the “Prayer of Offering” was said. The eucharistic prayer (the Roman “Canon’) is called by many names in the East: Anaphora, Qurbana and others. This is the central prayer of the Christian Liturgy, and the testimony of the Fathers is that when the prayer has been said, the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, as attested to as early as St. Irenaeus, “the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist.” (Adv Haer IV, 18, 5) The Anaphora, then, is the most solemn prayer of the Divine Liturgy, corresponding to the prayer of blessing that our Lord said over the bread and cup at the Mystical Supper, the foundation of the Eucharist. When we pray the Anaphora today, we fulfill the commandment of our Lord, “Do this in memory of me.” In the eucharistic prayer, we do remember all the wondrous works God has done for us, beginning with Creation, through redemption to the gift of the Divine Liturgy itself. In the Byzantine Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom, we pray, “Remembering, therefore, this saving command, and all that has come to pass in our behalf: the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and the second coming in glory.” Since the Liturgy is a “Divine Liturgy,” when we remember, God remembers with us, and while our memories are unable to restore the past, God’s memory makes the events of salvation present, now in a sacramental way, in a “sacrifice of praise,” and an “unbloody sacrifice.” The anaphora is the commemoration of the resurrection of the Lord, which filled the apostles with confidence after the fearful days of the passion and burial. If Christ is present, the eucharist is the living, risen Christ, to whom all power has been given, and who transforms us as individuals and communities by his resurrection. The Eastern Church abstains from the Anaphora during the Great Fast precisely because it is the memorial of the Resurrection, to which we look forward and thirst for on the great day of Pascha. Hence, St. John Chrysostom can say of the Liturgy, "The mystery at Pascha is not of more efficacy than that which is now celebrated. It is one and the same. There is always the same grace of the Spirit. It is always a Passover."
5In a very particular way, therefore, the Anaphora is the evangelization of the enlightened. Beyond the first movement of the Divine Liturgy, in which we heard the words of God, now his gospel is proclaimed to us in action. Having been purified by the preaching of repentance, we are enlightened by the light of life. Thus the Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom tells us, “You so loved your world that you gave your only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have life everlasting. (John3:16)” As to the disciples in the locked upper room, the Lord appears to us and grants us peace, the forgiveness of sins and life. The anaphora turns from words only, though the word of God is always effective, to actions - the gifts are raised in offering, the Spirit is invoked upon the bread and wine that they may become the presence of God and the means of our deification. For how could we become godly unless the gifts we receive were truly the body and blood of Christ. Here we see a higher evangelization, the proclamation of a wondrous mystery to those who are baptized. The role of the deacon in the Liturgy is to offer our petitions to the Lord. This is important, for we must lay all our needs before God, who alone provides for our lives. The role of the people is to sing hymns, and the hymns we sing glorify God and remind us of the unity of our celebration with the angelic Liturgy in heaven. The role of the priest, however, is to do what our Lord commanded, “Do this in memory of me,” What the priest says is what the people should come to know, for it is the memory of the great deeds of salvation that God has done for us. It is the sacrifice, and the redemption and the deification. This is the core of what the Liturgy is about. It can be accomplished only in the power of the Holy Spirit, who seals the ministry of the human priest.
It is clear what the practical recommendation for the Anaphora must be. The prayer of offering must be said aloud for the people to hear. I would hold with the author of the Protheoria in the eleventh century, commenting on the quiet recitation of the anaphora by the bishop, “the people ask what the aim of this practice is, adding that to know the prayers this way is like trying to know a garment from touching the fringes.” The presbyteral prayers are that part of the Divine Liturgy in which the priest prays in the name of the people, who make the prayer that of the whole community by sealing it with the Hebrew word, “Amen,” which means “So be it.” Perhaps the words of St. Paul, in regard to speaking in tongues, are also directly applicable here, “If you pronounce a blessing [with] the spirit, how shall one who holds the place of the uninstructed say the ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying. (1 Corinthians 14:16)” If the priest says a prayer that the faithful do not hear, how can they say “Amen” to it? Of course, this problem only arises when the Liturgy is celebrated in the vernacular language, for otherwise the people would not understand the prayer. To restore the presbyteral prayers aloud are a restoration of the commemoration of what our Lord Jesus Christ did for us at the Mystical Supper. This is truly a restoration of the original form of the Divine Liturgy, and also one that is confirmed by tradition. St. John Chrysostom described the interplay between priest and congregation: "One sees that the people contribute much to the prayer...during the fearful mysteries, the priest speaks for the people, and the people speak on behalf of the priest, .... The prayer of thanksgiving is again a common prayer offered by the priest and by all the people. The priest begins, and the people join him and respond that it is just and right to praise God: this is the beginning of the thanksgiving. Why are you surprised if the people mix their voice with that of the priest? Do you not know that these holy hymns rise to the heavens, where they mixed with those of the angels, the cherubim and the heavenly powers?"
6There is no doubt that for many centuries the prayers of the priest have been said silently, either during a hymn of the Liturgy or when the deacon says a litany. Have we been doing it wrong for so many centuries? The answer is, of course, not entirely. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the priest has been saying the words of commemoration. All the centuries have seen a valid Liturgy in which Christ transforms us through the sacrificial presence of his holy Body and Blood. But why do we ask the question now? The reality is that the question has been asked many times in tradition, but with special urgency now that the people can again understand the words of the Liturgy in the vernacular. For many years now, there has been a movement to restore the presbyteral prayers. The kollyvades, a movement on Mt. Athos, said the anaphora aloud in the eighteenth century. Mojzes, in his recent book Il movimento liturgico nelle chiese bizantine (Rome 2005, 112-123) describes the movement towards the public recitation of the Anaphora in the Russian Church from 1905, as preparation for the Synod of 1917. Bishops Nazarius of Nižnij-Novgorod and Sergius of Finland supported the proposal, along with theologians A, P. Golibtsov and V.I. Eksemplarskij and others. He quotes Tikhon, the future Patriarch, on page 112, “it is not undesirable to read some of the prayers aloud.” This proposal was also very active in the Greek Church. The Zoe (“Life”) movement dominated Greek liturgy life for almost fifty years (1907-1960) and proposed the public recitation of the anaphora. (See Mojzes 159-162) The proposal has not faded since. In Greece today, the Major Archbishop Christodoulos has founded the Special Synodical Committee on Liturgical Rebirth. Among its first recommendations (Encyclical 2784, March 31, 2004) was the public recitation of the prayers, “In order to restore the Eucharist as a vital dialogue of life and love between God and His people, Celebrators, Bishops and Presbyters, are advised to read most of the Priestly Prayers of the Holy Eucharist with audible voice, so that the participation of the faithful in all that takes place is made possible, so that by hearing the Prayers they can actually pray through them, and reply ‘Amen’, consciously and willingly.” (Pavlos Koumarianos, Liturgical Rebirth in the Church of Greece Today, p. 4)
The saying of the presbyteral prayers aloud, then, is a decisive step, a definitive decision to restore the Liturgy. In this we are encouraged by the actual practice of other churches, and by the recommendation of the Holy See in its 1996 liturgical instruction, § 54. What does it all mean? I think it means life. The Divine Liturgy is a commemoration of our Lord, as one who came into our midst, and is present with us to the end of time. But he is not simply present, but acting and giving life. Every celebration of the Divine Liturgy is a “time for the Lord to act.” We commemorate his death and resurrection, but this commemoration is a divine remembrance, and when God remembers, the holy acts he did for us happen again, not in a bloody way as in the historical cross, but in just as real a way mystically and sacramentally. Because of this, we can truly say that the Liturgy is a sacrifice. As the anaphora begins, the deacon invites us all to pray, “Let us stand aright, let us stand in awe, let us be attentive to offer the holy anaphora in peace.” The people respond with the meaning of the anaphora, it is the mercy Christ wants, it is peace with God, it is a sacrifice of praise. The Cross is essential to our faith. It is the love of God for us - both in the historical sacrifice on Calvary and in the sacrifice of the Divine Liturgy, but the Cross must be perfected by the Resurrection. The Christ present among us today is not a dead body, but the life-giving eucharist given in Communion. Before giving Communion, the priest unites the holy bread which has become the Body of Christ with the holy cup that contains the blood of Christ to manifest that the Lord we receive in Communion is the living and life-giving body of Christ, one of the Holy Trinity. Through the Body of Christ that we receive, we are united with the Father and the Spirit. The Divine Liturgy, then, is the act of God’s love for us, and the reading of the anaphora will make that much more clear for us.
The Gospel Proclaimed to the Perfect: Holy Communion
With the understanding that divisions in the Liturgy are for understanding only, the third movement is the reception of Holy Communion. The reception of the Body and Blood of our Lord was hidden in the first part of the Liturgy, as a mystery not yet revealed to the non-baptized.. The second part of the Liturgy looks forward to this climax. As the gifts of bread and wine are brought in, the Byzantine Liturgy chants, “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim now lay aside all earthly cares that we may receive [in Communion] the King of all, invisibly escorted by angelic hosts.” In his commentary on the Divine Liturgy, St. Maximus the Confessor describes Holy Communion as “ ... the climax of everything ... which transforms into itself and renders similar to the causal good (that is, God) by grace and participation those who worthily share in it. To them is there lacking nothing of this good that is possible and attainable for human beings, so that they also can be and be called gods by adoption through grace because all of God entirely fills them and leaves no part of them empty of his presence.
7 “ Here St. Maximus expresses beautifully the theology of our faith: God created us in his own image, and in partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we are restored and fulfilled in that image, and are made Godlike, becoming what we have eaten. The title of this presentation is the “eucharist and evangelization.” We may now define evangelization as simply “good news.” If this is the case, then Communion is indeed “good news,” a gift of God giving himself to us. No greater gift can be imagined.
This also corresponds to the third stage of the spiritual life, called in the West the unitive stage and in the East theoria. The characteristic of this stage is that we cannot enter on our own. It is where God unites himself to us in a union transcendent to all human abilities. This union carries us beyond words and beyond the power of human expression. We may sing hymns and say prayers and perform ritual acts, but the essence of this part of the Liturgy is simply our being united with God through the holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the ultimate goal of the Divine Liturgy, a service of worship that enacts itself not through our human powers, but through the action, descent and operation of the Holy Spirit. God chooses us in his freedom and gives himself to us. He becomes our father through adoption, our brother through incarnation and our sanctification through the Holy Spirit. We do not take the initiative in this, God searches for us and brings us to himself. The only question that remains for us is whether we are able to comprehend the gift. The akathist for Holy Communion prays to “Jesus who creates and perfects more then we can understand and comprehend.” We can never quite grasp the gift, but can only appropriate it according to our ability. As to his disciples on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration, God “reveals as much of his glory as we can behold.”
This leads to another question crucial for our Communion practice today. Who is worthy to receive Communion? The first answer, certainly, is simply - no one. Human nature is not worthy of the divine nature. Communion is possible only because God makes our nature godly through deification. Therefore, God communicates himself to whom he wills, and this communion, if received in the right spirit forgives sin and initiates eternal life in us. The priest means what he says in the Byzantine formula of Communion, “The servant of God partakes of the precious, most holy, and most pure body and blood of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins and for life everlasting.” This does not obviate the confession of serious sins, since to receive Communion sincerely must include the will to be obedient to the law of the Church to confess before the priest representing the Body of Christ, the Church.
The first condition for Communion is baptism. We must have freely committed ourselves to Christ through baptism to receive Communion. Therefore, the priest warns before beginning, “Holy things to the holy,” that is, to the baptized. .Moreover, there must also be another level of worthiness, as St. Paul teaches, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying. (1 Corinthians 11:29-30)” This verse, unfortunately, has been used to deprive children of the eucharist, though St. Paul refers here to sinfulness which would cause us to profane the body, as St. John Chrysostom explains, “It is unlawful for us to touch the table with profane lusts ... by which I mean those of the body, of money, of anger, of malice and so on.”
8 There are conditions for Communion.
Yet we still must face a historical difficulty. In the early Church, people went to Communion as a matter of course. Christ, after all, had commanded us to eat and to drink. Nor could anyone actually make themselves worthy of Communion. The prohibitions mentioned above are negative conditions. Even if we are baptized and free from “profane lusts,” and “all earthly cares,” we are still not worthy of this union with God, due to our very human nature. As the priest prays before the anaphora in the Byzantine tradition, “No one who is bound by carnal desires and pleasures is worthy to come to you, to approach you, or to minister to you, the King of Glory, for to minister to you is great and awesome even to the heavenly powers themselves.” When Christianity began to grow and encompass all levels of society, the Fathers began to stress the awesomeness of the gift to the point where people started to refrain from Communion altogether. Different responses were made to this. The ancient ideal was that everyone present received Communion, except the non-baptized. You were expected to partake of the banquet. If you did not intend to receive, you were dismissed before the Communion, so that only those who partook were present. Obviously, those people, when it came to be that in general they did not receive, they still did not leave, or the church would be empty for Communion. The net result was that we reached a stage where Communion was no longer a significant part of the Liturgy. The priest received Communion to complete the sacrifice, but no one else came forth. In the Catholic Church, from the early twentieth century, frequent Holy Communion again began to be promoted. This has greatly benefitted our churches, and our Orthodox brethren are also promoting more frequent Communion. It is hoped that this trend will continue, that only those in grave sin will absent themselves. Infrequent Communion, though, has a long history and may have led to a vision of the Liturgy that does not include its goal of union with God. This may have lessened our appreciation of this gift of God’s love. Communion brings us the forgiveness of sins, the beginning of eternal life, and union with God. It is compared to the burning coal which touched the lips of the prophet Isaiah, cleansing him. If there is any attitude in our lives that makes us hesitate before Communion, the correct response is not to abstain, but to correct our attitude.
How does this integrate with the idea I expressed at the beginning - Communion is the evangelization of the “perfect.” Who is perfect? St. Gregory of Nyssa struggled with this concept also. Jesus commanded us, “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect, (Matthew 5:48).” St. Gregory of Nyssa asked how human beings could keep this commandment, if God demanding the impossible. He then said that for the Christian perfection means constant growth in good.
9 Holy Communion evangelizes those who are sincerely trying to follow the path of our Lord in all their human weakness. As St. Paul wrote, “but the Lord said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)”
In speaking of evangelization and eucharist, we have the most work to do in our attitudes toward Holy Communion. We must take note, as St. Paul taught, that it is a participation in the body and blood of Christ, and that “because the load of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf, (1 Corinthians 10:16-17)” We must strive to restore the ways in which the symbolism of the one body is manifested. Too often Communion has become the distribution of individual hosts rather than common union in the one Christ, manifest in the one loaf, the one lamb.
It should also be clear that when we receive Communion, we all become equal. No one is greater than another, for the union in Christ of which no one is completely worthy utterly overwhelms our individual egos. St. John Chrysostom was extremely eloquent on this point. “All things are equal between us and you, even to the very chief of our blessings. I (as bishop) do not partake of the holy Table with greater abundance and you with less, but both equally participate of the same. And if I take it first, it is no great privilege, since even among children, the elder first extends his hand to the feast, but nevertheless no great advantage is gained thereby. But with us all things are equal. The saving life that sustains our souls is given with equal honor to both. I do not indeed partake of one Lamb and you of another, but we partake of the same. We both have the same baptism. We have been vouchsafed the same Spirit. We are both hastening to the same kingdom. We are all alike brethren of Christ, we have all things in common.
10” Any privilege, any clericalism ceases with the reception of Holy Communion. The laity received Communion equally as the clergy until the second millennium. St. John Damascene writes, “let us approach [the minister of communion] with ardent longing, and with palms crossed, let us receive the body of the crucified one. And touching the eyes, the lips and the brows, let us receive the divine coal ... “
11 The reason for modifications in the distribution of Communion were abuses that occurred, though by this time, frequent Communion must have been quite uncommon. Again, I personally do not want to legislate what must be done, for that depends on pastoral guidance and prudence, but we should at least not appeal to clerical privilege. We shouldn’t turn out of the icon screen altar servers who were considered worthy to serve inside the altar area, but not to receive Communion there. I find incongruous the protests of those who claim that only the priest can touch the body of the Lord with their consecrated hands, while all of us receive the transcendent Son of God into our own bodies.
Fr. Taft also brings up one other important aspect of Communion in his article, “Receiving Communion - a Forgotten Symbol?”
12 Here Taft argues that the symbolism of Communion, as in all sacramental rites, is that it is a gift given to us by God., which we do not seize for ourselves, but receive from his hand. It is, as he puts it, “a sharing of something we have and do and receive in communion and from one another - in short a communion. He then shows how in the early Church, no one took Communion for oneself, but always received it from another. Thus before the bishop distributed Communion to the concelebrating priests, he received it from a presbyter himself, at least until the time of the reform of the Patriarch Nicon in the seventeenth century. This usage was probably abandoned in Greece earlier, sometime after the diataxis of Demetrius Gemistos in the fourteenth century.
13 Again here, I am not advocating particular practices, but at the very least a metanoia on our part, a change of attitude. Communion is indeed evangelization by God giving himself to us. Jesus is the one who “receives and distributes,” we receive Communion from him, and this was symbolized by the older practices.
Some Conclusions
The recovery of the Divine Liturgy as evangelization is crucial to the life and health of the Church. We are attacked both from without and from within, but there is no need for fear, we can make a difference. Today many in the secular world point to religion and people of faith as a blight upon society. Religion brings war, intolerance, petty hatreds and the like and stifles human freedom. I do not want to speak of a “militant atheism,” that often went in tandem with Communist regimes, but a new evangelical atheism, which opposes the “good news” of faith in Christ with the “good news” of scientific progress. If human beings unlock their own potential and determine ultimate values, we will enter a new era of progress and welfare. Only scientific rationalism - which is blocked by unreasonable God-believers - can stop wars, heal diseases, bring immortality and human joy. However, what this new atheism ignores is that we have not given ourselves life and existence, and we are powerless to give ourselves any values at all that are not contingent and ephemeral. Atheism does not bring “good news,” because it cannot, and one of the most prominent atheists of history, Bertrand Russell, was honest enough to admit that when he wrote, “That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving: that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve the individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.”
14Only God can bring us the “good news.,” proclaimed in every Liturgy. Admittedly, we Christians have not always properly appropriated nor understood the “good news.” We have become bogged down in our own hatreds and intolerance. The search for truth may not lead to union but to conflict. This imperfection in the human nature will be with us always, the Church of Christ will never achieve perfect union, either with God or with itself, there will always be divisions, but it remains our goal, as the deacon prays in the opening litany of the Divine Liturgy, “for peace in the whole world, for the stability of the holy Churches of God, and for the union of all, let us pray to the Lord.” For this reason, I am convinced that ecumenical dialogue is one of the most important projects of our age. We do not seek a false ecumenism that would compromise the truth, but the true union arising from obedience to our Lord’s prayer “that all may be one,” a divine attribute. The one Body and one Cup of the Blood of our Lord in the Divine Liturgy is the source and goal of this union, to achieve it will be the perfect gift of evangelization.
1. Cited by Killian McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 108.
2. Instruction for Applying the Liturgical Prescriptions of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Churches, 1996, § 62. The Instruction calls for at least a partial restoration in keeping with the different conditions of life in the world today.
3. Liturgical Instruction, § 53.
4. Pliny refers to rumors that children were killed and eaten.
5. Hom. in Timothy 5.3.
6. In I Cor. Hom. 18.
7. The Church’s Mystagogy, 21.
8. Hom. 1 Cor. 28.1.
9. Life of Moses I.9-10.
10. Homily 4 on 2 Thessalonians.
11 PG 94:1149, cited by Robert Taft, Through Their Own Eyes (Berkeley, CA: Inter-Orthodox Press, 2006), 115.
12. Worship 57 (1983), 412-418.
13. Taft, op. cit. 415.
14. Mysticism and Logic.
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