Our Faith: Orthodox Christianity at St. Michael’s: The Mystery of Communion
Questions for consideration: What is the relationship of the “spiritual world” to the “physical world”? How do we experience reality? How does God work in this world? Only through ideas? Why did He become flesh and blood at the Incarnation? Why does He become flesh and blood in Communion?
Background.
- There is one creation; we experience it in various ways: colors, shapes, touch, feelings, relationships, intuitions, blessings, curses.
- We simplify reality in order to understand and work within it. One simplification is to separate the “spiritual” from the “material”; the “normal” from the “paranormal”; the “natural” from the “supernatural.” This simplification is occasionally useful, but has allowed the world to completely demote/ignore/dismiss/disparage the “spiritual.” Note that even the angels are made of something (they are “created”)!
- We mis-experience and mis-understand all facets of reality. The development of scientific objectivity and spiritual discernment are ways of correcting for this. We need both – or rather, we need a synthesis of both.
- God’s essence is outside creation, but He works through creation via His energies. These energies are real and have real effects; not just in the “spiritual world” or the “world of ideas”, but tangibly.
- Humankind is made in God’s image. As stewards of creation, we were given the power to affect creation. Through fallen Adam/fallen humankind, we bestow curses. Through the New Adam/the Church, we are able to bestow blessings. We do this in synergy with the energies of God. Again, the effects are tangible.
- The most powerful expression of this (both in magnitude and purpose) is Communion.
What is Communion?
- Look to the service. Divine Liturgy (St. John Chrysostom & St. Basil the Great) and Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts (St. Gregory the Theologian). This is how we “do” Communion and how we grow in our understanding and intuition of it.
- Look to the prayers. Before and after Communion. What do we learn? Repeating these prayers is part of how we grow in understanding and intuition.
- Look to our actions. How do we behave around the act and presence of Communion?
- But how do we know that it is real (or rather, how can we help those who have not experienced it understand)?
- The experience of the Eucharist has been the center of Orthodox Christian worship from the very beginning. The Divine Liturgy is more elaborate now, but its essence and critical elements were there from the beginning. The Church did not base its Divine Liturgy on Scripture – or even Tradition. The Divine Liturgy, Scripture, and Tradition all grew from the Apostolic experience. It is so important that it serves as a sort of “key” (cryptologically speaking) for understanding! [Creating “liturgy” from scratch is artificial and bizarre.]
- “Historical” scripture: not just the “Institution” on Holy Thursday (St. Matthew 26:26-28; St. Mark 14:22-24; St. Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-25), but also the supper during the walk to Emmaus (St. Luke 24:30-31). Foreshadowings include the feeding of the multitudes and Abram & Melchizedek in Genesis 14 & Hebrews 7).
- Theological scripture: St. Paul’s warnings about the seriousness of the Mystery (1 Corinthians 11:27-30) and Christ’s own teaching about His Body and Blood (St. John 6:31-69). There are more examples; the Orthodox see signs of the Eucharist everywhere (but others will not be persuaded by this). [An aside: why didn’t St. John write more directly about the Eucharist?]
- Post-Apostolic Fathers (once you get past them, the evidence in incontrovertible!):
- Ignatius of Antioch (110); “[the Gnostics] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again.” (Letter to Smyrnians 7:1).
- Justin Martyr (100-165); “For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus (First Apology, 66).
- Looking at the history of the Church from its very beginnings, it becomes difficult to allegorize “flesh and blood” into “faith and sacrifice.” The Eucharist is the life of the Church, and the Church is “Material & Spiritual”!
Thoughts? Questions?
