Keywords: Orthodox Church, Liturgy, Holy Eucharist, Communion, orders, canonical rules, pastorship, clerics, laymen, spiritual advancement
Abstract:
The Holy Eucharist is the mystery of our spiritual communion, the mystery of our life’s progress and fulfilling in Christ, the mystery by means of which “partakers of the divine nature” (1 Peter 1, 4), “a people for God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2, 9). Being so important in the process of our redemption, our Holy Church has been permanently watching for the right performing of this Holy Mystery, setting strict canonical criteria regarding the necessary requirement for the place, persons and the manner of its administration and steadfastness, so that any deviation from these strict rules was reckoned as impiety or sacrilegious which called for serious sanctions that sometimes went to defrocking. By communing with the Sacred and Most-pure Mysteries of Christ as part of the divine service of the Liturgy, the faithful are really living in the (original) atmosphere of the Divine Last Supper. They are spiritually immersed in it, with all his mind and heart, following with all their senses every episode of the life and redemptive works of our Lord Jesus Christ, represented and symbolically exemplified in the order of this service, and by communing with His Holy Body and Blood of Christ, they unite with Him, hoping to participate as much as possible to His life and to transplant in their humanity, and following His divine commandment and virtues. The Eucharist is meant transform and improve human being and life, after the divine archetype: Jesus Christ, the model of our moral perfection. By means of the Mystery of Eucharist is performed the unity of the human race in and together with God – the purpose of human existence. There is no other way to re-establish the communion with God, with our fellow creatures and God’s creation in general, in Christ through Holy Spirit. So, the Eucharist is somehow the Mystery of unity of Church in Christ and the ultimate purpose of the creation. A theology of the Holy Eucharist with all its implications is badly needed, all the more so this was rather neglected in the Communist regime and even earlier. For this reason, the author brings here important liturgical aspects of the Mystery combined with its theological and pastoral implications.
Pages: 38-55