Posted on 04/16/2005 5:40:36 AM PDT by Kolokotronis
The concept of communion is above all anchored in the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, the reason why we still today in the language of the Church rightly designate the reception of this sacrament simply as “to communicate”. In this way, the very practical social significance of this sacramental event also immediately becomes evident, and this in a radical way that cannot be achieved in exclusively horizontal perspectives. Here we are told that by means of the sacrament we enter in a certain way into a communion with the blood of Jesus Christ, where blood according to the Hebrew perspective stands for “life”. Thus, what is being affirmed is a commingling of Christ’s life with our own.
“Blood” in the context of the Eucharist clearly stands also for “gift”, for an existence that pours itself out, gives itself for us and to us. Thus the communion of blood is also insertion into the dynamic of this life, into this “blood poured out”. Our existence is “dynamized” in such a way that each of us can become a being for others, as we see obviously happening in the open Heart of Christ.
From a certain point of view, the words over the bread are even more stunning. They tell of a “communion” with the body of Christ which Paul compares to the union of a man and a woman (cf. I Cor 6,17ff; Eph 5,26-32). Paul also expresses this from another perspective when he says: it is one and the same bread, which all of us now receive. This is true in a startling way: the “bread” — the new manna, which God gives to us — is for all the one and the same Christ.
It is truly the one, identical Lord, whom we receive in the Eucharist, or better, the Lord who receives us and assumes us into himself. St Augustine expressed this in a short passage which he perceived as a sort of vision: eat the bread of the strong; you will not transform me into yourself, but I will transform you into me. In other words, when we consume bodily nourishment, it is assimilated by the body, becoming itself a part of ourselves. But this bread is of another type. It is greater and higher than we are. It is not we who assimilate it, but it assimilates us to itself, so that we become in a certain way “conformed to Christ”, as Paul says, members of his body, one in him.
We all “eat” the same person, not only the same thing; we all are in this way taken out of our closed individual persons and placed inside another, greater one. We all are assimilated into Christ and so by means of communion with Christ, united among ourselves, rendered the same, one sole thing in him, members of one another.
To communicate with Christ is essentially also to communicate with one another. We are no longer each alone, each separate from the other; we are now each part of the other; each of those who receive communion is “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gn 2,23).
A true spirituality of communion seen in its Christological profundity, therefore, necessarily has a social character, as Henri de Lubac brilliantly described more than a half century ago in his book, Catholicism.
For this reason, in my prayer at communion, I must look totally toward Christ, allowing myself to be transformed by him, even to be burned by his enveloping fire. But, precisely for this reason, I must always keep clearly in mind that in this way he unites me organically with every other person receiving him — with the one next to me, whom I may not like very much; but also with those who are far away, in Asia, Africa, America or in any other place.
Becoming one with them, I must learn to open myself toward them and to involve myself in their situations. This is the proof of the authenticity of my love for Christ. If I am united with Christ, I am together with my neighbour, and this unity is not limited to the moment of communion, but only begins here. It becomes life, becomes flesh and blood, in the everyday experience of sharing life with my neighbour. Thus, the individual realities of my communicating and being part of the life of the Church are inseparably linked to one another.
The Church is not born as a simple federation of communities. Her birth begins with the one bread, with the one Lord and from him from the beginning and everywhere, the one body which derives from the one bread. She becomes one not through a centralized government but through a common centre open to all, because it constantly draws its origin from a single Lord, who forms her by means of the one bread into one body. Because of this, her unity has a greater depth than that which any other human union could ever achieve. Precisely when the Eucharist is understood in the intimacy of the union of each person with the Lord, it becomes also a social sacrament to the highest degree.
Joseph Ratzinger
I don't have a link for it, but it was on a FR thread sometime back in the fall, I think.
This is the proof of the authenticity of my love for Christ. If I am united with Christ, I am together with my neighbour, and this unity is not limited to the moment of communion, but only begins here. It becomes life, becomes flesh and blood, in the everyday experience of sharing life with my neighbour. Thus, the individual realities of my communicating and being part of the life of the Church are inseparably linked to one another.
Isn't this derivative though of what he believes to be proper or authentic reception of the Eucharist? I'm not arguing against the principle, I'm arguing against what he believes to be the telling factor of authenticity. In other words, if a Christian is in struggle with his neighbor, does this mean his love of Christ is not authentic? Is it an end or a process?
And if this properly understood love of Christ results from us being subsumed into his Body and Being by reception of the Eucharist, then he or she who is not at one with their neighbor has received the Eucharist in a futile way. Is that what he's saying?
Where does the First Commandment fit in to all of this? It would seem to me that reception of the Eucharist provides a means of understanding and keeping the first, and that stuggle should be borne before the Second is even possible.
As I said in my first post, I may not understand what he's really getting at. I just might not have the capacity.
This may be partly due to the fact that this is a translation, and the translators may have put it into that kind of terminology and flavor. It may also be that Ratzinger is a German, and influenced in his language because of cutting his teeth on the writings of German theologians -- Catholic and Protestant.
We in the Orthodox Church have this from time to time. Fr. Alexander Schmemann, for instance, is the most famous (or infamous -- depending on one's perspective) theologian in the American Russian diaspora. I am told that he was actually, in practice, quite conservative and reverent liturgically. Yet, reading his "Introduction to Liturgical Theology" or "For the Life of the World" is sheer torture for anyone steeped in Orthodox thought. This is because Schmemann, even though he was in many ways a Russian's Russian, in other ways, he was heavily influenced by the folks at Union Theological, et al, and wrote in ways that seems designed to bring respectability in their eyes, by using their same convoluted and mushy language ("emmantizing the eschaton" and all that sort of thing.)
I had to look up something in the "Introduction to Liturgical Theology" because of a discussion I was having with my priest (who knew and liked Schmemann), and I think I would rather have had a root canal. I have to confess that while I'd probably enjoy sitting down with Cardinal Ratzinger and chatting over a whiskey or a beer, I wouldn't be able to make it through 100 pages of his kind of writing, if this is representative.
This may all seem rather petty, but for us Orthodox, it is not only important what we say and how we believe, but also how we say it. We have many examples just in the 20th century of highly educated bishops and theologians in the Orthodox Church who nonetheless rigorously used the Church's relatively simple and straightforward patristic language in communicating what the Church teaches (St. Justin Popovich and St. Nicholai of Zhicha of the Serbian Church, the late Fr. John Romanides and the still living Metr. Hierotheos Vlachos of Greece spring to mind).
I recently read something written by Abp. Christodoulos of Greece (their current primate), and was struck by the fact that this was a highly educated man (and it comes through), and yet the flavor of his writing and speaking was utterly patristic and didn't smack of a paper presented at a "theological symposium" -- even though that was exactly where it was presented!
I agree, by the way, that from what I have read of Ratzinger, he is pretty traditional by Catholic standards, and thus I would expect that there is more to his thought on this matter than what we see here.
That's a very good point, Debbie! Though an organic sense of community is a great blessing, the only one responsible for the state our soul is ourself, for God has given us free will, for use or abuse.
The Liturgy of the undivided Church? Was there even such a thing? Though many of the traditional liturgies have much in common, local uses developed quite early in Christian history, which then became liturgical rites. The challenge of Protestantism is the reason why the Latin West, for the most part, only has one rite.
Thanks for the link. Its always better to see the whole piece! As Agrarian suggested, some of this seems a bit mushy, but perhaps its just that the "worldliness" (that's probably not the right word) of it seems a bit off putting to me. By that I mean that the "social justice" type aspects of what he says isn't something we think about a great deal. It seems to look towards a sort of materialism which is not of great concern to Orthodoxy. In other words, the world seems to play a big part in what he is saying ought to be the focus of the Church.
Yes, of course, there is historical evidence that the bread was received in the hand in the past (in a reverent way, as your quotation from St. Cyril shows -- not in the casual way of taking it in one hand and popping into one's mouth like a gumdrop that I see done by most parishioners in Catholic churches.)
But I ask the question: Why? What was deficient in the pre-Vat II way of receiving communion that created an urgency to change the practice, other than the absence of communing with the wine as well? Why the big push to go to receiving in the hand? Why were people forced to receive communion in the hand, and not allowed to receive it in the old way, in many parishes? Historical evidence that it used to be received in the hand is really not a reason to do it that way. There are lots of practices from the ancient church that developed into something else as the centuries went by, practices that have not been reintroduced. I always challenge those who want to reintroduce something "old" (the effect of which is usually to have a "modernizing" effect) that if they want to do this -- fine. But then they should reintroduce everything else from pious practice in that day and age -- but that usually won't go over, since the praxis of those ancient times was usually very strict and severe by comparison to our age. So usually there are no takers.
The Catholic Church could have added the chalice to the existing way of receiving the host. It could even have taught its members to receive it as St. Cyril directed, and done so on bended knee -- the Anglicans have long received communion in exactly this way.
It seems clear at least to this outsider that there was a concerted and radical effort to "demystify" communion in the post Vat II church, at least in America. Why would it be so important to do this? There were of course things that were a bit over the top: veneration of the Blessed Sacrament is unknown in the Orthodox Church, for instance. But couldn't these things have been de-emphasized without the radical changes that actually took place?
And this brings us back to Ratzinger -- where will he take Catholic piety with regard to the Eucharist? Will he take it in a direction that the Orthodox recognize as being in the same spirit as the way we receive communion, even if the mechanics differ? The last Pope had a great concern for Orthodox-Catholic unity, and as I have pointed out before, the only unity that will matter is the one that the faithful recognize. The bishops and theologians can talk and write and sign agreements until they are blue in the face, but until Catholic and Orthodox faithful can walk into each other's parishes and recognize the same faith and the same spirit, it will be meaningless and there will be no union.
Right now, what I see in Catholic churches in this regard is more foreign to Orthodoxy even than what I remember from my Anglican days (I wasn't in Catholic churches pre-Vat II.)
And this brings me back to one of my recurrent themes: to see what is believed, we must see how worship takes place and what is done. Ratzinger's essay in many respects, even though it is in language that is not patristic, reflects some aspects of the Orthodox understanding of communion better than was perhaps the case 75 years ago in the Catholic church. But my question would have to be where Ratzinger's theory will take Catholic praxis should he become Pope.
Veneration of the Blessed Sacrament is "over-the-top!?" It is an organic development in the West. The first major time the Blessed Sacrament was displayed to the public in a monstrance was after the Miracle of Lanciano, Italy, where during the Consecration, the bread became actual heart tissue and the wine became actual type AB blood. It is still there to this day.
"The premise he's getting to here was true even before the New Covenant, wasn't it? The injunction to love one's neighbor as oneself predates Christ. Or is that not relevant?"
Relevant to me in this sense, this comment as well as more in the linked piece again seems to me to evince a sort of worldliness, or perhaps better said, a focus on the cares and tribulations of the world in a universal sense. I am not saying that we shouldn't be concerned for our brother's welfare, but I get the feeling what the Cardinal is talking about is a material sort of welfare, that that is the paramount concern rather than his spiritual welfare and in strengthening each other to keep our eyes focused on the mark, which is God. Of course, we all fail at that everyday, but keeping our eye on the mark has to be our primary goal.
That's exactly what I was trying to say and couldn't and didn't.
That is the position of the Patristic church. Zizioulas says it even more emphatically. Eucharist--the communion event--constitutes the church. It is not an act of a pre-existing church.
But for Ratzinger, the meaning of communion is to become like Christ. It is tied to history and the imitatio Christi--how we will live our life in this world in relation to others. It is how we experience and understand Christology.
For Zizioulas, communion is the action of the Holy Spirit and a preview of the future eschata--our life at the end of history. We are defined by who we will be and not through some moral attainment. This is the realm of Pneumatology.
And perhaps the benefit of ecumenism is a synthesis of these two approaches.
I think I'm with Pyro on this one, Agrarian. I suspect you have been with the priest when he carries the Eucharist to the sick our home bound and have noticed the reverence with which it is carried, or the full prostrations of the Faithful once the consecration has taken place, or the reverence shown by the Faithful during the Entrance in a Presantified Liturgy. Personally I don't know why the devotion of the "Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament" developed in the West, but it seems to me to demonstrate a profound respect for the Body and Blood of Christ. I do know that in times past, Orthodox hierarchs in Greece on some of the islands with a Roman Catholic presence, actually participated in processions of the Eucharist encased in monstrances. For me, this is hardly over the top and graphically affirms our belief in the Real Presence.
Now that is an excellent observation in almost all its parts! I say almost because I fear that any "substantial" focus on the world will, given our nature, lead us to become so concerned with things of this world that we could end up defining the Faith in terms of what the world sees as important. The meltdown of ECUSA and the abuses and innovations which infect elements of the Roman Church at least in the First World today are object lessons in this. How do we inculcate the "imitatio Christi" if indeed by that we mean a type of social concern and at the same time avoid this?
"This is the realm of Pneumatology."
My favorite, if most confusing, realm of the Faith.
But all of the acts of veneration take place in the context of the Liturgy or of giving Communion. Your account of certain Greeks (I assume on Corfu?) using a monstrance and having processions is the first I have heard. It certainly reflects a correct theology of the Real Presence in a sense, but I would also point out that the Orthodox Church has never defined exactly what Real Presence means. Everything we know is contained in the Liturgy and the pre- and post-communion prayers, and all of this is in the context of Communion, and I suspect that this is why the Orthodox Church hasn't developed a similar veneration that is cut off from the Liturgy and receiving of communion.
From what I have seen, the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has largely fallen by the wayside in current Catholic piety -- probably by design. I don't think that this means that the Catholic church no longer believes in Real Presence, but rather that the shift has taken place to the more Orthodox position that the Body and Blood of Christ are to be received, not put in a box or monstrance and adored. My point was that as an Orthodox Christian I agree with that aspect of post Vat II changes, but that I think in the process of making this shift, the trend seems to have gone toward downright impiety in many cases. A fellow-FReeper told me of being at one of the late Pope's "stadium Masses," and seeing hosts pieces of hosts on the ground, and having "extraordinary Eucharistic ministers" gather up the left-over hosts into porous burlap bags, and seeing crumbs sifting out through the holes.
This sort of thing simply wouldn't have happened in the days of widespread veneration of the Blessed Sacrament, to be sure. But this sort of thing doesn't happen in Orthodox Churches at all, either, and we don't have a similar Adoration. It is possible to have a great veneration and reverence toward the consecrated gifts *and* have these gifts really only be used and venerated in the context of receiving communion. I hope that makes what I was trying to say more clear.
When an Orthodox Christian reads the liturgies in use in the West back, say, prior to the 800's, he immediately recognizes that while it isn't the Byzantine form of worship, this is one and the same faith. When I read the writings of St. Leo or St. Gregory, Popes of Rome, I recognize instantly that this is the same faith and the same Church as that of St. John Chysostom or St. John of Damascus. I don't feel that when I read Ratzinger, though, for example. I certainly don't feel that when I am glancing through a missal in the pews of a modern Catholic church.
During the Vat II and post Vat II period, much liturgical revision took place, and much of it was supposedly based on scholarship and ancient practices. But the net effect was to make Catholic worship more like what goes on in a modern liberal Protestant church than like the worship of the Orthodox Church, which has barely changed in a very, very long time.
If the point to the liturgical revision was to return to the practices of the ancient Church, I would expect the worship and popular piety to be more familiar-feeling to me as an Orthodox Christian -- not less so, as has actually been the case.
Again, I wish to stress that what the Catholic church does is its own business, and it is not our place as Orthodox Christians to tell Catholics what to do. This thread started with the open-ended question of what the implications are for Orthodox-Catholic reunion are, based on the direction a given new Pope might take things, and it is in that context that I am writing
"But all of the acts of veneration take place in the context of the Liturgy or of giving Communion. Your account of certain Greeks (I assume on Corfu?) using a monstrance and having processions is the first I have heard."
Actually, I am aware of it happening both on Santorini and Andros, but the hierarchs were in the procession, the Roman Catholic hierarch or priest carried the monstrance.
"...I think in the process of making this shift, the trend seems to have gone toward downright impiety in many cases. A fellow-FReeper told me of being at one of the late Pope's "stadium Masses," and seeing hosts pieces of hosts on the ground, and having "extraordinary Eucharistic ministers" gather up the left-over hosts into porous burlap bags, and seeing crumbs sifting out through the holes."
I have seen something similar at an NO Mass I attended about 2 years ago. An old lady was walking back to her seat nibbling on the host and pieces were falling all over the floor. No one did anything. Other people saw this and did nothing. But I can't see how the devotion of Adoration resulted in this...quite the opposite in fact as I detect a sort of laissez faire attitude about the Eucharist among the Roman faithful which is different from what I observed in my father and the other Irish members of the family when I was a kid.
Millions of middle-aged women would beg to differ with you! ;>)
Kolo and Kosta:
I didn't read the cardinal's piece as asserting some sort of magical, instant theosis...but rather an ongoing transformation of us by our participation in the Holy Eucharist. And I wouldn't read it to be exclusive of other ways in which theosis occurs--this piece was merely focusing on the Eucharist.
Anne
"During the Vat II and post Vat II period, much liturgical revision took place, and much of it was supposedly based on scholarship and ancient practices. But the net effect was to make Catholic worship more like what goes on in a modern liberal Protestant church than like the worship of the Orthodox Church, which has barely changed in a very, very long time.
If the point to the liturgical revision was to return to the practices of the ancient Church, I would expect the worship and popular piety to be more familiar-feeling to me as an Orthodox Christian -- not less so, as has actually been the case"
As most of you know, I had the rather unique experience, as an Orthodox kid, of being an altarboy at Tridentine Masses. They are my image of a Roman Liturgy. What I see today is, well, protestant, and not very high church at that. Of course it is none of our business as Orthodox to tell Roman Catholics what to do with their liturgy, save to observe that, as Agrarian said earlier, no reunion will ever succeed until both Romans and Orthodox are comfortable worshipping in each other's Liturgies. This is a practical consideration and unfortunately, right now I suspect virtually all of us Orthodox would be as uncomfortable in an NO parish as a member of the Catholic Workers movement would be at our Divine Liturgy.
I must (again!) not have been clear. The Adoration certainly did not produce this. My point was that in the age of the Adoration, this would *not* have happened. I said, in essence, that while the *de-emphasizing* of the Adoration in the modern Catholic church reflects, in theory, a move toward a more Orthodox view of Eucharist and communion, it has gone hand in had with impious practices such as we both have mentioned.
My point was that the Orthodox experience shows that one can both have deep reverence for the Body and Blood of Christ *and* have a liturgical theology that makes such reverence inseparable from the act of communion.
Does that make sense? If not, I'm just going to give up! :-)
This story will horrify you: The priest for whom I served as deacon for a time was an alcoholic, and never consumed the "leftover" Eucharist. One of the altar guild ladies was horrified by this and asked him why he threw the Eucharistic bread, Jesus' body, away. He replied, "Jesus got Himself into it, He'll get Himself back out."
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