Guarding the Chalice

Pravoslavic RU ^ | 04-03-2014 | Nathan Duffy

[NRx]

When a faith is highly traditional—so traditional that her Tradition is seen as nothing less than the presence of God living and breathing in the life of the Church—it is sure to clash with the sensibilities of a modern, critical, and pluralistic culture such as our own.

One of the many sources of friction between the Orthodox Church and contemporary culture is in the exercise of authority.

As Lockean, democratic, social-contract theories, with an emphasis on individual rights, have come to dominate the way we instinctively think about morality and social life over the past few centuries, Christian moral and metaphysical foundations have eroded. This largely accounts for our extreme distrust of authority in every form. We don’t want kings or emperors, we want democracies; we don’t want bishops rightly dividing the word of truth and accountable to the Church and Tradition, we want our singular conscience and the Bible; we don’t want stable social institutions, we want revolutionaries, iconoclasts, and ‘progress.’ This modern sickness runs deep.

One of the primary spiritual manifestations of this illness can be seen in our disposition toward the sacraments of the Church. In particular, holy orders, confession, the Eucharist, and the relationship between them.

For many who come in contact with the Orthodox Church in our modern age, one of the more jarring aspects is a zealous guarding of the chalice by her bishops and presbyters. If someone is not a baptized Orthodox Christian in good standing, having recently confessed, they are turned away from the communion chalice—though practically this entails refraining from approaching in the first place. For contemporary American Christians, this practice appears to be a grievous sin and a manifestation of hubris on the part of the Orthodox Church. But the criterion of truth and love is not based upon the cultural sensibilities of modern America, but rather Christ and his Church.

(Read the rest at the linked site.)

[NRx]

"The Holy Things are for the holy!" -The Divine Liturgy

[Jeff Chandler]

the criterion of truth and love is not based upon the cultural sensibilities of modern America, but rather Christ and his Church