BB, the term metousiosis basically, means trans+substantiation. The Orthodox simply say they believe the Holy Spirit changes the blessed bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ without going into the "mechanics" of the mystery.
One thing with the Orthodox church is they all tend to be very "ethnic"
Try Orthodox Church of America (OCA) churches. They are all in English.
Every time I see papal Mass in Rome, he sings it in Latin, and lay readers read in their native languages. The Catholic Church is also very ethnic. Pre-Vatican II Church was universal in that the Mass was sung the same way in the same language in the Philippines and in Buenos Aires and in New York and in Rome, and Berlin.
I don't buy that Catholics can't learn Latin when each Missal used to have the words of the Mass in Latin on one side and in the local language in the other. After years, a Catholic cold attend Mass in Tokyo and hear the same familiar language which he or she understood.
We all learn how to read and write, how to be computer literate, how to add and subtract, yet for the love of God people cannot or won't learn the language that unites them! Amazing. I must conclude that some Catholics must love God less than their computers because no one was born speaking Latin and no one was born computer-literate.
If Orthodox Christians wanted to get some Catholic converts, I suppose the Orthodox Church could start their own "western rite" churches that followed the Roman rituals but were under the authority of Constantinople, if they wanted to.
I think the whole reason why the Orthodox church doesn't take a stance on how the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ is because the schism occurred before the Catholics weighed in on the matter and tried to explain what happens physically. I think the Lutherans accept the same doctrine and have their own version (it was mentioned earlier on this thread -- the idea that the body and blood of Jesus is UNDER the bread and wine). As a Catholic I probably side more with the Orthodox on this one -- the question of HOW God makes the bread and wine become his body and blood while retaining its original appearance is something that cannot be fully explained by human minds and remains a mystery.
As you can see from my thread above, I complained on these threads how some Protestants seem to lump the entire Christian community as accepting their doctrines. For example they constantly claim the veneration of Mary is a "Catholic thing" and the real presence of Jesus at communion is a "Catholic thing", both supposedly rejected by "non-Catholics", when in fact this and many other doctrine are accepted by both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and in fact the only ones rejecting it are the bulk of protestant churches (and not even all of them, since Lutherans and Anglicians tend to support the traditional POV). As an Orthodox Christian would you agree on that point?
Finally regarding the Agape feast, I think the reason for that was the early communion ceremonies were simply extended versions of Passover dinners, since the early Christians came from a Jewish background. Eventually they decided to make the passover meal a separate thing from the communion event, and soon did away with the passover meal all together.