Thursday, February 4, 2010

Fr Schmemann (again) on the boundaries of the Eucharist

In this passage, Fr Schmemann talks about the Eucharist taking us into heaven, the age to come. Go HERE to read his entire essay, Theology and Eucharist.

' . . . the Eucharist . . . is a passage, a procession leading the Church into "heaven," into her fulfillment as the Kingdom of God. And it is precisely the reality of this passage into the Eschaton that conditions the transformation of our offering - bread and wine - into the new food of the new creation, of our meal into the Messianic Banquet and the Koinonia of the Holy Spirit. Thus, for example, the coming together of Christians on the Lord's Day, their visible unity "sealed" by the priest ("ecclesia in episcopo and episcopus in ecclesia") is indeed the beginning of the sacrament, the "gathering into the Church." And the entrance is not a symbolical representation of Christ going to preach but the real entrance - the beginning of the Church's ascension to the Throne of God, made possible, inaugurated by the ascension of Christ's Humanity. The offertory - the solemn transfer of bread and wine to the altar is again not the symbol of Christ's burial (or of His entrance into Jerusalem) but a real sacrifice - the transfer of our lives and bodies and of the whole "matter" of the whole creation into heaven, their integration in the unique and all-embracing sacrifice of all sacrifices, that of Christ. The prosphora (offering) makes possible the anaphora - the lifting up of the Church, her eschatological fulfillment by the Eucharist. For Eucharist - "thanksgiving" - is indeed the very content of the redeemed life, the very reality of the Kingdom as "joy and peace in the Holy Spirit," the end and the fulfillment of our ascension into heaven. Therefore, the Eucharist is consecration and the Fathers called both the prayer of consecration and the consecrated gifts "Eucharist." The insistence by the Orthodox on the epiclesis is nothing else, in its ultimate meaning, but the affirmation that the consecration, i.e., the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, takes place in the "new eon" of the Holy Spirit. Our earthly food becomes the Body and Blood of Christ because it has been assumed, accepted, lifted up into the "age to come," where Christ is indeed the very life, the very food of all life and the Church is His Body, "the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23). It is there, finally, that we partake of the food of immortality, are made participants of the Messianic Banquet, of the New Pascha, it is from there, "having seen the true light, having received the heavenly Spirit," that we return into "this world" ("let us depart in peace") as witnesses of the Kingdom which is "to come." Such is the sacrament of the Church, the "leitourgia" which eternally transforms the Church into what she is, makes her the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.'

1 comments:

Alice C. Linsley said...

Lovely! Thank you for posting this food for thought.

I pray you are well, dear Bishop David.

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