Series on Divine Liturgy, Part 5

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The Communal Liturgy

Oops!

Scripture is a great thing, and I enjoy teaching it. But, have you noticed, it’s full of deplorable people! 

People who disobey authority. People who lie. People who are cowards. People who are murderers. People who commit sexual immorality. People who think of only evil. People who abuse drugs and alcohol … and all that happens in the first 9 chapters of Genesis! Imagine what we’d find if we surveyed the entire Bible!

Perhaps a peculiar aspect of our tradition is the pre-communion prayers. Now, preparation to receive the Body and Blood of Christ is good, but the odd thing is that these prayers ask us to identify with people that we typically despise. 

Take the first pre-communion prayer, by St. Basil the Great. There, he asks us to identify as a harlot. Now, harlots, as we all know, are unfaithful. They’re unable to commit to a relationship. In the Old Testament, Israel is often called a harlot because, as a nation, Israel was unfaithful to God—they went after other gods, worshipping them and forming relationships with them.

St. Basil also asks us to see ourselves as a thief, someone who has made a living by taking from others, depriving others of either what’s their’s by right, or what they’ve earned through hard work. This particular thief, the one St. Basil has in mind, was crucified for his immoral behavior.

But, St. Basil doesn’t stop there. He asks us to empathize with the publican. We don’t use the word “publican” very often in modern English: it means “tax-collector.” In scripture, a tax-collector was a cheat and a Benedict Arnold. They were usually Judeans who sided with the Romans. They over taxed their own countrymen, and, in this way, betrayed their own people. This is how we’re to see ourselves?

And, if this wasn’t enough, St. Basil wants us to see ourselves as the prodigal son. Here’s a person who wished his dad was dead so that he could inherit his dad’s money. Then what does he do with it? He squanders it in dissolute living. 

So much for seeing ourselves as worthy in approaching communion! 

Ugh!

St. Basil pulls no punches. In asking us to identify with these figures, he’s using them as a mirror. He’s holding them up, in front of us, so that we can see ourselves, our humanity, as it truly is: broken, sick, and in need of healing.

He’s asking us to consider what would happen if we follow our own passions? What would happen if we use our freedom to do our will instead of God’s.

As we read through the prayer, we realize that St. Basil does help us with an answer. If these people were nothing more than the behaviors I’ve just mentioned, they would stand condemned, and their souls and bodies would be afflicted. 

In the seventh prayer, by St. Simeon the New Theologian, it says that we are like grass and we’re in danger of being burned up by fire. That is wiped out, existing no more.

And that’s the fate of all of us without Christ. 

Aha!

Thankfully, we do have Christ. And, thankfully, we do have a choice. We don’t have to be burned up. 

Instead of the path of the harlot, the thief, the publican, and the prodigal, what option do we have?

We have communion, offered every Sunday in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at different aspects of the Liturgy. We’ve seen it as remembrance, as thanksgiving, as offering, as scriptural, and now, today, we see the Liturgy as communion.

Whee!

Catholics, like Orthodox Christians, believe that the bread and wine are, truly, the Body and Blood of Christ. However, a 2019 Pew Research study found that 69% of U.S. Catholics believe that the bread and wine are merely symbolic rather than Christ’s real presence. Unfortunately, we don’t have statistics for Orthodox Christians. But, I imagine that there’s a fair number of us who may also believe they’re symbolic. Yet, the Church insists that the Eucharist really is Christ. We really are communing with the living God.

This is an important point. If communion is merely symbolic, as many Protestants also believe, then there’s no mystery, there’s nothing salvific about the sacrament. 

Through the Incarnation, the act of the Son of God becoming enfleshed, we believe that our nature is healed of the disease of sin. Because God became a human, he was able to die and destroy death once and for all. Now, through communion, God is able to unite with us, individually, thus healing us and giving us life.

The pre-communion prayers walk us through the process.

First, as I mentioned, they get us to identify with sinners found in scripture. We see that we too are sinners and need to repent of how we’ve gone astray. Or, perhaps, to put a different spin on it, we too are sick with our passions and need Christ the Great Physician. 

Once we have this wakeup call, we can actually repent; we can change our minds. The fourth pre-communion prayer, by St. John Chrysostom, guides us:

“[Christ,] you enter and enlighten my darkened reasoning … For you did not turn from the harlot when she came to you in tears. Neither did you reject the publican who repented, nor the thief when he acknowledged your kingdom. Nor did you despise the persecutor when he converted. But all who come to you in repentance, you reckon among your friends …”

Tears, repentance, acknowledgement, and conversion. You see, all those awful people in scripture … they teach us that no one is beyond redemption.

Now, having had a realization of our own short-comings, we change our hearts, we boldly approach and commune with God by partaking in the Eucharist. And what happens? St. Basil’s prayer gives us a glimpse:

We partake for  “… a provision for eternal life, and for a good defense at [God’s] fearful judgement, so that [we], as partner[s] with all [God’s] elect, may also receive those undefiled good things which [God] has prepared for them that love [him] …” 

We become the children of God, transformed, and enter again into paradise.

In his second pre-communion prayer, St. Basil asks that communion, 

“… move [us] to boldness and love toward [God], to amend and keep firm [our] lives, and may [communion] ever be in [us] unto the increase of virtue, unto the keeping of [God’s] commandments, unto the communion of the Holy Spirit, as a provision for eternal life, and for a good defense at [God’s] fearful judgment seat, and not unto judgment nor unto condemnation.” 

In other words, communion is forgiveness, healing, transformation, and life … all wrapped up into one.

Yeah!

So, what’s our response? 

Well, firstly, if you don’t do this already, add the pre-communion prayers to your prayer rule. I do mine Sunday morning, but, if it works better for you, do them Saturday morning or Saturday night. There are a few of them, so, if you don’t have time, start with reading one. Maybe change which one you read each week, so, after a while, you will get to pray them all. If you have a family, read them together. You can take turns, each member of the family reading a prayer. This is a great way to instruct your children in prayer and the meaning of communion.

What else can we do? We can partake!

When Jesus celebrated the Last Supper, he didn’t just take the bread and say, “This is my Body.” He said, “Take, eat.” He didn’t just hold up the cup and turn it into his blood. He said, “Drink of this, all of you.” In other words, Jesus offered himself to us. All we have to do is reach out and accept him by eating and drinking.

It is interesting, in Greek the words “Take, eat” and “Drink” are in the imperative mood. This means that they are a command to us. Jesus isn’t offering it in a “if-you-want-then-do-this” sort of way. No! He’s giving us a command to participate and partake.

For this reason, I’ve been growing more and more uncomfortable with streaming our services beyond the Gospel reading. After all, for those watching online, you can’t obey Christ to come and partake through a computer screen. And, I believe that this is an important aspect of the Divine Liturgy. Worship isn’t entertainment. It’s participatory.

And, finally, what can we do?

We can remember God’s love in giving himself for our salvation. It was his body that was broken and his blood that was spilled so that we could have communion with God. May his sacrifice ever be for our deepening relationship with God.

Amen.