| I. The epiclesis – a rule of faith? The problem of the epiclesis, its meaning, and its importance – or, alternatively, expendability – for the consecration of bread and wine during a Eucharistic prayer has long been a highly polemical issue 1 . Despite their differences, scholars and theologians have often taken for granted that it was the Byzantine Church that always believed in a consecratory power of the epiclesis. Indeed, from the fourth century on (i.e., from the very starting point of the development of the Byzantine liturgy), the Byzantine Eucharistic prayers contained explicit epicleses with strong consecratory statements. In this article I will demonstrate, however, that, while the Byzantines undoubtedly were very concerned about the epiclesis recited during their Eucharistic liturgy 2 , its mere existence did not always signify the importance it is ascribed in late- and post-Byzantine theological literature. For the Byzantines often pointed to some other elements of the rite as «consecratory», and were in nowise strangers to the idea of a Eucharistic consecration independent of an epiclesis. II. The Origins of the Epiclesis II.1. A Brief Overview The origins of the epiclesis are obscure and much debated. The earliest extant eucharistic prayers from the Didache contain no explicit epicletic petition 3 (though some scholars identify the acclamation «Maranatha» from Did. 10.6 with a proto-epiclesis 4 ). In pre-Nicaean Christian liturgical usage the words πικαλεν/πικαλεσθαι and πκλησις, as has been demonstrated 5 , referred more to «naming/applying the name» than to «calling forth in prayer» 6 . It is, therefore, tempting to suggest that the epiclesis in its later sense of «a call to God/Spirit/Logos to come and show/sanctify the bread and wine» is a result of the development of the early epicletic «naming the divine Name» formulae. This possibility comes to light when one compares Origen " s commentary on 1Corinthians 7:5, where he describes the Eucharistic bread as the one «over which the Name of God and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit has been invoked» (FragmCor 34) 7 , with a baptismal and a Eucharistic prayer from Acta Thomae: |
| Introduction 1. Personhood and Being I. From Mask to Person: The Birth of an Ontology of Personhood II. From Biological to Ecclesial Existence: The Ecclesiological Significance of the Person 2. Truth and Communion I. Introduction: The Problem of Truth in the Patristic Era II. Truth, Being and History: The Greek Patristic Synthesis 1. The “Logos” Approach 2. The Eucharistic approach 3. The Trinitarian Approach 4. The “Apophatic” Approach 5. The Christological Approach 6. The Approach through the “Eikon” III. Truth and Salvation: The Existential Implications of Truth as Communion 1. Truth and Fallen Existence: the Rupture between Being and Communion 2. Truth and the Person 3. Truth and the Savior IV. Truth and the Church: Ecclesiological Consequences of the Greek Patristic Synthesis 1. The Body of Christ formed in the Spirit 2. The Eucharist as the Locus of Truth 3. Christ, the Spirit and the Church I. Introduction II. The Problem of the Synthesis between Christology and Pneumatology III. Implications of the Synthesis for Ecclesiology IV. Conclusions 4. Eucharist and Catholicity I. The “One” and the “Many” in the Eucharistic Consciousness of the Early Church II. The Composition and Structure of the Eucharistic Community as Reflections of Catholicity III. The Eucharistic Community and the “Catholic Church in the World” IV. Some General Conclusions 5. Apostolic Continuity and Succession I. The Two Approaches, “Historical” and “Eschatological,” to Apostolic Continuity II. Towards a Synthesis of the “Historical” and the “Eschatological” Approach III. Concrete Consequences for the Life of Church IV. Conclusions for the Ecumenical Debate 6. Ministry and Communion I. The Theological Perspective II. The Relational Character of the Ministry III. The “Sacramental” Character of the Ministry IV. Ministry and Unity V. The “Validity” of the Ministry 7. The Local Church In a Perspective of Communion I. The Historical and Ecclesiological Background II. Questions Concerning the Theology of the Local Church Today 1. Ecclesiality and Locality 2. Locality and Universality 3. The Local Church in a Context of Division List of Sources |
| The Holy Synod noted the deterioration of the situation in world Orthodoxy and called a Pan-Orthodox Council discussion the only way out of the current crisis. Photo: UOC On December 6, 2019, the last session of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church took place in the residence of the Primate of the UOC in the territory of the Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. Having discussed the latest developments in the sphere of inter-Orthodox relations, the Synod made an official statement, the text of which was published on the UOC DECR website. In the Statement, the Synod of the UOC noted that the crisis resulting from the anti-canonical actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Ukraine is not a problem of bilateral relations between the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow and concerns all Local Orthodox Churches, as it “destroys the very foundations of the life and mission of the Church of Christ”. In this regard, the Holy Synod welcomed the initiative of His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos III of the Holy City of Jerusalem and All Palestine to convene a Pan-Orthodox Council in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan since it considers the Pan-Orthodox Council discussion to be the only way out of the current crisis. The UOJ publishes the full text of the Statement of the Holy Synod of the UOC. STATEMENT OF THE HOLY SYNOD OF THE UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH December 6, 2019 The Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, after careful deliberation of the recent developments in the sphere of inter-Orthodox relations, makes the following statement: 1. We are compelled to declare that due to the anti-canonical actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Ukraine, and also in connection with the actions perpetrated by the Primates of the Greek and Alexandrian Orthodox Churches, namely by their entering into Eucharistic communion with the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, the situation in Orthodox Christianity has grown worse not only at the administrative but also at the spiritual level – that is, on the level of ecclesial communion in the Holy Sacraments. |
| 7. The Local Church In a Perspective of Communion I. The Historical and Ecclesiological Background The basic ecclesiological principle applying to the notion of the local Church in the Orthodox tradition is that of the identification of the Church with the eucharistic community. Orthodox ecclesiology is based on the idea that wherever there is the eucharist there is the Church in its fulness as the Body of Christ. The concept of the local Church derives basically from the fact that the eucharist is celebrated at a given place and comprises by virtue of its catholicity all the members of the Church dwelling in that place. The local Church, therefore, derives its meaning from a combination of two basic ecclesiological principles: (a) The catholic nature of the eucharist. This means that each eucharistic assembly should include all the members of the Church of a particular place, with no distinction whatsoever with regard to ages, professions, sexes, races, languages, etc. (b) The geographical nature of the eucharist, which means that the eucharistic assembly – and through it the Church – is always a community of some place (e.g. the Church of Thessalonika, of Corinth, etc. in the Pauline letters). 552 The combination of the above two ecclesiological principles results in the canonical provision that there should be only one eucharistic assembly in each place. But the geographical principle gives rise inevitably to the question of what we mean by a “place”: how are we to define the limits of a particular place which should be the basis of only one eucharistic assembly and thus of one Church? This question receives particular significance when the complexities of the early historical developments are taken into account. Since the Orthodox tradition was formed, both ecclesiologically and canonically, on the basis of these early historical developments, we must examine them briefly. Already in New Testament times there seems to be a tendency to identify κκλησα or even the κκλησα το Θεο with the assembly of the Christians of a particular city. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Church (Orthodox Ecclesiology) TAMARA GRDZELIDZE THE PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH The purpose of the church is to restore fallen humanity and thereby reconcile the whole creation to God. Its sacramental life is the means to fulfill this purpose. The divine economy of salvation is the foundational principle of the church. The mystery of human salvation leads to the mystery of the salvation of the whole creation which is God’s ultimate goal. In this life the church bears witness to a new existence revealed through the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ – “The Church has been planted in the world as a Paradise,” says St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 5.20.2) – and this new reality already proclaimed is destined finally to attain the status of the new creation. The nature of the church, as Orthodoxy understands it, is deeply experiential and accordingly it is difficult to describe it by any single formula that carries an overwhelming authority. The early church knew no such single doctrinal definition and the reason for this is that, according to Fr. Georges Florovsky (1972: 57), the reality of the church was only made manifest to the “spiritual vision” of the church fathers. The nature of the church can thus be experienced and described, but never fully defined. The closest approximation to a doctrinal definition within orthodoxy is the clause in the creed, which affirms that the church is “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.” The church is the place par excellence of a believer’s participation in the mysteries of God. The faithful participate in the divine mysteries from the very beginning of their life in Christ through the sacrament of baptism and reach the height of that participation in the Eucharistic celebration. The very essence of this participation is experiential, something that can be readily observed in the case of children whose love exceeds their understanding, or orthodox people of little knowledge but great faith. The love of God manifested to human beings and creation is reciprocated in faith by the church’s constant returning the love of God through the praise of the faithful. This human participation in the divine mysteries is nurtured always by the belief and knowledge that “God is love” (1 John 4.8), and this movement of praise that constitutes the church’s inner life is the height of creation – its meaning and fulfillment. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Divine Liturgy, Orthodox JOHN A. MCGUCKIN The divine liturgy of the Orthodox Church is its spiritual heart and soul. A closer and more revealing knowledge can be had of Orthodoxy by an observer from the study of the rituals and prayers than of any other external thing related to the church. The word “liturgy” (leitourgia) derives from the ancient Greek (pre-Christian) term for “public works” and grew in significance to mean a work conducted for the benefit of the state or community by a benefactor. It was with some of these residual associations that the term was then taken over by the writers of the Greek Septuagint Bible, and used by them to signify the Temple rituals of ancient Israel. It thus became, for the early Christians, the chief word to signify the divine “worship and sacrifice” of the church, a term which would distinguish it from the pagan sacrificial cults around them. The divine liturgy predominantly means the Eucharistic service of the Orthodox Church (often simply referred to as “the liturgy”) and the other mysteries (what the western churches generally call the “sacramental” services). Orthodoxy’s preferred term is mysterion. The latter word means “thing to be silent about” and was used by the apostles and fathers with deliberate analogous reference to the pre-Christian mysteries, or mystery religions, where the element of the arcana (refusing to divulge the contents of the initiation) became a very important identifying mark of the adherent. The mysteries are experiences of Christian initiation that are not easily explicable, and each one of them is deeply resonant with the grace of the Lord who has empowered them by his Holy Spirit, so as to use them as primary ways of manifesting his life-giving presence and energy within the earthly church until the Eschaton. As Sergei Bulgakov once described it, the mysteries are the continuing signs that Pentecost is still occurring within the heart of Christ’s church, and their youthful, unfailing freshness is a sure sign of the authenticity and truth of the church (Bulgakov 1988: 110–11). All the Christian mysteries are eschatological in essence. They stand, as does the earthly church itself, poised between the two ages: this age of conflicted loyalty to God, the expectation of the kingdom, and the next Aeon where the Kingdom of God will be revealed as all in all. (Each of the greater mysteries – baptism, chrismation, Eucharist, confession [metanoia or exomologesis], ordination, marriage, and anointing of the sick – has a separate entry in this encyclopedia and can be further studied there.) |
| Patriarch of Jerusalem: The Annunciation of the Theotokos Announces the infinite love of God Photo: en.jerusalem-patriarchate.info On Wednesday, April 7, 2021, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem celebrated the feast of the Annunciation of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos in the city of Nazareth, at the holy shrine where this event took place. On this feast, the whole Orthodox Church in joy and gratitude towards God, commemorates according to Saint Luke the Evangelist (Ch. 1:26-36), that Archangel Gabriel was sent by God to the Virgin Mary and announced that She was going to conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear in the flesh His Only Begotten Son. With Mary’s reply, “behold the maiden of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to thy word”, the Bodiless was made flesh, He became incarnate, for the sake of the rebirth, renovation, and salvation of the humankind from the corruption of death. This festive divine service was officiated by Patriarch Theophilos of Jerusalem, during which the Patriarch of Jerusalem delivered the following sermon : “O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name; shew forth his salvation from day to day” (Psalm 95:1-2), Prophet-King David chants. Beloved Brethren in Christ, Noble Christians “Today there is the true joy and gleefulness of the whole world,” Saint John Damascene says, praising the Annunciation to the Theotokos by Archangel Gabriel, in the holy place where the grace of the Holy Spirit has gathered us all to celebrate in Eucharist the annunciation of the “salvation of God”, the joyful message of the incarnation of God the Word by the pure flesh of the Ever-Virgin Mary in the city of Nazareth. “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28) the Archangel Gabriel exclaimed. The interpreters of Evangelist Luke’s testimony on this say: “because God told Eve she was going to bear children in sorrows, Eva’s sorrow is dispelled through this joy”. “Through ‘Hail’, Christ came to dispel the sorrow”. “He called her ‘full of grace’, as she was granted the grace beyond logic”. And “because the snake brought Eve the sorrow, rejoice, because the Lord is with Thee”. “One should know that at the time of the annunciation the Virgin conceived immediately paradoxically”. |
| Preliminary Remarks In this article I shall present the main results of my research of the prayers and other euchological elements peculiar to the oldest extant Russian Leitourgika (Sluzhebniki) manuscripts of the 13 th –14 th centuries. These antedate the Russian liturgical reform of the turn of the 14–15 th centuries, when new translations of liturgical texts, including the Diataxis of Philotheos Kokkinos and corresponding new redactions of the eucharistic formularies, were introduced into Russian worship. One can find the details of this research in a series of my Russian articles: «The Rite of the Divine Liturgy in the Oldest (11 th –14 th -centuries) Slavonic Euchologia» 1 (in this article one can also find a full bibliography on the topic), «The Prayers During Clergy Communion in the Old-Russian Leitourgika» 2 , «The Priestly Prayers before the Beginning of the Divine Liturgy in the Old-Russian Leitourgika» 3 , and «Additional Prayers at the End of the Divine Liturgy According to the Slavonic Leitourgika of the 11–14 th centuries " 4 . What follows is but a brief resume of the results I reached in those studies. There are thirty-two manuscripts of the oldest – I will call them pre- Philothean – Russian redactions of the eucharistic formularies of St. Basil (BAS) and St. John Chrysostom (CHR) 5 . These exclude four late-14 th -century witnesses which already contain the Diataxis of Philotheos and any later manuscripts (though many of these could still preserve this or that element of the pre-Philothean practice). What one finds in these sources is by no means a pure Constantinopolitan redaction of the liturgies of CHR, BAS and the Presanctified liturgy (PRES). Of course, this classical set of the three liturgies still consists here of the same prayers as everywhere – i. e., the Prothesis prayer, the prayer of the first antiphon, etc. But the oldest Russian Leitourgika also contain many other prayers, which are not to be found in the famous Constantinopolitan Euchologia. One could compare this phenomenon with other «peripheral» redactions of CHR, such as the South Italian ones studied by Andre Jacob, and, more recently, by Stefano Parenti 6 . Indeed, there are some points of similarity between the South Italian sources and the pre-Philothean Russian Leitourgika, but there are also many differences. Alternative Prayers of South Italian CHR in the Old-Russian BAS |
| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk: Decision demanded by church canons was taken today A briefing for journalists was held after the session of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church that took place in Minsk on October 15, 2018. Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, told the mass media representatives about decisions taken at the session. “The decision on the complete cessation of the Eucharistic communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople was taken today. This is a forced decision, but our Holy Synod could not take another one as the logic of the latest actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople has led to it. Several days ago it was decided at the session of the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople that it restored in holy orders the anathematized leader of the Ukrainian schism Filaret (Denisenko) and the leader of another schismatic group. The decision was taken “to revoke” the act of the Patriarchate of Constantinople of 1686 on including the Metropolis of Kiev to the Moscow Patriarchate and on establishing a stravropegia of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Ukraine. All these decisions are unlawful and canonically void from the point of view of the Russian Orthodox Church which does not accept them and will not adhere to them. The schism remains a schism. Its leaders remain the leaders of schism, and the Church which recognizes schismatics and enters into communion with them excludes herself from the canonical space of the Orthodox Church. It is the main reason for which we have to break communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople which has completely identified itself with the schism. I would like to tell you that it is not the first case of this kind in the history of the Orthodox Church. Once the Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople fell into heresy which was condemned at the 3 rd Ecumenical Council and the Patriarch was deposed. A thousand years later the Patriarch of Constantinople signed a unia with Rome. This action was condemned by the heads of other Local Orthodox Churches. The Russian Orthodox Church also condemned it. As patriarch-uniat was elected and there was no canonical patriarch in Constantinople at that time, the Russian Orthodox Church independently elected her metropolitan and since then has begun to live as an autocephalous Church. |
| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy DECR chairman attends conference on World Orthodoxy: Primacy and Conciliarity in Light of Orthodox Teaching On September 16, 2021, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations, took part in the conference held by the Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission on the theme “World Orthodoxy: Primacy and Conciliarity in the Light of the Orthodox Teaching”, which took place at the St. Sergius Hall of the Cathedral Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. The conference is attended by members of the Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission, representatives of the theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church, university faculty, hierarchs and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and guests from Local Orthodox Churches. Presenting his paper, Metropolitan Hilarion stressed in particular that the Orthodox teaching speaks about the unity and oneness of the Church proceeding from the Gospel and makes this characteristic the first in the rank of her properties. “Any threat to the unity of the Church is a threat to the Body of Christ, in which believers are united by one faith, the Eucharist and her Head - Jesus Christ”, the DECR chairman noted, “Precisely for this reason, the most tragic events in the history of the Church are schisms in which Christ-commanded unity is violated, the unanimous life in faith is lost, the union around the Eucharistic Cup ends, the apostolic succession in the hierarchy is upset, and a deep wound appears in the Body of Christ”. According to the hierarch, in the history of the Church there is a great deal of examples of how actions of her particular members led to tragic divisions with their consequences felt to this day. “These pages of church history could serve as a lesson and a warning against such actions in the present and the future. However, up to this day the unity of Orthodoxy is threatened not only from outside but also from inside, coming from those who seek to act contrary to the Orthodox teaching and canonical tradition. We can see such actions today taken by the Patriarchate of Constantinople”, Metropolitan Hilarion stated. |
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