On the Participation of the Faithful in the Eucharist: I. The practice of communion and the preparation

Document approved at the Hierarchal Consultation of the Russian Orthodox Church, February 2–3, 2015 in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow

The Eucharist is the main Sacrament of the Church, instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ on the eve of his saving Passion, death upon the Cross, and resurrection. To participate in the Eucharist and to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ is commanded by our Saviour who through his disciples said to all Christians: “Take, eat: this is My Body,” and “Drink of it, all of you: for this is My Blood of the New Testament” (Matt 26:26-28). The Church herself is the Body of Christ and, therefore, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ visibly manifests the mystical nature of the Church, building up the ecclesial community.

The spiritual life of an Orthodox Christian is inconceivable without the communion of the Holy Mysteries. Receiving the Holy Gifts, the faithful are sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit and are united with Christ our Saviour and with each other, making one Body of Christ.

The Sacrament of the Eucharist requires special preparation. In the Church, the time itself – be it the span of a human life or the entire history of mankind – is an expectation and preparation for the encounter with Christ, while the entire rhythm of liturgical life is an expectation and preparation for the Divine Liturgy and, accordingly, for communion, for which sake the Liturgy is celebrated [in the first place].

I. The practice of communion and the preparation for communion has changed and taken different forms throughout the history of the Church. Already in the apostolic period, the tradition was established in the Church to celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday (and, if possible, even more often, e.g. on the days of martyrs’ commemorations), so that Christians might remain in unending communion with Christ and with each other (see, e.g. 1 Cor 10:16–17; Acts 2:46; Acts 20:7). All members of the local community took part in the weekly Eucharist and received communion, while the refusal to take part in the Eucharistic communion without solid grounds was subject to condemnation:

All the faithful who come in and hear the Scriptures, but do not stay for the prayers and the Holy Communion, are to be excommunicated, as causing disorder in the Church (Apostolic Canon 9).

The early Christian practice of communion at every Divine Liturgy remains an ideal even for the present time, as part of the Tradition of the Church. At the same time, the growth in membership of the Church in the third and especially the fourth centuries led to some changes that entailed changes in liturgical life. As the number of the martyrs’ commemorations and feast days increased, Eucharistic liturgies began to be celebrated more frequently – however, the presence at these assemblies for every Christian was considered to be merely desirable, but not mandatory. The Church has countered this tendency with the following canonical regulation:

All who enter the church of God and hear the Holy Scriptures, but do not communicate with the people in prayers, or who turn away, by reason of some disorder, from the holy partaking of the Eucharist, are to be cast out of the Church, until, after they shall have made confession, and having brought forth the fruits of penance, and made earnest entreaty, they shall have obtained forgiveness (Canon 2, Council of Antioch).

Nevertheless, the sublime ideal of constant readiness for the reception of Holy Mysteries became hard to attain for many Christians. For this reason, already in the writings of the Holy Fathers of the fourth century we find evidence for the co-existence of different customs with regard to the regularity of communion. Thus, St Basil the Great refers to the communion four times a week as normative:

And to receive communion every day and to partake of the holy Body and Blood of Christ is good and beneficial, for [Christ] himself clearly says: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, has eternal life.’ … We receive communion four times every week: on Sunday, on Wednesday, on Friday, and on Saturday, and on other days, if there happens to be a memorial of a Saint (Letter 93 [89]).

But less than half a century later, St John Chrysostom remarks that some, including monastics, started receiving communion only once or twice a year:

Many partake of this sacrifice once in the whole year, others twice; others many times. Our word then is to all; not to those only who are here, but to those also who are settled in the desert. For they partake once in the year, and often indeed at intervals of two years. What then? Which shall we approve? Those [who receive] once [in the year]? Those who [receive] many times? Those who [receive] few times? Neither those [who receive] once, nor those [who receive] often, nor those [who receive] seldom, but those [who come] with a pure conscience, from a pure heart, with an irreproachable life. Let such draw near continually; but those who are not such, not even once (Homilies on the Hebrews 17.7).

In the fourth century, the rule concerning the mandatory Eucharistic fast, which emerged already in the pre-Nicene period, was definitively established, mandating a complete abstinence from food and drink on the day of communion until the reception of Christ’s Holy Mysteries: “May the holy sacrament of the altar be celebrated by the people who have not eaten” (canon 41/50 of the Council of Carthage, reaffirmed by canon 29 of the Council in Trullo). However, already in the late fourth – the beginning of the fifth century some Christians started to associate communion not only with the observance of Eucharistic abstinence before the Liturgy, but with the time of Great Lent in general, as attested by St John Chrysostom. The saintly bishop himself, however, was urging his flock for a more frequent communion:

Tell me, I beseech you, when after a year you partake of the Communion, do you think that the Forty Days are sufficient for you for the purifying of the sins of all that time? And again, when a week has passed, do you give yourself up to the former things? Tell me now, if when you have been well for forty days after a long illness, you should again give yourself up to the food which caused the sickness, have you not lost your former labor too? For if natural things are changed, much more those which depend on choice. … You assign forty days for the health of the soul, or perhaps not even forty, and do you expect to propitiate God? … These things I say, not as forbidding you to approach once a year, but as wishing you to draw near continually (Homilies on Hebrews 17.7).

By the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Byzantium, among monastics, the tradition was established to receive communion only when it was preceded by a discipline of preparation that included fasting, the examination of one’s conscience before the spiritual father of the monastery, and the reading before communion of a special prayer rule which emerged and began to develop in that period. Pious laypeople began to take their direction from this same tradition, because monastic spirituality in Orthodoxy was always perceived as an ideal. In its strictest form this tradition is represented, e.g., in the directives of the Russian Typicon (chapter 32) which, in contrast with the Greek Typicon, mentions a mandatory seven-days fast before communion.

In 1699 an article titled “Note of Instruction” (Uchitel’noe izvestie) was included as an appendix to the Russian Sluzhebnik (Euchologion). This article contains, among other things, a directive concerning a mandatory term of preparation for Holy Communion: whoever desires, may partake during the four long fasting periods, while outside of these fasts, one must fast for seven days – this period, however, can be reduced:

If they desire to approach the holy communion outside of the four usual fasts, let them fast for seven days beforehand, remaining constant in prayers at church and at home – this is for those who are not in need, when in need, let them fast only for three days or for one day.

In practice, an extremely stringent approach toward preparation for Holy Communion, which had its positive spiritual aspects, led also to the fact that some Christians were abstaining from communion for a long time, citing their need for worthy preparation. The norm, contained in the Spiritual Regulation (1721), mandating that all Christians in the Russian Empire must receive communion at least once a year, was precisely directed against this practice of rare communion:

Every Christian must receive the Holy Eucharist frequently, but at least once a year. For this is our most eloquent thanksgiving to God for such salvation accomplished for us by the death of the Saviour… For this reason, if any Christian is shown to abstain long from Holy Communion, by this he shows himself to be not in the Body of Christ, that is, he is not a communicant of the Church.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries pious people sought to receive communion at least during every one of the lengthy fasting periods. Many saints of that time, among them St Theophan the Recluse and Righteous John of Kronstadt, called the people to approach the Holy Mysteries even more frequently. As St Theophan said, “a measure [to commune] once or twice a month – is the most measured,” even though “one can say nothing disapproving” regarding a more frequent communion. Every faithful may be guided by these words of this Saint:

Try to receive communion of the Holy Mysteries more frequently, as your spiritual father will permit. But try always to approach with due preparation and, moreover, with fear and trembling, lest, by getting accustomed, you start approaching with indifference.

The confessing struggle of the Church during the years of persecution in the twentieth century motivated many clergymen and laity to revisit the practice of infrequent communion that existed previously. In particular, on May 13, 1931 the Provisional Patriarchal Synod stated in its resolution:

[Be it resolved that] the desire that an Orthodox Christian receives communion as often as possible, and those more advanced among them – even every Sunday, may be deemed acceptable.

At the present time, many Orthodox Christians receive communion much more frequently than the majority of Christians in pre-revolutionary Russia. However, the practice of frequent communion cannot be automatically expanded unto all the faithful without exception, for the frequency of communion is directly dependent upon a person’s spiritual and moral state, so that the faithful, to use Chrysostom’s words, may approach the communion of the Holy Mysteries “with a pure conscience, as much as it is possible for us” (Against the Jews 3.4).

Source: http://jordanville.org/