An Orthodox Feast of Corpus Christi?
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| An Illustration from "My Book of the Church's Year" by Enid M. Chadwick |
Sermon for the 1st Sunday After Trinity: The Feast of Corpus Christi
Introduction
Today we remember the Feast of Corpus Christi, a controversial feast within our Orthodox context, and one that has its roots in the papacy and the western scholar, Thomas Aquinas. Our Anglican Patrimony also had difficulty with this Feast, because many of the Fathers of the Anglican Patrimony believed that the practice of elevation and procession undermined the commandments of Christ on what should be done with the Eucharist, "take, eat", and this was reflected in a general aversion to the elevation or procession of the Holy Gifts. In the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, there is no form of procession with the body and blood of Christ outside the Eucharistic rite, and also the processions within the Eucharistic rite - for example the entry of the pre-sanctified gifts to the altar - are functional movements, rather than an attempt to create an outward interaction between the Holy Eucharist and the world. The very simple Orthodox understanding of Holy Communion is that the sacred species are to be eaten, instead of worshiping them. We do use the Holy Eucharist to bless the people within the Liturgy, but carrying them in procession, etc., seems to break with the character of a meal. In this, the Orthodox believe they are fulfilling the mandate of the Lord, who says precisely to eat and drink, and fulfilling this mandate by bringing adequate reverence to the body and blood of the Lord already gives us enough to do! We also find the fact that Pope Urban IV inaugurated this feast in the thirteenth century to be problematic, because the theology behind the manner of observance is a local opinion made universal by a unilateral papal decree, not an extension of the synodal mind of the Whole Church. Orthodoxy always calls the Roman Church back to the early practice of establishing doctrine through Ecumenical Council, a practice of mutual submission and love, rather than through papal fiat and the power of “Ex Cathedra” declaration.
Because of the importance of this feast to Western Christians, the Western Rite of our Church and in the Antiochian Orthodox Church pastorally allow for the commemoration of the Feast of Corpus Christi with the correct Orthodox understanding of the Holy Eucharist. On points of custom and practice that do not contradict Holy Orthodoxy, we strive to keep our Western Patrimony and redeem it for our Orthodox Catholic use, enabling us to re-incorporate the West and our Christian loyalties into the flow of the undivided, spirit-filled, and transformative grace of God’s Church. In this case, rather than parading around as the Latin’s do, we acknowledge the way that Orthodox use the Eucharist to bless the Faithful in the Liturgy, and bless the world in the same way, after we have partaken. We also use the text of Thomas Aquinas’ Hymn “Lauda Sion Salvatorem” expunged of any ideas that contradict our Orthodox Eucharistic theology, remembering him as an important personage within the Western Church, without granting him infallibility or the status of a universal teacher to our Church. In this, we repent as a people of any past heresy or schism, while we acknowledge God’s grace as present and always leading us all back into the fullness of the Faith Once Delivered!
This nuanced and historically accurate view of Western Christianity, mindful of our past errors, and hopeful of the eventual restoration of the West back to Orthodoxy, remembers our own history accurately and repentantly, and does not perpetuate the fallacy of “removing the ancient landmarks” or of establishing a “tabula rasa”, a blank slate upon which an a-historical or anti-western narrative may be built. Rather than giving way to bitterness or ethnophylitism, we declare the Gospel of Christ to the world and allow Orthodoxy to do the miraculous work of transformation that we have seen it accomplish throughout history. We restore the ancient foundations, re-dig the ancient wells of faith that were dug by our saintly ancestors, not tearing down or filling in those ancient wells, and in this way, allow the Orthodox Faith of the Ancient West to stand as a shining beacon of Truth and Life to all those who live within the Western Civilization today.
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| A Typical Medieval Procession of the Holy Eucharist from a 13th Century Latin Manuscript |
Scripture Readings
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 11:23-29
23 BRETHREN: I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:
24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
26 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.
27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
These verses powerfully portray the dynamic engine of God’s grace and interaction with Him as a human person, through the Bread and Wine of the Lord’s Table. The word “remembrance” here is the Greek word “ἀνάμνησις”, a word used by Platonic philosophy to show how human knowledge of past events was a continuation of those events, and how remembrance of those events re-incorporated the person remembering into that historic and heavenly reality. For this reason, in the Greek Old Testament, the Passover is also called a “Anamnesis”, and Jews believed that they experienced the Exodus out of Egypt with their forefathers, thus walking through the waters of the Red Sea and receiving God’s Law, becoming co-members of God’s people and joint-heirs of His Covenant. In exactly the same sense, we who enter into the Lord’s Supper through Baptism and Faith in God’s New Covenant, we enter into the reality of Christ’s Passion, Death, Burial, and Resurrection in a real and eternal way. It is so real that St. Paul warns those who would take it lightly and “symbolically” (in the modern sense of a symbol being something “unreal”, not the original sense of a symbol standing for that which is real and present) that they risk death and damnation if they do not “discern Christ’s Body.” It is not a “memorial” or a “figurative act”, but a real interaction with God and of eternal consequence.
The Gospel: St John 6:55-58
55 AT that time: Jesus said unto the multitude of the Jews: my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
The Scripture continues and says that many left Jesus because of this teaching. They left Him because they felt the Eucharist was crazy, that it could not possibly be what He said it was, and that He required too much of them. This feeling is still present in the minds of many would-be Christians who love Jesus but do not want to experience the intimacy of eating and drinking Him, of receiving Him as a “personal savior” without getting that personal. This is a stumbling-block for many, a doctrine hard to hear, and it requires our complete surrender to Christ, both in mind and in heart, in order to believe that Christ is who He says He is and does what He says He will do. After we have offered ourselves fully to Him, even though it still remains a mystery, the Holy Spirit confirms in our hearts that Jesus is truly present in the Sacraments, and that through them, God gives us grace to live a more holy life.
Sermon
There is a quintessential prayer that all Christians of every Christian Denomination says everyday, contains within it a mystery, a puzzle that very few people even know exists. This mystery deepens when we see how hard various biblical experts and translators have tried to keep this mystery an obscure point of no consequence. But, this one little word, leading into a whole new layer of mystery, opens up into a broad and expensive worldview at the heart of the divide between the historic Church and later Protestant sects. It centers on our view of the Eucharist, what we know Christ taught about his own body and blood, and the commandment He gave to His disciples regarding the Lord’s Supper.
This mysterious prayer goes -
Matthew 6:9-13
9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
The word here, translated as “daily”, is the word ἐπιούσιος, or “super-substantial.” It does not mean “daily,” and the only way that you can get this meaning is through analogy. It only occurs three times in the Ancient Christian record, in Matthew 6:11, Luke 11:2, and in the Didache. Instead, what the Ancient Church Fathers, Sts. Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyprian of Carthage and John Cassian, all taught that the “super-essential bread” was the Holy Eucharist and used it as a clarifier for Jesus’ famous Eucharistic Passage of John 6:55-58 that we just read. We can see in the Lord’s Prayer, the model of how we are supposed to pray and live, that Christ was establishing the Holy Eucharist as the core of Christian reality and the center of our liturgical practice. Through this “super-essential” meal, our debts would be forgiven and we would forgive others, and we would be relieved of temptation and enter into Christ’s new Kingdom. The very core of Christian life, the seed of our Faith, is present and expounded in the simplest prayer that we all know and say every day.
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| The "Supersubstantial Papyrus", from the Midcentury 200's, the Earliest Extant Text of the Lord's Prayer to Preserve This Special Word |
One of my favorite scholars, Fr. Thomas Hopko said, in his lectures on the Lord’s Prayer at St. Paul’s Orthodox Church in Irvine, California, in 2008 - “Epiousios is an absolutely unique word. Etymologically, ‘epi’ means ‘on top of’ and ‘ousios’ means ‘substance’ or ‘being.’ So it means suprasubstantial bread. Suprasubstantial bread: more-than-necessary bread. In the first Latin translation of the Lord's Prayer, done by Jerome it was..., panem supersubstantialem. Somewhere along the way it became ‘cotidianum, daily.’ Luther translated ‘daily’ from the beginning: tägliches Brot. But in all languages that traditionally Eastern Christians use—Greek, Slavonic, and all the Arabic languages: Aramaic, Arabic—it doesn't say that; it just says a word that's similar to that... How do they translate it into those languages? ...they claim that the best translation would be: ‘Give us today the bread of tomorrow.’ Give us today the bread of the coming age, the bread that when you eat it, you can never die. What is the food of the coming age? It's God himself, God's word, God's Son, God's lamb, God's bread, which we already have here on earth, on earth, before the second coming. So what we're really saying is, ‘Feed us today with the bread of the coming age’, because we are taught by Jesus not to seek the bread that perishes, but the bread that, you eat it, you can never die.”
In the Syriac New Testament epiousios is translated as “ameno/a”, which means lasting, perpetual, constant, trustworthy, never-ceasing, and never-ending. This is what the Eucharist is to us. It is a perpetual feast, and eternal reality in Heaven, and through the breaking of bread here on earth, we enter into the timeless Eschaton of the New Heaven and Earth, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. In one of the most ancient liturgy in Christendom, the Liturgy of Sts. Mari and Addai, the priest intones as he places the bread and wine upon the altar - “The Body of Christ and his precious Blood are on the holy altar. In awe and love let us all draw near unto him, and with the angels let us cry aloud unto him, Holy, holy, holy Lord God… Let us lift up praise to your glorious Trinity always and for ever. May Christ, who was sacrificed for our salvation and who commanded us to make a remembrance of his death, burial and resurrection, accept this sacrifice from our hands, in his grace and mercies forever: Amen. By Your command, our Lord and our God, these glorious, holy, life-giving and divine Mysteries are placed and arranged upon the absolving altar until the coming of our Lord the second time from heaven, to whom be glory always and forever: Amen.” We can see from this beautiful portion of the Syriac Liturgy that the “Daily Bread” that we receive in accordance to Christ’s command is the “Heavenly Manna” that is beyond time and is kept with Christ Himself in Heaven, His eternal sacrifice in which we enter into through our commemorations here on earth. “On earth as it is in heaven.”
The Roman Catholic Catechism says: “‘Daily' (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition of ‘this day,’ to confirm us in trust ‘without reservation.’ Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for subsistence. Taken literally (epi-ousios: ‘super-essential’), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the ‘medicine of immortality,’ without which we have no life within us. Finally in this connection, its heavenly meaning is evident: ‘this day’ is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the kingdom to come. For this reason it is fitting for the Eucharistic liturgy to be celebrated each day.” While not Orthodox, this understanding of the Eucharist is also what we believe.
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| The Lord's Supper is the Central Act of the Christian Community |
Sequence Hymn "Lauda Sion Salvatorem"
Let us remember this feast with the most Orthodox thing Thomas Aquinas ever wrote, the Sequence Hymn of the Feast of Corpus Christi. While we may regret the effect that Latinization had on the Eastern Church, and the way that the Thomistic theological schema contradicts the Cappadocian Fathers and the teachings of St. Gregory Palmas on the Uncreated Energies, in this hymn we have an approach of the western mind to the Mystery of the Eucharist, an incomprehensible blessing that equally dumbfounds and silences both East and West. In this place of silence and wonder, the long separated West comes close to a re-appropriation of the Ancient Orthodox Faith, and in this way, Corpus Christi also functions as a bridge between long estranged brothers and sisters, and calls us all back to Christ Himself.
Laud, O Sion, thy Salvation,
Laud with hymns of exaltation
Christ, thy King and Shepherd true:
Spend thyself, his honour raising,
Who surpasseth all thy praising;
Never canst thou reach his due.
Sing to-day, the mystery shewing
Of the living, life-bestowing
Bread from heaven before thee set;
E'en the same of old provided,
Where the Twelve, divinely guided,
At the holy Table met.
Full and clear ring out thy chanting,
Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting
To thy heart and soul today;
When we gather up the measure
Of that Supper and its treasure,
Keeping feast in glad array.
Lo, the new King's Table gracing,
This new Passover of blessing
Hath fulfilled the elder rite:
Now the new the old effaceth,
Truth revealed the shadow chaseth,
Day is breaking on the night.
What he did at Supper seated,
Christ ordained to be repeated
His memorial ne'er to cease:
And, His word for guidance taking,
Bread and wine we hallow, making
Thus our sacrifice of peace.
This the truth to Christians given -
Bread becomes His Flesh from heaven,
Wine becomes His Holy Blood.
Doth it pass thy comprehending?
Yet by faith, thy sight transcending,
Wondrous things are understood.
Yea, beneath these signs are hidden
Glorious things to sight forbidden:
Look not on the outward sign.
Wine is poured and Bread is broken,
But in either sacred token
Christ is here by power divine.
Whoso of this Food partaketh,
Rendeth not the Lord nor breaketh:
Christ is whole to all that taste.
Thousands are, as one, receivers;
One as thousands of believers,
Takes the Food that cannot waste.
Good and evil men are sharing
One repast, a doom preparing
Varied as the heart of man;
Doom of life or death awarded,
As their days shall be recorded
Which from one beginning ran.
When the Sacrament is broken,
Doubt not in each severed token,
Hallowed by the word once spoken,
Resteth all the true content:
Nought the precious Gift divideth,
Breaking but the sign betideth,
He himself the same abideth,
Nothing of His fulness spent.
Lo! the Angel's Food is given
To the pilgrim who hath striven;
See the children's Bread from heaven,
Which to dogs may not be cast;
Truth the ancient types fulfilling;
Isaac bound, a victim willing;
Paschal lamb, its life-blood spilling;
Manna sent in ages past.
O true Bread, good Shepherd, tend us,
Jesu of thy love befriend us,
Thou refresh us, thou defend us,
Thine eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see;
Thou who all things canst and knowest,
Who on earth such Food bestowest,
Grant us with thy Saints though lowest,
Where the heavenly Feast thou shewest,
Fellow-heirs and guests to be.
Amen. Alleluia.
Summary
Having heard the unique and pristine Gospel of Christ’s Holy Eucharist in its Orthodox context, having seen the differences between what we believe and the Roman Catholic practice of Corpus Christi, and seeing how our faith in the Holy Eucharist is truly a meeting point and a bridge between Christians from East and West, let us celebrate the Western Feast of the Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ as an expression of our faith in Christ and our love for Him as our Savior and our God. He has not left us comfortless! He has not left us without His presence, grace, and a pathway to sanctification and eternal salvation. In Christ, in His “once and for all sacrifice”, we have the remission of sins, the hope of glory, and the promise of eternal life. In the Holy Eucharist, all of this is ever present and ever working, and it ties us to Christ’s work on the Cross and His eternal sacrifice of Himself before the Father in Heaven. Through His Blood we have abundant life, and He links our life with the eternal and uncreated life of the Holy Trinity in his constant propitiation for His people. In His Body, the Orthodox Church, we find the communion of saints, the remission of sins, and a pathway upon which we can walk for eternity with God in a personal relationship of love, evermore dwelling in Him and He in us, and experiencing perpetual growth in love and service to God in an eternal process of becoming like Him.
The Collect 
O GOD, who in a wonderful Sacrament hast ordained unto us as a re-presentation of thy Passion: grant us, we beseech thee, so to worship the sacred mysteries of thy Body and Blood, that we may ever know within ourselves the fruits of thy redemption. Who livest and reignest with the Father.
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