A RESPONSE CONCERNING THE HOLY EUCHARIST

Fr. Duncan Richards Communing the Faithful at St. Mitrophan and Alopen’s Cathedral Parish in the Missionary Diocese of East and Southeast Asia

Most Reverend Father E,

Grace and peace to you in Our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray you have a blessed and peaceful Lenten season! 

Thank you for your thoughtful and fraternal inquiry. We are grateful for your careful reading of our materials and for raising so central a question that needs to be addressed. If anything must be made explicit in our confession, it is the Eucharistic Mystery, our Church is born from the Altar, and lives from the Chalice. Just as we do not film the Consecration and Epiclesis in our liturgies, preserving the mystery of our faith from outside intrusion, behind curtains in the Ancient Liturgy of St. James; so on our website, we do not go too deeply into the mysteries that only our baptized initiates should know. 

I have talked very clearly about the Eucharist in catechetical sessions, and also have a whole section about it in “The Pathway to Holiness” book that I sent you with my last letter. This is my teaching session here, which goes into depth on the Biblical, Patristic and Canonical issues we consider when talking of the Holy Eucharist. 

Allow me to respond clearly and without ambiguity on all of your questions: 

The Ancient Church of the West confesses the full sacramental realism of the Undivided Church. The Eucharist is not a mere commemoration, nor a symbolic recollection of the Last Supper. It is truly the Holy Oblation in which, by the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the bread and wine are mystically and truly transformed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

As our catechetical text affirms in “The Ancient Orthodox Catechism”, which is the short catechism appended to our St. James Prayerbook, “the Eucharist is a true sacrament in which Christ gives Himself substantially and really to the faithful for the remission of sins and life everlasting.”

We follow the teaching of the Fathers, such as St. Cyril of Jerusalem: “Since He Himself has declared and said of the Bread, ‘This is My Body,’ who shall dare to doubt any longer?”and also St. Irenaeus: “The bread, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist.” Thus, we do not attempt to define the manner of this change in scholastic categories, nor do we reduce it to subjective presence. We confess what the Church has always confessed: a true, objective, sacramental transformation effected by the Holy Spirit within the anaphora of the Church.

In our celebration of the ancient recension of the Divine Liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem, the epiclesis stands prominently as the climactic invocation whereby the priest prays that the Holy Spirit “Transforms these gifts of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!”

We understand the consecration not as a moment isolated from the whole Eucharistic Prayer, but as the integrated action of Christ through His Church: Institution Narrative, Anamnesis, Oblation, and Epiclesis forming one single sacred act. The transformation is effected by Christ through the Holy Spirit in the prayer of the Church.

So, we affirm unequivocally the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Gifts.

After consecration, the Bread and Wine are no longer merely bread and wine, but the true Body and Blood of Christ, though the outward accidents remain. Christ is present whole and entire, and not locally circumscribed in a material manner, but sacramentally and ontologically real. The faithful receive not a symbol of grace, but grace Himself.

Our liturgical and canonical texts consistently uphold this realism, and our canonical theology emphasizes that Eucharistic communion is the visible expression of ecclesial unity. There are no permissible differences of doctrine on this matter within our World Federation of Orthodox and Apostolic Churches. Because we are bounded by the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the patristic consensus, a denial of sacramental realism is not optional.

While jurisdictions may articulate the mystery using different theological language (for example, some using the Western patristic idiom, others from Syriac or Greek expression), the substance of belief is one and the same: The Eucharist is the true Sacrifice of the New Covenant, the true Body and Blood of Christ, offered and received for the healing and deification of the faithful.

Because of this, we understand the Eucharist not merely juridically (as an obligation) nor solely devotionally (as a remembrance), but ontologically (as the foundational experience of Christ’s Church in the world): it is the medicine of immortality. Through it, we participate in the divine life. As St. Athanasius taught, “God became man that man might become god.” The Eucharist is the living means of this participation in the Body of Christ.

The Church does not create Christ’s presence; she receives it. She does not declare transformation; she prays and God acts. Every Eucharist is a miracle of God’s work. We receive it with joy as an expression of the power of the Holy Spirit in our midst! 

I thank you again for your careful and brotherly inquiry into our beliefs and practices. “Iron sharpens iron,” and your questions help me to do a better job at communicating the truth of the Apostolic Gospel! Thank you so much! 

In Christ Our Lord, 

Blessed Lent! 

Bp. Joseph

Ancient Church of the West