Читать книгу The Cup of Salvation - Beth Wickenberg Ely - Страница 8
ОглавлениеIt is truly extraordinary that in The Episcopal Church the laity now can receive the body of Christ in their hands and the blood from the chalice, both administered by another layperson. The confluence of these developments—communion in two kinds; the body received in the hands; and laypeople distributing the sacrament as licensed Eucharistic Ministers—is theologically revolutionary.
The earliest Christians handled the body and blood freely. Lay Christians routinely took the bread home with them from the Sunday eucharist, where they kept it nearby in case of emergency. Life in ancient times was tenuous. An accident that would seem trivial today could kill a person. Childbirth was just as likely to cause death to the mother as the infant, or both. Any journey was fraught with dangers of accidents, bandits, getting lost, and falling ill. A cooking mishap could be fatal. The faithful wanted to make sure they had access to communion in an emergency when a priest could not be found, thus you have laypeople communicating themselves and others with the consecrated elements. Deacons and laypeople also took communion to the sick during the week.1
The early Christians also treated the sacrament like a lucky charm, and some carried it around their neck in a pouch to ward off danger and evil. An early story tells of Satyrus, who was on a sea voyage. When his ship wrecked, he tied the sacrament around his neck, jumped into the sea, and credited its presence for saving him from a certain death.2
The earliest Christians probably received bread in their right hand, kissing it and moving it to their own mouths. From about the fourth century, women were required to wrap a cloth around their right hand in order to receive. Some laity drank the wine directly from the chalice and others through a small tube or fistula. These early practices were not uniform.
One of the earliest writers, St. Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 313–86), gives a blueprint for faithful reception of the body and the blood:
In approaching therefore, come not with thy wrists extended, or thy fingers spread; but make thy left hand a throne for the right, as for that which is to receive a King. And having hollowed thy palm, receive the Body of Christ, saying over it, Amen. So then after having carefully hallowed thine eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, partake of it; giving heed lest thou lose any portion thereof.…
Then after thou hast partaken of the Body of Christ, draw near also to the Cup of His Blood; not stretching forth thine hands, but bending, and saying with an air of worship and reverence, Amen, hallow thyself by partaking also of the Blood of Christ. And while the moisture is still upon thy lips, touch it with thine hands, and hallow thine eyes and brow and the other organs of sense.3
But writing at the same time as St. Cyril, St. Basil of Caesarea (330–79) tells us that receiving the bread in the hand is only allowed in times of persecution.4 He suggests what many other writers do: that reception of the eucharist on the tongue is the norm.
ACCESS LIMITED
As the church became what we know as the Church, the increasing number of converts necessitated further organization. The Church began to set aside (ordained) leaders, and the clergy began to restrict the laity’s access to the eucharist, probably for reasons of safeguarding something sacred and regulating its proper use.
Thus, the clergy became the guardians of the sacraments, and probably by the late fourth century, the laity did not routinely remove the bread and the wine from the service. What’s more, by church decree three hundred years later, the laity no longer were allowed to even touch the elements. One of the theological reasons given was that only something that was consecrated (the priest’s hands anointed at ordination) should touch the body and blood, and thus the paten and the cup. No one but a priest or a bishop (not even a deacon) was ordinarily even allowed to remove from or to place anything upon the holy altar.
St. Thomas Aquinas makes the reasons for this very clear much later, in the mid-thirteenth century:
Out of reverence towards this sacrament, nothing touches it but what is consecrated, hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands, for touching this sacrament. Hence it is not lawful for anyone to touch it, except from necessity, for instance if it were to fall upon the ground, or else in some other case of urgency.5
This idea that the consecrated hands of the priests and bishops were the only ones holy enough to touch the eucharist became the basis for placing the body on the communicant’s tongue instead of in her palm, although it was not a universal practice until a church decree in 650.
Finally, a council at Rouen in 650 settled the matter, decreeing, “Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layman or laywomen but only in their mouths.”6 A mere forty-two years later, a council in Constantinople prohibited laity from giving themselves communion, thus stopping completely the practice of taking it home and/or receiving it even when the clergy put it into their own hands.7 Meanwhile, the clergy always ate the body and drank the precious blood.
Though in most of the rest of the world, Roman Catholics still receive the bread upon their tongues, in 1977 Pope Paul VI allowed the U.S. Bishops to return to the practice of giving the host into communicants’ palms.
DOCTRINE OF CONCOMITANCE
Anglicans have been receiving both the bread and wine since the founding of the Church of England in the sixteenth century. For the Reformers, one of the problems with Roman Catholicism was that the elements were not available in both “kinds” or “species.”
The Council of Trent (1545) put forth the Doctrine of Concomitance in reaction to the Reformers’ insistence that the laity have access to the cup. Anglicans, like Roman Catholics, still uphold this doctrine, which says that the consecrated bread and wine each contain entirely both the body and blood of Christ. A congregant who just receives the bread or just receives the wine has received Christ in the body and the blood.
SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
Spiritual Communion is a communion of desire, meaning that a Christian inwardly shares in the eucharist, though the body and blood are not physically present.
In 2001, the bishops of the Church of England reiterated that the Anglican Church subscribes to the “ancient Catholic teaching that a person prevented from receiving the sacred elements may be brought into real communion with our Lord through faith (‘Believe and you have eaten,’ as St. Augustine says), just as the whole Christ is received when communion is administered in one kind.” 8
The first BCP (1549) recommended spiritual communion for those who could not attend because of illness or for those who could not swallow the elements. Eucharistic Visitors now take care of many of these pastoral situations.
Why does this matter to Eucharistic Ministers?
Often EMs serve persons at the altar rail who choose to receive only the bread or (less often) only the wine. Thus, EMs who are aware of this doctrine can assure alcoholics who abstain from the consecrated wine, for instance, that they have received the fullness of communion in the bread. Conversely, people who drink only the consecrated wine because they cannot digest the gluten in the bread used for the eucharist, have also received the full benefit of communion.
The English Reformers held out for the necessity of the bread and the cup to be available to all. From the beginning of the English Church, Article XXX of the Articles of Religion (1571) stated: “The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both the parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.”9
“CHURCHPERSONSHIP,” FORMERLY KNOWN AS “CHURCHMANSHIP”
In the mid-twentieth century, Sunday schools and camps often taught various versions of this song to illustrate some of the truths of our Anglican identity:
I Am an Anglican Sung to “God Bless America” Author: probably wanted to remain anonymous
I am an Anglican.
I am P.E. (Protestant Episcopal) I am High Church, And Low Church I am Protestant and Catholic and free. Not a Presby, Nor a Luth’ran Nor a Baptist, white with foam. I am an Anglican, Just one step from Rome. I am an Anglican, Via media’s my home.
Using this lighthearted synopsis, here is a very brief sketch of some of the areas in which we differ but remain wonderfully—and even miraculously—united.
People who visit Episcopal churches often wonder how services using the same Book of Common Prayer can contain so much variety. Shouldn’t it always be exactly the same? Thankfully, not so! Styles of worship often differ, and these differences reflect some very real theological differences within our one denomination. The old-school way of referring to these differences was High Church, Low Church (see song above), and Broad Church—or churchmanship.
This word still has not really changed. Although Episcopalians are more aware of inclusive language than ever, “churchpersonship” is a mouthful!
One way of looking at Episcopalians is along a spectrum with Protestant on one end and Roman Catholic on the other. Such a spectrum has nothing to do with a conservative/liberal range but is a spiritual orientation. As a matter of fact, the Anglican Church is the only church to claim to be both Protestant and Catholic at the same time, since it is a product of an (English) Reformation (a “Protestant” is one who protests) as surely as are our Lutheran brothers and sisters. On the other hand, we use the term “Catholic” in much the same way as the “Roman Catholic” church originally used it starting in the fifteenth century—to mean “universal.”
Along that spectrum from High Church to Low Church is a middle ground often referred to as Broad Church. Episcopalians are famous for taking the via media, or middle way, the gift of being able to seek a balance of views instead of seeing black and white or right and wrong. So a great many of our congregations are what we call Broad Church.
Congregations that are High Church are closer to the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox end of the spectrum. They use icons and “smells and bells” (incense and sanctus bells) in chanted liturgies. Their vestments and other trappings can be breathtaking, and some lucky laypersons (subdeacons) get to wear and use them! Some of these Episcopal churches even add historical elements to services, such as the Angelus. This High Church orientation is also known as Anglo-Catholic.
Broad Church is in the middle and combines elements of High and Low churches. These congregations might use incense on festive occasions such as Christmas and Easter and maybe some feast days; yet priestly vestments usually are minimal and hymns tend to be a mixture of “old” and “new” and sometimes from supplemental Episcopal hymnals.
Low Church congregations come out of a distinctly Protestant Evangelical orientation. In fact, except for the cadences of The Book of Common Prayer, a worshipper might think he is in a United Methodist Church. (After all, members of the Wesley family were devoted members of the Church of England!) These parishes often are plain inside, they do not usually reserve the sacrament, and their liturgies are less formal. They might be more inclined to have what we call today “contemporary services.” The music might include many hymns from the renewal movement.
But all these churches—High, Broad, and Low—are Episcopalian! Pick the style that speaks to your heart. This is one of the great things about being a part of The Episcopal Church! By no means are we cookie-cutter congregations.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
Episcopalians believe that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Theologians have debated for centuries just how that happens and what it means.
The Episcopal Church’s official position on this is called the Doctrine of the Real Presence. The following definition is by Thomas Aquinas: “The whole Christ is present under every part or quantity of each species. As a loaf of bread is bread, and a slice of bread is bread, and a crumb of bread is bread, so, the Eucharistic species, in whatever quantity, is Christ.”10
Each crumb of bread contains the whole of Christ, like each piece of a fractal pattern contains the whole of the pattern, no matter how small.
St. Cyril cautions:
… for whatever thou losest, is evidently a loss to thee as it were from one of thine own members. For tell me, if any one gave thee grains of gold, wouldest thou not hold them with all carefulness, being on thy guard against losing any of them, and suffering loss? Wilt thou not then much more carefully keep watch, that not a crumb fall from thee of what is more precious than gold and precious stones?11
Thus, we treat the consecrated bread and wine as we would Christ himself: with reverence for his holiness. This means many Episcopal clergy and laity believe that crumbs from the bread are considered to be the body, and like the entire wafer, not to be scattered or stepped on but quickly retrieved if they are dropped. Anglo-Catholic clergy are particularly aware of this. One of the reasons it is difficult to serve loaf bread is that it has a lot more crumbs than wafers. The same care is taken with wine that spills.
WHY I LIKE COMMUNION WAFERS …
1. Do not have to be chewed
2. Few if any crumbs
3. Easier to count when setting up for eucharist
4. Easier to estimate how many if I don’t count them
5. Never distribute too big a piece for someone to swallow
6. Easier to consume if I over count
7. Can usually consume extras without wine
8. Don’t usually have to break them as I distribute them
9. If we have the right kind, those with celiac disease can receive them
10. Fit better on a paten
11. Easier to pick up from the paten
12. More sanitary
13. Easier to pick up off the floor if dropped
14. Easier to fish out of a chalice if dropped in it
15. Communion doesn’t take as long
16. Don’t spoil when reserved in aumbry or tabernacle
Oh yes, Episcopalians differ in their theology, usually as a part of their “churchpersonship.” Our ability to include people of such widely divergent views has long been the strength of Anglicanism.
WHY I DON’T LIKE COMMUNION WAFERS …
1. Don’t taste as good as loaf bread
2. Probably weren’t used at the Last Supper
3. Probably not made by someone I know who has prayed over it as she kneaded and baked it and gave it as a gift for our eucharist
4. Slide off of a flat paten
5. Blow off a flat paten when I walk with it
6. Hard to pick up off the paten with long fingernails
7. All the monks’ good recipes are for altar bread
8. Don’t remotely look like real bread, which puzzles children when we say “The Bread of Christ”
Anglicans’ Doctrine of the Real Presence acknowledges a change in the elements of communion though not a belief that Christ is present materially. Thus the doctrine is broad enough to encompass a variety of other ways of looking at what happens when the bread and wine are consecrated.
Episcopal churches worship according to their eucharistic theologies. For example, the theology of Anglo-Catholic churches is closest to that of the Roman Catholic Church, which holds to the doctrine of transubstantiation, a form of the Doctrine of the Real Presence. Transubstantiation maintains that God converts the bread and wine into the body and blood during the Prayer of Consecration, though their material substance is not changed.
Low churches often have a more Protestant understanding and reject any notion that the body and blood changes into the bread and the wine. Instead they focus on the spiritual presence of Christ in the elements that can only be received by the faithful, agreeing with the ideas developed by Jeremy Taylor, a seventeenth-century Anglican bishop that it may not be about a change of substance, but it is about a substantial change.12
Incarnational theology is especially important to Broad Church Episcopalians, who treasure the truth that the eternal Christ makes himself known through very earthly elements—bread and wine. They often embrace the question of how Christ is present in the eucharist as a deep mystery.
“He was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it.” 13
NAMING OUR WORSHIP
The names we give to our worship services reflect our theologies, just as the ways we conduct our worship services do:
• eucharist or holy eucharist
• communion or holy communion
• the Lord’s supper
• the mass
• the liturgy or the divine liturgy
Each of these terms is correct, and each stresses a different prism through which believers look upon the divine mystery of what happens when they partake of the body and blood.
Low Churches often call their service the “Lord’s supper,” which emphasizes the historical remembrance of the service, which some see as a memorial or anniversary celebration of what once happened.
“Communion” and “holy communion” reflect the unitive nature of the sacrament, in that the recipient joins with Christ when she partakes of the bread and wine, and that the community becomes one with each other and with the larger Body of Christ. In this way, Christ is made present once again, not as a memory, but in a mystical way that allows the believer to enter into his birth, death, and resurrection. This is referred to as “anamnesis.”
The terms “holy eucharist” and “eucharist” (“thanksgiving” in Greek) emphasize the gratitude of the faithful for everything God has given and is giving, particularly Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for the salvation of the world.
High Churches use the word “mass,” which is what Roman Catholics call their sacramental liturgy. This word comes from the end of the service in which the faithful are sent out to do the work of God. The Latin phrase is “Ite, missa est,” “Go, the mass is ended.”
Orthodox Christians also use “the liturgy” and the “divine liturgy.” These terms place an emphasis on the worship itself as a gateway to heaven and access to God through Jesus Christ.
Each of these labels carries with it a truth but none contains the whole of the truth of this sacrament, which has layers upon layers of meaning. In fact, the holy eucharist is so mystical we will never get to the bottom of its affects and its effects on this side of the kingdom. Nor are we meant to.
I often picture the eucharist as like the divine puff pastry known as Napoleons or mille-feuilles. Those “thousand sheets” are impossible to count because they are not meant to be dissected. They are meant to be savored. I am sure mille-feuilles is served at the heavenly banquet!
GUESS WHO’S COMING TO SUPPER?
The Lord’s supper, that is. Though we often don’t think of it this way, we who are the baptized are the guests at the Lord’s supper. We are the blessed ones invited to the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9). The presider issues God’s invitation each week: “The gifts of God for the People of God” (BCP, p. 365), holding out the bread and wine in invitation.
In our theological understanding, Christ always is the host of our eucharistic worship just as he was at the Last Supper for his friends on the night before he died. Hear, too, an echo of the many Scriptures that depict eternal life as a wedding banquet or marriage feast. Two examples are the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) and Isaiah’s vision, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear” (Isaiah 25:6).
Much more than host, though. Christ really is the feast himself because the meal is his body and blood shed for us. He only becomes the feast through his willing sacrifice on the cross —once for all. “He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14).
At the Lamb’s high feast we sing
praise to our victorious King,
who hath washed us in the tide
flowing from his pierced side;
praise we him, whose love divine
gives his sacred Blood for wine,
gives his Body for the feast,
Christ the victim, Christ the priest.14
Using the image of the priest’s ancient role as one who offers sacrifices to God, this wonderful hymn reminds us that in his self-sacrifice, Christ is victim and priest at the same time. As God, Jesus was the one who instituted the sacrifice; as the Lamb, he was the offering, too. Our Trinitarian theology allows both these mystical things to be True, with a capital “T”.
The Mystical Supper 15 By Sally Brower
In the alchemy of blood and silver,
in the mixture of wine and gold,
we become partakers of divine fire,
full sharers in God’s supper of desire.
This is the great banquet of God,
in which we are united,
the lover with the Beloved,
the perfect union imparting life.
This is the feasting on gifts most holy;
this is the meal of love poured out.
This is the mystical moment,
while empty, we become full,
while dying, we rise to new life.
This is the mystical supper
where we become the love we drink.
1. Mike Aquilina, The Mass of the Early Christians (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2001), 41.
2. Beth Wickenberg Ely, A Manual for Eucharistic Visitors (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2005), 2.
3. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Mystagogical Catechesis” V:21-22, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Series II, vol. VII, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1893) 400-401. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.pdf.
4. Basil the Great, “Letter 93,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Series II, vol. III, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Blomfield Jackson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1894) 526. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf208.pdf.
5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Vol. III, 82,13, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).
6. “Communion in the Hand Is a Sacrilege,” These Last Days Ministries, accessed February 24, 2012, http://www.tldm.org/news2/cih.htm.
7. Henri LeClercq and Fernand Cabrol, “Communion,” in Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie, vol. 3, part 2 (Paris: Librarie Letouzey et Ané, 1948), 2570.
8. House of Bishops of the Church of England 2001.
9. The Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Hymnal Corp., 1979), 874. Hereafter referred to as BCP.
10. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, 76, 3a.
11. Cyril, “Mystagogical Catechesis,” V:21, 400.
12. Jeremy Taylor, “Of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Sacrament,” in The Whole Works of the Right Reverend Jeremy Taylor, vol. VI, sec. I, ed. Reginald Heber, rev. Charles Page Eden (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852), 14.
13. John Donne, “On the Sacrament,” in Remembering the Faith: What Christians Believe, by Douglas J. Brouwer (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 131.
14. The Episcopal Church, Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Hymnal Corp., 1982), #174.
15. Unpublished poem by Sally Brower. All rights reserved.
