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4. The Mysteries of the Kingdom The Sacraments in Orthodox Life "We are ordered to perform in this world the symbols and signs of the future things so that, through the service of the sacrament, we may be like men who enjoy symbolically the happiness of the heavenly benefits, and thus acquire a sense of possession and a strong hope of the things for which we look." Theodore of Mopsuestia (c.350 – 428) The subtitle of this final article is The Sacraments in Orthodox Life. We shall explore the part these very specialised services of the Christian Church play in both the particular and the everyday lives of Orthodox Christians. I am not especially concerned here with their history or their content, but rather, their meaning in the overall view of the Orthodox Christian experience. The quotation we have just read talks of us being ordered to perform ‘in this world’ the symbols of the next. It is precisely for this idea that the opening quotation was chosen, for it sums up, so beautifully, the role played by the sacraments, or mysteries, as they are more properly called, in the Orthodox way of life. There is, to start then, an interesting juxtaposition between this world, on the one hand, and what Theodore calls the future things. We have already heard in the second article the idea of the original, paradisial, state of man and of our fall into this world; of how our Lenten endeavour is to achieve, through ascesis (the practice of self-denial) and though synergy with God’s grace, a return to that paradise. The future things are therefore nothing less than the return to our very origins, and this world is to become what it is already in potential, the Kingdom of God. Though it might seem strange to the western mind, I wish to begin uncovering the Orthodox conception of the sacraments not with the services themselves, but with two of the twelve great feasts in the tradition: Theophany and the Transfiguration. Theophany, (the Western Epiphany, 6th January,) the showing forth of God, commemorates the revelation of the Holy Trinity on earth in the Baptism of Christ by John in the Jordan river. The services of the day involve the Great Blessing of the Waters, after which the homes of the faithful are blessed. Here we need to emphasise that in Orthodox thinking the celebrant of any sacrament is Christ himself. Christ himself blessed the waters by his presence once in the River Jordan. What we perform now is an extension, as if the ripples from that original act were extending and spreading outwards in concentric circles, down to our own day. By that token presence in one river all waters were cleansed from the fall wrought in Adam, for Christ came not only to save mankind, but all creation with us and, indeed, through us. [Mark 16:15] In this blessing the true, metaphysical nature of water is thus uncovered. Examined, of course, according to the modern scientific method, or rather, according to modern scientism, the waters have not changed at all: they are still reducible to a compound of hydrogen and oxygen in a two to one ratio, but this is to tell us nothing of the meaning of water. Yet in the feast their biological life-giving properties are surpassed, and the true meaning of the word, Life, (Gr: Zwh) is revealed; that which is established by our communion with the source of life, God himself. It is, then, in the sacrament of Baptism that we are reborn into this new life; that we take, in tangible form, the pledge of Theodore’s future things. Christ died once, for all people, and by extension, as it were, we enter his death. ‘Do you not know,’ says St. Paul to the Romans (6:3-4), ‘that as many of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism.’ But herein lies the essence of the sacramental realities: this transforming mystery is not something we accomplish for ourselves by pious thoughts or even by faith. It is the act of God through his Church. When we are baptised we are baptised and incorporated into the faith of the Church. Orthodoxy rejects the exclusivism of so called believer’s baptism found in some forms of Protestantism, as if only by our own mental attitude towards a set of particular statements of faith we could bring about rebirth. Baptism by triple emersion in the name of the Trinity is the tradition handed down by the Apostles and is therefore the means and general rule, (exceptions in extreme circumstances only proving the rule.) This point is made clear by the fact that the form of the baptismal service is exactly the same in the Eastern Rite both when adults and infants are baptised. Our second feast, the Transfiguration (6th August), celebrates the revelation of the uncreated light of Christ’s divinity on Mount Tabor. The message is clear: not only does this glory prefigure the glory to come in Christ’s resurrection and his Second Coming, but also our own in him. And indeed, again by extension, all creation is to reveal this glory. The events told in the gospels take place around the Jewish feast of weeks (Heb: Shavuoth), a kind of harvest festival. It is traditional on this feast in Orthodox churches to bless the first fruits: grapes in the Greek tradition, apples in the Russian. Once again, the message is reiterated: that sacraments and sacramental acts, taking the very matter found in this world, bless and transfigure them to reveal what they truly are in the mind of God: not elements for analysis, dissection and exploitation [c.f. the modern science of genetics and embryology and what they have done to and with the human person!], but rather, the first fruits of those future things. Bearing this in mind, we see something remarkable about the human vocation and our role in this universe we now know. I mentioned above that Christ was the only true celebrant of any sacrament. So, as regards the sacred ministry of the Church, itself (bishops, priests and deacons) there is but one priest: Christ. And yet, in a sense all are priests; there is a real priesthood of all believers, baptised into Christ. The creation, St. Paul tells us, groans in travail, awaiting with eager longing, the revelation of the children of God. But unknown to the unbelieving world, the people of God’s Church are his holy priesthood, his royal nation, as St. Peter calls us. It is the vocation of mankind to be the priest of creation, standing at its heads, and on behalf of the animal and plant kingdoms, even of the earthly elements themselves, to pray and mediate the mystery of those future things. Yet, furthermore, within the body of the faithful, certain men, and it is men alone in Orthodox tradition, are called out and elected to the sacred ministry, icons on earth of the heavenly bridegroom to his bride the Church. But this sacrament of Ordination, which they alone receive, is not the conveying of some supernatural powers, as if, by themselves, they might bless water, or turn bread into the actual body of Christ. What they receive is authority to lead the congregation. It is especially in worship that the pastors, at their head of the people, pray with and for them, to which the faithful affix the seal of their approval with their own amen.An interesting case in point here is over the controversy between the eastern and western traditions over the moment or form of consecration in the eucharistic prayer or Anaphora. In the Western tradition it is when the priest recites the words that Christ used at the what they call the Last Supper over the bread and wine that the elements becomes ‘transubstantiated’ into the very body and blood of Christ. The Eastern tradition on the other hand, rejecting the 13th Century, neo-pagan philosophical definition of transubstantiation, has always maintained that such definitions of ‘moments of consecration’ are vain pursuits. In fact, the words of Christ: this is my Body; this is my blood are not words of consecration at all. In fact they are used by Christ just before he delivers the bread and wine to his disciples at what the Orthodox call The Mystical Supper. For the Orthodox, what must follow is an invocation or epiclesis (calling down) of God, the Holy Spirit to bring about the change, without any attempt to define what happens. This change, into the body and blood of Christ, for the Orthodox comes about because the priest, the icon of Christ at the Liturgy, asks for the descent of the Spirit upon the gifts on behalf of the whole people, yet it needs their presence and assent. (It is interesting that the epiclesis in the Anaphora asks first for the Spirit to come upon the people first and only then on the elements.) Here, sacramental theology reaches its zenith, for bread and wine are revealed to be what all bread and wine is in potential: nothing less than that same Lamb of God that is on the altar before the Father in heaven. Indeed, here we see that it is not so much that the Spirit has descended for us, but that we have ascended, and our altar on earth is a symbol of the true altar in the heavens where Christ is enthroned. As Alexander Schmemann remarked, the most important words in the Liturgy are not the words of Christ, nor even the Epiclesis, but the invitation by the celebrant to ‘lift up your hearts.’ And yet those words of Christ are all important, as St. John Chrysostom said in the fourth century: This is my body, my blood…once spoken by Christ, consecrates every euchartist. That is, they are the license by which we do what we do; our eucharist is only valid by extension of what he, the true celebrant, once did on earth. Poor Thomas Cranmer! His conundrum at the Reformation, - how can Christ’s body be in two places at once, both in heaven and on an earthly altar? - is shown up for the piece of tortuous medieval rhetoric it always was. Most of all, however, to appreciate fully the Orthodox conception of the sacraments, we need to understand what is meant by a symbol in the eastern tradition of Christian thought. A symbol here is not a stand-in for something absent. When we see a national flag we know it represents the nation symbolically, but we know also that it, in itself, is not the nation. The same can be said to a large extent in the western conception of the ordained ministry, where the priest is a representative for Christ; he is alter Christus, the stand-in, acting his part on his behalf with his authority through the grace of Orders. But in Orthodox tradition the priest does not represent Christ, he manifests him, in the same way that a painted icon manifests him. For in Eastern Christianity a symbol is not a stand-in for what is absent, but the physical manifestation and evidence of its presence. The human face, for example, is the ‘symbol’, in this sense, of this or that particular human person; it is the outward image manifesting the inward reality, yet cannot be separated from it. In the same way, the sacraments are symbols of the grace they convey and in being consecrated from the very stuff of matter in this world, the sacramental elements, as symbols, manifest the truth about those elements, be they water and oil in Baptism; bread and wine in Communion; the crowns at marriage; whatever they be, once consecrated they not only bear a sacred power as means of grace, but moreover, point to the sacred nature of all matter, that once redeemed from the fall of creation by the action of the Holy Spirit and of Christ through his Church, begin to manifest the nature they had in the beginning and are to manifest as the future things. By way of illustration – and remembering that all analogies break down when pushed too far – I once read an Anglican explanation of the understanding of the sacramental elements in Holy Communion, and this is a good example of the middle-of-the-road Anglican approach. Here the bread and wine were seen as symbols of Christ’s body and blood in the same way that money in our hands represents gold (the real thing of value) held by the Bank of England: an interchangeable token of corresponding value. This neat and easy to understand analogy, representing as it does the western approach to symbolism, will not do, from the Orthodox perspective, as an explanation of the nature of the sacrament and any doctrine of the ‘real presence’. For us I should rather use the analogy of when someone switches on a light in a room: the bulb itself manifests light and indeed uses the very power that is being generated by the electricity generating station. Here the electric light bulb is an active and dynamic symbol and manifestation of what empowers it. The active bulb is a sacrament of electrical power and in this we can begin to see something of the Orthodox appreciation of the holy mysteries. For many, if not most, within Protestantism all this must appear very alien. For a religion based on a personal decision to accept Christ into your heart as your personal Saviour; of salvation through grace alone; of justification by faith alone; of authority only from the Bible - belief in which, incidentally, must logically come first, even before belief in God – such a religion must puzzle over the dynamic role afforded to what appears, at first, as mere tr5aditon, custom and esoteric ritual. Yet the problem of proof lies with them, for the Orthodox abide by the sacraments for very clear reasons: They hold them as coming from Christ and his Apostles That he taught them to his disciples in his earthly life and between the forty days of his resurrection and his ascension That they are part of the earliest tradition and we can show clear historic roots, even to this day That they have been guarded and handed on by the successors to the Apostles, the bishops of the Church That no one (on their own authority) can just end such a tradition which was inspired by the Holy Spirit, based on their own novel theological understanding, fifteen hundred or more years later That they are an essential part of the unique Christian revelation and experience of the true religious life That they manifest the true nature and purpose of matter, showing forth the Kingdom of God We could go on if space allowed, but suffice it to say that from cradle to grave the Orthodox religious experience is made known in tangible and very sensual form, for in this world we are material creatures and when the future things are made manifest this division between the spiritual and the material will be declared of no relevance. When someone goes down into the waters of Baptism their very body, their matter, is spiritualised; their body becomes, in the Pauline phrase, the temple of the Holy Spirit. And at the resurrection on the last day, that same Holy Spirit will be materialised in them, and they too will reflect the glory of God, in the body, as Christ did on Mount Tabor. I have deliberately avoided categorising and listing the sacraments in the way of systematic western theologies. Yes, we will talk of Baptism, Chrismation, Confession, Communion, Marriage, Ordination and Anointing. Yet in the Kingdom of God, all things are sacramental, not just seven particular services ordered by the rubrics in liturgical books. And lest you see all this as somehow esoteric, too spiritual, even arcane, then a quick glance at the Trebnik, or Great Book of Needs, will convince you that a Church possessing orders of service for the blessing of cowsheds and the stocking of fishponds has its feet firmly fixed in the mud! All can be offered back in worship to the Creator by man, the creature. Here, man is not just Adam the gardener and steward of creation, he is more than this; he is become creation’s priest. In the life of the Christ’s Church we see the first-fruits of those future things already being celebrated in this world; the earnest of realities yet only hoped for and a pledge of the those things to come. by Fr. Chrysostom MacDonnell |
