Retrieving a Theology of Belonging: Eucharist and Church in postmodernity, Part 2

Retrieving a Theology of Belonging

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1 Nicholas Denysenko

P r e fa c eThis article constitutes part 2 of a project devoted to retrieving

a theology of belonging for the postmodern Orthodox Church. Part 1 established the situation by defining the problem of ecclesial belonging in the postmodern era. The article opened with a reference to an email exchange with a theologian who was denied Communion on account of her sexual orientation. We defined the question of belonging as complex and widespread, evidenced by examples of sacramental exclusion enforced on account of race and the use of biomedical technologies for conception. We established that Church history has privileged sacramental exclusion to promote unity of faith and morals, symbolized by the inability of Mary of Egypt to enter the sacred space of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre because of her sin. I began the process of articulating a theology of ecclesial belonging for postmodernity by drawing from the ascetical writings of St. Basil of Caesarea, who urged ascetics to view themselves as belonging to a larger community of different others. I highlighted Basil’s notion that salvation is worked out in a community that includes even enemies, and the process of salvation begins with attending to one’s own sins. Basil’s instruction constitutes the first of three pillars for this theology of belonging. The present article continues this study by consulting two additional pillars that round out my thesis of ecclesial belonging: the eucharistic theology of St. Maria Skobtsova and the Byzantine version of the anaphora of St. Basil.

1Nicholas Denysenko is assistant professor of theological studies and director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is also deacon at St. Innocent Orthodox Church, Tarzana, California (Orthodox Church in America).

Retrieving a Theology of Belonging: Eucharist and Church in Postmodernity, Part 2

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S t. M a r i a S k o b t s ovaIf the writings of St. Basil offer us pearls of ancient wisdom for

the promotion of eucharistic inclusiveness, St. Maria Skobtsova of the twentieth century presents a modern perspective on ecclesial belonging. Skobtsova led an unpredictable life in which she encountered fierce turbulence. Glorified as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2004, Skobtsova was a complex personality.1 Skobtsova was caught up in two wars, almost executed for her views sympathetic to the Bolsheviks during the course of the revolution in Russia, and eventually perished, having taken the place of a Jew on a train to the gas chambers during World War II. In many ways, she is an unconventional saint: she was twice married and divorced and alienated from her children. When she took monastic vows, she tended to eschew the order of divine services and instead frequented bars in Paris, providing spiritual direction to the people of the city.

In her writings, Skobtsova established a vision for ecclesial renewal, one that called for the Russian Orthodox Church’s engagement of the world. Her celebrated essay on the types of religious life challenges the static, arid spirituality of her Russian Orthodox heritage.2 Despite her critique of the Russian Church, the Church and in particular her monastery constituted Skobtsova’s world, and she devoted her life to kenotic service to the world up until her arrest and deportation to the Ravensbrück concentration camps where she eventually died in the gas chambers.3 Her intellectual

1 My biographical narrative of Maria draws primarily from Michael Plekon, Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church, foreword by Lawrence Cunningham (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 59–80. For additional scholarship on St. Maria, see idem, “The ‘Sacrament of the Brother/Sister’: The Lives and Thought of Mother Maria Skobtsova and Paul Evdokimov,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49 (2005): 313–34; Sergei Hackel, Pearl of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova, 1891–1945 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982); Katerina Bauerova, “Emigration as Taking Roots and Giving Wings: Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev and Mother Maria Skobtsova,” Communio viatorum 4 (2012), 184–202; Natalia Ermolaev, “Modernism, Motherhood and Mariology: The Poetry and Theology of Elizaveta Skobtsova (Mother Maria)” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2010).

2 For an English translation of this essay, see the collection, Mother Maria Skobtsova: Essential Writings, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, intro. Jim Forest, Modern Spiritual Master Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 140–86.

3 Plekon, Living Icons, 60–61.


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output is not surprising given the company she kept, which includes Nicolai Berdyaev, Lev Gillet, Sergius Bulgakov, and Metropolitan Evlogy, inter alia.4

Skobtsova developed her eucharistic theology in this émigré context, probing the sources and the living liturgical tradition to develop a renewed ecclesiology. Her essay on the mysticism of human communion draws directly from the typical liturgical experience of the Orthodox Christian to depict how the faithful might envision the Church and her borders. This essay was originally published in the Almanac Krug in 1937.5

Skobtsova begins her theology of human communion with Christ and his engagement with the world: “The great and only first founder of worldly endeavor was Christ, the Son of God, who descended into the world, became incarnate in the world, totally, entirely, without holding any reserve, as it were, for his divinity.” 6

Skobtsova emphasizes that this act of giving himself over was complete and total and that he included all Christians in the call to be “immolated for the world,” which Skobtsova relates to the eucharistic sacrifice.7 Already, our pairing of Basil with Skobtsova discloses common theological ground: the Eucharist calls the entire body of Christ to be immolated for the world.

Skobtsova continues by claiming that authentic, Orthodox communion with God is achieved through communion with humanity:

In communing with people we commune not only with likeminded people, friends, coreligionists, subordinates, superiors—not only, finally, with material for our exercises in obedience and love; we commune with Christ himself, and only a peculiar materialism with regard to Christ’s appearing and abiding in the world can explain our inability to meet him within the bustle, in the very depth of the human fall.8

Skobtsova’s reference to the type of people one communes with is clairvoyant, and her reference to meeting Christ in the midst of the human fall unveils the core of her eucharistic theology. She sets

4 Ibid. 5 See Skobtsova, “The Mysticism of Human Communion,” in Pevear and

Volokhonsky, Mother Maria Skobtsova, 191. 6 Ibid., 78. 7 Ibid., 79. 8 Ibid., 79–80.

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up her punctuating point about the world that remains difficult for the Orthodox Christian to receive, given Orthodoxy’s preference for fleeing from the world. Skobtsova states that Orthodox misunderstand the meaning of churching life and interpret it as hanging icons and burning lamps before them. On the contrary, the churching of life is to be found in and for the world: “The churching of life is the sense of the whole world as one church, adorned with icons that should be venerated, that should be honored and loved, because these icons are true images of God that have the holiness of the living God upon them.” 9

Skobtsova then blurs the distinction between liturgy and the liturgy outside of the Church and explicates the others whom Christian faithful are called to love and share communion with:

It is our own sinful distraction that distracts us and our own sinful bustle that devours our concentration. We get from the world and from man what we count on getting from them. We may get a disturbing neighbor in the same apartment, or an alltoomerry drinking companion, or a capricious and slowwitted student, or obnoxious ladies, or seedy old codgers, and so on, and relations with them will only weary us physically, annoy us inwardly, deaden us spiritually. But through Christ’s image in man, we may partake of the body of Christ. If our approach to the world is correct and spiritual, we will not have only to give to it from our spiritual poverty, but we will receive infinitely more from the face of Christ that lives in it, from our communion with Christ, from the consciousness of being a part of Christ’s body.10

Skobtsova’s essay would have challenged its readers to seek communion with Christ through the annoying people one encounters. Skobtsova was establishing the legitimacy of finding communion with God through difficult people. I would like to propose that her list need not be exhaustive: she recommends a type of podvig to the Christian to engage the person one would prefer to avoid. For Skobtsova, this was the moral imperative of the Eucharist, to engage the bodied other one encounters in daily life instead of opting for the easy path of lighting a lamp before an icon. Her notion of solitude demanding communion echoes Basil.

9 Ibid., 80–81.10 Ibid., 82.


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In our context, we might admit that one encounters annoying people not only in the world outside the Church but also within the Church itself. Skobtsova did not explicate this point, but I propose that the eucharistic assembly is the optimal gathering for rehearsing this podvig, wherein faithful engage and love the other, the different people who will be encountered in that very same assembly. A tragic consistency stands out in Skobtsova’s life of inconsistencies, namely, her experience and witness of hatred in multiple environments. Skobtsova bore witness to the hatred that fueled the Bolshevik revolution and suffered martyrdom on account of the hatred employed by the Nazi regime against the Jews and other ethnic groups during World War II.11 Skobtsova challenged her interlocutors to transform the disdain and hatred they bore toward others into love, a love that is modeled by Christ and rehearsed in the eucharistic community. Her reference to the iconostasis in “The Mysticism of Human Communion” is instructive because the Byzantine Churches depict the holy ones they love on the iconostasis, according to a hierarchical order: Christ, Mary, and any number of saints, including the patron of the community, who is presumably beloved. When the world becomes the iconostasis, the process of imagining the different other on the iconostasis necessarily entails venerating the other. If we draw from Skobtsova’s example, her interlocutors would be challenged to imagine an iconostasis populated by the people who annoyed them: the loud neighbor, the drunk friend, and the slowwitted student. The process goes beyond the act of imagining; one aspect of the iconostasis is that it functions as a portal into God’s kingdom in the midst of the eucharistic assembly. Implicit in this process is the act of engaging and loving the different others who are depicted on that iconostasis: the assembly rehearses these loving acts in the eucharistic assembly, and loving the different other is a required step to sharing in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, communion with God.12 Besides Christ himself, Skobtsova presents Mary as a

11 For a stunning definition of the legalization of hatred, see Skobtsova’s essay, “Insight in Wartime,” in ibid., 131. Also see Ermolaev, “Modernism, Motherhood, and Mariology,” 209.

12 See the remarks of Ermolaev, “Modernism, Motherhood, and Mariology,” 211–12.

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model exemplifying radical love with the capacity to transfigure the world.13 Natalia Ermolaev states that modeling one’s behavior after Mary by “cosuffering, cofeeling, and co experiencing” with children and others has the capacity to transform both individuals and society.14 Skobtsova thus establishes the radical love manifested by the Eucharist as having historical archetypes one can adopt as ethical examples in loving different others.

Skobtsova’s redefinition of the churching of life so that it becomes a eucharistic churching of the world is necessary to retrieve an Orthodox theology of belonging today. Pastors should encourage Orthodox Christians to engage the twofold process of imagination and action in the eucharistic assembly. Every person in that assembly is on the imaginary iconostasis, regardless of one’s status. The eucharistic assembly will include today’s different others so that the assembly is not merely a collection of likeminded people. The possibilities for the composition of this assembly are infinite, but we might imagine it including not only stereotypical parish troublemakers but also fornicators, homosexuals, cheaters, liars, thieves, divorced men and women, gang members, Goths, alcoholics, addicts, runaway teenagers, and anyone who does not fit a stereotypical Orthodox parish. In fact, the salvific process of imagining and engaging the other necessitates the full participation of everyone, so there can be authentic bodily encounters. The presence and participation of those who are outside of traditional ecclesial boundaries is not only for their salvation but also for the salvation of the faithful traditionally included in the Church.

Historical theologians might be tempted to object here, since Church orders have traditionally included people on the threshold of belonging: catechumens preparing to be baptized and penitents preparing for reconciliation are among them. My goal here is not to relativize sin but to attempt a reconfiguration of eucharistic participation where everyone works out their salvation together, in community. I will address the question of repentance in the next section when I discuss the contribution of pneumatology and epiclesis to eucharistic belonging.

13 Ibid., 212–19.14 Ibid., 218–19.


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T h e B y z a n t i n e D i v i n e L i t u r g yWe have established two foundations for a eucharistic theology

of belonging: St. Basil’s twofold instructions to ascetics to attend to themselves in preparation for serving others in the Church, and St. Maria Skobtsova’s eucharistic notion of churching the world, which requires the twofold process of imagining the other depicted on the iconostasis and engaging that other as an entrance to the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. I will now explore two specific aspects of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy to complete this argument, namely, the power of memory in the Byzantine anaphora of St. Basil and the multiple liturgical epicleses that symbolize God’s constant outpouring of grace on the assembly and manifest the Christian life as one always in progress and needing infusions of grace. A methodological note: I will be examining the Divine Liturgy in its contemporary Byzantine celebration.15 History is instructive: the Byzantine Church once dismissed catechumens and penitents from the assembly, and there is evidence suggesting the prayer before the elevation of the gifts (“holy things for the Holy”) was a dismissal of noncommunicating Christians.16 In contemporary practice, the liturgy dismisses catechumens and photizomenoi without actually enforcing anyone’s dismissal from the assembly.17

15 For selections from the seminal scholarship on Basil’s anaphora, see Gabriele Winkler, Die Basilius-Anaphora: Edition der beiden armenischen Redaktionen und der relevanten Fragmente, Übersetzung und Zusammenschau aller Versionen im Licht der orientalischen Überlieferungen, Anaphorae Orientales 2 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2005); idem, “The Christology of the Anaphora of Basil in Its Various Redactions, with Some Remarks Concerning the Authorship of Basil,” in The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology, ed. Bryan Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 112–26; John Fenwick, The Anaphoras of St. Basil and St. James: An Investigation into Their Common Origin, Orientalia christiana analecta 240 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1992); P. Hieronymus Engberding, Das Eucharistische Hochgebet der Basileiosliturgie: Textgesschichtliche Untersuchungen und kritische Ausgabe, Theologie der Christlichen Ostens 1 (Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1931); Emmanuel Lanne, “Les anaphores eucharistiques de saint Basile et la communauté ecclésiale,” Irénikon 55 (1982): 307–31.

16 Robert F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. 5: The Precom-munion Rites, Orientalia christiana analecta 261 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2000), 74–103.

17 The photizomenoi are dismissed from the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts beginning with the fourth week of Lent. Pastoral liturgists might explore the fissures

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Remembering Others in the ProthesisIn the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, the assembly prays for people at

multiple points throughout the liturgy. The first such instance of offering prayers for others occurs in the preparatory rites of the liturgy, called the Prothesis or Proskomidi.18 The preparatory process became more intricate and elaborate during the Middle Byzantine period.19 Originally a simple preparation of vessels, wine, water, and bread with a prayer of offering, the breads were cut into small pieces and placed on the diskos as symbolic representations of the hierarchically ordered Church. With the Lamb of God in the center of the diskos, the remainder of the body of Christ is also cut into triangles and placed on the plate according to rank, beginning with Mary Theotokos and including all the ranks of the saints, including the angels. The living and the dead are also placed in smaller particles on the diskos.20 The rubrics simply instruct the presbyter and the deacon to remember whomever they wish.

It is common among Slavs to purchase one prosphora, a small loaf of bread baked specifically for commemorations, and to present the prosphora along with a list of names of living and dead for the preparation.21 The presider takes particles from these prosphora, one for each name on the list provided, and reads the

between rite and theology in calling for the dismissal of orders from the liturgical assembly without enforcement, a worthy task outside the scope of this essay.

18 For an English translation and explanation of this rite, see Ephrem Lash, “The Order of Preparation for the Divine Liturgy,” Anastasis website, http:// anastasis.org.uk/Proskom02+notes+diag.pdf (accessed January 10, 2014). Also see the recent analysis of the Prothesis rite by Stelyios Muksuris, Economia and Eschatology: Liturgical Mystagogy in the Byzantine Prothesis Rite (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2013).

19 HansJoachim Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy: Symbolic Structure and Faith Expression, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986), 98–99; 107–11.

20 For a helpful diagram, see Lash, “The Order of Preparation for the Divine Liturgy,” Anastasis website, http://anastasis.org.uk/Proskom02+notes+diag.pdf, p. 12 (accessed January 10, 2014).

21 These small prosphora are for the peoples’ commemorations only, distinct from the large Lamb which the presider places on the diskos (paten) and uses for holy communion. Technically, the people consume only portions of the lamb when they receive Holy Communion, although this practice is not universal since the contents of the entire diskos are offered in the anaphora.


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names aloud as he places each small particle on the diskos. The prothesis thus illuminates the selfoffering of the Church, the body of Christ, beginning with Jesus, the Lamb of God and head of the body. The Prothesis conveys a dynamic action combining memory with a ritual food offering. The selfoffering of the Church occurs in a local context. When the laity are encouraged to offer food that will be used in the eucharistic rite, the memory of each person read from the lists presented to the presider is included in the offering of that Eucharist. In other words, the entire Church participates in the eucharistic offering, including the living and the dead who are on these lists, even if they are not members of the local parish.

Having read the names presented on these lists with prosphora in numerous parishes, I can attest to the diversity of people whose names appear on these lists. While parishioners generally include the names of living and departed family members, sometimes they list the names of friends, coworkers, friends of their children, neighbors, and people whom others have asked them to remember in prayer. Occasionally, people will identify names as nonOrthodox, but it is not always possible to verify whether or not a particular person who is named on a list is even Christian. Ultimately, the people whom parishioners have consciously included in their offering are included in the ecclesial offering to God in the Eucharist. They are joined to that eucharistic assembly on that particular day because they have been memorialized. Depending on a particular list of any given liturgy, the multitude of names is often a collection of different others. The Church includes them in the eucharistic offering because it trusts in the people to remember those whom they love. The identities and narrative stories of these collections of different others are usually unknown to the parish community because the Prothesis rite is celebrated before the liturgy, in the sanctuary, in a private, quiet setting.22 The inclusion of a multitude of names constituting a collection of different others illustrates the Orthodox Church’s encouragement of laity to remember those whom they love.

The Prothesis rite presents a strong opportunity to inform the laity on the meaning of this practice and to encourage it. The laity’s

22 In some parish communities, the clergy read all of the names that have been included in that particular eucharistic offering at the Augmented Litany.

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offering of food creates a tangible ritual component, adding an additional layer of meaning to eucharistic memorial. A more concerted effort on the part of Church leaders to increase awareness and encourage people to participate in these actions would facilitate the naming of different others (regardless of their location) and inclusion in the offering of the eucharistic rite. At minimum, clergy should inform parish communities that the eucharistic offering includes a multitude of different others whom they have given to God, even if they do not know them.

Remembering Others in the AnaphoraThe anaphora of St. Basil, used on particular solemnities of the

liturgical year, offers another glimpse into the Church’s tradition of including the different other in the Eucharist. Most eucharistic prayers include intercessions in which the Church prays for specific people, but the Byzantine variant of Basil’s anaphora is a crucial contributor to this thesis because it presents a comprehensive list of different others who are commended to God’s memory.23 The intercessions occur at the end of the anaphora, beginning with the commemoration of the Theotokos when the presider censes.24 Historically, the intercessions were expanded as the prayer evolved through the manuscript and praying tradition.25 The intercessions of the textus receptus are quite lengthy, and when recited aloud by the presider, inform the assembly that God will remember a multi

23 Note that I am referring to anaphoral intercessions here, which are distinct from diptychs. On the difference between intercessions and diptychs, see Robert F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. 4: The Diptychs, Orientalia christiana analecta 238 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1991), 23.

24 “The presider’s exclamation [commemorating the Theotokos] was once followed immediately by the diptychs of the dead, proclaimed aloud by the deacon. This custom has long since fallen into disuse, but a reminder of an earlier usage can be discerned in the rubric instructing the deacon to remember the departed in silence as he incenses around the altar. . . . This incensation, today considered an honor to the Theotokos since the diptychs are no longer proclaimed, is rather to be interpreted as a remembrance of the dead, in line with the still current Byzantine liturgical custom of incensing during prayers for the dead” (ibid., 10).

25 Anne McGowan, “The Basilian Anaphoras: Rethinking the Question,” in Issues in Eucharistic Praying in East and West: Essays in Liturgical and Theological Analysis, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 223–24. For an extensive analysis of the historical development of the intercessions, see Fenwick, The Anaphoras, 193–284.


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tude of different others. On account of the theological depth of these intercessions, I am citing them here in their entirety:

For Saint John the prophet, forerunner, and baptist; for the holy, glorious, and most honorable apostles; for Saint(s) (Names), whose memory we commemorate today; and for all Your saints, through whose supplications, O God, visit us. Remember also all who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection to eternal life (here the priest commemorates the names of the deceased). And grant them rest, our God, where the light of Your countenance shines. Again, we pray to You, be mindful of Your holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which is from one end of the inhabited earth to the other. Grant peace to her which You have obtained with the precious blood of Your Christ. Strengthen also this holy house to the end of the ages. Remember, Lord, those who have brought You these gifts, and for whom and through whom and the intentions for which they were offered. Remember, Lord, those who bear fruit and do good works in Your holy churches, and those who remember the poor. Reward them with Your rich and heavenly gifts. Grant them in return for earthly things, heavenly gifts; for temporal, eternal; for corruptible, incorruptible. Remember, Lord, those who are in the deserts, on mountains, in caverns, and in the chambers of the earth. Remember, Lord, those living in chastity and godliness, in asceticism and holiness of life. Remember, Lord, this country and all those in public service whom you have allowed to govern on earth. Grant them profound and lasting peace. Speak to their hearts good things concerning your Church and all your people that through the faithful conduct of their duties we may live peaceful and serene lives in all piety and holiness. Sustain the good in their goodness; make the wicked good through Your goodness. Remember, Lord, the people here present and those who are absent with good cause. Have mercy on them and on us according to the multitude of Your mercy. Fill their treasuries with every good thing; preserve their marriages in peace and harmony; nurture the infants; instruct the youth; strengthen the aged; give courage to the faint hearted; reunite those separated; bring back those in error and unite them to Your holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Free those who are held captive by unclean spirits; sail with those who sail; travel with those who travel; defend the widows; protect the orphans; liberate the captives; heal the sick. Remember, Lord, those who are in mines, in exile, in harsh labor, and those in every kind of affliction, necessity, or distress; those who entreat your loving kindness; those who love us and those who hate us; those who have asked us to pray for them, unworthy

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though we may be. Remember, Lord our God, all Your people, and pour out Your rich mercy upon them, granting them their petitions for salvation. Remember, O God, all those whom we have not remembered through ignorance, forgetfulness or because of their multitude since You know the name and age of each, even from their mother’s womb. For You, Lord, are the helper of the helpless, the hope of the hopeless, the savior of the afflicted, the haven of the voyager, and the physician of the sick. Be all things to all, You who know each person, his requests, his household, and his need. Deliver this community and city, O Lord, and every city and town, from famine, plague, earthquake, flood, fire, sword, invasion of foreign enemies, and civil war.26

The number of approaches one could adopt for interpreting this text is almost inexhaustible, so in my analysis, I will focus on the dialogical implications of the prayer, the collection of identities referenced, and the question of worthiness.

At this point in the liturgy, the Church has heard the word of God, has lifted up the names and identities of many in prayer, and has offered the oblation to God. Immediately before the intercessions, the Church asked God to send the Spirit upon the Church and the gifts, to show them to be the body and blood of Christ. One should neither become preoccupied with any individual component nor express concern about a moment of consecration: what is notable is that once the Church affirms God’s manifestation of the divine gifts as holy, the Church asks God to remember a multitude of living and dead before beginning the fraction and distribution of Holy Communion. The Church’s petition for God to remember occurs after an oration that confesses the Church’s faith in the fruits of communion with God (this oration occurs immediately after the threefold “Amen” sealing the assembly’s faith that God has consecrated them and the gifts).27 In the Byzantine recension of Basil’s anaphora, this text is as follows:

26 Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website, http://www.goarch.org/chapel/liturgical_texts/basil (accessed January 10, 2014).

27 In the Byzantine rite, the epiclesis has a twofold function: the Church invokes God to send the Spirit upon the Church and the gifts, in that order. The Roman Catholic Church integrated such multidimensional epicleses into the three new eucharistic prayers added to the Missal of Paul VI, but the petitions for the Church and the gifts are split, with the Institution Narrative serving as a bridge.


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And unite us all to one another who become partakers of the one Bread and the Cup in the communion of the one Holy Spirit. Grant that none of us may partake of the holy Body and Blood of Your Christ to judgment or condemnation; but, that we may find mercy and grace with all the saints who through the ages have pleased You: forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, teachers, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith.28

This oration is ecclesiological by nature, an appeal to God to unite all communicants into one communion in the Holy Spirit.29 The oration describes the composition of the community: fellowship in the Holy Spirit entails joining the community of patriarchs, apostles, prophets, and every good spirit made perfect. The theological concept is simple: the many become one community, following the pattern of righteous men and women whom God has made perfect.

Theologically, if one imagines the composition of this community and views the intercessions that follow it as an organic continuation of the prayer, the sequence is quite potent: the Church asks God to make the eucharistic assembly into a perfect community of righteous people and then asks God to remember a multitude of people who live in a variety of conditions. The text of the anaphora prayed by the Church asks God to act, a consistent refrain uniting all orations of the prayer. The dialogical elements of prayer are quite instructive here: the Church does not ask the assembly to remember the multitude of different others in the intercessions. Were this the case, the deacon would instruct the assembly to remember them. The assembly has already committed the people named in the intercessions to its memory, so by asking God to remember them, the Church is essentially acknowledging that God has committed them to the care of the body of Christ. In other words, since the Eucharist is a ritual of thanksgiving that asks God to continue to build and sustain the community, in the intercessions, the Church is asking God to bring everyone in his divine


29 For the seminal commentary on the ecclesiology of Basil’s anaphora, see Boris Bobrinskoy, “Liturgie et ecclésiologie trinitarie de saint Basile,” Verbum Caro 23 (1969): esp. 22–26.

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memory into the bosom of his body so that these too would partake of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

When assemblies pray this Byzantine version of Basil’s anaphora, they might gain a sense of its ecclesiology. Basil’s prayer assumes that the Church is aware of and attending to the needs of the different others by instructing the Church to commit all different others to God’s memory. There is no space to argue here that God will refuse this petition because the prayer does not have asterisks or caveats. When God remembers them, they become God’s people and thus belong to the Church, becoming united to all others in the communion of the Spirit, as illustrated by the preceding oration.

T h e D i f f e r e n t O t h e r s : A n E l a s t i c C o s m i c T e n tWho, then, are these people that the Church commits to God’s

divine memory? Basil’s prayer presents an almost inexhaustible list of different others that reveal the Church as an elastic cosmic tent, with room to expand. The genius of the intercessions lies in the apparent attempt to include everyone. After remembering the saints according to their ranks, the Church presents a customary list of people, categorized by rank or office: the first part of the prayer refers to the eucharistic assembly itself (those who have offered the gifts). The Church’s monastic heritage is honored when those who live the ascetic life of deserts and caves are committed to God’s memory. Civil servants are included, and then the prayer refers to people in various stages of life and work: married, young, old, infants, separated, erroneous in faith, widows, orphans, captives, sick, persecuted or living in harsh conditions, and the possessed. Two potent petitions close this section of the prayer: the Church prays for both those who love them and hate them even though the Church is unworthy of praying for them. The unworthiness of the Church in offering prayer for those who hate them is a paradox worthy of further explanation, but again, the awareness that those who hate the Church have been committed to them is notable. The final petition before the doxology illuminates the elastic quality of the Church’s borders, expressed by the praying assembly itself: “Remember, O God, all those whom we have not remembered through ignorance, forgetfulness or because of their multitude since You know the name and age of each, even from their mother’s womb.” The Church has prayed for the categories of


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people in its consciousness, but it acknowledges that there are more people in various states of life whom they have not remembered, so the Church commits these to God’s memory here along with an implicit acknowledgment that the unremembered are fully vested with the image of God since God knows their names.

Offering the intercessions makes the people who have gathered vulnerable to the world’s environment by bringing the entirety of the world into the eucharistic consciousness of the local gathering. Besides the clergy, monastics, and civil authorities, the Church asks God to remember everyone regardless of their age or even of their attitude toward Christians, manifested by the request that God pour out his rich mercy even upon those who hate the Church. The most significant element of vulnerability occurs when the Church commits multitudes of unknown people to God’s memory: those who offer this prayer cannot possibly know if the unknown multitudes are authentically Christian, but the Church asks God to remember them nonetheless in acknowledgment of the divine invitation to all to belong to God’s body. The power of this petition is manifold, and I will summarize the following points: the Church asks God to remember each category of person, a tacit acknowledgment that everyone invoked can belong to the divine fellowship; the breadth of people invoked in this prayer is infinite, and the prayer does not provide checkpoints that exclude sinners; the Church’s recitation of this prayer is potentially formative.30 Participating in the prayer

30 Alexander Schmemann offers a complementary analysis of the potency of the liturgical kiss of peace (all italics are in the original): “In our current, utterly individualistic and egocentric approach to the Church this rite is inevitably perceived as a hollow ‘form’. I realize I don’t know the man who is standing across from me in church; I can neither love him nor not love him, for he is a ‘stranger’ to me and thus no one. And we are so afraid of this hollow form, so utterly ‘sincere’ in our individualism and egocentrism that we forget the chief thing. We forget that in the call to ‘greet one another with a holy kiss’ we are talking not of our personal, natural, human love, through which we cannot in fact love someone who is a ‘stranger’, who has not yet become ‘something’ or ‘somebody’ for us, but of the love of Christ, the eternal wonder of which consists precisely in the fact that it transforms the stranger (and each stranger, in his depths, is an enemy) into a brother…it is the very purpose of the Church to overcome the horrible alienation that was introduced into the world by the devil and proved to be its undoing” (The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. Paul Kachur [Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988], 138–39).

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by hearing it and affirming it with the “Amen” has the capacity to form the consciousness of the participants so that they would view the Church as having elastic borders designed to include all. The structure of the oration, especially its position proximate to the previous petition asking God to unite all participants into the communion of the Spirit, envisions that everyone named and unnamed in this portion of the prayer would belong not only to the Church but also to the divine community of the Spirit.

I would like to conclude this section by making two comments about memory. In her essay on ecclesiology and exclusion, Fulkerson refers to the organic relationship between anamnesis and the Eucharist and calls for those who have been traditionally included to remember the different others who were excluded from the eucharistic community unjustly.31 The Eucharist remembers God’s saving activity throughout history. In Christian history, though, the body of Christ has unjustly excluded people from belonging for too many reasons. The Byzantine anaphora of St. Basil presents a positive approach to memory when the assembly asks God to unite the entire cosmos to enter into the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The ritual act of asking God to remember these different ones is a tool of formation pastors can employ in their ministry if they introduce the meaning of the oration to the consciousness of the assembly. Forming the assembly to live in accordance with God’s memory requires reciting the prayer so the people can hear it during the liturgy.32 In the past, the faithful themselves have been excluded from this liturgical oration (as the presider recited it sotto voce), just as the Church has privileged the practice of excluding different others. Orthodox theologians and pastors have recognized the capacity of the intercessions to form the lives of the faithful for some time now. For example, during the preconciliar deliberations on potential liturgical reforms for the Russian Church, an anony

31 Mary McClintock Fulkerson, “Ecclesiology, Exclusion, and Sacraments,” in Ecclesiology and Exclusion: Boundaries of Being and Belonging in Postmodern Times, ed. Dennis Doyle et al., foreword by Richard Gaillardetz (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2012), 244. Fulkerson refers specifically to the work of Shawn Copeland on the matter of racial exclusion in the Church.

32 On this point, see the insightful remarks by Bruce Morrill in Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 203, 207–10.


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mous priest from the Vjatsky eparchy recognized the benefits of the faithful hearing the intercessions recited in the anaphora of St. Basil the Great: “We think that if this prayer would be read for the whole church to hear, it would create many holy and good feelings and that it would greatly strengthen the relationship between the pastor and his flock. His prayer before the throne of God would be quite evident to them.” 33 In his analysis of the practical implications of eucharistic liturgical anamnesis, with specific reference to Basil’s intercessions, the Jesuit scholar Bruce Morrill opines that “those assembled thereby perform a commemoration that enables them to remember with God, to see the world as God does, and thus to recognize their own mission as one of acting as God has revealed God’s merciful action in the tradition of the prophets and the person of Christ.” 34 This pastoral comment remains true for the lives of Orthodox Christians in the twentyfirst century.

I n c l u s i o n o r R e l at i v i z i n g S i n ?One of the obvious problems we must address in this discussion

on belonging is how the Church should handle sinners. Opponents of my proposal might suggest that making inclusion the norm instead of the exception dismisses sin and removes any sense of moral norms from the Church’s life. Including people who voluntarily sin in the eucharistic community might appear to communicate tolerance for sin. I have addressed the question of pastorally treating sexual sins elsewhere, with a reminder that everyone in the Church, from the patriarch to the youngest Christian, is both called to and capable of practicing askesis and selfdenial.35 Here, I contend that the eucharistic assembly is a body of people who are all unworthy of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. God’s constant outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the people in the liturgy is a

33 Nikolai Balashov, На пути к литургическому возрождению (n.p.: Христианская Россия, 2001), 368, and n. 47.

34 Morrill, Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory, 209. Earlier, following Johann Metz’s eschatological approach, Morrill suggests that practical solidarity with the other is required for salvation (203).

35 See Nicholas Denysenko, “Pastoral Principles for Orthodox Clergy in America,” in Church and World: Essays in Honor of Michael Plekon, ed. William C. Mills (Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute Press, 2013), 29–54.

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process where the community as a whole receives the grace to grow in God’s likeness.

The eucharistic liturgy itself forms the assembly to confess its unworthiness of God’s divine gift. This confession of unworthiness illuminates one’s identity as a sinner requiring correction and formation, a healthy anthropological tension manifested again by Basil’s anaphora. For example, in the beginning of the anaphora, the prayer asks, “Who is worthy to praise your mighty acts? Or to make known your praises?” 36 The obvious answer to this question is that no one is worthy, but the same prayer, after posing this question, begins a long series of praises drawing upon God’s own mighty acts in salvation history. In other words, despite the unworthiness of the assembly, it will praise God because God permits it.

The tension between unworthiness and grace thickens later in the anaphora when the presider acknowledges the Church’s utter unworthiness in standing before God’s throne and presenting an offering:

Therefore, most holy Master, we also, Your sinful and unworthy servants, whom You have made worthy to serve at Your holy altar, not because of our own righteousness (for we have not done anything good upon the earth), but because of Your mercy and compassion, which You have so richly poured upon us, we dare to approach Your holy altar, and bring forth the symbols of the holy Body and Blood of Your Christ. We pray to You and call upon You, O Holy of Holies, that by the favor of Your goodness, Your Holy Spirit may come upon us and upon the gifts here presented, to bless, sanctify, and make this bread to be the precious Body of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.37

The Church dares to present God an offering because God has made the Church worthy. The addition of “for we have not done anything good upon the earth” appears negative, and while one might be tempted to dismiss it as ascetical hyperbole, the statement coheres well with Basil’s admonition of the ascetics to attend




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to their own sins. The anaphora bearing Basil’s name communicates the same message to the Church, that each participant must always recognize his or her humility before God. The privilege of praising God for his mighty acts is one given to the assembly freely, not because it was deserved. Everyone in the assembly is a sinner and, by definition, unworthy of daring to approach God, but God still invites the assembly to approach because God has the power to perfect that which is informed by divine grace.38

The practice of excluding others from the assembly undermines the healthy tension of unworthiness and grace in the eucharistic assembly. The Church has privileged the practice of exclusion for designated periods of time in the past in the order of penitents. Today, the Churches of East and West essentially enroll the whole assembly into the order of penitents during Lent, a consequence of the liturgy’s historical development.39 The obsession with penance during Lent obscures an important Christian reality: Christians are always penitents, not just during Lent, but at all times. This section from Basil’s anaphora discloses the crucial dynamic between God and humanity: humanity will never be worthy of approaching, but God will continue to invite humanity to approach, not once, but repeatedly, at each liturgy, as God continues the divine work of perfection, which is a gradual process.

This gradual process of divine perfection is abundantly pneumatological. Orthodox theologians have marveled at the number of epicleses in the Divine Liturgy.40 Besides the anaphora, the Byzan

38 The reference to “divine grace” occurs in the rites of ordination and as one of the multiple epicleses in the Byzantine liturgy. For divine grace in the ordination rites, see Paul Bradshaw, Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1990), 26–30. For an example of its appearance in the Byzantine liturgy, see Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website, http://www.goarch.org/chapel /liturgical_texts/basil (accessed January 13, 2014). Note that the divine grace petition also appears in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

39 For the origins of Ash Wednesday as enrollment into the order of penitents, see James Dallen, The Reconciling Community: The Rite of Penance (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 119–24, and Nicholas Denysenko, “Rituals and Prayers of Forgiveness in Byzantine Lent,” Worship 86 (2012): 140–60.

40 Boris Bobrinskoy attests to the numerous epicleses in the Byzantine eucharistic liturgy in The Mystery of the Trinity: Trinitarian Experience and Vision in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s

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tines have viewed the commixture and zeon as epicletic ritual gestures, buoyed by liturgical texts in the synapte and prayer before Our Father that petition God to send down the Holy Spirit as a descent of divine grace.

The repetitive invocation of God in the Divine Liturgy is not accidental, nor is it superfluous. The repetitive descent of the Spirit manifests unworthy humanity’s need for God’s divine grace to perfect deficiencies. Elsewhere, I have argued that God’s continuous descent into human life in the liturgy is modular for ordinary Christian life.41 One is never worthy of communion with God, so God invites humanity to dare to approach by approaching humanity himself.

When the Byzantines describe God’s approach as epicletic, they understand the descent of the Spirit as facilitating the assembly’s participation in the fellowship of the Triune God. Eastern Christianity has traditionally invited everyone to participate fully in God’s divine life by baptizing, chrismating, and communing infants, without passing an examination based on cognitive criteria. Infants participate in the life of the Church fully because they have the capacity to grow in God’s likeness. The Eastern Christian mind cannot accept the practice of denying infants eucharistic Communion because it violates the fullness of their humanity and the crucial role of the Spirit in creating humandivine communion, even if infants are not fully functioning Christians, as it were.

The point from this lesson is that the practice of excluding others from the Eucharist because they are sinful violates the lex orandi and denies those who are excluded access to the community of the lifegiving Spirit. Basil’s anaphora calls all to confess their sins yet dare to approach so God can perfect them. Inclusion does not cause the relativizing of sin but instead calls all into an assembly of people who are aware of their sins and seek God’s grace that heals the infirm. Excluding different others from the assembly creates dangerous social fissures between groups of people within and

Seminary Press, 1999), 191. For a Catholic perspective on the frequent descent of the Spirit in the Eucharist, see Bruce Morrill, Encountering Christ in the Eucharist: The Paschal Mystery in People, Word, and Sacrament (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012), 16.

41 See my book, Chrismation: A Primer for Catholics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014).


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outside of the Church.42 Exclusion can promote an unhealthy sense of pride on the part of the included, who may be tempted to rejoice that they are not like the different others. Including everyone provides a healthy reminder of the tension that God seeks to reconcile: God can make the unworthy worthy. Those within the eucharistic assembly have access to the God who can form the faithful in his likeness; ecclesial decisions that exclude others deny them access to grace. Such ecclesial decisions might be metaphorically described as the Church placing cherubim with flaming swords at the gates of paradise: Christ has removed the flaming sword and the Church does not have the authority to restore it.

C o n c l u s i o nThis essay began with a sober review of some of the demo

graphic and cultural issues impacting contemporary Orthodox Church life. In a period of demographic and social paradigm shifts, the question of ecclesial belonging has become crucial for Orthodox Christianity. Baptism, chrismation, and Eucharist initiate people into the life of the Triune God, experienced in the Church community alongside others. Orthodox rightfully honor these three sacraments of initiation as egalitarian, indiscriminately ushering men, women, and children into the divine community regardless of income, social standing, gender, or national origin. The Byzantine custom of communing infants challenges even Roman Catholic sacramental theology, which delays participation in Communion until the age of reason.

The practice of excluding some from full participation in the life of the Church deviates from the initiatory ideal of the whole assembly always participating. History presents numerous precedents and rationales for such exclusion, especially the practice of excommunicating sinners for healing and rehabilitation. The Byzantine tradition of penance excommunicated penitents for periods of time commensurate with the severity of the sin. The prospect of including everyone in the eucharistic assembly, including the most scandalous sinners, seems to dismiss the existence of

42 For a Catholic perspective on the problems of creating classes of belonging within the Church, see Dominic Serra, “Baptism and Confirmation: Distinct Sacraments, One Liturgy,” Liturgical Ministry 9 (Spring 2000): 70.

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sin and dilute the content of Christian life. Proponents of the status quo would appeal to tradition and argue that some exclusion is necessary for the good of the Church and the salvation of her faithful.

In this study, I have argued that the time has arrived for the Orthodox Church to privilege inclusion over exclusion in the eucharistic assembly. My argument is manifold, grounded in St. Basil’s exhortation to ascetics to view themselves as belonging to a larger body of Christians and attend to their own salvation and St. Maria Skobtsova’s challenge to Orthodox to church the world by venerating its inhabitants as bearing God’s divine image. The ancient father and modern mother complement one another well by prioritizing humility and selfconfession of sinfulness while venerating the good in others, even when they are different. Humility, an awareness of one’s own sins, and serving one’s neighbor are core components of a theology of belonging that is given to all. I contend that these two teachers offer relevant and timely instruction for the contemporary conditions of the Byzantine Church.

Above all, the liturgy itself offers the greatest testimony to a theology of belonging. The Byzantine version of Basil’s anaphora combines a healthy sense of humility—we have done nothing good on earth yet we dare approach God’s throne—with a vision of who belongs to the Church. The anaphora reminds us that everyone belongs to the Church because we commend everyone to God’s memory, even those whose names we do not know. We trust that God will descend upon the Church of different others, over and over again, and continue to form and reform the faithful into his people. This model requires radical inclusion for the salvation of all, because the divine grace heals not only sinners who cause scandal but also the faithful whose humility should lead them to seek correction even from other sinners.

Most Byzantine churches retain liturgical rites of antiquity even if they are no longer functional. We pray for and dismiss catechumens and photizomenoi, but no one actually leaves the Church. We dismiss noncommunicants implicitly, but most people stay in the Church. We command everyone to come forward for Communion, but many do not. The liturgical theology of the Church has advanced beyond the actual ritual practice. Current global conditions have heightened the need to honor a sense of ecclesial

Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB: “Adaptation” in Liturgy and in Life

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belonging. Including all different others in the Church, even those whose behaviors conflict with official Church teachings, grants them access to the lifegiving Spirit who is ever forming the faithful. The eucharistic theology reviewed here manifests a vision of Church with infinite boundaries, in which all different others have access to the lifegiving Spirit. The leaders of the Byzantine Churches should seriously consider adopting policies of radical inclusion, in obedience to the liturgy and for the salvation of the unworthy who dare to approach and receive the salvific divine grace of God.

Stephen S. Wilbricht, CSC

I first encountered the name Anscar Chupungco on the syllabus of a graduate seminar on liturgy and culture at The Catholic University of America in the fall of 2003, having recently completed seven years of ministry in the Southwest.1 From 1995 to 1999, I was assigned to St. John Vianney Parish in Goodyear, Arizona, located roughly sixteen miles west of Phoenix. This was a wellestablished Mexican American parish that began as a mission for immigrant farmers employed to pick cotton for Goodyear Tires. In the summer of 1999, I moved into the city of Phoenix itself, where my religious community had just assumed responsibility for St. Gregory the Great. At its founding in 1947, this parish was a thriving community surrounded by middleclass neighborhoods, businesses, and

Stephen S. Wilbricht is a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and is an assistant professor of religious studies at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. Holding a doctorate in liturgical studies from The Catholic University of America, he is the author of Rehearsing God’s Just Kingdom: The Eucharistic Vision of Mark Searle (Liturgical Press, 2014).

1 I am grateful for the instruction, vision, and passion of Margaret Mary Kelleher, OSU, who taught this seminar. Also, I am indebted to Mark R. Francis, CSV, for his helpful critique and suggestions in the preparation of this essay.

Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB: “Adaptation” in Liturgy and in Life

Documents

Retrieving a Theology of Belonging: Eucharist and Church in postmodernity, Part 2