The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts
Communing from the Body and Blood of the Master during
the period of spiritual combat
The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is attributed
to Saint Gregory the Dialogist († 604), Pope of Rome, but in actuality, it is
not the work of one individual, but is a composite work coming down to us from
Holy Tradition.
The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which consists
of the Service of Vespers and the Communion of the Faithful with the Holy
Gifts. It is commonly celebrated daily in monastic communities, and on
Wednesdays and Fridays in parishes, with Holy
Bread—that is, the Body of
Christ—which has been intincted in the Holy Blood and consecrated at the
preceding complete Liturgies on Saturdays or Sundays. The Presanctified or
“abridged” Divine Liturgy (since it is affixed to Vespers), is normally
celebrated in the late afternoon, when Christians, having fasted until that
time, commune, afterwards eating a meal of dry foodstuffs (dried fruits and
nuts).
The celebration of the Divine Liturgy, because it is
festive and Resurrectional in character, is not allowed during Great Lent and
the somber period of the fast, according to ancient tradition and the
forty-ninth Canon of the Synod of in Laodiceia [336]. However, from their side,
the faithful children of the Church, engaged in the abstemious struggle of the
Great Fast and having a clear and particular need for reinforcement by the Holy
Mysteries during this period of intensive spiritual combat, desired to commune
as often as they could, since Holy Communion was indeed their life and
sustenance.
For this reason, so that the faithful not be deprived
of the Holy Eucharist on the weekdays of the Great Fast, but that they might be
able to commune from the Presanctified Holy Bread [the Body of Christ], the Church,
by way of the fifty-first Canon of the Fifth-Sixth [Quinisext] Synod [692],
appointed that the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts take place on the
weekdays of the Great Fast.
Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite [† 1809], in his Rudder,
citing the Byzantine canonologist Matthew Blastaris [fl. 14th cenury], reminds
us that the faithful resemble wrestlers, and just as wrestlers cease their
matches in the afternoon to take nourishment in order to strengthen themselves
for the upcoming bout, so the faithful commune from the Body and Blood of the
Master during the period of spiritual combat in the Great Fast, that they might
be reinvigorated and reinforced by the Lord, thus to continue their match
against the passions and the spiritual enmity of the devil with renewed powers
and more valorously.
With
love in Christ,
Abbot
Tryphon
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου