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Holy Catechism

Nikolaos Voulgaris, tr. Daniel, 1893

Of the Elevation of the Holy Bread

Holy things to the holy.

The Priest in pronouncing these words with a loud voice, elevates the Holy Bread in careful remembrance of our Saviour’s Resurrection from the dead. And the sign of the Precious and Life-giving Cross is made three times at that moment, in token of the Supersubstantial and unconfounded Trinity, seeing that the Son and Word suffered by the good pleasure of the coeternal God and Father, and by the co-operation of the Holy Ghost. The Cross which is signed above with the Precious Bread itself, signifies that the Heaven was hallowed by the Resurrection; the Cross made midway signifies the hallowing of the air; and the third Cross made low down near the paten, signifies the hallowing of the earth, wherein that life-giving body of Christ was buried. So Germanus of Constantinople in the Mystical View, who writes in fact that the Divine Bread is alone elevated, “because the King Himself is Lord, and He is the Head, as the Apostle says; but the other Precious Gifts are Christ’s members.”

Holy things to the holy.

The holy things, he says, are given only to the holy and righteous Christians. “But if there be any one not holy, let him not approach; not merely, says he, free from sins, but holy. It is not freedom from sin only that makes one holy, but the presence of the Spirit and wealth of works;” so writes the divine Chrysostom in the 17th Hom. on the Ep. to the Hebrews. And the people answer:

Nay, verily; we are not holy; we are sinners, and unworthy of such a title. One is Holy, even the Lord Jesus, the God-Man.

One holy, one Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Holy things to the holy.

The Priest says, Holy things to the holy. The presented gifts are holy, having received the approach of the Holy Spirit. We too are holy, having been vouchsafed the Holy Spirit. The holy things therefore correspond to the holy persons. Thereupon you say, One Holy, one Lord, Jesus Christ. For verily there is one holy, holy by nature; yet we are holy, not however by nature, but by participation and training and prayer. Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat. xxiii. 19.)

And whereas we learn that in the Mystic Supper, whereof this Initiation is a perfect calling to mind, Christ blessed, sanctified, broke and then distributed the holy gifts to His holy Disciples, “He blessed, sanctified, broke and gave to His holy Disciples,” so the Priest in imitation of God, having blessed the Precious Gifts, and by the power of the All-holy Ghost sanctified them, comes with all devotion and piety to divide the holy Bread and to distribute the sacred Mysteries. “Having exhibited the gifts of the Divine Work, he comes himself to the sacred participation of them, and encourages the rest;” this is the comment of Dionysius the Areopagite.

“And the Deacon, imitating the Cherubim when they cover their faces, first arrays himself, when he is about to communicate, girding his horarium about him; then the High Priest coming to Communion receives again his scarf, showing that in the first instance he was serving, and fearful to be clothed with that holy garment; but when the work is over, and he comes to elevate the Bread, and divide and share and distribute it, there is need for him to clothe himself even with all the sacred symbols of dignity.” So the Thessalonian in the Temple.

The Deacon. Sir, dismember the Holy Bread.

And the Priest. The Lamb of God is dismembered and distributed, Who is dismembered, not severed; Who is ever eaten, yet never consumed; but He sanctifies those who partake of Him.

This dismemberment represents both the breaking of the Bread, which Christ, as we saw, made, and the various sufferings of His undefiled Body, which was buffeted, stricken, wounded, and in death withstood corruption. For which reason the dismemberment also takes place cross-wise into four portions. “And herein the Priest looketh on Jesus Crucified,” is the interpretation of the same Symeon.

Dismembered, not divided.

Wherefore, although Christ suffered so much by reason of the Incarnation, yet His Flesh saw not corruption in Hades, as says the Prophet. Only the species or accidents of the matter of the Mystery are dismembered and distributed. Nevertheless the Lord’s Body is not cut or divided, since He is entire in the whole, and entire in every portion; whole and untouched equally in the entire Pearl,¹ and in all its portions, regard them as small as ever you choose, in the same way that philosophers teach about the human soul. The same Who is found in all the Churches of the four quarters of the world, in all the sacrifices from one end of the world to the other, the same as regards number one and single, the very one Who sits at the right hand of the Father. And do not imagine, teaches John of Damascus, “that the identical Body Which was taken up, comes down from heaven, but that the Bread itself and the Wine are changed into the Body and Blood of God.”

Dismembered, and not severed; always eaten, and never consumed.

“For the Lord’s Flesh is a quickening spirit, and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” So teaches the Great Illuminator himself. And Samonas of Gaza: “When the consecrated Bread is cut into portions, do not suppose that that spotless Body is divided, or torn asunder or severed; for it is immortal and incorruptible, and cannot be consumed. But think that that division is only of the visible accidents after consecration, which remain for the strengthening of Faith and presentation of a visible sign, and a pledge and viaticum of eternal life.” And thus the Spotless Mysteries are not circumscribed locally like other natural bodies, since in comparison with that which contains them they have not any extension: they are only said to be in a place after a mysterious sort, and with such extension only, as the dialecticians speak of, in relation to themselves, a property which as not having any local position, does not bear being circumscribed. Such is the teaching of the principal authors of the Scholastic Theology.

Dismembered, and not severed.

For as though any one who had a mirror should let it fall and dash it into many fragments, yet in each several fragment, he will see his shadow entire, so one might conceive also from this shadow that Christ’s Flesh is entire and whole in each fragment at every moment whensoever and wheresoever broken. And as whatever word any one speaks, both the speaker understands it and hears, and his neighbours hear it; no matter how many the hearers be, it is not severed but is whole; so also in respect of Christ’s Body, the All-holy Body of Christ seated by the Father abides in Him, yet also the Bread of the holy rite being by divine power through the approach of the All-holy Spirit changed into the true Body of Christ, though it is dismembered, yet is preserved whole and entire in each fragment, even as the word of the speaker reaches all the hearers, and is heard whole and undivided. Samonas.

But it sanctifies those who partake.

A sanctification which one certainly cannot understand more narrowly. “We become of one body and one blood with Christ through His stainless Mysteries,” writes S. Cyril in his holy Catechetics. And the great Damascene: “We are united to the Body of the Lord and His Spirit, and become Christ’s Body.” “A partaker in incorruption by union with the immortal,” is Gregory of Nyssa’s description of one who shared the stainless Mysteries of Christ. And Nicolas of Methone says: “The Body and Blood of Christ in the Rite are a sharing with Christ and eternal life, and as much as to say a deification of the partakers.” He who worthily partakes of the Flesh and Blood of the Word God-Man is no more mere man but God-man. And according to the great Basil, not only does Jesus our Saviour dwell in him, but all the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. “May I be united, he says, to Thy Holy Body and Blood, and I shall have Thee dwelling and abiding in me, with the Father and Thy Holy Spirit.”²

I said worthily; because “he who eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, according to the Apostle, not discerning the Lord’s body, and for this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep,” 1 Cor. xi. 29, 30. And according to the divine Chrysostom, “As Judas betrayed Christ, and the Jews treated Him with insult, so those dishonour Him who unworthily with their mouth receive His all-holy Body.”

George Cedrenus for instance tells about a certain heretical lady in the reign of Arcadius, how directly when the Mystery as celebrated by the Macedonians was handed to her, in the presence of that great Illuminator John Chrysostom, a stone came into her mouth to reprove the heretical and to confound the unworthy. And the great Cyprian in his book which he writes about the Lapsed, writes concerning a certain Christian, who ventured to partake of the holy gifts unworthily, how in his hands the Precious Bread became mere myrrh oil. “A certain man of those who had lapsed, he says, came to partake, and when he had taken the Bread, ashes remained in his hand.” And elsewhere again the same Saint, “A certain woman who had lapsed came up and partook of the Divine Bread; but as she was conscious of her unworthiness, she put it in a box, and when she wanted to open it, a flame darted out upon her, and she perished,” died there and then. Here you see how in those days the Precious Bread was given into the hands of Christians, although they were laymen, and not into their mouth, as the practice is to-day. “So when thou comest up, wrote Cyril of Jerusalem of this, come not with the wrists stretched forth, nor with the fingers parted, but having made the left hand a throne for the right, as destined to welcome a king, and having hollowed the palm, receive the Body of Christ.” We observe the same too in the 51st canon of the Sixth holy general Council, although from his time, Balsamon notes, the Holy Body was handed in many churches immediately into the mouth of the laity, and no more into their hands. “For right faith and the fear of God and unsuspecting piety have preserved this tradition,” he writes in his interpretation of the same canon. And many will have it that this arrangement began in the Church from the days of Arcadius because of the miracle that occurred in the case of the heretical woman who communicated of the Mystery celebrated by the Macedonians, and hid the Pearl in her hands, which John Chrysostom had given her when he was ministering; and he they record was the first to introduce the Spoon.³

The Deacon. Sir, fill the holy Cup.

And the priest dropping the one portion of the holy Bread into the holy Cup says,

The fulness of faith in the Holy Ghost. Amen.

There is nothing more suitable in all the Holy Liturgy than is this Union of the Precious Body and Blood of Christ, forasmuch as in nature Blood unites itself with Body: and as we saw with John of Damascus, “the bread of the Prothesis, and wine and water, by the invocation and visit of the Holy Ghost supernaturally are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ; and they are not two, but one and the same.” If henceforth they are one and the same thing, and not two things, the Body and Blood of our Saviour God, the Church rightly unites the one with the other, saying at the same time,

The fulness of faith in the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“And this,” interprets Nicolas Cabasilas, “in order that the initiation of the Mystery may be complete. For what is the end and the result of Christ’s sufferings and of His words and acts, if you regard them in reference to us? Nothing else than the sojourn of the Holy Ghost in the Church. It was consequently necessary to have this too signified after the rest.”

This dwelling and coming of the Holy Spirit the Priest manifesting as the end of all, at the time when he drops the holy Bread into the Cup, says no other words than what have been quoted, conveying the impress of the Fulness of Faith, that is to say the filling of the Cup (namely of the whole of Christ’s holy Church, being Christ’s Body, 1 Cor. xii. 27) with the Orthodox and Catholic Belief in God, which we received through the dwelling of the All-holy Consecrating Spirit Himself after Christ departed. “But the Comforter the Holy Ghost which the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things,” John xiv. 26. And so at once follows the ancient custom of the warm water, handed down from the Fathers.

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