Eucharist

Contents 1. The Eucharist as a sacrifice 2. The special character of the Old Testament sacrifices 3. What is “remembrance” (ἀνάμνησις)? 4. Heavenly and earthly sacrifice 5. Eucharist and its establishment 6. Eucharistic presentation 7. Divine-human sacrifice 8. Divine-human sacrifice 9. Redemptive sacrifice (Eucharistic commemoration) 10. Eucharist and the Mother of God Conclusion Appendix: on the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts Eucharistic dogma One of the inaccuracies and ambiguities of Eucharistic theology is the insufficient establishment of the relationship between the Sacrament of Communion and the Eucharistic sacrifice. Some (Protestants) simply deny the presence of the latter and know only communion (sacramentum altaris), while others - and here the Orthodox teaching does not differ from the Catholic - place the Sacrament of Communion as if along with the Eucharistic sacrifice as a kind of its completion. a kind of replenishment, “beyond that,” while there is complete identity here: the Eucharist is precisely a sacrifice, or, conversely, the Eucharistic sacrifice of thanksgiving includes, as one of the possibilities, communion. Pious practice has singled out as predominant precisely this last moment as the Sacrament of Communion. Although in religious practice this bias we have here is harmless, theologically it leads to infidelity and one-sidedness. A similar one-sidedness, however, is represented by the Roman practice of the Mass in those abuses that precisely caused Protestant confrontation and led them to the Eucharistic heresy. The Lord’s establishing words contain not only thanksgiving (εὐχαριστήσας) and blessing (εὐλογήσας), characteristic of sacrifice, but also direct evidence of the sacrifice being performed: when breaking bread, the words: “for you is what is broken - τό ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν" (1 Cor. 11:24), and about the cup: "My blood is poured out for you and for many for the remission of sins" (Matthew 26:28; Luke 22:20), "My Blood of the New Testament" (Mark 14:24; 1 Cor. 11:25). The Last Supper is, first of all, a sacrifice, and therefore also communion, and it should be understood precisely in this connection. In this sense, the communion of the Body and Blood, “My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51), is explained in the Eucharistic theology of the Gospel of John, chapter 6. In particular, the fact that the Last Supper is timed to coincide with the celebration of Easter with its symbolism of the slaughter of the Paschal lamb, no matter how closely we understand the connection between these two accomplishments, once again confirms the nature of the sacrifice in conjunction with communion, as established by the Lord: “...Our Passover, Christ, was slain for us” (1 Cor. 5:7). This is the guiding idea of ​​the apostle Paul's theology in the doctrine of the atonement of the Blood of Christ (Rom. 5:9; 3:25; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14, 20, not to mention the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, see below). If we stop at the structure and text of the Divine Liturgy of both the Eastern and Western types, in them we find not only the “Communion service,” but precisely the Eucharist, the “sacrifice of praise,” “verbal and bloodless sacrifice.” This character of hers appears with completeness in the rite of proskomedia, precisely due to the fact that there is no eating of the Lamb at all, that is, communion, but the symbolic preparation of the sacrifice is performed: “the Lamb of God is devoured, take away the sin of the world for the worldly belly and salvation.” In the proskomedia there seems to be no memory of the Last Supper at all, the turn for which comes only at the liturgy of the faithful; here it is rather replaced by the Old Testament symbolism of sacrifice. Further, the very consecration of the Holy Gifts at the liturgy ἀναφορά, with its prayers, has the character of a sacrifice being performed as given to us by the Lord: “the ministerial sowing and Bloodless Sacrifice is a sacred act,” in which, together with the liturgical priest (“granted to You to be brought by me, Thy sinful and unworthy servant, by this Gift”) Christ is “the one who offers and the one who is offered, the one who receives and the one who is distributed” (prayer in Cherubic). The “holy offering” is offered as “the mercy of peace (peace offering), the sacrifice of praise” - “Thine from Thine offered to Thee for all and for all.” This sacrifice is also associated with the memory of everything that happened at the Last Supper, and further with communion included in the sacrifice 2 So, the most New Testament sacrament of all, namely Communion, is taught as a sacrifice. But it is not one of the Old Testament sacrifices, but the only one offered “according to the order of Melchizedek.” Nevertheless, it has a prototype in the sacrifices according to the order of Aaron, which it not only abolishes, but transforms. Sacrifice in general is the basic and original phenomenon of religious life. With only a few exceptions, which have a certain explanation for themselves in the circumstances of their very origin (in addition to primordial Buddhism, this includes the Koran, modern Judaism and Protestantism), sacrifice is an image of the union of man with the Divine. In this sense, it seems to be self-evident, a priori of religious life, like prayer. The nature of the sacrifices reflects the level of religious life and the general state of religious consciousness - from the crudest paganism to Revealed religion, which includes the law and practice of sacrifices. Their origin relates to the original state of man. It was the first sacrifices that were made by the righteous Abel from the firstlings of his flock and from their fat, and by Cain from the fruits of the earth (Gen. 4: 3-4), and then by Noah - a burnt offering after the flood (8:20). Sacrifices are made by the patriarchs: Abraham (15:7 et seq.) the first time - in connection with the conclusion of the Covenant with God, the second - in connection with the temptation of Abraham (22:1-18), but the main sacrificial institution was, of course, the Passover, performed during the exodus of Israel from Egypt (Ex. 12) and deliberately established in the order of its celebration by the Law (Deut. 16:1-8). During the days of the Jews' wanderings in the desert, special sacrifices were made at the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood (Ex. 29:10–28, 31–35) and at the consecration of the altar (16–32), and daily burnt offerings were also established. The detailed law regarding sacrifices is outlined in the book of Leviticus. The following types of sacrifice are established here: burnt offerings (1:9 et seq.), grain offering (1), peace offering (3) 3 for sin and error (4), for the need of ritual cleansing (5:1-14), guilt offering (5:15-19; 7:5-10). The sacrificial substance consisted of agricultural products of Canaan, animals, bread and oil; Old and young calves were selected from large livestock, sheep and lambs, goats and kids were selected from small livestock, and pigeons were selected from birds. Wild animals and fish were not sacrificed. According to the image of the offering, sacrifices are distinguished in two ways: when the offering is given entirely to God (burnt offering) or only a part of it, the rest goes entirely to the priests or is shared with those who offer. The Law of Moses, as well as both oral and written liturgical tradition, detail the manner in which the various sacrifices were performed. During this performance, the following points can be distinguished and highlighted: 1) the approach of the sacrificer with his victim to the place of sacrifice (usually to the altar or altar); 2) laying his hands on the head of the victim, a symbol of identification with it, which is significant for the idea of ​​atonement or substitutionary sacrifice: the sin of the offerer is transferred to the sacrifice; 3) the victim is usually killed by the offerer himself (only on the day of purification is it killed by the high priest); 4) this is where the participation of the priest begins: the blood shed is taken by him to sprinkle it on the altar or to pour it on it; 5) the meat, all or part, is burned on the altar; 6) part of it (except in cases of burnt offering) is eaten either by the priests, or with the participation of the offerer himself. The general idea of ​​sacrifice is, first, to offer to God a gift of certain chosen substances in thanksgiving to God; secondly, in liberation from guilt or sin by offering a ransom for them through accepting death as a sacrificial animal; and thirdly, in a kind of deification through union with the Divine through eating sacrificial meat, which after slaughter is already sacred. Atonement and deification, slaughter and communion - these are the defining moments of sacrifice both in pagan and Old Testament consciousness, and this same idea completely dominates in the New Testament consciousness: “Look at Israel according to the flesh: are they not partakers of the altar who eat sacrifices? What am I saying? is it that an idol is something, or that something sacrificed to idols means something? No, but that the pagans, when making sacrifices, offer to demons, and not to God. But I do not want you to have fellowship with demons” (1 Cor. 10:18–20). Redemption through self-identification with the sacrifice and deification through union with it in partaking of it - this is the scheme of sanctification through sacrifice, which is entirely applied from the Old Testament to the New with the only difference that the redemption of the Blood of Christ and the communion of the New Testament Lamb in a superlative degree combines the meaning of all sacrifices in its absoluteness. The Old Testament sacrifices are striking in their multiplicity, both in repetition and in diversity, moreover, combined with indecency. One has only to imagine the whole atmosphere of a slaughterhouse in an Old Testament church - with a multitude of slaughtered animals, their dying spasms and screams, the smell and smoke from burning meat and fat, here is the smell of fried meat with the priests eating it, and finally - the continuous sprinkling of blood and its pouring out near the altar 4 - all this sea of ​​blood, and against the background of this - smoking incense. You need to have a special Old Testament strength of nerves and a hardened sense of smell in order to be able to endure all this, just as it is unbearable for us now to hear or read about the bloody victims who still survived. In any case, the main element of sacrifice and sacrifice is blood. According to Moses, the blood contains the soul of animals, and in this sense it is the element of life, life itself. And this is where the substitutionary nature of the sacrifice is most expressed: a life for a life, the identification of the lives of the victim and the sacrificer. Since the sacrifice offered to God thereby itself becomes divine, it achieves deification, albeit to varying degrees, and the atoning sacrifice is one of the images of this deification, the path to it, along with the communion of sacrificial meat. The blood itself is not eaten, it is only sprinkled on the altar, and also - although not always - on the sacrificer, and this is already enough to join this new life, the source of Divine power. This Divine help and power supplied through sacrifice differs according to the nature of the sacrifice (sin offering, peace offering, burnt offering, etc.), but in any case it leads a person out of his sinful limitation, and carries out for him a transcensus to another, Divine life. Man, one might say, is endowed with a religious organ of sacrifice, and if we exclude cases of religious mediocrity and stupid rationalism, the presence of such an organ is a universal phenomenon of religious life, and, of course, as is the faith, so is the sacrifice (as well as vice versa). The nature of sacrifice with its theology completely reflects the nature of religion. 2. The special nature of the Old Testament sacrifices If the difference between sacrifices is determined by the quality of the religion that they express, then it is obvious that the sacrifice to the True God is radically different from the sacrifices of idols, expressing different images of pagan piety. The Apostle Paul warns his children against them as against serving demons. This is what they are, along with the sacrifices to the True God, especially as they compete with them. This, of course, does not prevent the fact that these sacrifices themselves, like all pious paganism, express a lower degree of religious consciousness, not enlightened by Revelation. However, as a “natural revelation”, outside the opposition to true religion, although in ignorance of it, these pagan sacrifices, like all paganism in general, can also represent a certain positive religious value, which, however, is abolished and even turns into the opposite, supplied along with true religion. One of these pagan substitutions and temptations in religious life is magic, accompanied by the ritual mechanization of sacrifices. It is known that not only serving false gods, but also false serving the True God is the subject of severe prophetic reproof (in Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, Jeremiah, etc.). The prophets contrast this ritualism and magism with serving God in the spirit of truth, spiritual sacrifice, and human deeds (Isa. 1: 11–17, Jer. 7: 20–22, Am. 5: 21–22). “...I want mercy, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6). “A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit” (Ps. 50). However, judgments of this nature in no way mean the abolition or even just the derogation of the sacrificial law. All the piety of the chosen people and their worship are connected with victims and priests and are determined by the priestly typicon, just as the church itself is, first of all, a place of sacrifice, having its center in the altar. The truth of sacrifices to the True God was not destroyed by the sinful limitations and abuses of Old Testament Israel, with which the prophets fight. Therefore, even among the latter one cannot find ideas that shake the sacrificial institution itself. And yet, the Old Testament sacrifices, precisely because of their Old Testament nature, have only a limited, educational significance, as is deliberately revealed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. First of all, this stems from the relativity and insufficiency of the entire Old Testament priesthood as such. On the one hand, every high priest who is appointed to serve God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin, of himself “does not accept this honor, but is called by God, like Aaron” (Heb. 5: 1, 4). However, on the other hand, “those priests were many, because death did not allow one to remain alone” (7: 23). Moreover, “The Law, having a shadow of future benefits, and not the very image of things, with the same sacrifices, constantly made every year, can never make perfect those who come with them. Otherwise, they would stop offering them, because those who offer the sacrifice, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But through sacrifices we are reminded of our sins every year; for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (10:1-4). “And every priest stands daily in ministry, and repeatedly offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (10:11). This is the difference between the true, New Testament, absolute high priesthood of Christ from the Old Testament, that Christ, “having offered one sacrifice for sins, is seated forever at the right hand of God... for by one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified” (10:12, 14), and in Him we have “a great Priest over the house of God” (10:21), “Who sat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and is the Priest of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man” (8:1-2). That is why both the priesthood and the very law of sacrifices in the Old Testament had only a preliminary meaning: “if the first covenant had been without deficiency, then there would have been no need to look for a place for another” (8:7), but “the first covenant had a decree regarding worship and an earthly sanctuary” (9:1), and the former tabernacle “is an image of the present time, in which gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot make the offerer perfect in conscience, and which... were established only until the time of correction” (9: 9–10). The Old Testament knew only “images of heavenly things,” but not “heavenly things themselves” (23). Throughout the entire content of the New Testament, it is clear that, surpassing, it abolishes the Old, just as the priesthood “forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps. 109:4) abolishes the priesthood of Abraham. However, for this reason, one should not diminish the full power and authenticity of this priesthood, as well as the sacrificial law in its place and for its time. It is enough just to remember all the exceptional seriousness with which they are spoken about at their very establishment. After the completion of the peace offering, this Old Testament Eucharist, having read the book of the Covenant, Moses sprinkled the people with sacrificial blood, saying: “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you regarding all these words” (Exodus 24: 7–8), and therefore Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and 70 elders ascended the mountain and saw the God of Israel, “and under His feet something like the work of pure sapphire and as clear as the sky itself” (24: 9–10). And the meaning of the sacrifices, and the tabernacle, and the Aaronic priesthood is explained as follows: “And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and I will be their God” (29:45), and individual sacrifices are defined as “great holiness” before the Lord (Ex. 29:29, 37; 31:10, 29; Lev. 2:3; 7:1, et seq.). The Old Testament people of God were raised by the law of sacrifices for the coming of the Lord and prepared, in their chosen ones, to meet Him. Such was the saving power of the Old Testament images, although they were only a shadow of the Prototype. There is an internal ontological necessity for just such a path towards the Lord, and therefore the order of Aaron is not so much abolished as absorbed, but at the same time and in a new way restored in the New Testament priesthood. The Old Testament, as a law protecting the Lord's inheritance and the chosen people in the midst of a sea of ​​paganism, of course, not only does not allow any, even relative, recognition of the pagan priesthood, but it fights irreconcilably with the latter. However, one cannot close one’s eyes to the fact that this also expresses a deliberate simplification or pedagogical stylization characteristic of the salvific education of the Old Testament. But it is already losing its power for New Testament humanity, to the extent that it becomes able to see the natural Old Testament in paganism. Here what strikes us most is what can be defined as this universal instinct of sacrifice, widespread throughout the entire religious world and thereby forcing us to find in this religious phenomenology its ontological basis. The general presentiment of salvation and redemption, as well as its need, are characteristic of all humanity, no matter how darkened and distorted this feeling is by pagan attacks. We can say that it is inherent in man as part of his humanity, together with reason and conscience, as a kind of imprinting of the image of God in man. Is this not one of the images of that aspiration of Christ among the tongues, which in general was and is characteristic of humanity? If the Old Testament showed only a shadow of future blessings, then in paganism we have only a shadow of this shadow, however, it also has its own messianic content. In this regard, it is characteristic that Melchizedek, although the king of “(Jeru)-Salem,” who was “priest of the Most High God” (Gen. 14:18), showed himself to be the image of the High Priesthood forever according to the order of Melchizedek. But he himself does not appear from the Old Testament, but emerges from the darkness of times and peoples to meet Abraham, and, moreover, not in the Holy Land, but somewhere in the Shave valley, along with the king of Sodom. The boundaries of the Old Testament and pagan world are erased before the appearance of the one who bears the prototype of the Coming High Priest. The same is “the light and revelation of tongues, and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). Melchizedek appeared as a high priest definitely not according to the order of Aaron, but outside of it, as if on behalf of all mankind. This feature is important for the complete understanding of this image. 3. What is “memory” (ἀνάμνησις)? At the Last Supper, when giving communion to the disciples, the Lord explained this communion as part of the sacrifice. It is the words of Christ: “for you that is broken”, “for you and much that is poured out”, spoken by Him about His Body and Blood, that establish precisely such a sacrificial character. They connect the Last Supper, as communion, with the sacrifice that was once performed by the Lord Himself on the Cross. Moreover, They are commanded to do this in remembrance of Him, repeatedly and unceasingly, “until He comes” (1 Cor. 11:26), that is, until the end of the age, or until the Second Coming of Christ in glory. The relationship between communion at the Last Supper and its repetition until the end of the century is defined as “remembrance.” What does this anamnesis mean here? Is this a simple memory, a commemoration of the past that once existed, but now no longer exists, its subjective reflection in the soul, nothing more? But, of course, such an interpretation of Christ’s words is completely unacceptable. Already all the serious severity with which the Apostle Paul speaks here, admonishing him about worthy communion (“let a man examine himself and thus eat of this bread and drink the cup worthily. For whoever eats and drinks unworthily, he eats and drinks condemnation for himself, not considering the Body of the Lord” - cf.: 1 Cor. 11: 28-29), contradicts this. It also contradicts that the communion itself is explained not as a remembrance of the Last Supper itself, as establishing in relation to the Eucharist, but as a proclamation (καταγγέλλετε) of the death of the Lord: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes” (1 Cor. 11: 26). Thus, in terms of its strength and meaning, “memory” is defined much more broadly. It is not only a personal memory of this event - especially since its direct participants and witnesses were only twelve disciples who were present at the Supper (among them was not the Apostle Paul himself, although he “received from the Lord what he passed on” (23), and not all those countless Christian generations who are called to this remembrance, “until he comes.” Thus, “memory” is the true power of what is happening, as existing in the world, and our co-memory is an entry into this force, its participation - real, ontological. Plato teaches about the anamnesis of ideas-forces, heavenly prototypes of existence before its descent into the world, however, referring it to the prototypes in their abstract universality. Here the power of memory refers to a specific event that took place not in the sky of abstraction, alien to concrete reality, but in the world, living in the fullness of life. “Memory” here is equal to what is remembered and has all its power. The Lord now communes His Sacrificial Body and Blood in exactly the same way as He did at the Last Supper, despite all the empirical differences that exist only on the surface. “Remembering” here precisely means this power of identification, ontological identity, and not just subjective likeness—this is the mystery of “translation.” And this power of identification is established by the command of the Lord, which has the force of a creative act entrusted to us: “Do this in My remembrance.” We must fully understand and accept this identity of accomplishment, which seems to multiply, secretly repeating itself in endless repetitions, with the boundaries of space and time being removed in their limitations. In the world and in general, nothing disappears, does not return to non-existence - into that nothingness from which the world was created, although it disappears from our subjective memory and is forgotten. This memory of the world about everything that happened in it, and about all human life, will be revealed at the Last Judgment of Christ: the books will be opened (Rev. 20:12), and everything that happened will be repeated, as if in its power, although it has no lasting meaning, but will be abolished, plunging into “utter darkness.” However, in a very special and unique, exclusive sense, the world preserves the “memory” of the earthly life of the God-man, in which the Divine power is imprinted in the fullness of the sinless holiness of created human existence. The entire fullness of the Savior’s earthly life, accomplished in time, is preserved, as if continuing or repeating all the time. The Lord is with us always, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Symbolic evidence of this is given by the church circle, in which not only holidays are remembered, but also all the events and features of Christ’s earthly life, at least through the consistent recollection of Gospel events in everyday readings. Repetition in time and at certain times reveals this inexhaustible power of Divine accomplishments. How to express in the language of time these super-temporal events, which, although they bear the stamp of temporality (because they are confined to certain points in space and time), but at the same time remain beyond their control? They are eternal with their Divine power, but they are welded with time, opening in it and through it. This dual and antinomic character is generally inherent in the Incarnation in its dual nature, in which the True God united Himself with human nature and became the True Man. The Divine here reveals Himself to humanity, and this latter contains the revelation of the Divine. This is generally the mystery of the Incarnation, which includes the Divine Eucharist. Having once taken place in a certain place and time, it occurs super-temporally in heaven, but is also “repeated” on earth as a “memory.” Moreover, here multiple repetitions by the power of the Divine merge into unity until identification, which is the secret action. The sacrament is a manifestation of the one-acting, single-performing power of the Divine, under the cover of empirical accomplishments, in the flesh of the world, and in this sense it is, as it were, a newly occurring or repeating Incarnation of God. So, the Eucharist is a single sacrifice. In it, a sacrifice is made to God. What is this sacrifice and how is it made, what is its content? This latter is defined in the establishing words of Christ as His death on the cross through the “breaking of His Body” and the “outpouring of His blood,” and with this is connected the possibility of communion. However, such a narrow and limited understanding of the sacrifice of Calvary is opposed, first of all, by its feature that the Last Supper with the communion of the sacrificial Body and Blood takes place before the sacrifice itself, “on the night on which Christ was betrayed,” and not on the day of Great Friday, when He was crucified and, having exclaimed: “It is finished,” gave up His spirit to the Father. In this way, the limiting power of time as an alternation of periods is removed, and all of Christ’s earthly work is generalized as a unity, which includes sacrifice. It itself in the words of the Lord (in the teaching on the Eucharist in the 6th chapter of John) is set forth without regard to times and seasons, as a kind of abiding praesens: “he who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life... for My Flesh is truly food, and My Blood is truly drink,” - the Incarnation in its entirety. Already this separation, so to speak, of the liturgical sacrifice that took place at the Last Supper from the death on the cross of Calvary with its “completion” in time, as well as the interpretation in its transtemporality by St. John, does not allow us to understand it only as one of the many events of the earthly life of the Lord among others, but forces us to see in it an entire event or a single event that generalizes it all. In other words, we must necessarily come to the conclusion that the subject of the sacrifice, the very sacrifice of Christ, is not only the death on the cross, but also His entire life on the cross, which all - from the beginning in the Bethlehem cave and from the persecution of Herod - is the path to Golgotha. The latter is also not some random incident in His life, which might not have happened. On the contrary, it concentratedly expresses the sacrificial nature of all its events, and therefore it could not fail to exist. The One Sinless One, who came to the sinful earth, breathed its plague-ridden air and lived among sinners, inevitably had to experience the agony of the cross even before the approach of the Calvary Cross. All its inevitability, external and internal, was completely obvious to Him and was repeatedly expressed by Him, moreover, with growing insistence. 5 Therefore, it is strange and incorrect to measure His sacrificial path only by the space from Gethsemane to Golgotha, when it, starting from Bethlehem, through Egypt, led Him through all the places of His earthly sojourn. 6 The idea that the sacrifice of Christ extends to His entire earthly life, to the entire Incarnation, expressed in the following texts of the Epistle to the Hebrews: Christ, “entering into the world, said: sacrifices and offerings... I did not desire, but a body I prepared for Me... Then I said: Behold, I come, as at the beginning of the book it is written about Me, to do Your will, O God” (10: 5, 7); “It is by this will that we were sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ for once” (10:10). The same idea about the universal nature of the sacrifice of Christ is expressed in liturgical texts, which also by no means allow the Divine Liturgy to be timed to the mere remembrance of the Last Supper (see in the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom about the prayer of thanksgiving on Worthy: “You brought us from non-existence into being, and you raised up those who had fallen away, and you did not retreat, having created everything, until now you have raised us to Heaven and granted Your kingdom to the future...” and further, at the beginning of the epiclesis: “Remembering this saving commandment and all that was for us: the Cross, the Sepulcher, the three-day Resurrection, the ascension to Heaven, the sitting on the right hand, Your second and glorious coming from Yours is brought to You. everyone and for everything” (and the same, but even more extensively, at the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great). 4. Heavenly and earthly sacrifice According to the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ, as the High Priest, who made a sacrifice on earth, also offers it in heaven: “... the images of heavenly things were to be purified by these, but the heavenly things themselves by the best of these sacrifices. For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made with hands, in the image of the true (built), but into heaven itself, to appear... for us in the presence of God” (9: 23-24). “He has again opened [the way] for us through the veil, that is, His flesh” (10:20). The sacrifice of Christ is accepted (liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) “into His holy and heavenly and mental altar in the stench of the spiritual fragrance,” and Christ is both “offered and offered” (liturgy of St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom), a sacrifice, and also an altar 7 Christ is sacrificed on earth and heaven, in time and forever, “the great priest over the house of God” (Heb. 10:21). How to understand this connection and the relationship between the earthly and heavenly sacrifice, as well as the high priestly ministry of Christ, also earthly and heavenly? 8 We have the guiding teaching about the high priesthood “according to the order of Melchizedek” in the Epistle to the Hebrews in repeated and persistent repetition. The appearance of Melchizedek in the Old Testament in his meeting with Abraham can only be understood Christologically, precisely as the Old Testament Christophany (cf. especially 7:1-10). “So Christ did not appropriate to Himself the glory of being a High Priest, but He who said to Him: You are My Son, this day I have begotten You” (Ps. 2:7), as in another (place) he says: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps. 109:4). The eternity of this priesthood, which is connected and even identified with His sonship, must be understood literally, that is, in the sense of transcending time, which only contains its revelation. Christ is the High Priest who sacrificed His body on earth. “In the likeness of Melchizedek rises a priest, who is the same not in the power of the carnal commandment, but in the power of unceasing life, for it is testified: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (7: 16-17). He, “as he who endures forever, has an imperishable priesthood” (7:24). The high priesthood “forever according to the order of Melchizedek” does not mean only an actual state that both arises and flows in time, but has the power of “eternal abiding.” This poses the following question, which is of fundamental importance for the theological understanding of sacrifice: does the high priestly ministry of Christ, in which He Himself is both victim, priest, and altar, arise only on the basis of the completed Incarnation of God and as its consequence? Or, on the contrary, this service itself is an ontological precondition for the Incarnation of God, through which the things that exist in eternity are revealed in time, since earthly priests, bringing their gifts, “serve the image and shadow of the heavenly,” as Moses was told when he began to complete the tabernacle: “See,” it is said, “do everything according to the image shown to you on the mountain” (Ex. 25:40); (Heb. 8:5)? Is the high priesthood of the Son of God only a consequence of the need to redeem the human race, which fell in the person of Adam and Eve, however, by the meaning of temptation it had the opportunity not to fall, or is the high priesthood forever, according to the order of Melchizedek, the foundation of the earthly priesthood, and it would have arisen on earth apart from the Fall? It is obvious that such occasionalism is unacceptable when understanding the relationship between earthly and heavenly things, because it contains a contradiction: eternity is not determined from time, but vice versa. And therefore, the understanding of the Golgotha ​​sacrifice, and then its Eucharistic “memory,” must be raised to its Divine Prototype in the “celestial and mental (νοερόν) altar,” and connected with it, and in a certain sense, identified, of course, while at the same time distinguishing it. It is to this interpretation of earthly images by heavenly ones, and the temporal priesthood by eternal ones, that the guiding thought of the Epistle to the Hebrews boils down. In the light of this idea, from here, first of all, one should understand the Incarnation itself as the humiliation of the Lord, the humiliation of Himself with the acceptance of the “form of a servant” (Phil. 2). Therefore, the main meaning of the sacrifices is explained as follows in the Epistle to the Hebrews (10: 5-7): Christ, “entering the world, says [to the Father], “You did not desire sacrifices and offerings, but you have prepared a body for Me.” Burnt offerings and sin offerings are displeasing to You. Then I said, “Behold, I come, as it is written about Me at the beginning of the book, to do Your will, O God.” “It is by this will that we were sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once more” (10). The Incarnation in itself is the fulfillment of the will of the Father and in this sense the sacrificial obedience of the Son, while His offering of His blood is a special image of this obedience, which is in connection with the Fall. It might not have existed, however, without the abolition of the high priesthood itself. For Christ is the High Priest forever, and not only in time, precisely for a certain period of time. And the sacrifice in heaven is made in eternity, transtemporally, although it is also connected with an event that occurred in time. The Eucharist, celebrated on earth, takes place in heaven in eternity, and to understand its nature as the connection between the earthly and heavenly Eucharist is the first task of Eucharistic theology. The eternal high priestly service must be understood first of all on the basis of the Trinitarian dogma 9 Christ is the High Priest not only by the Incarnation and everything connected with it, but also as the Son, and even first of all as the Son 10 The Holy Trinity is Trinitarian Love, and thereby also Trinitarian self-revelation, in which each Hypostasis loves and self-denies in its own way: Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. Eternally giving birth to the Hypostatic Word, the Father plunges Himself into eternal Silence about Himself, which is overcome in the Only Begotten Son, the Word of the Father. The Son accepts this existing Word not as His own, but as the Revelation of the Father, gives Himself to the Father, makes a filial sacrifice. His very existence as the Son is already a sacrifice, and the Son, as the Son, is the High Priest forever (“according to the order of Melchizedek”). The Son is in this sense the Hypostatic Glory of the Father (εἰς δόξαν Θεοῦ Πατρός) (Phil. 11:11). But this also presupposes the acceptance of the sacrifice by the Father from the Son, and the sacrifice itself is already a two-pronged counter act of Divine love, which is the Holy Spirit, He is Hypostatic love itself, as the reciprocity of the love of the Father and the Son, its inspiration, joy and triumph, the Gift of God, the Gift of the Holy Trinity within Herself, the Glory of God. Therefore, the Incarnation of God is characteristic of the second, as the sacrificing and sacrificing Hypostasis in the Holy Trinity. This is not the Father, although His will is done by the Son, and not the Holy Spirit, although He adopts the Son to the Father, and reveals the fatherhood of the Father to the Son, but it is the Son, the Second Hypostasis in the Holy Trinity. Divine love is trinitarian and therefore threefold in its ecstatic image, as emanating from itself, bestowing itself, and being fulfilled by itself. In this trinity, the life of God is heavenly worship, the triple sacrifice of God, in the Holy Trinity of existence, to Himself and Himself. It is triune and cannot be otherwise, and, however, the sacrificial Hypostasis, and in this sense the High Priest, is precisely the Second - the Son. The Father is the One to whom He makes sacrifices, and the Holy Spirit is the One by whom the sacrifice of the Son is offered and through His kenotic self-humiliation the entry into the Glory of God the Father is accomplished. What is the subject or content of this eternal, premium sacrifice in God Himself, if there is no extra-divine, created being, there is no “world”? Obviously, such content can only be taken from the Divine life itself; only the Divinity Itself can appear to them - namely, not God in His Hypostatic being, but in the Divine nature, which is always the triple hypostasized self-revelation of God. The sacrifice offered on the heavenly altar is not God, but the Divine. We know what it is: the Word of God as Light and Life, Truth and Beauty, Wisdom, Divine Sophia and Glory of God. She is the self-revelation of the Father in the Son by the Holy Spirit, the Word of the Father in the Glory of the Father, “His eternal power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20). And this Divinity of the Trihypostatic God is not the “fourth hypostasis,” as fearful feeble-mindedness imagines, but the nature or life of God, the inexhaustible and inexhaustible source and fullness in which the Hypostatic existence of God is realized. God in His Trinity lives inseparably from His Divinity, in the triple self-determination of each of the Hypostases, in the trinity of the Holy Trinity, and, however, this His Divinity itself is not a hypostasis (neither the “fourth” nor any other according to unreason), although It is eternally hypostasized, residing in Hypostatic existence. It is not identified with the hypostases, differing from them, although not separating. Each Hypostasis, like the entire Holy Trinity in Its Trinity, has Its own Divinity, or Divine Sophia in its entirety, although in its own way. And this is His Divinity, His Sophia, in His possession of it, receiving it from the Father, the Son, the Eternal High Priest, sacrifices it to Him with the Holy Spirit, as Filial Love - this is His Divine sacrifice of His Divinity. But with this sacrifice He realizes Himself in His Hypostatic existence: “Therefore the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life in order to take it again. No one takes it away from Me, but I Give it Myself” (John 10:17–18). This self-giving is crowned with the glory “which You gave Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24), and this glory is “another Comforter” (John 14:16), Whom the Father gives. So, the Son has His own Hypostasis Divine existence as “Priest forever,” offering it as a sacrifice to the Father. He is “the offerer and the offered,” “the sacrifice and the priest.” Where are the altar and the altar? But this too is He Himself in His own Divinity. Of course, in heaven this is not a place, but a being, namely the Divinity in the Holy Trinity. It appears as such in the face of the Heavenly High Priest, sacrificing Him to the Father’s obedience, and its fulfillment is the Holy Spirit resting on the Son. This idea about the eternal Divine sacrifice of the Son to the Father, or, which in this case means the same thing, of God to Himself, can be expressed even more specifically and separately. In the essay “Eucharistic Dogma” we already had to develop the following thought (in connection with its sophiological interpretation): man, as created in the image of God, has a body, perceived by God Himself in the Incarnation, and this makes us think about the body of God, of course, absolutely spiritual, as the whole being of God is spiritual, in the sense of complete alienation from the flesh, in which the main feature is usually seen - and, of course, completely wrongly physicality. The body in itself is not yet flesh, which is only an image of corporeality, by no means the only one. The opposition does not exist between the spirit and the body as such, otherwise the Incarnation would be unthinkable and contradictory as a combination of, although different, but not opposite and mutually exclusive principles, but only between different images of corporeality, namely carnal and spiritual. This is evidenced not only by the Incarnation in general, but, in particular, by the Resurrection in the flesh, the Ascension into heaven and “sitting at the right hand of the Father,” as well as the Second Coming from heaven, also in the flesh. Consequently, possessing a body is not an obstacle to Christ’s presence in heaven and even to sitting at the right hand of the Father. If angels are spoken of as disembodied spirits, then, strictly speaking, this does not equate to recognizing them as incorporeal in the precise sense. And the apostle speaks not only about different types of flesh (1 Cor. 15:39), but also about physicality: “There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the glory of those in heaven is one, and that of the earth is another. There is another glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another of the stars; and star differs from star in glory” (40–41). “There is a spiritual body, there is also a spiritual body” (44) 11 Theologians generally avoid a direct answer to the question of what exactly this seemingly contradictory concept of a spiritual body means, and even more so - a celestial body (or they see here only bodies of different densities). However, we have to admit that Revelation here forces us to abolish the very opposition between spirit and body as such, allowing it only in application to different states of fleshiness. Corporality can be carnal (“they are not flesh” - Gen. 6:3), mental and spiritual, and true corporeality is that glorified and completely spiritualized corporeality that is characteristic of the Resurrected body of the Lord, and then of the Most Holy Theotokos in Her resurrection. Thus, the last question about spiritual corporeality, namely the body of God, is brought up for discussion, and no longer in the sense of the Incarnation, that is, the perception of flesh, or the “earthly body,” but also in the sense of that absolute spirituality, which is generally characteristic of the being of God. However, what will remain of the body in general if we remove from it materiality, flesh and even “spirituality”, understood as a certain emotional structure, which at one end comes into contact with the life of the flesh, and at the other goes back to the spirit? (This includes all kinds of experiences, emotions and passionate movements, which can also represent spiritual states - such they are, obviously, in the life of fallen spirits, although alien to the flesh, but not alien to the carnal lusts they acquired in the state of their fall). The spiritual body is designated in the Word of God as the highest degree of bodily refinement or transparency, since such refined, as if rarefied, bodies remain no less real than the densest ones, and differ from each other only in the number, so to speak, of atoms or energy centers. The spiritual body in a precise sense is, indeed, the opposite of the material, since it manifests the life of the spirit in a state of incorporeality (though not incorporeality). Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between two understandings of the “spiritual body”: one – as the spiritualization, glorification and transformation of the carnal body, which, however, does not at all imply complete liberation from corporeality; the other means complete freedom from the flesh - its removal. The middle state is characteristic only of the angelic world, which is characterized by a certain spiritual vestment in the image of created nature, although this is not a body in its massive concreteness, but a certain, even inexpressible in human language (that is, carnal) fabric of emotions, feelings, and in general the life of the created spirit. The spiritual body, in the precise sense of the word, remains inherent in form, image, concreteness of being, in contrast to negative amorphism or formlessness, which is usually for some reason considered inherent in the spirit. It remains to define it in this sense only in the language of negative theology (and anthropology): spirit in this sense is everything that is not, determined by the elimination of any specific characteristics, and therefore ugliness, a kind of emptiness of being, and at most, its potency alone. Theologians, however, cannot help but experience considerable difficulty in presenting the general doctrine of God as Spirit, understood in the sense of such a pure negation of all concreteness, when they encounter in the Word of God certain bodily attributes attributed to God. Thus, various organs of the body are assimilated to Him, such as ears, eyes, hair, arms, legs. All this has to be interpreted “spiritually” or simply annulled, without stopping or being embarrassed by the obvious violation of the sacred text. Of course, these expressions must be truly understood “spiritually”, without attributing to the Divinity what is characteristic of the flesh with its organs. But it is precisely this spirituality that should not justify the nihilistic reprisal that is being carried out here over the sacred text for the glory of pseudo-negative theology. So, we not only do not have the right and reason to belittle the meaning of such expressions in which the body in general or its individual features are attributed to the Divine, but we must accept them in all their significance. An image or form can be not only carnal (corresponding to the flesh), or spiritual (corresponding to the “spiritual body”), but also spiritual, although it is inaccessible to us, as beings embodied in the flesh, and is understood only by analogy, rather as a postulate of thought, rather than direct perception. However, it is wrong to conclude that what is inaccessible to our direct experience does not exist. Even for the material world, there are boundaries of our perception, beyond which things that undoubtedly exist and are tangibly manifested in their existence cease to exist for us. But if this is possible within the physical world, then all the more natural is it in the presence of metaphysical differences - for different areas of existence 12 At the same time, the very concept of the spiritual body is conceived only by analogy with the sensual, carnal, or even spiritual body (which, however, is itself conceived as a body only by analogy with the carnal, but in real life remains inaccessible to our direct vision). However, the presence of analogy here testifies not only to the difference, but also to the similarity, if not directly to the ontological identity of what is compared in the analogy and is essential, albeit in different images of being. And so essential for the body is its imagery, and at the same time its concreteness, form, originality, reality. The body has the power of being, giving reality to ideality. In the body, the idea becomes reality, and the personality is connected with existence by the soul. The body overcomes Fichte’s “jacking” (in his Ich-Philosophie, which Berdyaev has recently learned from us). Fichte (the Elder) turned him into a non-self. However, from the non-self, as the ideal boundary of the self, concrete reality cannot yet emerge. The self is fused not only with the non-self, but also with the extra-self, since the body is a personal revelation of the self beyond its boundaries, in extra- and non-personal existence. It is the I that penetrates it, shines through it, reveals itself through it. The body corresponds to the third person pronoun with all its specific images, shells or substitutes. It is connected as a predicate with the subject, which is the first person, together with its second person variant: I and co-I or you, we and co-us or you 13 Personal being, I, both individual and collective, in the fullness of its self-revelation (in the likeness of the Trinitarian Person in the Holy Trinity) cannot completely remain in the vicious circle of this “yakaniya” of its own, it must not only be, but also be something, to have an existential definition, an image of being, which is its body. Let us add that the body lives bodily, having the power of life in the soul, which not only gives life to the body, is its life, but also mediates between the spirit and the body, being addressed to both, and therefore is qualified either as a bodily or as a spiritual principle, and in this its own indetermination from itself. We are now approaching the comprehension of what corresponds to the body in the Divine life. Hypostatic, and in this His hypostasis the Trihypostatic God, the Divine Person, has a Divinity that is consubstantial and indivisible. This Divine Essence is, in the above sense, the “body” of God. As the Divine essence, or nature in God, it corresponds to corporeality in general, as such an absolute Divine reality, which is expressed by the definition: the existence of God. God exists means that the personality of God lives in reality, is inextricably fused with it, so that in this sense a sign of equality between person and nature can be put: Hypostatic God is this Divine being. However, reality alone or concreteness as such, without any further definitions, does not yet exhaust what is characteristic of the Body of God. It is not only absolute reality, but also absolute content, the self-revelation of God, Sophia, Ens realissimum. It is not a dull, deaf and dumb reality, a kind of res, but light and life, the fullness of everything in everything. And all this is not in an abstract and ideal concept, only as its shadow, but in all the power of reality and life, as an entire organism of ideas worthy of being, there is a “body that includes all its organs,” the fullness of the ideal-real existence of God. But this is the Divine Sophia, she is also the Glory of God. God, being threefold in Persons, is a Trinitarian Person, but consubstantial and indivisible. The nature of God is one, although it is the being and self-revelation of the Trinitarian Person. In it one can discern the Logos of the world, the self-revelation of the Hypostatic Word and the Glory of the Hypostatic Spirit, revealing the very Hypostatic Being of God. The Father, as God, has His hypostatic self-revelation in both revealed Hypostases of the Son and the Holy Spirit. But it retains the character of each of the hypostases. Thus, Sophia-Glory is, in a certain sense, the body of God, but absolutely spiritual, free from all carnality. It is the fullness of everything in everything, the existence of God in concreto. We can now return to the question of the eternal high priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek and the heavenly sacrifice. The Logos, the Son of God, is the Self-sacrificing Hypostasis. He sacrifices His Divine nature, His body, which is as characteristic of Himself as of other Hypostases, to the Father. This is His special hypostatic image in the intra-trinity life. He brings His heavenly body as a kind of spiritual self-revelation - His sacrificial self-revelation in heaven. And this is the sacrifice of Filial love for the Father, which is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, the Hypostatic love of Both. This mystery of Divine reciprocity, inaccessible to us, is comprehended only in the most general terms. However, this is enough for us to be able to look for an analogy in the created world, in earthly sacrifice. At the same time, we must return to the idea of ​​the Pre-Eternal Humanity of the Son of God, in whose image all of our humanity is realized, as is His earthly humanity. He is that Heavenly Man, the second Adam, in whose image earthly man, the first Adam, was created. The Lord came down from heaven and became precisely a man, incarnated, taking on an earthly body. However, all this does not happen arbitrarily or accidentally, so that it might not have happened, but by analogy with the heavenly, Divine body and the all-human, created body. “No one has ascended into heaven except the Son of Man, who is in heaven, who came down from heaven” (John 3:13). “The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second person is the Lord from heaven.” “As we bear the image of earthly, so let us also bear the image of heavenly things” (1 Cor. 15:47, 49). The words of the Lord affirm this analogy between the earthly man and the Heavenly man, in the God-man. The analogy further continues in application to the earthly sacrifice offered by the Heavenly Man, the God-Man, sent to earth for earthly incarnation, with the acceptance of an earthly body, and with it the entire earthly human nature: “a body I have prepared for Me... behold, I come... to do Your will, O God” (Heb. 10: 5-7). The creation of the world with the world-man as its focus was also not a random act, which could not have happened, it is a matter of self-revealing love, which has an internal free necessity for itself. It is in its way as indestructible as the Divine's own inner life, although in a different sense. And, of course, it is not accidental, but also internally necessary, that it is the Second, priestly in the Holy Trinity Itself, that is sent into the world. This message in the manner of its implementation is determined by the destinies of the world, in man endowed with the freedom of created self-determination. Due to the latter, there were different possibilities for him, and he could equally fall or not fall. However, the nature of the earthly sacrifice depended on this, which - all the same - could not fail to take place: “I go to do Your will, O God,” for You “have prepared a body for Me.” The Incarnation, as a sacrifice of love for the world, still lay on the path of the creation of the world and man, since it is its completion. The proclamation on the cross: “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30) refers not only to the Calvary sacrifice, but also to everything that is accomplished and completed in it, namely to the entire work of creating man according to His prototype - the Heavenly, uncreated Man. It is he who is called to participate in the creation of the world through the adoption of a body, according to the will of the Father, and this God-incarnating Love - “he has prepared a body for Me” and “behold, I come to do Your will, O God” (Heb. 10: 5, 7) - does not stop at any sacrifices on this path of self-abasement, with the adoption of the “form of a servant” and death on the cross (see: Rom. 2:7). The Incarnation was bought at the highest price, and obedience was achieved in the most terrible and merciless way - even to death on the cross. “He, in the days of His flesh, with a strong cry and with tears offered prayers and supplications to Him who was able to save Him from death; and was heard for His reverence; Although He was the Son, He learned obedience through His sufferings, and, having been perfected, became the author of eternal salvation for all who obey Him, having been called by God High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 5:7-10). The cross is a symbol of Divine life - in the Holy Trinity in heaven, and on earth - in the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. The cross therefore marks not only individual states associated with events on the paths of the Incarnation, but also the Divine existence itself as an eternal sacrifice. 5. Eucharist and its establishment The Last Supper is not directly the sacrifice itself, but only the establishment of the communion of the Eucharistic gifts as the sacrificial Body and Blood of Christ. It is established as a “memory”, but at the same time it is included in the fullness of the sacrifice, although it does not exhaust it. What does the “remembering” that we are called to do refer to? Is it only to the event itself at the Last Supper, or does it include Golgotha, or does it extend even wider - to everything that conditioned them or made them possible, that is, to the entire Incarnation? According to the text of the liturgy, the latter is obvious. The creation of the world in itself is the kenosis of God, in the Holy Trinity of existence, and, moreover, special for each of the Hypostases. God reduced Himself to a relationship with the world, in its creation and provision for it. All this is not only the action of God ad extra, over the world external to God, but, first of all, God’s own self-position in relation to creation. What happens in God Himself happens in a similar correspondence with the world. The transcendental sacrifice of God in Himself above creation is realized in the heavenly God-manhood, and then in the Incarnation through the union of God with creation. In comprehending the Eucharist as a sacrifice, one should approach the subject first of all from this earthly end and ask oneself when and how the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered, in what way its offering is expressed. Regarding the first - when - we stand before the fact of removing the boundaries of the sequence in time, since the communion of the broken Body and shed Blood of Christ at the Last Supper is established by Him before the very event of sacrificial refraction and outpouring, precisely on the eve of Calvary's death. On the other hand, his “memorial repetition” begins only after it and on the basis of it, having to continue at all times, “until the Lord comes.” At the same time, another question arises, namely, what is the relationship between the Last Supper, which can be defined as a liturgical sacrifice, and Calvary’s death as its very performance. Both of these events constitute parts of one whole, and the Last Supper is, as it were, an offering of sacrifice, a “proskomedia” (although, due to the removal of the boundaries of time, the communion of the disciples is also included in it). One can distinguish here the sacrifice as such and the sacrifice itself: the first is the action of the sacrificer, or the priest; the second is a certain Divine given of the sacrifice. Christ in this sense is both “the one who offers and the one who is offered, the one who receives and the one who is distributed” (prayer on Cherubimskaya). In the teaching about the New Testament sacrifice, it is necessary to establish the relationship between the earthly gifts - bread and wine, which are offered. The power of “translation,” as the incorporation of the earthly elements of the sacrifice into the Body and Blood of Christ, is explained in the essay “Eucharistic Dogma.” at the Last Supper, which continues on earth, and with the Body and Blood of Christ existing in heaven, after the Ascension. Usually, “translation” is considered only in the aspect of communion: how it happens and what exactly it means that in bread and wine (“under the guise” of them) believers eat the Body and Blood of Christ, partake of the Heavenly Bread and the Cup of Divine Life. And at the heart of this question lies another, more general one: when and how does the very sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ take place, if the “translation” of gifts is the image of its accomplishment, as a real remembrance, an identical repetition. Already at the Last Supper, it speaks of the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, however earthly, still here on earth abiding in the Person of Christ the High Priest through the breaking of bread and wine. The commemorative repetition of the Last Supper no longer has earthly body and blood in front of it, just as Christ Himself, after the Ascension, is no longer present on earth in the same way as at the establishment of the Eucharist. Therefore, we are talking about the Body and Blood of Christ in a different image, namely Heavenly. Translation is therefore a genuine union of “things earthly and heavenly” (St. Irenaeus). The question arises: what is the glorified Body of Christ in relation to earthly things? According to the Apostle (1 Cor. 15:44–49), it is defined as “spiritual body.” But what exactly the “spiritual body” is, theology usually does not ask itself, being content only with this vague formula. The body, although spiritual, means a certain corporeality, and in the Eucharist the Lord mysteriously preserves all the states of His corporeality that are characteristic of it throughout the entire length of His Theanthropic path. Consequently, even while residing in heaven, the Lord maintains contact with our unglorified world and its flesh. Therefore, the earthly body of the Eucharistic Translation becomes the receptacle not only of the Divine Spirit, but also of the glorified spiritual Body of Christ Himself. The Son of God, as the Heavenly God-Man, offers a sacrifice of love in the eternity of Divine life, in the depths of the Holy Trinity, as the Word that reveals the Father and is carried out by the Holy Spirit, and this self-revelation of God is the Divine Sophia. As the earthly God-man, in His Incarnation He sacrificed His humanity, which is created Sophia. This sacrifice, performed in time, has supra-temporal power, exists for all times, and in this repetition retains its unity and self-identity. Supertemporality is not eternity, which is above time, being its ontological basis. The earthly Eucharist can be celebrated always and everywhere; no place or time is no longer closed or inaccessible to it (of course, if appropriate conditions exist). Supertemporality is also temporality, and in this sense it still belongs to time. The sacrifice of Christ is offered in heaven, in eternity, and on earth, in time - it is an abiding and repeatable act. Their connection is inextricable, although it does not turn them into identity. In this sense, the Eucharist takes place in heaven and on earth, but the whole difficulty of the question is how this should be understood and: is this a countable joining of one to the other, or a semantic identification of what is happening on two planes, earthly and heavenly? The Eucharist, on the one hand, must be understood as a single and identical sacrifice, offered in heaven and on earth, but this unity and identity is also combined with the distinction that is inherent in the Divine Sophia and the created, eternal being and created formation. The glorification of Christ’s humanity, His clothing with the Glory that He had “before the world was” (John 17:5), is the fullness of His sophiaion, or deification. It ascends into heaven, “enters into the interior behind the veil,” “where Jesus entered as a forerunner for us (for all mankind. - S.B.), becoming a High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 6: 19–20). Therefore, it is said that we have “boldness to enter into the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus Christ, in a new and living way, which He again revealed to us through the veil, that is, His flesh, (having) a great Priest over the house of God” (Heb. 10: 19-21). This identification of the Divine and theanthropic sacrifices raises a new question about the meaning of the Eucharistic presentation as a manifestation of the humanity of the Lord in His corporeality, in heaven and on earth. Translation is the identification of the spiritual, heavenly body and the earthly body. Here we again face the same fact that the Last Supper was celebrated on earth, within the limits of the earthly life of the Lord, while the Eucharist is celebrated beyond these limits. The “transformation” of earthly substance, bread and wine, into the Body and Blood of Christ, obviously, cannot be limited in its power only to the earthly state of the Lord’s humanity, but must include all of its self-determinations, that is, not only belonging to our world, in which He resided before His Ascension and glorification, but also these latter. All these changing, and at the same time interconnected, images of the Lord’s physicality are inherent in His sacrificial self-immolation. Therefore, the sacrifice of Christ is, first of all, His earthly body - “a body He has prepared for Me” (Heb. 10:5; Ps. 39:7). This earthly body, in a certain sense, is bread and wine, like its earthly elements, through transformation they are included in the Body of the Lord, just as in His earthly life through the reception of food (see “Eucharistic Dogma”), And this sacrifice, which has an earthly image, visibility and tangibility, and therefore can serve for communion, is the earthly Eucharist, celebrated on earthly altars. But at the same time, it is also the heavenly Eucharist, celebrated on the altar “most heavenly and mental” (as it is said in the litany after the consecration of the Holy Gifts: “I am received into the holy and most heavenly and mental ὑπερουράνιον καὶ νοερό&#957 14 His altar in the stench of the spiritual fragrance") beyond the limits of our sensory perception and in this sense called the “spiritual” body (despite all the inaccuracy of such word usage). This concept refers to the glorified physicality of the Lord, associated with His Resurrection. In this glorified Body, He no longer resides in the world, but above the world, however, remaining within the limits of its existence, although inaccessible to our sensory perception. In this glorified Body, the Lord will appear in the world “in glory,” already visible to us and again accessible to our perception, in accordance with our own resurrection, which will be a change for us (1 Cor. 15:5). This glorified and therefore invisible Body by the power of transformation is one and the same with the earthly Body, visible to us in the Eucharistic elements. In our current state, we are not able to see it in its spirituality, however, not because it is generally invisible as such, but because we ourselves are not ready for this, we have not yet “changed”, as will happen to the whole world and to ourselves at the Second Coming of the Lord. Then the whole world will appear as a visible altar on which the glorified human nature of the Lord is offered 15 Thus, the Eucharistic transfiguration refers to the Body of the Lord in His earthly, and at the same time the above-earthly, glorified state, as it remains in His incarnation and Ascension, in the descent from heaven and in the ascension to heaven, visible and invisible. Further, the Eucharistic Body of the Lord, as belonging to the world, but also supramundane, has an existence that is not only earthly, physical, but also metaphysical, it is at the same time immanent and transcendental to the world. Here we need to make a digression towards Christology. The main Christological dogma (Chalcedonian) states that Christ has one Hypostasis and two natures, united inseparably and unmerged. This dogma of the IV Ecumenical Council (as well as the VI Council) is sharply directed against Monophysitism, which either belittled or even directly denied the presence of two natures in Christ and the power of each of them in itself, or merged them through confusion and absorption of one another. Christ is called here as equally perfect both in Divinity and humanity (τέλειος ἐν Θεότητι καὶ ἄνθρωποτητι) truly God and truly man, the same from the rational soul and body (τὸυ 16 The incompleteness of the Chalcedonian definition (as has already been shown in the Lamb of God) lies in the fact that it is set by the task of denying Monophysitism (and later Monothelitism), and not overcoming it through the disclosure of the positive relationship between Divinity and humanity, as an image and Prototype. As a result, the relationship of humanity, as consisting of “soul” and “body,” to the Divine remains unclear: whether in this latter, as the Prototype, there is a direct analogy with them. Likewise, the scope and content of the concept φὑσις “nature” remained undisclosed. This might not have been felt within the theological tasks that were posed at that time. However, this already becomes noticeable when the Chalcedonian dogma is revealed in Eucharistic theology, which until now has not yet found its place. When attempting such a disclosure, a special, new problem inevitably arises, which consists of the following. According to the Eucharistic dogma, the natural elements of bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, so that those who partake of them (or, according to an imprecise, ambiguous and therefore unfortunate usage of words, “under the guise of them”) partake of Christ Himself in His God-manhood. For the problems of the doctrine of the Sacrament of Communion, such a definition is sufficient, but it is no longer sufficient for understanding the Eucharistic sacrifice. What exactly does this teaching contain? First of all, it is recognized here that bread and wine are transformed or included, enter into the Body and Blood of Christ, no matter how we further explain the nature and power of this entry: the very fact of “translation” is important, which is the change of one nature through entry into another, namely from natural existence into the Divine-human. Bread and wine become such, so that through partaking of them the faithful partake of communion and through this communion are united with the God-man. What exactly does this connection refer to? According to the Chalcedonian dogma, the God-Man “in one Hypostasis and one Person” unites two natures – human and Divine. The first belongs to our world and our humanity; but what does the other correspond to, which enters into an inseparable and unfused union with that one? At the same time, the Chalcedonian dogma deliberately confirms the “preservation of each of both natures” φύσεως). What is human nature made of? To this we have a direct answer in dogma: “true humanity” (ἄνθρωπον ἀληθῶς) consists of a rational soul and body (τὸν αὐτόν ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος), and, according to the basic meaning of the dogma, the place of the human hypostasis is occupied by the Hypostasis of the Logos, the Only Begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, and in the last days, according to humanity, born of the Virgin Mary, “the One and Same Christ, the Son of the Only Begotten Lord” (ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτόν Χριστὸν υἱόν κύριον μονογενῆ ἐκ δύο φύσεων). So, what does this other nature mean according to the Divinity, what does the Divinity correspond to, preserving, as has been said, its natural properties? Until now, the edge of the dogma was turned towards humanity; it ensured the insolubility and incombustibility of humanity in the Divine, preserving its natural identity. However, the other side of the dogma should be revealed and provided with no less force. Namely: the composition of the God-man presupposes not only the unity of hypostases, but also the duality of natures. In what and how, in what sense is this dual nature realized? Φύσις in the God-man in relation to human nature means humanity in all its fullness, only except for the hypostasis, which is Divine - this humanity includes not only the body, but also the soul 17 (ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος). The designation λογικῆς is precisely ambiguous, since it can be attributed to the human soul, as opposed to the animal, but can also be interpreted in relation to the human spirit. But in this case, one obtains recognition in the God-Man of the human spirit, inseparable from the Divine Hypostasis, and therefore, duality in the God-Man is allowed. But this would contradict both the main intention of the dogma and its direct text, according to this τέλειον ἐν θεότητι, or θεὸν ἀληθῶς. This fullness is revealed in parallelism with humanity, which is hypostasized by the Hypostasis of the Logos, like His Divinity. In any case, “True God” cannot here mean hypostases or only hypostases, and “nature”, “Divinity” should not be understood in apophatic uncertainty. The single life of both natures in their completeness with the unity of the Hypostasis includes, as a self-evident condition, complete correspondence, although, of course, not the identity of the Prototype and the image, the Divinity and humanity. In other words, not only does the human body have a certain prototype for itself in the body of God, but also the human soul, which animates the body and lives in it, finds a correspondence for itself in the nature of the Divine. How to express it? This is only possible sophiologically. The Divinity, as the Divine Sophia, the Divine substance, has in Itself the content and power of life as a joint revelation of the Logos and the Holy Spirit. This dual unity is the dyadic prototype of the unity of soul and body in humanity. In particular, in man this is expressed in the combination of body and blood (this is stated in the word of God that the soul of animals is in the blood). To this extent, one can and should, in a reasonable sense, speak about the spiritual Body and Blood of the Divine, the heavenly humanity of the God-Man. Based on this distinction and comparison, we can apply the Chalcedonian definition to Eucharistic theology, namely, interpret both of them in mutual connection with each other. The question arises: when we speak of the transmutation of a certain natural substance, namely bread and wine, into the Body and Blood of Christ, as a terminus a quo in conjunction with a terminus ad quem, how is this latter understood? What goes without saying when we talk about the Body and Blood of Christ? Does this apply only to the human nature of Christ, which tends to have body and blood, and only within the latter does transformation take place? In this case, his understanding would be similar to how if bread and wine were transformed into the body and blood of a person when eaten, when assimilated through eating. The Eucharistic communion of bread and wine would differ from anything similar only by the difference in hypostases, namely: in the first case, human nature, body and blood, are assimilated into the Hypostasis of Christ, and in the other, into the Hypostasis of some other person. But by understanding the Eucharistic transformation only in this way, we simultaneously sin against both Chalcedonian and Eucharistic dogma, and fall into a kind of Eucharistic monophysitism. It is Christ’s nature, as the terminus ad quem of the Eucharistic transformation, that is understood only as human nature, although hypostasized by the Logos; His own Divine nature, as it were, disappears in Him or does not participate. True, this dogmatic question has not yet been consciously posed in this way, however, in formulating and understanding the dogma, the proposals have not yet gone beyond a vague and imprecise formula, which, due to its incompleteness, leaves room for ambiguity. Precisely one can and should ask oneself: how should one understand the Body and Blood of Christ, into which bread and wine are eucharistically given: is it only human nature, although belonging to the God-man, or is it divine-human, precisely because of such belonging? If the Body and Blood of Christ are theanthropic, which is self-evident, then one can no longer go for deliberate and heretical monophysitism and one must adhere to the Chalcedonian definition, on whose guard the Church stands - in its eucharistic diophysitism. But then the question arises about its power and meaning, and in its light, the transfiguration of the Holy Gifts contains three principles: 1) natural elements, bread and wine; 2) human nature, in which they are transformed into body and blood (just as this happens with any assimilation through eating food); 3) The divine nature of Christ, which is united with the human in the God-man. In the one-hypostatic, but at the same time bi-natural Personality of the God-man, there is a specific complexity: the God-man nature lives in all the fullness of the spiritual-soul-physical life of God and man. It has humanity, like a human soul and body, in an inseparable and unmerged union with the Divine nature, which also has a soul and body, of course, Divine-spiritual. Here we get a paradox of concepts, however, which does not have anything contradictory in itself: the human soul and body and the spiritual soul and spiritual body in the Divine, hypostasized by the One Hypostasis. These concepts are tacitly and unconsciously included in the Eucharistic dogma, but they must be clearly and consciously highlighted. The Chalcedonian dogma about the union in Christ of two natures, Divine and human, moreover, with a deliberate definition: True God and true man, forces us to look for the completeness of the analogy that exists between these two natures, which would correspond to the basic thought of the Incarnation. It affirms the parallelism of both natures, which are included inseparably and unmerged in this connection and, therefore, have a correspondence with each other. Thanks to the latter, their very union into one hypostasis, in a single human person, is accomplished. And if the humanity of Christ, in addition to the hypostasis of the Logos, consists of soul and body, then the Divinity in Christ cannot be poorer and more simplified than His humanity, with all the simplicity inherent in the Divinity in the power of spirituality. On this basis we must look for the Chalcedonian analogy to human nature, as having body and soul, and in the Divine. How can this analogy be seen? It lies in the dyadic nature of the one Divine life as the self-revelation of God in the Divine essence or Wisdom (Sophia). The Father, giving birth to the Word and coming upon Him with the Holy Spirit, reveals Himself dyadicly through this duality and lives in it. But in this single self-revelation there is not only a union, but also a separation, or distinction, of both Hypostases that reveal the Father’s essence - the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Second Hypostasis, as the Word, brings content, ideal quality, completeness of images into the Divine life; this analogously corresponds in Sophia to what exists in man as a created word or the content of his being, that is, to the soul. The third Hypostasis, life-giving and existential, fulfills the words of the Word, and this analogously corresponds in Divinity to the human body, reveals life, beauty, the power of the Divine command: let there be good. This dual unity of the Word and the Life-giving Spirit in the Divine is also the prototype for the created world. In man, created in the image of God, the fullness of his image is determined by the union of the hypostatic spirit with the duality of soul and body. The Divine Prototype is the Trinitarian Spirit, in which Divine life is realized in the unity of Word and Spirit, content and being, word and glory, analogous to the dual unity of soul and body. On this basis, in the Incarnation, just as in the Eucharistic Translation, the Divine and human natures in union find their correspondence. 6. Eucharistic celebration The Eucharistic communion, which is also the Eucharistic sacrifice, contains within itself “memory,” that is, the presence of all its moments in an unfused connection. It includes both the beginning, the middle, and the end of the accomplishment of the entire Divine economy, which is actual God-manhood. In liturgical prayer, this is expressed as follows (the secret prayer of the priest on Worthy, in the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom): “You brought us from non-existence into being, and you raised up those who had fallen away, and you did not retreat from everything you created, until you raised us to Heaven, and you granted Your Kingdom to the future.” In the prayer of the epiclesis, where attention is focused on the very performance of the Sacrament, it reads like this: “Remembering this saving commandment (that is, the establishment of communion) and everything that was about us: the Cross, the Sepulcher, the three-day Resurrection, the ascension to Heaven, sitting on the right hand, the Second and glorious coming again - Yours from Yours is brought to You for everyone and for everything.” If not the most sacred events, both past and not past, but destined to be, then their power, realized in their accomplishment, resides in the offering of a “verbal and bloodless service,” that is, the Eucharistic sacrifice. From this it is clear that it combines the earthly and the heavenly, the present and the future, the past and the not yet past, at different stages of Eucharistic remembrance: thus, at the Last Supper the very events of the Passion of the Lord were not yet past, but now we are still anticipating the Second and Glorious Coming of the Lord, but “memorially,” that is, with their perfect power they are all present, denoting the path of sacrifice as an ascension from earth to heaven. And, first of all, Jacob’s ladder is established here on earth: it is “This Bread” and “This Cup.” They remain, preserving their earthly nature (and not just its “species”), as belonging to this world, its nature, and yet they no longer belong to it, as having been transformed, united with the Theanthropic nature of Christ. Having become the Bread of Heaven and the Cup of Life, they nevertheless remain on earth in their natural nature as an earthly sacrifice, and this earthly, created character cannot be taken away from them, for along with it the earthly sacrifice would also be taken away. But they are “translated” into the Body and Blood of Christ, like food and drink they enter and are included in the living body and blood of the Lord in His true humanity. The power of this eating of them is the communion of the human nature of the Lord. This is the first stage of transformation. However, Eucharistic communion does not therefore become simply the eating of meat and blood, for with all the authenticity of the Body and Blood of Christ, into which the holy gifts are transposed, this human, earthly, created body of Christ is united inseparably and unmerged with His Divinity, more precisely, with the spiritual Body and Blood, that is, the Divine Sophia, the two-hypostatic self-revelation of Divine life. “My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world... I am the bread of life” (John 6: 32, 35, 48). “The bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (51). “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life... He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him... He who eats Me will live by Me,” “this is the bread that came down from heaven” (54-57). “The Spirit gives life, but the flesh does not profit at all” (63). We refuse to attribute all these definitions only to the earthly body and blood of Christ, to His human nature, for first of all, it can be called not descending from heaven, but, on the contrary, ascending into it, more precisely, ascending in the Ascension (let us not forget that the “breaking of bread” in the primal Church begins only after Pentecost, if we do not talk about the Last Supper, which occupies a special place here). Human nature, the Body and Blood of Christ, is inseparably and inextricably united with the Divine, in theanthropic unity. Communion of Divine Life, Heavenly Bread, is accomplished only through eating earthly bread, combined with it or transferred into it. Transfiguration in this sense is God-manhood being realized. It is therefore not only a sensual, although intangible, communion with the Divine life. Since that life is Sophia, it is the deification of man through communion with the Divine life of the Holy Trinity. Although the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ in the above-explained, Sophian sense does not relate to His Hypostasis, but to the Divine-human nature, it is not feasible apart from His Hypostatic revelation, outside of the personal communication of the Divine Person with the human face, which, uniting with Him, seems to drown in this Hypostatic love. The God-man Christ has a single all-human hypostasis in which everyone finds himself through the power of love. This merging with Christ does not abolish created human hypostases: “It is not I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20) - this is what every person who approaches the Chalice is called to say about himself, by the power of Holy Communion as universal deification, in union with Christ. But Christ, both in His eternal or supermundane existence, and in the Incarnation, in unity with the life of the world, both Divine and created Sophia, is inseparably and inextricably united with the Holy Spirit. And this inseparability of the one life of the Son and the Holy Spirit is also manifested in the Eucharistic union with Christ, both through the sacramental transformation and through communion. If the first is accomplished “by being transformed by Your Holy Spirit,” then the fruit of the second is the “reception of the Heavenly Spirit,” and just before communion the Church asks for believers “Divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit” (litany), which the Son brings from the Father at universal Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is revealed to us as the Spirit of Christ, through Christ and in Christ, who reveals the Father. However, the revelation of the Father and the Holy Spirit in us does not have that hypostatic character that is characteristic of our unity with Christ. We know the Father as the Father of the Son, and through Christ and His Fatherland in general, we also know the Holy Spirit in His gifts, and not in the Hypostasis. But the Son contains all the fullness of God-manhood, which is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, emanating from the Father. Let us turn again to the nature of the “remembrance” inherent in the Eucharistic sacrifice. The latter is, in any case, a transformation, that is, an elevation from some lower, created state to a higher, Divine and Theanthropic state, although, we repeat, this lower level is not abolished in it. What exactly does transposition mean? In other words, what are the Body and Blood or that theanthropic nature of Christ, which is sacrificed, slain both on the earthly and on the “holy and heavenly and mental” altar? What kind of High Priest is he who makes this sacrifice? Is it the same as we recognized Him at the Last Supper, where the Eucharist was preformed by Him, or some other one? Of course, He remains equal and identical to Himself in relation to His nature, however, He is already in a different state in relation to its revelation and the fulfillment of His service. He resides in heaven, at the right hand of the Father, and maintains His connection with the world and humanity “always, now and ever and unto ages of ages.” “We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven” (Heb. 8: 1, cf. 3, 6). And if “we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10), who, “having offered one sacrifice for sins, is seated forever at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:12), then we have “boldness to enter into the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus Christ, in a new and living way, which He again revealed to us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a great priest over the house of God...” (19-21). Ancient and new interpreters of the sacrifice of Christ try to explain the properties and meaning of this sacrifice, as including (in “memory”) the Ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father, that is, its heavenly properties, along with the Cross of Calvary. The usual definition of them is that the sacrifice itself, namely the body and blood of Christ, receives a “spiritual” character. What could this mean? How can one say this without obvious contradiction? 7. The Divine-Human Sacrifice Christ is the High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, and the sacrifice of Christ is offered in heaven and on earth, in time and in eternity. It is bloody and bloodless, physical and spiritual, redemptive and laudatory (“Mercy of the world, Sacrifice of praise”). It must be understood in all these aspects, not only in the light of Trinitarian dogma, but also of Chalcedonian diophysitism, as the presence in Christ of two natures, Divine and human, in their hypostatic Theanthropic unity. In the first sense, the Second Hypostasis in the Holy Trinity is characterized by being the sacrificer of the spiritual sacrifice of His Sonship, as an eternal birth from the Father. As the Son, Christ is already a sacrifice, and sonship is a sacrifice that permeates His entire Theanthropic, and therefore human, life. He is sent into the world by the Father and comes to do not His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him. His theanthropic sacrifice is offered by the entire Incarnation of God, but has its center in the free acceptance of death on the cross. But it is necessary and important to note that it includes not only the Theanthropic sacrifice, but also the Divine one, which is offered in heavenly eternity, although it is also revealed in temporary formation, in created life. God-manhood contains within itself all the power of the Divine, namely the hypostatic Divinity of the Son. In the Incarnation, the eternal kenosis of the Son in the Holy Trinity is realized through the earthly kenosis of the God-man, in His taking on the form of a servant, as revealed in the Epistle to the Philippians: “He, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God; but he humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men... he humbled himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, even death on the cross” (2:6–8), which is why “he was exalted and glorified by God (the Father) above every name” (see: Phil. 2:9–11). All these events, occurring in the sequence of time, have power, occur in eternity, and from it they receive all their significance. The revelation of eternity in time, their connection establishes the mystery of the Creator’s relationship to creation, incomprehensible to creation. For created consciousness, this constitutes an antinomic postulate of thought. Such is the whole mystery of the Incarnation and God-manhood, in which the eternity of God is united with the life of temporality along the paths of kenosis, in which God is humiliated to the point of death on the cross, but this is followed by the glorious Resurrection. This mutual permeability of eternity and time, their actual identification, is the common basis of creation in the bosom of God, in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Therefore, the sacrifice made on earth by the God-Man is inextricably linked and has its basis in the heavenly sacrifice, which is the Divinity Itself in His self-revelation, the Divine Sophia Itself, the “kingdom and power and glory” of the Holy Trinity. The sacrificing God-man is the Divine Sacrifice Herself in eternity. The Divine Eucharist is sacrificial, Sophia of the Cross, the sacrifice of God Himself, and God Himself is the Sacrifice offered in the Son 18 and accepted by the Father, accomplished by the Holy Spirit. But also the Eucharistic sacrifice, although it is offered in time and on earth, has power and is offered in eternity, in the Holy Trinity. 19 In its earthly historical aspect, it also includes human nature with its life, flowing both in time and super- and timelessly, in humiliation and glorification. The Eucharistic Sacrifice on earth, although it begins already with the Incarnation (cf. the rite of proskomedia), is offered for the first time at the Last Supper. Theologians interpret the event in the Upper Room of Zion in such a sense that the sacrifice took place here not by force of fact, but only by its preliminary “offer” (oblatio), as the first part of the Eucharistic sacrifice itself, which will be followed by the second part, the perfect one (“completed” - John 19: 30), namely the death of Calvary. This opinion is also affirmed on the basis that the Lord established the Sacrament of Communion in His earthly life, before His death on the cross, so that this establishment was precisely liturgical. It was given for all times as a “remembrance”, as “the proclamation of the death of the Lord until it comes” (1 Cor. 11: 25–26). This conclusion, of course, is completely correct in the sense that communion at the Last Supper took place through sacramental communion, and not through the direct partaking of the Lord’s Body and Blood. To this we must add the fact that their actual presence on Calvary did not in itself serve as the basis for their sacramental-Eucharistic communion through direct eating. On the contrary, it can be argued that no one has ever partaken of the Body and Blood of the Lord in their immediate reality: neither at the Cross of Christ itself, nor before or after it. From here we conclude that for the reality and completeness of the sacrifice, such communion obviously has no meaning and even in a certain sense contradicts them. 20 At the Last Supper in the establishing words of Christ, together with His thanksgiving and blessing, the sacrifice of Christ was offered in all its fullness and power, and Christ’s disciples received from His hands holy communion in all authenticity and completeness, in exactly the same way as it is taught now, always and ever. The Lord, Himself present among the disciples, obviously had the intention of presenting His body for eating, and blood for drinking, not in a direct, so to speak, natural form, but like bread and wine, and not “under the guise,” but just like that. Catholic theologians (and, following them, Orthodox theologians) explain and, as it were, excuse this way of communion by the fact that eating human body and blood is contrary to natural feeling and therefore must be accomplished precisely by the sharing of bread and wine (as if the full power of the Sacrament lies in eating meat and blood). But such an interpretation contradicts the very meaning of the Sacrament and its power, especially since these theologians themselves admit that the establishment, like the very celebration of the Sacrament of Body and Blood, occurred even before the Lord’s death on the cross. The acceptance of the spiritually already completed sacrifice, to a certain extent, was independent of the onset of the external fact of death on the cross. Consequently, here there is a removal of the boundaries of time in the acceptance of what has not yet happened in time as already accomplished, in its anticipation. This removal of the boundaries of time, corresponding to the supertemporality and timelessness of what is happening, is inherent in the Incarnation itself, which occurs on the edge of the world and its time. This is evidenced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (10:5-10): “Therefore Christ, entering into the world, says: You did not desire sacrifices and offerings, but you have prepared a body for Me. Burnt offerings and sin offerings are displeasing to You. Then I said: Behold, I come, (as) at the beginning of the book it is written about Me, to do Your will, O God” (cf. Ps. 39: 7-9). This is already the sacrifice of Christ, beginning with the Incarnation of God, about which it is therefore said: “He has prepared a body for Me.” It is in this sense that we can say that the Eucharistic eating is possible at any point in the time of the Incarnation. This is confirmed by chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, which contains the fullness of Eucharistic theology. First, the event of feeding five thousand people with loaves and fishes is described. “Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks (εὐχαριστήσας), and distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those reclining, and also the fish, as much as anyone wanted” (6:11). And then an interpretation is given of the mysterious symbol of the miraculous feeding 21 “...My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world... I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst” (32-35). “I am the living bread that came down from heaven... and the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (51). In this entire Eucharistic speech, communion is spoken of not only or not so much in connection with the sacrifice of the cross, but with the Incarnation in general. In this sense, it is not yet decisive and determining for the Eucharist that the time of the Last Supper is in such close proximity to death on the cross. The words of the Lord “My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51), are separated from it by a more significant period of time. But the entire earthly life of the Lord before the Passion on the Cross is this “oblatio” and “passio”, the sacrifice of Himself, in which the distinction between individual successive moments is not of decisive importance. They are not mutually pushed out of existence in the succession of time, but in it they are united in the unity of the Theanthropic life 22 In the Eucharistic communion, with the removal of the boundaries of time and the acceptance of times and terms in their unity, one should fully realize the fact that at the Last Supper the Lord communed His disciples with the Eucharistic, that is, the ascended into heaven and glorified Body and Blood, while still on earth, before His suffering and death on the Cross, through the eating of earthly, “transmuted” elements. The Eucharist in this presentation is truly a union of “things heavenly and earthly” (St. Irenaeus). The Lord, still remaining on earth and in His earthly body, performs the Sacrament of Communion in the Upper Room of Zion, and therefore entrusts it to the earthly (New Testament) priesthood. This means that He Himself mysteriously, visible with the eyes of faith, abides on earth as a Priest and High Priest: “Thou art the one who offers and the one who is offered.” However, His presence on earth does not diminish the power of His Ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father, but is combined with it. In the Incarnation, all of its individual accomplishments are not removed or abolished, but are preserved, united in a kind of ladder ascending from earth to heaven, and first descending from heaven to earth. The event of the Eucharistic Translation is also preserved, and our world becomes the Upper Room of Zion, in which the Last Supper took place and continues to take place on earth, not yet transfigured and glorified, but already on the path to transfiguration. “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17; Rev. 21:1). In the Incarnation, Christ, who is in heaven, is also on earth, and it includes the incarnation both with the earthly priesthood, “in persona Christi”, who pronounce His words of breaking bread and wine and performing His actions, and in unity with the Church - in persona Ecclesiae, imparting the Holy Gifts by the Holy Spirit. The Eucharistic transformation of earthly bread and wine into the Heavenly Bread and the Cup of Life, the Flesh and Blood of Christ, is not a physical transformation or “transsubstantiation”, on the basis of which the physical miracle of the disappearance of one nature with the appearance of another is performed, as is interpreted in Catholic theology. On the contrary, with the complete preservation of bread and wine, in their own nature of bread and wine, they are included in the human corporeality perceived by Christ, for which there are no boundaries at all, except for those that are set by Him Himself. The Incarnation of God is not limited to the adoption of a specific limited earthly body, but refers generally to corporeality, which includes, as a possibility, its unlimited expansion. In this sense, just as the whole world is potential humanity, ultimately a world-man, so the humanity of Christ, embodied in this world, was also mysteriously united with it. This union will be fully revealed at the Second Coming, when the world will be transformed with Christ and enter into His power, although it will remain itself, not physically “transforming,” although being transformed into a new, glorified state. The transformation of the flesh of this world into humanity, the Body and Blood of Christ, is not a physical miracle, as violence against nature; on the contrary, it is something ontologically natural, as the realization of the inherent possibility in it. It is a consequence of the Incarnation, namely the revelation of its power. In His incarnation, the Lord not only perceived the human body in all forms of its existence - infancy, childhood, maturity - but also its connection with the entire created world, as the world-man. The latter still remains in a potential state, but can, by the will of God, develop, becoming a reality from a possibility. This happens not in general, not in the abstract formlessness of matter, but in its specific concreteness, in which only it exists, in this case as an object of consumption, food, not only earthly, but also heavenly. If Christ, by eating earthly food and thereby perceiving it, that is, in a special sense, “transforming” it into His Body and Blood, demonstrated this unity of the world and its flesh, then here, in the Eucharistic transformation, this same unity is evidenced, according to the will of Christ. This is the general ontological basis of the Eucharistic presentation as natural, albeit miraculous. Bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, and this Body and Blood are genuine bread and wine, available for consumption, but at the same time abiding in heavenly glorification. To understand the special nature of the Eucharistic Translation, it must be noted once again that it was fundamentally performed by Christ on earth, and, moreover, before His Passion on the Cross and His death, before the Crucifixion, when Christ Himself was still among the disciples, communing with His Body and Blood on the basis of “translation”, and not their direct partaking as a natural nature. The Lord commands that it be carried out in the future in the order of remembrance, which has the meaning not only of a subjective memory of a once-occurring event, but also of all reality and power. It occurs supra-temporally and all-time in the Eucharistic celebration, in which both of its terms are equally preserved: terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. Terminus a quo are bread and wine in all their authenticity, terminus ad quem are the mysterious Body and Blood in all their reality. Contrary to Catholic theology (Thomas Aquinas), here there is no destruction of one with the emergence of another in its place, as if a kind of physical catastrophe taking place in this world, but limited to it alone. On the contrary, both termini are invariably preserved in their authenticity: it is the bread that “is” the Body of Christ, and it is the cup of wine that “is” the Blood of Christ in their sacramental identification. But this does not mean that there is no longer bread and wine, for they have ceased to exist. No, they exist, but they contain the Body and Blood of Christ within themselves, and in transformation they become them. And besides, both belong to the same being, namely the created world, world-humanity, which, by the power of the Incarnation of God, becomes God-humanity in its depths, in its potentiality. It is this that is carried out by the Holy Spirit in transformation, in which a new Incarnation, as it were, takes place - in “remembrance,” that is, in all its power and authenticity. The Lord can manifest His humanity in different ways: both in a heavenly form and in an earthly one, and in the latter His Body and Blood are not hidden “under appearance,” but are simply bread and wine 23 So, the Eucharistic transformation presupposes an earthly substratum, for it was accomplished and thus established by Christ on earth and on earthly substances - bread and wine - which, from this side, determines the very possibility of its “memorial” repetition on earth. A further conclusion that should be drawn from the establishment of the sacrament at the Last Supper, that is, before the Lord’s death on the cross, is that for the Eucharistic Translation it was not the presence of the already completed refraction of the body and the outpouring of blood on the Cross that was essential, but the entire humanity of the Lord in general in the fullness of His life, its unity. To save the situation and find a way out of the difficulty, theologians (Taille, Lepin) connect the Last Supper and Golgotha ​​as an offering of sacrifice and the sacrifice itself as parts of a single whole, the sacrifice of Christ. 24 However, this does not change the fact that the communion of the disciples had already taken place at the Last Supper before the death of Christ on the cross, therefore, with the removal of the boundaries of time, in the supertemporal unity of this event, as the establishment of the Sacrament for all times. In the free acceptance of the feat of the cross, in the kenosis of the Incarnation of God, the Lord could say with all his might - and not in the future, but in the present tense, which here means all-temporality and super-temporality: “for you that which was broken, for you and for many it is poured out.” The spiritual acceptance of death on the cross here is equivalent to the commission itself. But, in addition - what is most important here - the Eucharistic miracle cannot be understood and accepted at all apart from the removal of boundaries, not only temporal, but also ontological, - in the entire unity of the life of the God-Man: both as God and as Man, together with their unmerged inseparability (according to the dogma of Chalcedon). That is why it is necessary to see the highest expediency, and at the same time the internal necessity of the fact that the Divine Eucharist is established on earth, performed over earthly matter and, if I may say so, earthly, still living on earth, Christ, for earthly life and earthly humanity still living in this world. What is essential here is precisely that Christ, so to speak, liturgizing in the Upper Room of Zion, is also the earthly High Priest in the fullness of His earthly kenosis. And this is the suffering Christ, coming to free suffering, saying to His disciples: “I greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before My suffering” (Luke 22:15). Due to the power of supertemporality and timelessness inherent in the entire life of the Lord, we must also believe in His Eucharistic presence at the Last Supper, not only as a sacrifice sacrificed for communion, but also as a Priest who offers and offers it. The priest is also a sacrifice, He offers Himself, although He is slain and crucified by the hands of soldiers, by the permission of Pilate and by the malice of the Jews. The external side of this event disappears and is not repeated, it remains only in its power, that is, as the crucifixion and death of Christ that took place once for all time. However, it is also important to understand that the communion of the disciples was already accomplished as the fruit of the sacrificial slaughter. Therefore, the power of the Last Supper cannot be belittled or limited in this sense on the grounds that it was performed before Golgotha; this does not make the Eucharistic sacrifice any less of a cross. It is not without reason that in the liturgical rite - from proskomedia to epiclesis - the entire earthly life of the Lord from the Nativity to the Cross is remembered, and everything earthly in His God-manhood is included in the Eucharist in its entirety and is given on earth in a liturgical form. Christ sacrifices and gives communion as one who exists on earth - in the Upper Room of Zion and at His Last Supper, which is what every liturgy is (this is also evidenced in the prayer before communion: “Today of Thy Last Supper, O Son of God, accept me as a partaker”). This general idea about the earthly celebration of the Heavenly Eucharist must be supplemented by the doctrine of the “Holy Grail” (cf. our essay under this title in “The Way”, 1930), relating to the earthly presence of Christ on earth in His blood and water, which poured out when His side was pierced on the Cross. They reside on earth as His human nature, soul (blood) and body (water). Christ, Risen and Ascended, through this remains in His earthly nature on earth. This is not His Eucharistic presence on earth as a priest and sacrifice at the Last Supper, it is different, albeit royal. It is associated with humiliation on the cross, although on the way to enthronement, as stated in the prophecies: “let not His bone (the Paschal Lamb - Christ, as the New Passover) be broken" (Ps. 12:46). This refers to His power on earth. And again: “I will pour out the spirit of grace and compunction on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and they will look at Him, whom they have pierced, and will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only begotten son, and grieves, as one mourns for a firstborn” (see: Zechariah 12:10). The entire prophecy of Zechariah in chapters 12–14 refers to the coming of the day of the Lord and the reign of the Lord on earth, the features of which are of a mixed eschatological, and at the same time chiliastic character: “The Lord will be King over all the earth, in that day there will be one Lord, and His name is one” (14:9), and “all the rest of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will come from year to year to worship The King, the Lord of Hosts, and for the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles” (16, see further 17–21). The entire prophecy refers to theocracy (more precisely, Christocracy), which opens on earth and completes history, as the revelation of its inner meaning and the end of its paths. The perforated King is an object of contemplation, that is, worship and veneration of all peoples, and the God-fighting Christ bows before the King of Jerusalem in His royal city. So this tale of the Holy Grail relates to history as its innermost meaning. 8. The Divine-Human Sacrifice The Eucharistic sacrifice, whose place of offering was this world, our land, the Upper Room of Zion, and at the time - “the night in which the Lord surrendered himself,” the eve of Calvary’s crucifixion and death on the cross, contains the fullness that is ontologically characteristic of it, due to its God-manhood. On earth it has a beginning and an image of its accomplishment, but it permeates the whole world, ascending from earth to heaven. And it is in this fullness that the Eucharistic sacrifice must be understood. And, first of all, it must be understood in the fullness of its earthly accomplishment, as the death of the Lord on the cross, not only in its spiritual free acceptance (“not as I want, but as You, Thy will be done” - Matthew 26: 39, 42–43). Theologians distinguish and to a certain extent contrast the Last Supper, as an “offering,” and Golgotha, as the sacrifice itself, although at the same time they combine them, which is, of course, impossible to avoid. However, this is not only a performance identical in internal meaning, but also simply a single sacrifice, which includes the entire Incarnation. Tangibly, this sacrifice begins after Peter’s confession on the way to Caesarea Philippi: “From that time Jesus began to reveal to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and high priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day rise again” (Matthew 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22; cf. Matt. 17: 22–23; 20: 18–19; Mark 20: 33–34; And it continues as the spiritual beginning of dying: “My soul is sorrowful even to death” (Matthew 26:38). Suffering and death come not only as external violence or legal murder, but as an internally perceived decision, a free victim of self-immolation. Here the image of Isaiah arises with all prophetic power: 52: 14–53: 1–12. But this sacrifice was not only human, but also Divine-human, and if in it the fullness of Divine-humanity was accomplished through the obedience of human nature to the will of God, then it also contained the fullness of the accomplished deification. Golgotha ​​was a place of suffering and death on the cross, not only human, but also theanthropic, the ultimate kenosis of the Divine: “he humbled himself, becoming obedient even to death and death on the cross” (Phil. 2:8). But this accomplished deification is also victory over death through the Resurrection from the dead, the Ascension into heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Father, glorified God-manhood. This is not a series of alternating events, externally connected to each other, but their internal unity and identity, although, from the human side, they are temporarily successive accomplishments. Christ, made man, crucified and risen, ascended into heaven and sits in glory at the right hand of the Father, is the Sacrifice and the Priest. His earthly sacrifice embraces everything characteristic of His glorified humanity, but at the same time does not lose the properties that connect Him with the world. All those definitions that flow from His God-manhood as the fruit of His deed on the cross do not displace one another, but are combined with each other: the Eucharistic bread is also the Heavenly Bread, just as the earthly body of Christ is glorified and spiritual, although these qualities of it are not accessible to direct experience. They are visible only with the eyes of faith, hidden in the Sacrament and accessible only to the ineffable mystical experience, in unity with Christ and life in Christ, which is endless. The main idea of the teaching about sacrifice, developed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is precisely that the sacrifice of Calvary is offered not only on earth, but also in the heavenly sanctuary, “For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made with hands, in the image of the true (built), but into heaven itself, to appear now for us in the presence of God” (Heb. 9:24), “and not with the blood of goats and bulls, but with By his own blood he once entered into the sanctuary and obtained eternal redemption” (12). And in Christ we have “a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God” (4:14), “not according to the law of carnal commandment, but according to the power of unfailing life” (7:16). Therefore, “we have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven and (is). The priest of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man” (8:1-2). Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter into the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus Christ, in a new and living way, which He again revealed to us through the veil, then let His flesh sit, and (having) a great Priest over the house of God, let us approach with a sincere heart...” and further (10: 19-22). Based on such evidence, we must recognize that the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered on earth and in heaven, in the liturgy of the upper room of Zion, which precedes the outpouring of blood at Calvary, and in the heavenly sanctuary by the High Priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. It is this idea about the earthly and heavenly, temporary and eternal nature of the sacrifice of Christ that now needs to be realized theologically. Christ, the God-man, preserves His Divinity in kenotic self-humiliation on earth, which is united with His heavenly glorification. As the High Priest, He reveals His Divinity in Humanity. He is the High Priest in eternity, in heaven, in the life of the Holy Trinity, in which the Logos is the sacrificial Hypostasis, “offered and offered,” a sacrifice to the Father, performed in the Holy Spirit. That is why He is the High Priest on earth, in His God-manhood. In the Incarnation, earthly sacrifice is performed in accordance with the duality of natures in Christ and their unity, inseparably and unmerged. This unity contains all the degrees of deification of human nature, but while preserving all its originality. The God-manhood of Christ in the Eucharist becomes accessible, presented for communion to people through earthly consumption, but in its deification and glorification. This is precisely the sacrifice, which includes his communion. So, what do we partake of and what do we sacrifice visibly and invisibly, visibly and mysteriously? Together with the visible, tangible and tasted Body and Blood of Christ, in the presentation of bread and wine, we have on the earthly altar the same as on the heavenly altar, which is Christ, together both altar and sacrifice. The deified humanity of Christ receives the properties inherent in His Divinity through union with Him; it does not dissolve in Him and does not burn out. Eucharistic Monophysitism is dogmatically forbidden, just like any other. This means that in the dual nature of Christ, both His Divinity, that is, the spiritual Body and Blood (in the above sense), and the spiritualized, or glorified, ascended to heaven, deified His Humanity are eucharistically united. The fullness of Christ’s sacrifice equally requires heavenly, earthly, spiritual, and physical, Divine and human nature in their mysterious union. Therefore, human communion of the Body and Blood of Christ is spiritual through the acceptance of Divine life, but it is also partaking, as a union with the physical God-human nature. One is inseparable from the other, as if united inseparably and unmerged in the God-Man. Therefore, the sacrificing Priest offers a spiritual sacrifice of self-denying Divine love along with a physical sacrifice, in the image of the Old Testament sacrifices (although in their own image the latter were abolished by the New Testament sacrifice). We must also make a further conclusion, saying that the Theanthropic sacrifice in eternity, in the Holy Trinity, in the Divinity, is offered by God, in the world, in humanity, by Man, however, in His Theanthropic unity, that is, the perfect deification of human nature. The God-man brings His God-manhood for men, with them and for them, for He commanded them: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” At the same time, we distinguish in the memorial action the offering and the offered, the sacrifice and the sacrifice, the given and the action 25 Of course, we, humans, could not offer a bloodless sacrifice, repeating it eucharistically, as if in remembrance, if this sacrifice had not already been given to us once, for us and for us forever offered by Christ in the sacrificial Incarnation. The very fact of this sacrifice, as well as the power of it, are completely beyond human effort, and we are not able to go beyond the pagan or even the Old Testament sacrifices on our own, “which cannot make perfect in conscience the one who offers” (Heb. 9:9): “The Law, having a shadow of future benefits, and not the very image of things, with the same sacrifices, constantly offered every year, can never make perfect those who come (with them) (10: 1). “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (4). It is necessary that there be a one-time sacrifice, through which “we are sanctified by the one-time offering of the body of Jesus Christ” (10). But this “once”, referring to a temporary occurrence in the alternation of earthly events, has force forever, which is why it can be repeated in a memorable way for us and in us, remaining in itself a single transtemporal, eternal thing. In the Eucharistic sacrifice, heaven and earth, Creator and creation, eternity and time are united by a single penetrating connection. But this sacrifice itself in all its universality is given, as we, who “remember” it, testify: “Your offering to You for everyone and for everything,” “this verbal and bloodless service.” Who brings it and to whom does it refer? It was brought forever, and therefore Christ, the High Priest forever, always brings it, but with Him and in Him we also bring it in our mystery, given, entrusted to us by Christ: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Who are we? First of all, directly - the priests, but not priests alone and not on their own, but with all those who are ahead - in the present, past and future, temporally and all-spatially, that is, the whole Church, the humanity of Christ, one with Him. The Church offers Eucharistically, as a bloodless sacrifice, the slain Christ Himself, the Lamb of God, who is “eaten for the sin of the world.” He is “the one who offers and the one who is offered,” He brought Himself and always brings, but He is also offered by us. What does this offering by us mean? It is, first of all, spiritual fulfillment, entering into the power of what is given to us by Christ in His atoning sacrifice: we fall down to it, we partake of it, we feed on it. But do we ourselves remain only passively accepting, or do we actively participate in it? Of course, the last thing: we can offer the sacrifice of Christ only by offering ourselves and our own. The definition “Thou art the bringer and the one brought” also applies to us. In order to partake of Christ’s sacrifice, by sharing it, one must put aside one’s sinful nature, be crucified with Christ and be resurrected with him. Of course, we can talk about this not in an exhaustive, adequate and one-time sense, but only as a constantly repeated entry into the power of Christ, in the image of daily sacrifice, as it was also established in the Old Testament. Christ unites us in His incarnation, not only giving Himself to us, but also taking us to Himself in a kind of mutual movement. Our unity with Christ was not only completed once, but is also constantly being accomplished. Thus, the Eucharistic sacrifice is the very fulfillment of God-manhood, the deification of men. Christ in it is united with His humanity as priest and victim, altar and sacrifice. Humanity is called to participate in His sacrifice, according to His own command: “do this in remembrance of Me.” By doing “this” by His power, in Him and together with Him, we perform the Sacrament, in which “everything that happened about us” on earth and in heaven is reproduced for us. It gives us the spiritual-physical presence of Christ Himself in communion, slaughter, death on the Cross, and together in Heavenly glory. On the other hand, we ourselves, as fellow human beings with Him, are called upon to spiritually sacrifice ourselves to Him, lifting up our hearts to “mountain”, in thanksgiving to the Lord, in spiritual co-dying and co-rising with Him. This is self-giving of oneself to Christ, putting off the old man and putting on the new (and an auxiliary means of this is the cleansing of conscience in the Sacrament of Repentance). The sacrifice itself, as the mysterious transformation of earthly bread and wine into the Bread of Heaven and the Cup of Life, is liturgically and hierarchically determined, like the order of Aaronic service. It is not entrusted to the human subjectivity of “moods,” but is associated with certain persons and form, with the hierarchical-liturgical order. The order of the Melchizedek priesthood, entrusted to the New Testament Church, does not differ in this from its prototype, the Aaronic priesthood, and this gives a person a certain guarantee that protects him from possible objections or doubts. But how should we understand this Eucharistic sacrifice in relation to its performer: does Christ Himself offer it, or the priest “in persona Christi”, or the priest “in persona Ecclesiae”, on behalf of the Church, as other sacraments are performed? This question, which arose in Western theology in connection with disputes about epiclesis and the power of the “institutional” words of Christ, is flawed in its very formulation, since there is no “either-or” at all, but “both-and.” The Church cannot be opposed to Christ or separated from Him, like the body of Christ. It should not be diminished in its originality, like His Humanity, inseparable with Him, but also inextricably united. There should be no place for any monophysitism, hidden or obvious, Christological or Eucharistic. Although the apostle said that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20), this is said not in the sense of the absorption of our humanity in the God-manhood of Christ, but its inspiration through deification: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). Christ gave us the power to perform, as a “remembrance”, everything perfected by Him, and He calls us to His altar by His Holy Spirit, by whose power the Sacrament is accomplished. In this accomplishment, we remain ourselves in our humanity, but we also go beyond its limits in the Theanthropic unity with Christ. To Christ belongs the eternal sacrifice in heaven, but to us - in space and time on earth. In connection with this discussion, another question may arise in passing: what is the participation of the holy angels in the Eucharistic sacrifice? There is no direct indication of this in the word of God itself. And our conclusion can be made only on the basis of some indirect indications in connection with the self-awareness and self-witness of the Church. Here, of course, we must take into account everything that we have in Revelation about the service of the holy angels in the matter of the Incarnation, starting from the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin (and even to righteous Zechariah about the birth of the Forerunner) and the appearance of angels to the shepherds on the night of the Nativity of Christ, ending with the appearance of an angel in Gethsemane (“and an angel appeared to him from heaven and strengthened him” - Lk. 22:42), and also as messengers of His Resurrection and Ascension. Although “He does not receive angels, but He receives the seed of Abraham” (Heb. 2:16), this does not exclude the special participation of angels in the matter of the Incarnation, accordingly, the general service of angels in relation to people. And from here we must undoubtedly deduce the necessity of the presence, and therefore the spiritual participation, of angels in the Divine Eucharist. The Church directly testifies to this in the liturgical hymns, both in relation to the prayerful doxology: “who secretly form the Cherubim and sing the Trisagion hymn to the Life-giving Trinity,” and further, and in the sacrament itself: “now the Heavenly Powers invisibly serve with us, behold... the secret sacrifice is completely delivered” (Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts), and the most majestic hymn of the liturgy Great Saturday: “Let all human flesh be silent... The King of kings and the Lord of lords comes to sacrifice and be given as food to the faithful... the angels come before Him... covering their faces and crying out the song: Alleluia.” Could there be more decisive and convincing evidence that the sacrificial slaughter on earth is performed in the presence of angels and in the Eucharistic sacrifice is accessible to them too? The special, dogmatic character of this presence is determined by the fact that the power of the Eucharist for the holy angels themselves is not redemptive, 26 since, being alien to the fall, they do not need redemption. In this regard, it also has meaning for them in relation to redeemed humanity, whom they serve. 27 But, in addition, in relation to the holy angels themselves in the Incarnation, the essence of which is revealed by the Eucharistic sacrifice, for them the power and possibility of a new deification opens up along with all creation, and not only in creation, but also in the Incarnation, as the sincere union of God with all creation, in which angels also enter. This action is not direct, but indirect, according to the force of the unity of angels with the human world, heaven with earth. For them, this is like co-incarnation with people, according to the power of the universal Incarnation of God, but its effectiveness does not become non-existent. Since the angels' own lives remain hidden to us, we have no means of expressing in what exactly the power of the Incarnation is expressed for them, however, as a dogmatic postulate, this remains undoubted 28 So, the Eucharistic sacrifice is the action of the entire Church, as the body of Christ with Christ at the head, both on earth and in heaven. “For Christ did not enter into the sanctuary made with hands... but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Heb. 9:24). This is the main idea of ​​eucharistic theology in the book of Hebrews (and also in the Revelation of John). The expression: “sitting at the right hand of the Father” signifies the degree of glorification of Christ in heaven, which surpasses all measure. This, of course, does not determine the heavenly state of Christ, as if some kind of heavenly inaction; on the contrary, in heaven He eternally makes sacrifices. True, this sacrifice should be understood not as some incessantly repeated action of Christ “at the right hand of the Father,” but rather as an abiding state, which, with all its Divine actuality in the fullness of its completion, is the rest of God. He is called upon to “enter into His rest” so that no one will be “late,” “but we who have believed enter into rest...” (Heb. 4: 1, 3). “Therefore there still remains a Sabbath for the people of God. For whoever has entered into His rest has also rested from his own works, just as God did from His” (Heb. 4:9-10). But rest does not mean Divine inaction, which is rejected: “My Father works until now, and I work” (John 5:17). The “rest” and “Sabbath” of Christ signify the fullness and completeness of His sacrificial work, but in its accomplishment it continues transtemporally in countless repetitions on countless altars on earth, to which corresponds the unity and continuity of this sacrifice in heaven. “Sitting at the right hand of the Father,” like the Sabbath of heavenly rest, is also an “enduring priesthood” (Heb. 7:24): “He, as one who abides forever, has an enduring priesthood.” “And he, having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down forever at the right hand of God” (10:12). Therefore, every earthly Eucharist is identical with the heavenly one and has all the properties of the glorified Christ in His spiritual body, while the faithful partake in His earthly Body 29 The heavenly character of the earthly Eucharist, as a revelation of eternity in time, is combined with its eternal presence. Contrary to the popular opinion of theologians, 30 her presence extends not only until the Second Coming of the Lord, but also after it, that is, forever and ever. For sitting at the right hand of the Father, like the passage of Christ through the veil, that is, His flesh (Heb. 10:20) with His Blood, as “eternal redemption” (9:12) remains forever, retaining its power even after the Second Coming. And if the apostle says: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes” (1 Cor. 11:26), then these last words refer not to the sacrifice itself and the eternal priesthood, but to the earthly manner of its accomplishment. It includes, as a determinant, the remembrance (“proclamation”) of the death of Christ until His very coming, which will take place in the image of His Resurrection and glory, in which this remembrance of death will already be absorbed: “death is swallowed up in victory” (Is. 25: 8 = 1 Cor. 15: 54). However, this does not mean that the earthly Eucharist, like the heavenly Eucharist, will cease, although its future images remain unknown to us (we have a mysterious indication of this in the final chapter of Revelation: 22: 1-2). If the Eucharist changes its character as a sacrifice for the dead, after victory over death, then the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving on the part of the creature to the Creator and Savior will remain forever, in heaven and on earth. “And [the 4 living creatures and the 24 elders] sing a new song, saying: You are worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for You were slain, and by Your blood you redeemed us to God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God; and we will reign on the earth. And I saw and heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, and their number was ten thousand ten thousand, and thousands upon thousands, who said with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” And every creature that was in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and everything that was in them, I heard saying: To him that sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, “Amen” (Rev. 5:9–14). Is not the Eucharistic celebration described here, heavenly and earthly, praise to the Lamb from “every creature, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea” - the universal Eucharist? The words “you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” contain a general indication that the proclamation of the Lord’s death ceases after His new coming into the world in the glory of the Resurrection, but also a specific one: it is the special Eucharistic significance of the Second Coming that is being testified. Christ’s personal presence on earth among His disciples at the Last Supper was not an obstacle to their communion with the sacrificial Body and Blood, just as it is not after His Second Coming and His new and obvious presence among the disciples, in the face of all mankind. Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John says without any limitation that “he who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him” (56), “has eternal life” (54), “for My Flesh is truly food, and My Blood is truly drink” (6, 55). This actually applies to communion. This can be said less confidently about the words of the Lord at the Last Supper: “from now on I will not drink of the fruit of this vine until that day when I drink new wine with you in the kingdom of My Father” (Matthew 26:29 = Mark 14:25: “in the kingdom of God”, cf.: Lk. 22:18, the same in relation to the Eucharistic Chalice). In any case, from this it is clear that the words “until he will come” do not refer either to eating the Bread and drinking the Cup, that is, to communion, but only to a specific memory of Death on the Cross. The latter is superseded by the coming of Christ, Risen and Resurrecting. The following also begs for comparison. Christ gave communion to the disciples in His personal presence, but after His death, Resurrection and Ascension, communion was no longer repeated until Pentecost, the coming of the Comforter. Only the latter was a condition of the Eucharist, but only as a “proclamation of the death of the Lord.” After the Second Coming, a new Eucharistic communion with Christ is established, in “proclamation” and “remembrance” of His Second and Glorious Coming. This corresponds to the new image of union with Christ in communion. Mysterious, but quite clear instructions about this are given in the final words of Revelation (chap. 21-22) about the new Jerusalem, the tabernacle of God with men and His abode with them, - in connection with the promise of Him who sits on the throne: “To him who thirsts I will give freely from the source of living water,” - and about the tree of life, which bears fruit 12 times and leaves of the tree for the healing of the nations: “And they will see His face.” This will be the new Easter, which will take place in the Kingdom of God. 9. Redemptive sacrifice (Eucharistic commemoration) Christ sacrificed Himself for us, for the redemption of the human race. Therefore, we must understand the Sacrifice of the Cross as the only image in its expediency and necessity of restoring fallen man. The latter could not be forgiven in such a way that his sin would be left without any consequences by the goodness of God. God does not tolerate sin, and leaving betrayal and apostasy without consequences is equally inconsistent with the dignity of man and his filial relationship with God. Sin is not only a fault that can simply be forgiven, but it is also a disease - an event that has indelible internal consequences that are inevitably overcome, but at the same time cannot be completely overcome and erased by the person himself. To save a person, without abolishing his freedom and without turning him into a thing, into an object of Divine influence, can only be a sinless person, but also possessing a corresponding superhuman power, that is, the God-man, the Incarnate Logos. Accepting human nature with all the possibilities inherent in it, and in particular the consequences of sin, the God-Man suffered them completely and to the end, throughout His entire earthly life, even until death on the cross. Out of love for His creation, God Incarnate suffers instead of man and together with man. The fruit of this redemptive suffering is the redemption or reconciliation of man with God in the God-man, with the restoration of sinless human nature. At the same time, the assimilation of atonement, the acceptance of forgiveness is given to each person according to the strength of his own will and effort, and is a free matter for everyone. As a result of this, redemption also loses its mechanical character, which does not correspond to human freedom. So, the path of salvation is the Incarnation with the acceptance of death on the cross “for the remission of sins” of “many” (that is, in this case, everyone): the Lord is all-man in His humanity, and His compassionate sorrow for man contains everyone and everything. The Last Supper, together with the Passion of the Cross, is the sacrifice of Christ in all its exhaustive fullness. And this sacrifice is not just one of the events in a series of times, but it is also all-time-supertemporal: it belongs to eternity and is “repeated” on earth, filling all times with itself, like the Divine Eucharist, which, according to Rev. Theodore the Studite, is the “heading” (συυκεφαλαίωσις) of our entire salvation. This is a sacrifice, not only offered once in full, but also always offered “for everyone and for everything” - such is its meaning. The Lord sacrifices Himself for all those present and praying, as well as those absent, and for each and every one individually. The Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the repeatedly repeated, although powerless in these repetitions, sacrifices of the Old Testament with the sacrifice of Christ, offered once (Heb. 7:27; 9:28), but which accomplished eternal redemption. However, this one-time offering of Christ’s sacrifice not only does not exclude, but actually presupposes its repeated “remembrance,” continuously repeated. This is based on the fact that Christ, as High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek, established the New Testament priesthood, giving His brethren the power to co-offer His sacrifice with Him, offering praise and thanksgiving to God, along with prayer for “all people and for human ignorance.” This is nothing other than the sacrifice of Christ, which continues in its repetitions, which is not only the death of the cross, once accomplished on the Cross, but also liturgically incessantly performed in secret. In other words, if the Last Supper together with the Calvary Passion is the Eucharist, then vice versa: the Eucharist is also the Last Supper with the Calvary Passion in a memorable way, that is, not only subjectively, but also really, essentially. In this sense, we can say that atonement continues, and the atoning sacrifice, once offered, is still being offered. But here is the difference between the Heavenly High Priest Himself and His earthly co-servants: the sacrifice of Christ, like our Eucharistic one, as universal without any limitation, is offered “for all and for everything,” for there is no limit to the love of God for man, the Creator for creation, but the heart, like the consciousness of the created priest, man, accommodates in its love only a small, limited part of humanity in its sacrificial prayer. But the Lord condescends to this limitation and weakness of ours. The Church allows “commemoration,” that is, actually including a limited number in the Eucharistic “remembrance,” and concentrating prayer energy on a few. But since these few are remembered in many liturgies, a kind of continuous chain of private and personal prayers is formed, which are connected with the universal prayer of the Great Bishop. The Liturgy does not limit itself to this in its general, universal prayer, but also performs it in a particular way, focusing not on all, but on some only the commemoration of the living and the dead. In relation to the living, the logic of private commemoration knows many limitations and exceptions, which, of course, do not exist for the prayer of the God-man Himself and the power of His sacrifice, but relate only to our limitations and the practical consequences and requirements of church discipline that flow from this. Thus, the circle of commemoration is limited to Christians, primarily, of course, Orthodox Christians. We will not discuss here the dogmatically secondary and only disciplinary issue of the extent to which church diptychs can be opened to include non-Orthodox Christians or those subject to church sanction and punishment. The mystery of God's mercy and His ways does not fit into the involuntary limitations and inflexibility of church discipline and its logic. Here there is still hope that those deprived of prayerful remembrance on earth have ways of salvation unknown to us through the power of Christ’s sacrifice, for in His Gethsemane struggle the Lord did not deprive anyone of His love, but “remembered” everyone. A dogmatic question can arise only about the commemoration of the dead: is it only a matter of prayerful love of the living for these dead, who remain only a passive object in it, or do they themselves prayerfully participate together with the living in the Divine Eucharist and therefore receive spiritual fruits? Obviously, the fullness of these fruits is not available to them, since it is given through the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, but the full fullness of prayerful participation in them remains possible. The latter is confirmed by the prayerful invocation of the saints, which is performed in connection with the liturgy. It is quite obvious, according to the proskomedia rite, that the saints serve with us and prayerfully participate in the liturgy. However, there is no reason to limit such participation only to glorified saints; in addition to them, there are also unglorified ones, who are understood in the celebration of “all saints,” known and unknown. But there is also no reason to exclude from any participation in the liturgy those whose fate for eternity has not yet been determined. Like us sinners, we are allowed to attend the Divine Liturgy on earth, and they can spiritually feed on it beyond the grave. All this comes down to the question to what extent is communion beyond the grave possible? The answer in a positive sense in church writing is given by Nicholas Kavasila, who speaks directly about the spiritual communion of the departed, seeing in freedom from the body even a special advantage in the accessibility of spiritual communion for them. However, one can hardly see a real advantage in incompleteness, but it cannot be denied that in a special way, corresponding to their state, the deceased, who are “remembered” at the liturgy, thereby enter into a kind of Eucharistic communion, growing and strengthening spiritually from unity with Him Who is the God of the living, and not the dead. If we deny such a possibility, an unanswered question arises about the power and meaning of the very commemoration of the dead at the liturgy: is it performed “in re suffragii” only, or is it more significant? Finally, there remains one last question regarding who the sacrifice is being made: does it apply to disembodied spirits, not only saints, but also fallen ones? The first part of the question is not difficult. The holy angels participate with us in the very offering of the sacrifice, in the celebration of the Divine Eucharist, “serving with us invisibly.” Is this co-service limited? According to the text of the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom first says about the participation of the holy angels that “thousands of archangels and darkness of angels, cherubim and seraphim, hexacrylates, many eyes, towering pernatians stand before you - a victorious song, singing, crying out, calling out and saying: Holy, Holy, Holy” (and further). “With these blessed powers, O Master who loves mankind, we cry out and say: Thou art holy and most holy” (and further). More commonly, the same thoughts are expressed in the liturgy of St. Basil the Great. for the holy angels by prayerful praise and thanksgiving together with people and for people 31 or do the holy angels also for themselves have spiritual fruit from this, along with all creation? This question can also be approached from this side: do the holy angels have spiritual fruit from their participation in the Divine Eucharist through their invocation (at the proskomedia and the liturgy itself) for themselves (and not just for us), or is the measure of their holiness already fulfilled and does not tolerate further replenishment? Obviously, the last thought cannot be allowed in relation to the creature, since for it there is always and forever an increase in holiness: “but we all with open face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). Immobility is generally not characteristic of creation, which, even joining the eternity of God, does not lose the temporary created character of its existence. And being adored, “God by grace,” she does not become equal to God even when He “will be all in all” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:28). This growth in holiness and ascent from glory to glory does not occur automatically, but effectively and, of course, “synergistically”, in Christ and with Christ, His incarnation, by the power of His saving sacrifice, which is given to the world in the Divine Eucharist. The same idea can be expressed this way. It is necessary to accept that all the saints, who are deliberately commemorated on a given day (this is precisely what this predominant deliberateness consists of), participate in spiritual communion with us, just as this is allowed in Eucharistic theology (Nicholas Kavasila) in general regarding the dead. There may be differences in the acceptance of this gift, in the degree of its assimilation. However, its very possibility cannot be disputed. In addition, we must firmly remember that the Incarnation of God, which is directly realized for us in the Eucharist and Holy Communion, has not only redemptive power “for the remission of sins” - which is only a negative condition of salvation - but also positive. This is deification, life in Christ by the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of God, which thus “comes,” grows for people, both saints and sinners (even if in different ways). But doesn’t the same thing apply to the participation in the fruits of the Eucharist and the holy angels, for whom “spiritual communion” may be completely accessible, just as for the souls of the departed, as those who have taken off their bodies and become to that extent (albeit temporarily) in an angelic state? According to their created composition, the holy angels have a disembodied spirit, but clothed with a created soul, like some kind of form or shell. Likewise, dead people, separated from their bodies, retain the connection of their spirit with their soul. In this sense, both are equally not only spirits, but also souls. On the other hand, angels, of course, have an advantage over humans in their holiness and closeness to God. Not having their own world and their own nature, they participate in the Divine nature, the life of the Divine Himself. However, is it possible, and is it still necessary, for a new deification through union with Christ, “for He does not receive angels, but He receives the seed of Abraham” (Heb. 2:16)? It even says that Jesus “was made a little lower than the angels, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9, 7; Ps. 8:6). But this humiliation of the God-man in His humanity before the angels, precisely through the taste of death, refers to His free kenosis, and not at all to the God-human nature, and in its composition also to humanity, for all angels are still “ministering spirits, sent to serve for those who are to inherit salvation” (Heb. 1: 14). Regarding the God-man, it is said that He “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, being as much superior to the angels as He inherited a name more glorious than them” (1: 3-4). Thus, the high position of angels due to their proximity to the throne of God and the special nature of their service as “ministering spirits” does not diminish the significance of the fact that in the hierarchy of creation angels are not higher, but lower than man precisely because of the incorporeality of the former and the corporeality of the latter (see: Jacob’s ladder). But regardless of this, deification for creation, no matter how high the latter may stand, will always remain limited and, therefore, presupposes new possibilities of ascension from glory to glory. In connection with this, there is a more general question, namely, what significance did the incarnation of the Lord have for the angelic world, or whether its power is generally limited only to the human world. Obviously, the latter is impossible. The entire mutual relationship between angels and men through the Incarnation generally changes, since in Christ the heavenly and earthly were united. “He who descended, he is also the one who ascended above all the heavens, that he might fulfill all things” (Eph. 4:10). Angels, together with people, enter the Church, which is the body of Christ; through the Incarnation they received the fullness of fulfillment for their angelic nature, since it is inextricably united with the human. “And from His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (John 1:16), and not only “we,” but also the holy angels with us. From this we should conclude that the angelic world also grows spiritually from the Incarnation, which is carried out in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and, together with us, eating the “bread of the angels” (Ps. 77:25), approaches the Cup of heavenly life 32 So, the holy angels participate with us in the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice, although in a different way than we do. They differ from human co-incarnation with Christ, from which comes the fullness of our priestly service according to the order of Melchizedek. They form a different order than ours, although also a priestly one. Together with us they cry out and call out the victorious song of the Trisagion, but the sacrificial offering and transfiguration itself is not performed in heaven, but on earth, although it penetrates the heavens of the angelic heavens, ascending even to the Holy of Holies itself. But the angels are not given the power to lift up the Body and Blood of Christ; they only worship such in prayer. The Holy Gifts are offered on the earthly throne, which at the same time is also heavenly. It is permissible to expand and deepen this question about the participation of disembodied spirits in the Eucharistic sacrifice to the end, asking oneself: does its power also extend to fallen spirits? The very posing of such a question when applied to the enemies of the Cross of Christ, the spirits of evil in high places, may seem daring and even daring. However, “he who fears is not perfect in love” (1 John 4:18), and don’t we have St. Isaac the Syrian in his teaching about the merciful heart, which kindles in love for all creation, including the fallen spirits? And indeed, in response to this question, you need to ask yourself: does the entire depth of Satan’s fall exclude Satan and his army from the entire composition of God’s creation, does it deprive him of the grace-filled power of being given to him at creation and remaining after the fall? Fallen spirits live; they are not destroyed by the wrath of God and are not deprived of the power of existence given to them by God. “Michael the Archangel, when he spoke with the devil, arguing about the body of Moses, did not dare to utter a reproachful judgment, but said: The Lord rebuke you” (Jude 1:9), and this word of the apostle should, at least, lead to a certain restraint in anticipating the judgment of God and the final destinies of fallen spirits, their “apocatastasis,” whatever it may consist of. The divine power of being, invested in all creation, is also present in fallen spirits, no matter how they trample it in their demonic bitterness, and it can be said that even if they themselves left God, then He does not leave them and does not deprive them of their created rank. The Old Testament develops this general idea even more decisively when it allows Satan to stand before the throne of the Lord along with other angels: “And there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord; Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan: “Where have you come from?”, and what follows is a conversation between the Lord and Satan (Job 1: 6–12; 2: 1–7). (Compare the words of the prophet Micah about his vision: 1 Kings 22: 19–23). In the New Testament, the Lord Himself allows Satan to converse with Him during temptation. And although his armies were cast out of heaven, they are not thereby deprived of the power of being, no matter how they exercise it. And this means that the love of God rests on them, punishing and admonishing, but also merciful. To this extent, an objective question can be raised about whether the power of the atoning sacrifice, as offered “for everyone and for everything,” extends to them. Of course, we should remember that this sacrifice is mutual: offered by Christ for creation, it also requires a reciprocal participation in it, a spiritual sacrifice to God of one’s creation, one’s life: “liturgy” is a common cause, a common sacrifice of God and men - theanthropic. And, obviously, demons in their devilry do not bring sacrifices to God in a state of rebellion and malice and do not participate in it, as is characteristic of holy angels, disembodied spirits. In powerless trepidation and anger, they turn away from her. However, does this abolish the power that it has for all creation without any limitation: “at the name of Jesus every knee bowed, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11)? “And every creature that is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and everything that is in them, I heard saying: To him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever” (Rev. 5:13). Is there any need for clearer evidence of the power of the Lamb sacrificed for all creation than these words? One must therefore assume not the absence of the Eucharistic influence on fallen spirits, but rather the power of the fire that scorches and torments their already torn existence. Is it not in anticipation of this that they cry out: “What have you to do with us, Jesus, Son of God? You came here ahead of time to torment us” (Matthew 8:29). “Leave what does Hebe have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? You have come to destroy us. I know You, who You are, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). These features of the Gospel narrative reveal the demonic state in relation to Christ as torment and fear, or as a continuous burning sensation from the Divine fire of the Eucharist, which burns them. The actual state of Satan and his angels, despite the proud pose of self-affirmation and power, is emptiness and powerlessness, which constitute the true secret of his existence. However, this created defectiveness is powerless to abolish the saving and regenerating power of Christ's redemption. She torments them by saving them, admonishing them, reviving them, for she does not exclude them from existence. And Divine love for all things rests on them. Here we enter the soil of general eschatology with its main question: do its paths lead to universal salvation and rebirth or to the final separation of those who are saved from those who perish? If the latter, then we have to accept that scorching fire, fiery Gehenna, the hellish torment of sinners is nothing more than the power of the Divine Eucharistic fire, the power of the Eucharist, as the Incarnation of God, which is expressed in the actual displacement, expulsion from the world of the prince of this world and others like him. If the first, then we have to admit that the Divine fire can become illuminating and joyful from being scorching, or - such is the mystery of salvation - simultaneously burning and regenerating, so that in “eternal” life, understood in the sense not of infinite duration, but of Divine power and depth, the fiery baptism of fallen spirits takes place. This is the mystery of mysteries, to the gates of which meditation on the power of the Divine Eucharist leads us. One thing is clear: in it itself there are no boundaries in being for everything that becomes involved in it by the power and will of God and is subject to the regenerating power of the Lamb. A creature can evade it only by the power of its creaturely freedom. However, does not the latter have final power for itself? Or can she, too, be convinced and in the fullness of time be fully convinced of the power and truth of God and thereby be brought into the bosom of Divine love? Thus, the Eucharistic sacrifice accomplishes the work of salvation for all creation. Salvation must be understood in all its ontological meaning, as a saving, regenerating and adoring power, and all these properties are manifested in application to the powers of heaven, earth and the underworld, angels and men, hell and paradise, holy and fallen spirits. This deification has different forms of implementation, but the same content. It consists in the approach and union of God with creation. God brings into being and holds in His hand all creation, so that it already has this Divine source in its original definition. But the entire further life of the world consists in the ongoing deification, which in the creation of the world has its beginning, outcome, and in the Incarnation and sacrifice receives perfection and power, but in the last times it will be revealed as the only thing that exists. Deification is the most general definition of the content of world history, it takes place in it and contains its various images, which are all covered by it, so that not only heaven and paradise, but also hell and hell - all these are just different images of deification, in which there will be no place for the middle, indifferent or neutral. And the whole world is a single Eucharistic altar, and all life is a single Eucharist. The visions of the Apocalypse about the heavenly throne and the city of God with the Eucharistic tree in the middle become the one and only reality. It follows that all eschatology can be understood and expounded in the light of Eucharistic theology, and, in turn, this latter is connected with the first, as its foundation. The general one-sidedness of eschatology, characteristic not only of Catholic, but along with it and partly following it also of Orthodox theology, is that it suffers from jurisprudence, borrowing its basic concepts and categories not so much from the Old Testament as from criminal law. She understands the New Testament images not from the general context of the entire New Testament Revelation, but on the basis of lex talionis, crime and punishment. However, such legal concepts do not and cannot exist in a teaching that is entirely based on the idea of ​​redemption and the merciful love of God, where there are only different images of it. Eschatology is not criminal law, but the ontology of our salvation, in it there is no place not only for the spiritual death penalty, to which eschatologists so easily and willingly resort to in the doctrine of eternal torment and death in the sense of the infinity of punishment in time and the unforgiveness of sins, so that temporary sins are punished by all-time punishment, the Incarnation, together with the atoning sacrifice, turns out to be powerless to lead to salvation, it turns out, rather, even aggravating the guilt and fate of sinners. Of course, there can be no question of understanding redemption as a magical or mechanical act, occurring apart from created freedom, without its participation in salvation. However, even less can it be understood as the completeness of fate in only one given definition, no longer accessible to any movement and change. If the Eucharist is truly the recapitulatio of the entire work of our salvation, then it can and should be said that it, as the ever-continuing sacrifice of Christ, is a salvation that is being accomplished. The idea of ​​Catholic Eucharistic theology, although actually still not agreed upon, but also akin to our theology, is that the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered or is valid only until the Second Coming and the Last Judgment 33 and then, obviously, ceases. But such a limitation cannot have a sufficient basis for itself (except for the misunderstood text of the Apostle Paul - 1 Cor. 11: 26, see above). For the Eucharist is the very Incarnation of God, and its rays extend to the whole world as a regenerating and saving power. They pierce the gates of hell with the light of the Resurrection (“now everything is filled with light, the heavens and the earth and the underworld”) 34 as well as the hearts imprisoned in them. They melt both these seals and these hearts, for the Eucharist is a sacrifice not only of redemption, but also of salvation through communion and union with Christ. Its power in the future age, in the bodies and souls of the resurrection, acts more directly and more convincingly than in the present age, in the nature of the old Adam. Therefore, the life of the future century, or, more precisely, the future “centuries of centuries,” must be understood in the sense of Eucharistic dynamism in Christ and with Christ. The Eucharist radiates the power of salvation, which takes place in the Universe and extends not only to the human world, but also to disembodied spirits. It is, according to what has been said, the energy of universal apokatastasis - “heavenly, earthly and underworld.” “And every creature that is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and everything that is in them, I heard saying: To him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever” (Rev. 5:13). 10. Eucharist and Our Lady Elsewhere we have to touch on the question of what exactly the absence of the Mother of God at the Last Supper means. Of course, this is not just an accidental absence of a face that could have been present. Such occasionalism in a dogmatic interpretation of a fact of extreme importance is, to say the least, inappropriate. This absence is significant, although the Holy Gospel, as usual in relation to the Mother of God, does not even speak about it directly, but in silence. It was natural for the Mother of God to be absent from the Upper Room of Zion and not to take part in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, and this is precisely because She could not partake of Her own body and blood, with which Christ communed His disciples. However, such a thought obviously requires precise expression and careful consideration. Of course, we do not want to say here that the Most Holy Theotokos, as a person, could Herself partake of Her body and blood as the Holy Mysteries of the Lord - such a blasphemous thought is far from us. 35 However, as the Mother, She gave the Son human nature, and Her Motherhood is by no means exhausted by the Nativity of Christ alone. On the contrary, this connection did not cease even after him, as happens with every human birth. No, and after him - now, and forever, and forever and ever - She retains Her Maternal connection with the Son (as is usually expressed in icons of the Mother of God holding Christ in her arms). She not only gave birth to Him once, at the Nativity of Christ, but also gives birth to Him forever: the Incarnation of God not only happened once, but is an ongoing fact. It abides not only in Him, but also in relation to Her, as a union of two natures, Divine and human, inseparable and unmerged, according to the Chalcedonian definition. The latter reveals the dogma only Christologically, but it also implies Mariological content. We know from the Gospel that human nature was assumed by Christ through seedless conception by the Holy Spirit from the Ever-Virgin, the “Servant of the Lord.” The Lord's humanity, His Body and Blood, belongs to Him hypostatically, precisely as the Second Hypostasis, hypostasizing Divine and human nature, the latter being deprived of its own human hypostasis and in this sense does not have its own independent existence. From here it should be concluded that it could not have come into existence as the humanity of Christ if it had not had its own hypostatic existence in the Person of the Servant of the Lord, with Her sacrificial obedience. The humanity of Christ, belonging to the Divine Hypostasis of the Logos, thereby turns out to be in a certain sense both co-hypostatic with the Face of the Mother of God and co-human with Her humanity. This is self-evident in the case of single conception by the Holy Spirit, “the unspeakable birth of the Husbandless Mother.” Christ received living human nature from the Mother of God, who at the Annunciation also became the Spirit-Bearer, however, only naturally, and not hypostatically. The Blessed One preserved Her own human hypostasis in Her God-conception. And this mysterious, hidden in the silence of the Mother of God, connection of the lives of Christ and the Mother of God, who is the Holy Spirit as the energy of the Incarnation, makes the Mother of God a co-participant in this salvific work, and rightly She is sometimes called (in Catholic theology) co-redemptrix - co-redeemer. Although She Herself personally is not the Redeemer, She is naturally inseparable from the Redeemer. About Her, first of all, and in a very special sense, one can say in the words of the Apostle: “I live not for this purpose, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Life in Christ, through the communion of His Body and Blood, is given by the Holy Spirit. But this communion for the Mother of God is the never-interrupted Incarnation of Christ by the Holy Spirit; She always remains the conceiver, the womb-bearer and the God-bearer. In relation to Her human nature, we can also speak of a certain transmutation of it into the nature of Christ, Body and Blood, although it is not directly, but only indirectly Eucharistic. That is why the nature of the Most Holy Theotokos cannot appear as a sacrament, for in itself it is only human. However, in conjunction with the Divinity of Christ, it is precisely the Divine Eucharist itself, His Theanthropic Body and Blood. That is why She could not be at the Last Supper to partake, as it were, of Her own body and blood. And at the same time, through the Incarnation of God, She remains in that state of continuous, as it were, communion, which is inherent to Her as the Mother of God. And we must also add that in this sense She is not only a co-redeemer, but also a co-servant, co-liturgizing with Christ. 36 Therefore, some prayers are addressed to Her at the liturgy with a request both for worthy saving communion, and thanksgiving for it (also in following Holy Communion). And is it not in the same sense that She is clothed with an omophorion (according to Church Tradition about the Feast of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary) as the High Priest, along with the High Priest “forever according to the order of Melchizedek”? However, this last thought does not yet eliminate further questions about Her - not only as a co-servant in Christ’s sacrifice, but also as its object or goal. Does this saving and atoning sacrifice apply to Herself? Is She included in the prayer “for everyone and for everything” for whom the sacrifice is made - “for the remission of sins”? Is She included in humanity burdened with sin, or, on the contrary, is She excluded from it in advance (as this stems from the Catholic dogma of the “immaculate conception” of the Blessed Virgin Mary in its precise sense)? All these questions do not allow a simple answer only in a positive or negative sense, as a yes or no. On the contrary, this answer combines both, however, not in contradiction, but in antinomian combination (as in general such a path is indicated at the heights of theology, in its last questions). The answer in the affirmative is already clear from the fact that the Virgin Mary is a creation, and the New Eve is maternally connected with the entire human race, as the Mother of Christ’s humanity, which is also all humanity. Therefore, since the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered “for many” - for this case in the broad sense: for all - it, embracing all of humanity, thereby includes the Mother of God: about Her and for Her, although together with Her, first of all this sacrifice is offered. However, coming closer to the question, we ask ourselves in what sense this should be understood. A direct answer to this question seems to be given in the establishing words of the Lord at the Last Supper: “My blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” ἄφεσιν ἀμαρτιῶν) (Matthew 26:28), or more briefly in Mark. 14:24 and Luke. 22:20: “poured out for you: (τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐκχυνόμενον)”, as well as in the Apostle Paul - 1 Cor. 11:24: My body, broken for you - τὸ σῶμα τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν. Should these words be understood restrictively, with a silently implied exception: for many or for all except One, the Virgin Mary, Who is alien to original sin, as Catholic dogma believes, and, of course, free from sins of personal will? 37 Again, one should answer: both yes and no. Yes, in the sense that She is a person, more human than all people, having contained all human nature within Herself, She is the fullness of humanity. And if the latter fell in Adam, so that original sin hereditarily became the source of not only personal sins, but also his fate, then She did not separate from him in this fate, accepting the burden and original sin, even though She did not participate in it in Her personal freedom. She shared it sacrificially out of Her love for humanity. In this She is a co-redemptrix, a co-redeemer together with the Redeemer, Her Son, Who, as the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world and of all men. At the same time, of course, the full force of the difference between the Redeemer, who redeems the human race, and She who, being the instrument of the Incarnation, thereby becomes the instrument of redemption, is preserved. However, this instrumentality should be understood not mechanically or magically, but with the preservation of freedom. The Mother of God, preserving Herself from all sin, despite the power of original sin living in Her, freely wanted to become this instrument in the Annunciation, when she answered the call of God, conveyed to Her through the Archangel: “Behold, the Servant of the Lord, let it be done to Me according to your word.” And this yes to the Virgin Mary expressed Her free participation in redemption, although not as an active-committal principle, “taking away” the sins of the world, but as the virginal obedience of the “Servant of the Lord.” So, on the one hand, the Virgin Mary cannot be freed from the power of original sin and death, even nesting naturally in Her. Therefore, She also needed redemption, and she accepted it along with all humanity through the power of the Sacrifice of the Cross. She was redeemed by the Son in the general redemption of the human race. But at the same time, as free from personal sins in Her perfect holiness, She personally did not need atonement. She could accept him only in others and for others as the universal Mother. But She herself could not accept redemption also because She Herself is a co-redeemer in Her Son, as His hypostatic humanity, which He took into His own Hypostasis and dissolved it - inseparably and unmerged - with His Divinity. However, this does not eliminate the fact that He, sacrificing Himself in His God-manhood, co-sacrificed at the same time the human nature of the Servant of the Lord and the Mother who stood at the Cross on which Christ was crucified. Although She Herself was not crucified, She was crucified with Him, so that “the instrument pierced Her soul.” Here is the mystery of Her standing at the Cross of Christ, as the bearer of His human nature, the “Wife” - Mother. “He says to His Mother: Woman - λέγει τῆ μητρὶ: γὐναί” (John 19:26). She is the universal Mother, demonstrating this universal motherhood in the face of John: “Woman, behold, Thy son.” Then he says to the disciple: behold, your Mother! And from that time on, this disciple took Her to himself” (26-27). This is not a detail of the story, but a symbolism of the mystery. From what has been said, it is clear that the Mother of God could not have been a communicant at the Last Supper, nor after it, because She Herself is also a communicant, or rather, a co-communicant of Her most pure blood. This should be understood, of course, not in the sense of Her Herself being the God-man, for there is only one God-man, Christ, but this means Her participation, so to speak, presence in the God-manhood of Christ. The hypostatic unity of both natures in the person of the God-Man is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, Who also accomplished the Conception of God at the Annunciation: “The Holy Spirit will come upon You” (Luke 1:35). The Holy Spirit, who rested on the Mother of God, made Her, although not the God-man, but His human vessel. She herself, as the Spirit-Bearer, is this union of two natures, Divine and human, although not hypostatic. However, the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ for believers in itself is also not yet a hypostatic union with Christ in His God-manhood, but a natural one. And it is similar (although, of course, not equal in completeness) to what the Most Holy Theotokos reveals: those who receive communion enter into Her rite. But in this way, through natural unity with Christ, personal unity with Christ in a kind of spiritual communion is possible, as well as personal unity with the Most Holy Theotokos. Here we again recognize the inseparability of Christ and the Mother of God, as is evidenced in the icon of the Mother of God with the Child in her arms, and once again the whole connection between Mariology and Christology (in particular Eucharistic theology), which is usually understood insufficiently and not fully, is established: it should be said directly that by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we commune with our humanity and the nature of the Mother of God. One general objection can be raised against the totality of the ideas expressed here: for them no textual confirmation can be found either in the Gospels or in all Old Testament and New Testament writing. It is difficult to argue against this (especially if you forget or ignore the standing of the Mother of God at the Cross and through this Her spiritual participation in the passion of the cross: John 19: 25–27). For Protestant scribes, this issue is finally resolved, so that all Mariological theology turns out to be fantasy or delirium. However, even for Protestantism, such simplification cannot be fully justified, unless everything that is found in the Synoptics and in the Fourth Gospel about the Mother of God, especially about the Incarnation, is accepted in its proper force and meaning. Of course, Protestant theologians prefer to deal with these data with the help of rationalistic criticism, distorting and impoverishing our faith, turning it into a moralistic Christianity without the Mother of God, and through that without the God-man, without Christ. The Church knows that the humility of the Servant of the Lord hides the mystery of faith, and it is revealed in the prayer life of the Church and is imprinted in Church Tradition. This sacred mystery must also be imprinted in theology. Everything stated here regarding what can be called Eucharistic Mariology represents a direct and, it seems to us, indisputable conclusion from the dogma of the Incarnation and the Mother of God, as it is imprinted in the Gospel story of the Apostle Matthew about the Nativity of Christ, and Luke - about the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Presentation of the Lord. In some cases we have direct evidence, in others - no less expressive silence (such as, for example, the absence of mention of Her at the Last Supper) 38 Both, like light and shadow in their combination, are present on the same canvas. However, it can be said that, while directly absent from the Last Supper and not taking part in the apostolic communion, the Mother of God was invisibly present here and even participated in the general communion, however, not as a communicant, but as communing, together with the Son, in Her flesh, since She became the human flesh of the God-man. Of course, this is characteristic of Her not in a separate, but in Her separate existence, just as not in Her absorption in the Divinity of Jesus, but in the inseparable and unmerged, Chalcedonian, union of the natures of Divine and human. But in connection with this, another question arises: how can one accept this participation of the Mother of God in the Last Supper as a co-communicant (although, however, in her personal absence, which, however, does not matter for this case), if the Mother of God still remained in an unglorified state on earth? In a certain part, it merges with the more general question of the Eucharistic sacrifice and communion. After all, the Lord Himself communed His disciples with Body and Blood even in earthly life, before His suffering, death on the Cross, Resurrection, Ascension and glorification, that is, with an external anticipation of events and the removal of the boundaries of time. Here, however, the very beginning in time, for what was already internally accomplished, was equivalent to the entire completeness of the accomplishment. But since this turned out to be possible in relation to Christ Himself on earth, the same is possible in relation to the Mother of God co-liturgizing with Him in Her earthly sojourn. However, this question about the Mother of God also has another side. The fact is that only after the removal of the Lord from the world through the Ascension, moreover, precisely after Pentecost, did the Eucharistic breaking of bread on earth begin, if only the mention of the breaking of bread is attributed to the Eucharist (Acts 2:42), which, however, is difficult to doubt. However, even this is not of decisive importance for establishing the general and fundamental fact that the primacy of the Church already knows the celebration of the Eucharist. However, in this case, there is still room for the following bewilderment: is it possible, as we affirm, for the participation of the Mother of God in the Eucharistic sacrifice before Her Dormition and Glorification, while She remains on earth in an earthly and unglorified state, while Her Son ascended to heaven in a glorified body and sits at the right hand of the Father? Can the body of glory be united with a mortal body, which, after all, still remained the body of the Mother of God, as is clear from the very fact of Her Dormition? This question seems to us to be quite unambiguous with the previous one: both here and here we are dealing with a certain overcoming of time in anticipation of events, due to which in time what has not yet happened receives the power of what has already happened. The body of the Mother of God, being mortal by its natural nature, is already immortal, as predetermined for the resurrection, ascension and glorification by virtue of Her Motherhood and the perfect union with the God-Man through it. The body of Mary and Her entire nature, already beginning with the Annunciation and Conception of God, becomes the Mother of God, although the full power of this Mother of God was realized only at the very end of Her earthly path, that is, in Her Dormition, which is also Her glorification. Just as the body of the Lord, starting from His very Nativity, is the same Eucharistic Body that is sacrificed and eaten by the faithful who partake of Him, which is confirmed by liturgical symbolism, especially proskomedia. The same applies to the earthly nature of the Virgin Mary, initially from Her Nativity and even from the “immaculate conception”, but completely, at least from the Annunciation or the Nativity of Christ. The times and timing of accomplishments in the life and ministry of the Mother of God and Christ differ from each other according to their different nature. Heavenly glorification for Christ comes, naturally, earlier than for the Mother of God. Christ was the first to enter “into the sanctuary... by a new and living way, which He again revealed to us through the veil, that is, His flesh” (Heb. 10: 19–20), but His Most Pure Mother was the first to follow Him along this same path into heaven. However, such a difference in times and timing does not change anything in the original power of the Mother of God, which is revealed in the fullness of its fulfillment, but exists supratemporally and manifests itself in the anticipation of the timing. Motherhood, according to what has been said, is also co-service in salvation or, so to speak, co-priesthood with Christ. If Christ’s sacrifice embraces His entire earthly life, having its perfect focus in death on the cross, then His Mother, in the silence and intimacy of Her service, walks with Him and behind Him all His way to the Cross and, standing at the Cross, silently brings His sacrifice to Him, giving Herself entirely for the salvation of the human race. This is the mystery of the spiritual dying of the Mother of God at the Cross of Christ. According to Church Tradition, which expresses a certain spiritual self-evidence (although this, according to custom, is silent in the Gospel), the Lord appeared to the Mother of God first on the Resurrection, and His own appearance was preceded by the gospel of an Angel, as can be concluded from the words of the Easter hymn: “The Angel cried out with Grace.” And if standing at the Cross, co-experience of the death of the Son was also a spiritual co-dying for Her, then His Resurrection was also a spiritual co-resurrection for Her. However, this spiritual prelude to the resurrection should have been accomplished in full spiritually and physically. This happened after some time, when the hour of Her own dormition came. After him, She was already bodily - and, as it were, a second time - resurrected by Her Son (according to iconographic tradition, at the Dormition of the Mother of God, Christ accepted Her most holy soul into His hands as Her Resurrector). And after the resurrection, She was taken up into heaven by His own power. The significance of this event is not sufficiently revealed in the church consciousness - and even less in theology. However, no one can identify the resurrection and ascension of Christ and the Mother of God. Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven by the power and radiance of the Divinity, and according to God-manhood He was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven by the will of the Father by the Holy Spirit 39 after which He “sits at the right hand of the Father” as “one of the Holy Trinity” in the bosom of the Divinity. Thus, He is resurrected and resurrected, ascended and lifted up by the power of the Divine, as well as by the power of the Theanthropic, but the Mother of God, as a person, although the Most Honest Cherub, does not resurrect herself, but is resurrected by Christ, by His power, just as He ascends into heaven above the angelic world. We can say that Her resurrection is precisely a co-resurrection with Christ, just as Her ascension is also a co-ascension with Him and after Him. But that is precisely why the “places of ascension” are different. This is no longer the Divine bosom of the Holy Trinity, where the Son ascended and “sits at the right hand of the Father,” on the contrary, the Mother of God sat “at the right hand of the Son” 40 as the humanity of the God-man, Her Son, on the verge of earth and heaven, between the Creator and creation, united with heaven through Her Son, but also belonging to the world, “not leaving us in Her Dormition.” This truth of Mariology must be fully revealed, applying it to Eucharistic theology and, in particular, to the doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ. The Eucharistic Body and Blood of Christ, the Holy Gifts, represent an earthly, natural nature, accessible to human consumption, but also included, or “transferred”, into the glorified, heavenly humanity of Christ, as part of His God-manhood, in an inseparable and unmerged union with the Divine. This humanity embraces His entire earthly ministry, culminating in His death on the Cross, but at the same time residing in heaven as glorified, spiritual, God-human, in the unity of the human and Divine bodies. Holy Communion is therefore both bodily and spiritual food. However, let us not forget that human nature in the Divine Eucharist still belongs to the Mother of God, it is Her human flesh, although completely deified through the Incarnation, in hypostatic union with the Logos. Moreover, the Mother of God humanity in the Divine Eucharist is also not only natural, but also glorified by heavenly glory (albeit different from the glory of Christ), which is defined figuratively as “sitting at the right hand of the Son.” We can say that all the heavenly glory that Her Son receives in His humanity as such, that is, taken in “inseparability and non-fusion” with the Divine, is also assimilated to Her. This stems from the fact that the humanity of Christ, and at this Divine-human, “Chalcedonian” union, retains, so to speak, its substantiality, its created nature, but is not absorbed by the Divine (contrary to Eutychianism, which proclaims such absorption). Hypostatic affiliation with the Logos, as a connection with the Divine (not abolished by bifurcation, contrary to the “Nestorian” wisdom) does not destroy humanity in Christ as one of the terminus a quo in the hypostatic union of both natures. This Christ's humanity is glorified, heavenly, although at the same time earthly humanity. And it is His humanity that is the nature of the Mother of God, which is thereby included in the Eucharistic sacrifice or, what is the same, sacrificed. For this, it must be - and indeed is - in the state of the Divine Mother of God, not only in its earthly nature, but also in heavenly glorification, which corresponds to “sitting at the right hand of the Son in heaven.” The dogma of the Dormition of the Theotokos, Her Ascension and Glorification is therefore revealed in its meaning for understanding the full power of the Eucharistic sacrifice, which unites the heavenly and earthly, penetrates what is above and below, and the Mother of God is co-glorified with Her Son, the God-Man, by the power of Her Motherhood, but in its human measure. All this applies both to the sacrifice itself and to the eating of the Eucharistic sacrifice, that is, communion. By receiving it, we partake of the Body and Blood of the Lord, but we also partake of the humanity (“body and blood”) of the Mother of God, in its “Chalcedonian” inseparability with the Son. However, it must generally be said that the Mariological side of the Chalcedonian dogma, just like the Eucharistic one, has not yet been theologically revealed and has not even been touched upon, so here we have to follow paths that have not yet been tested. So, the doctrine of the Eucharist must be understood from two sides: Christological and Mariological, in their sophiological connection. If the Eucharist is truly ἀυακεφαλαίωσις, the head and accomplishment of our salvation, then it combines the revelation of God’s love in Himself and in creation. The Being of God in Himself is the Divine Sophia, the Wisdom of God, which dwells in Christ Jesus as the self-revelation of God, is “God’s power and God’s Wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:24). “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9), and the ego is the “Divine nature” of the God-man, according to Chalcedonian dogma. But, according to him, Christ, who also assumed human nature, is thereby the revelation of created Sophia, “in Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28) as “the image of God” (29). This Wisdom of God in creation, created Sophia, is the fullness of the revelation of God: “His invisible things, His eternal power and Godhead, have been visible from the creation of the world through the consideration of creation” (Rom. 1:20). “[We] preach the secret, hidden wisdom of God, which God ordained before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7). Here we mean Wisdom as the Divine prototype of creation, its intelligible basis, which is revealed in Christ. “From Him” “From Him” here replaces “from God” (1 Cor. 27:29) without further qualification. However, it is possible here to understand the Father as the Divine Origin and Creator, and the Holy Trinity, in trinity revealed in His Wisdom - both in Itself and in creation. and you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30), "so that their hearts may be comforted, united in love for all the riches of perfect understanding, to know the mystery of God the Father in Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:2-3). Christ in the Chalcedonian union reveals both images of God's revelation, in Divine and created Wisdom, as the God-man. In this sense, He is its hypostatic manifestation as the Word of God in the Father and in creation. The God-Man, the Anointed One (by the Holy Spirit) reveals the Wisdom of God in a twofold sense: firstly, as the self-revelation of God the Father through the dyadic combination of the revelation of the Second and Third Hypostases, the Word and the Holy Spirit - this is that Sophia Beginning in which “was (endowed with the Holy Spirit) the Word”, and this “Being” of the Word was “with God” (πρὸς τὸυ Θεόν) Father; secondly, this Wisdom is the Divine Beginning and the foundation of creation. Christ, as the God-man who appeared in the world through the Incarnation, can no longer be considered as being outside the world or separately from it. He is with the world in its perfect form and completeness, in its humanity. But this humanity of the world is the Mother of God. The greatest one-sidedness, which church theology was initially guilty of, both East and West, led later to the heresy of Protestantism with its rejection of the Mother of God. It consists in the fact that the Incarnation was considered abstractly, and not specifically. It was understood only as an external fact of some violence against human nature, and not accomplished in the free personal self-determination of the Mother of God: “Behold the Handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), according to Revelation. Non-hypostasis nature, like human nature in the abstract sense, simply does not exist. It is revealed as a perfect, albeit created, human personality, maternally embracing all humanity, “Spirit and Bride” (Rev. 22:17), and it is characteristic of Christ, the God-man, as His own human nature is taken into personal existence, into the Hypostasis of the Logos. And this personal humanity accompanies Him on all the paths of salvation and redemption of humanity, the free sacrifice of love. The Incarnation of God is such even and not only on the paths of salvation, for the Incarnation of God is accepted not only for the redemption of fallen man, it would also take place apart from his fall. The Incarnation is the completion of creation, which was determined “before” the creation of the world, as its foundation, rooted in the unity of the Divine and created Sophia. Thus, “predetermined”, or rather, determined not only the coming of Christ into the world, as the very Incarnation of God, but also the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, the appearance of the Virgin Mary, as its human anticipation and preparation. But the Eucharistic sacrifice is also “predetermined,” in which the purpose of creation is revealed as the deification of the creature. From what has been said, the full importance of the Mariological aspect in Christology, in particular the Eucharistic, is clear, which in theology is, in fact, usually forgotten. The application of Mariological interpretation must also take place in the dogmatic understanding of the Transfiguration of the Holy Gifts. It is not enough to limit ourselves to external evidence of the very fact of transformation or to understand it as a kind of mechanical or magical transformation of one substance into another (which would correspond to the exact meaning of the term μεταουσίουσις - transubstantiation), especially since no change of substance occurs in this transformation. It must be understood only in the complex of concepts related to it. The starting point here is, of course, the Incarnation, and one of its particular applications is the transfusion of the Holy Gifts. The Incarnation begins in its implementation with the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Mother of God at the Annunciation, or the Mother of God Pentecost, by the power of which the seedless conception took place. This means that the human nature of the Mother of God gave place in itself to the Theanthropic nature of Christ, or was transformed into it, and this transformation was accomplished by the influx of the Holy Spirit, just as it is now accomplished in the Eucharistic transformation: “transformed by Thy Holy Spirit.” Terminus a quo is bread and wine, cosmic, or more precisely, world-human nature belonging to this created world; terminus ad quem - human nature in the God-Man, with whom the Divine nature is united, and thus the Son of God indwells and dwells. This His dwelling and co-dwelling with man is accomplished by the power and influx of the Holy Spirit. This relationship should be understood in this way: in the Conception of God, the Holy Spirit Himself, resting on the Mother of God, is the womb for the Incarnation of the Logos, while in Christ Himself there is an opposite relationship: the Holy Spirit, who descended on Him at Baptism, rests on Him and dwells in Him. Of these two images of the union of both Hypostases in the God-Man: the Son of God in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit in the Son, at the Transfiguration of the Holy Gifts we have the first; it is this that must be understood by analogy with the Conception of God, that is, with the Annunciation, or as the continuing Incarnation of God. In particular, the Eucharistic bread, the “Lamb” offered, represents the human nature of the Mother of God. Translation consists precisely in the fact that the Eucharistic bread and wine are included, or transposed, into the Body and Blood of Christ, which He received from the “most pure blood,” from the nature of the Mother of God. But in this way, the Mother of God Herself in the Conception of God, on one side belonging to this world, on the other, is already turned to the Divine life. So in the Eucharistic Transfiguration, as the continuing Mother of God, the natural nature of the Holy Gifts is taken from this world, there is bread and wine (in addition to all the ingenious inventions of Catholic theology about the change of substance and the immutability of accidents), but it also becomes belonging to the human nature of the Mother of God, and through Her and the God-Man, which is why those who partake of it also partake of the Divine humanity unites with Christ. This is the very nature of the Mother of God, which belongs on one side to created humanity, to the world (like bread and wine), and on the other to Divine-Humanity, for She is inextricably linked with the latter, carrying it within Herself. Panagia,” that is, a kind of special communion of the Mother of God prosphora, although after the liturgy, but in connection with it. The underdevelopment of Mariology in theology is manifested in the fact that although this rite is performed according to some church instinct, 42 it does not have a theological, dogmatic understanding for itself. 43 In reality, it means that the Eucharistic presence of Christ in His Holy Mysteries is inseparably linked with the Mother of God, “in the Dormition of the world there is no abandonment” (the troparion of the holiday), it is in this sense the continuing Incarnation of God. In turn, eschatology must also be put in connection with Mariology, just as the appearance of Christ at the Second Coming must be understood Eucharistically, according to the essential identity of both, these two different images of the appearance of Christ to the world. The difference here is that in the Holy Mysteries Christ is present, although essentially, but not clearly; rather, one might say, in His humanity, however, not as the Hypostatic God-man, but in the Second Coming He appears in His own face. Likewise, the Mother of God Eucharistically appears as a “Mother of God particle” on the paten (at the right hand of the Lamb) or in the rite of Panagia as the “Mother of God prosphora”; at the Second Coming she will appear together with Her Son in the image of the Queen of Heaven, the Ever-Virgin, as She matured in many appearances to Her chosen ones. Although the Word of God does not directly speak of the coming of the Mother of God with Christ, when He comes “in His Glory and all the holy angels with Him” (Matthew 25:31), Church Tradition definitely interprets what this “Glory” is: The Most Holy Theotokos is present at the Judgment together with Christ, as with all the saints, but She does not judge, but only shows mercy about convicted persons. She is, although not an incarnation, but a human manifestation of the Holy Spirit, namely the personal Mother of God. And it is necessary to understand that without Her and apart from Her, the Second Coming cannot take place, since it is a continuing, never interrupted Incarnation. The second coming of Christ, although, of course, in a special sense, is also the Eucharistic presentation, to which the promise of the Lord also refers: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), and it, together with the mysterious coming of Christ, includes the same coming of the Mother of God, since both of them are inseparable. However, this entirely refers to the appearance of the Lord at the Second Coming inseparably with the Mother of God, which will be the appearance of the Holy Spirit in the person of the Spirit-Bearer. The coming of Christ in glory reveals the fullness and power of Christ's sacrifice, the essence of which is the Incarnation. The Incarnation, in turn, is the completion of the creation of the world, like the revelation of the Divine Sophia in the created Sophia. The Eucharistic sacrifice is not only symbolism, but also the ontology of the world as God's existence. This is not a ransom or even just redemption, it is God’s love for His Image, in Himself in the Holy Trinity, and for His likeness in creation, the unity of which in its entirety is the God-man. In it is the power of the creation of the world and man, the incarnation and incarnation of the Logos, the salvation and glorification of creation, present life, as well as the future century, and eternal centuries. All legal interpretations of the Eucharist, as an expiatory sacrifice or only communion, suffer from one common drawback: the power and significance of this sacrifice are determined in them and limited to only one aspect of it. As a result, a monstrous conclusion is obtained regarding its limited time, after which it has to cease, or the limited nature of its goal, which is confined to the salvation of this only part of creation with the deliberate elimination of the general apocatastasis, when “God will be all in all” (cf.: 1 Cor. 15: 28). The Eucharistic sacrifice begins with the creation of the world by the Father through the Hypostatic Word in the Holy Spirit: “all things were created by this” (John 1:3). The creation of the world as the world-man begins the Motherhood of God and the Incarnation of God. “Woman,” who, despite the weakness of the Fall, is still the first Eve, foreshadows the new, true Eve, “the Woman clothed with the sun” (Rev. 12:1), the Bride of Christ (21:9). Also, the Fatherhood of God, as the genealogy of Christ the Savior, is the main and essential content of the entire Old Testament, both in its own and in the expanded sense, that is, including all of humanity. With the appearance of Christ in the world, all the rays of the energy of the Incarnation gather in Him and His Mother, and all the power of sacrifice is concentrated in the Calvary Sacrifice with the outpouring of His blood. But this, in turn, already contains the glorious Resurrection, Ascension and Second Terrible Coming and stay with us forever and ever. The entire life of God with people, the Epiphany in the world, is sacrificial, and the focus and symbolism of this sacrifice is the Divine Eucharist, the Eucharistic sacrifice. God, starting from Himself, sacrifices the peace of eternity, Divine sabbath-keeping for the sake of the world, in order to call it from non-existence to the created sabbath-keeping of the future age. And the Divine Sacrifice is a sacrifice offered not only by the Second Hypostasis, but also by the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity. She, being in the Divine fullness of eternity, in the creation of the world and for the sake of saving creation from its limitations and sin, accepts kenosis: the Creator, Savior and Sanctifier. This kenosis is carried out differently for each of the Hypostases, but is the same for the entire Holy Trinity. It cannot be said that only the Son, incarnate, descending from heaven, sacrifices Himself, but the entire Holy Trinity. And the Upper Room of Zion, like our church altar, where the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Son is performed, expands to the limits of the whole world and even above it, to the heavenly heaven of the Holy Trinity. In it the Creator meets and unites with the adored creation, the Sacrament is performed: “The Word became flesh.” Application. About the “Liturgy” of the Presanctified Holy Gifts In the practice of Eucharistic piety there is communion with the Holy Gifts, consecrated and outside the liturgy - “Presanctified”. Such communion is permitted in cases where attendance at the liturgy is unavailable for one reason or another: in case of illness, distance from church, living in the desert, and the like. Celebrated according to the appropriate prayer rite, such communion - liturgically and dogmatically - represents a spatially and temporally allocated moment of the liturgy corresponding to communion. Therefore, there can be no general question or bewilderment about the power and significance of such an act, since it merges with the general liturgy. However, such bewilderment involuntarily arises if such communion is no longer private or individual in nature, but is introduced as a special Eucharistic institution and even receives the name of a special “liturgy” of the Presanctified Gifts. First of all, it is obvious that there is no liturgy here in the precise sense, because the consecration of the Holy Gifts does not take place (through transfiguration). On the contrary, for the liturgical rite and communion, the consecrated Gifts are used “before,” that is, at the previous full liturgy. The entire liturgical rite is therefore a special follow-up to the veneration of the Holy Gifts, complicated by additional liturgical features (in particular, taken from Vespers and the full liturgy and some others), as well as communion (at least for the clergy, even in the absence of the laity receiving communion). It goes without saying that the “Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts,” as it does not contain “translation,” is not a Eucharistic sacrifice, the whole power of which lies precisely in this latter. The liturgy is not a whole consisting of two independent parts: sacrifice, on the one hand, and communion, on the other. On the contrary, it is a single sacramental-liturgical action, namely sacrifice, which includes communion. The latter cannot have a separate, independent and, as it were, independent existence for itself, but is only a part of this whole. Therefore, the very name of the “liturgy” of the Presanctified Gifts is only conditional, and in the exact sense it is incorrect and even contradictory, if only by this name of liturgy we mean sacrifice in its entirety, with communion inclusive, and not just this last one separately. On this basis, we do not call the “Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts” the communion of the reserve Gifts, although in essence there is no difference between both sacred rites. And, on the other hand, it is unacceptable to think that the Holy Gifts can be consecrated twice: once at the full and, so to speak, main liturgy, and the second at the “Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.” This expression is in its origin. There is a number of evidence throughout the East that the “liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts” was then (in the 7th century) in primary respect on a par with the liturgies of Basil the Great and Chrysostom (Collection of ancient liturgies of Eastern and Western, section V, appendix: liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, p. 152. Compare a number of others similar evidence here). has a historical and religious-psychological explanation, but cannot be justified as a terminus technicus, which in its inaccuracy and some ambiguity will even give rise to perverse or even downright erroneous interpretations. In the rite of the “Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts” we find absolutely no prayers that would relate to sacrifice, but only speaks of worthy and saving communion. In its practice, and therefore in its corresponding dogmatic interpretation, there are some ambiguities and characteristic disagreements associated with the question of the consecration of the Eucharistic cup. The Lamb for the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is prepared at the last full liturgy and is consecrated simultaneously with the general presentation. However, the matter is not limited to the mere presentation of bread into the Body of Christ for use as reserve Gifts during communion. Through this, communion would creep in under one species (sub una specie), which, of course, does not correspond to the teaching and practice of the Eastern Church. Just as the preparation of the reserve Holy Gifts is carried out, precisely through the drinking of a particle of the Eucharistic bread with blood, the Lamb for the Presanctified Liturgy is also given blood to drink (before the communion of the clergy) and only in this form is preserved in the “bread-bearer” for the upcoming Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts 44 Therefore, at communion it is said: “The Honest and Most Holy Body and Blood... taught”, etc. The question now is, what is the wine in the Holy Chalice, both before and after the Holy Gifts are placed into it? Regarding this, different, even opposing views prevailed at different times. According to one of them, “the contents of the Holy Chalice at the Presanctified Service are only consecrated wine” - this opinion is also stated in the “Exposition” of our Service Book. This opinion is of “Western and not particularly ancient origin.” 45 Certain features of the order also correspond to it. On the contrary, in the more ancient missals of both the Eastern and Western Churches, expressing the original church belief, the prevailing opinion is the opposite, namely, that “at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, the wine combined with a portion of the Holy Bread is converted into the Blood of Christ.” On the basis of this understanding, there even arose the conviction that “The Presanctified Liturgy occurs for the sake of the celebration of the Holy Chalice,” and in some service books, “The Holy Chalice is confessed to the Holy Blood.” 46 This corresponds to the image of communion, the same as at the full liturgy, while according to our current Rule the contents of the Chalice are considered as simple and only consecrated, but not broken wine, with which one does not partake - nor clergy, if they still have to consume the Holy Gifts, nor children who are unable to receive the Holy Body. Between these two main currents there are also intermediate shades of secondary importance. The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, of course, cannot exist in isolation or outside the Eucharistic sacrifice as an independent “sacrament of communion,” for such a thing does not exist at all. It should be considered as the communion of the spare Gifts, separated into a separate rite. Being liturgically independent, sacramentally the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts belongs to the previous full liturgy, at which the Holy Gifts were “presanctified”; it is, as it were, a part and continuation of it, and cannot exist outside of this connection. However, the problem of the Eucharistic presentation is by no means excluded; it receives here only a special formulation, thanks to which some new aspects of it are revealed. This relates primarily to what exactly happens with the contents of the Holy Chalice at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. There is no unanimous answer to this question, but there are at least two different, even opposing, opinions. According to the first, nothing is simply done with the wine in the Chalice, it remains the same as it was before its use in the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts; according to the second, the essence of wine changes to such an extent that it is even possible to talk about its transformation, albeit in its own special sense. However, even in the first case one cannot speak of the complete absence of any change in the wine, although there is no change that would be carried out by appropriate exclamations and prayers or action. Something is still being accomplished, although not in words, but in action: it is into the Chalice that the Holy Lamb, watered (or in other cases not watered) with Blood, is lowered. How can this accomplishment be more accurately defined? The wine in the cup is blessed. As it is said in the “Exposition”, “wine may be sacred by the investment of a particle, but it is not transubstantiated into the Divine Blood.” How is the measure of this sacredness and sanctification more accurately determined? It is negative in that a priest or deacon who, at the end of the liturgy, has to consume the Holy Mysteries, after communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, through partaking of the drink, “let not drink from the cup,” so that in this sense, wine is equal to any other taste that blocks the mouth for the consumption of the Holy Gifts. But how is the measure of this sanctification determined from the positive side? Is there such a single measure that is equally applicable to different cases of sanctification? Formally, it seems as if it exists, for everything that is sanctified becomes generally sacred. However, concretely, undoubtedly, different images or degrees of sanctification differ: for example, the measure of baptismal blessing of water (“great agiasma”) and simple one are different, although we cannot express it precisely. The measure of consecration of a church and a house, sacred vestments and any coverings, the blessed Easter bread (on Easter Saturday) and at litia, even the prosphora of the Mother of God (“panagia”) and all others, etc., varies. When determining the sacred nature of the wine in the Chalice, it is especially significant that its consumption, although with certain restrictions, is in some sense still included in communion. Namely, the wine that is drunk from the Chalice, albeit “silently,” differs from the wine that is washed down with it after communion, as at the full liturgy. When discussing the question of the nature of the Eucharistic Chalice in the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, due to the lack of a strong and unanimous tradition, it is necessary to especially consider a number of dogmatic possibilities. I. How should we understand the practice that existed in some places of preparing the Holy Lamb for the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts without feeding it with holy blood? What do we have here in relation to communion if the wine remains unchanged? Obviously, here we get communion under one type, sub una specie, according to the Catholic principle of ubi corpus ibi sanguis, which is not generally recognized in the Eastern Church. If, on the contrary, wine is recognized as being transformed into blood, then we have a special image of transformation only through the union of wine with the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. What results is a new expansion of the field of action of the Sacrament beyond the boundaries of the initial presanctification, however, without additional sacramental action, through mere contact with the shrine. There is no theological disclosure and confirmation of such a thought at all, and, of course, it would be extremely difficult. II. The second possibility, as a variation of the previous one, exists in the case (in our practice the dominant one) if the Holy Lamb is given the Holy Blood to drink (as in the reserve Gifts), and communion is accordingly accompanied by the words: “The Honest and Most Holy Body and Blood... is given” (as is said when giving communion to the laity at the full liturgy). After this communion, the clergy (except only the one who has to consume the Holy Gifts at the end of the service) “drink from the chalice, saying nothing,” while the laity partake of the Lamb in combination with wine from the chalice. What is the content of this cup and how is its purpose determined? Is it not equivalent here to simple wine (with water), in which the reserve Holy Gifts are dissolved when giving communion to a sick person? 47 Is the contents of the Chalice simple or consecrated wine? In any case, it is sanctified, although two different understandings of such sanctification are possible: according to the first, the complete sanctification of wine is recognized, tantamount to its transfusion, although it is accomplished not through epiclesis and blessing of the Holy Gifts, but through the simple immersion of the Holy Lamb in wine. (From here arise the corresponding features to follow 48, which are unusual for the now dominant view.) What fundamentally means here is the very recognition of the possibility of such sanctification, which would have the power of transformation, through the simple expansion of the area of sacramental transformation, by including new elements in it, and does it not say that there is no impassable line separating these areas, since the entire universe is destined to become the Body of Christ and is already permeated with energies Incarnation, and thereby can be included in the saving transformation? The latter is not a new creation or, in general, a new action of the Creator on the creature; it is only the actualization of the potentiality already invested in it. But this is precisely the sacramental consecration, or the Eucharistic Translation, which in the next century will spread to the new heaven and earth, to all creation. III. In the same context, the opinion should be considered that the consecration of wine, which is equivalent to transfusion, is not performed here. However, in a certain sense it still occurs, as it stems from the purely physical inseparability of the Holy Gifts from the wine after they are immersed in it. There is a well-known parallel here with the consecration of particles taken out for the living and the dead, immersed in the Holy Blood. They are not offered and cannot be used for communion, but are consumed together with the Holy Gifts. However, in the physical inseparability of their union with the Holy Blood, they themselves receive the utmost degree of sanctification. This consecration cannot be equated with various other consecrations that have a deliberate purpose (for drinking or eating, or for other purposes, numerous and varied). The consecration of particles through their immersion in the Blood, like wine through union with the Holy Lamb, does not have a direct or special purpose; it is only concomitant with the Eucharistic presentation as its lowest stage. But, not being the Eucharist, it is nevertheless eucharistic in the sense that it has a certain degree of sanctification, namely eucharistic. The Translation of the Holy Gifts ontologically means the transformation of nature, although it is not accompanied by its visible glorification, but remains mysterious. Transfiguration, obviously, can have different degrees of transmutability, as well as transmutability. Considering these different images of it in the light of communion alone, we distinguish the Holy Gifts, which are consecrated for communion, from everything else that, although connected with the Eucharist, is not intended for it (such are not only particles and wine in the chalice, but also prosphora or antidoron). They partake, but do not partake of them. However, it should be said that they are also a kind of communion, but not of the Body and Blood of Christ itself, but still given from them. Any non-Eucharistic consecration of bread, as well as other foods, is in a certain sense connected with the Eucharistic, in it it has its basis, namely, the power of God-manhood. However, even this does not exhaust the possibility of a non-Eucharistic, but at the same time eucharistic in its basis, consecration, since they are all different manifestations of the Incarnation: such are the consecration of the church, holy water, holy icons and other accessories of church and non-church piety. The Eucharist, as the Sacrament of sacraments, is the heart of the Incarnation, but all these different images of non-Eucharistic, but still Eucharistic consecration are adjacent to it, connected with it, included in it 49 If we understand the Eucharist only as the sacrament of communion, then the non-Eucharistic consecration, however connected and included in the Eucharist itself, becomes incomprehensible and, so to speak, ontologically arbitrary. Objects of such consecration are “consumed” by the performer of the sacrament and seem to have no purpose of their own. And yet it still remains valid in itself. It is only necessary to abandon the narrowed and therefore incorrect understanding of the Eucharist as only the sacrament of communion. Namely, if it is considered in conjunction with the Eucharistic sacrifice as two separate, although interconnected acts of a single sacred rite, the question receives proper formulation and resolution. The Eucharist, we repeat again, is not a sacrifice, and moreover, it is not communion, but it is precisely a sacrifice, which includes, as one of its consequences, communion. She is the Incarnation in actu, the accomplished and ongoing deification of creation. This deification in its fullness is the transmutation of the Holy Gifts, but in its incompleteness it is the general sanctification of nature, which has different stages. This presence of Eucharistic, but not Eucharistic consecrations in the life of the Church is of great fundamental importance. It precisely testifies to the ongoing and, so to speak, ongoing cosmic deification. At its limit, this difference between Eucharistic and Eucharistic consecration (and transfiguration) must be completely abolished, and both of them will merge and become identified with each other, when the apostolic word becomes a clear reality for everyone: “you are the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12:27), and “God will be all in all” (cf.: 1 Cor. 15:28). The Eucharistic celebration lays the foundation for the transformation of the entire world, and its effect extends far beyond the limits of individual communion. The latter is not only personal, but also universal, cosmic. On the Mount of Transfiguration, not only the face, but also the clothes of Christ shone with the light of Tabor, which became “white and shining” (Luke 9:29), “as a whitener on earth cannot bleach” (Mark 9:3). We can conclude that this light illuminated not only the clothes, but also the entire place where Christ was transfigured. And the ancient prophets (Isa. 65:17) and the Seer of Mysteries (Rev. 21:1) speak about the worldwide transformation as the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, for “the first heaven and earth have already passed away.” This is, of course, not a new creation in the precise sense, that is, out of nothing, but a transformation, a transformation, in which sanctification and a corresponding change occur with the clothes, as well as with the entire place of the saving Incarnation of God, that is, the whole world. The transformation of the world in this sense is a completed transformation, which presupposes sanctification as a result of union with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost. Here a state of creation already occurs in which it is assimilated to Christ as His body, which eliminates the difference between sanctification and transfiguration. Here the question of communion in the future century, which is considered by some theologians of the East and West to be ending as if unnecessary, returns to us once again - and from a new angle. It becomes unnecessary if all life is an unceasing communion and abiding participation - “God will be all in all.” However, is this so? After all, the deification of creation, although accomplished through the “creation of a new heaven and a new earth,” still cannot be considered only as a static and unchanging state, to which all dynamism of growth is alien. Deification cannot be conceived of in this way at all, as the rooting of creation in God. It is not the unchanging fullness of God’s eternity, but one that becomes and always increases (not aeternitas, but aeviternitas). The created communion with the divine-human life of Christ always takes place in a growing degree, but the transformation of the world will not only be accomplished once, but will also continue. The same idea is generally applicable in relation to the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, which cannot be abolished in the future age of resurrection. There is an indisputable basis for such a statement in the fact that holy communion is not only the partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ as a “source of immortality,” but also the personal union of those who partake with Christ by the Holy Spirit (that is, dyadic). How exactly this communion will be celebrated in the next century in connection with the Eucharistic sacrifice, which can never cease, is not told to us. One thing is obvious: even if the Eucharist loses its meaning as a sacrifice of atonement “for the remission of sins” (“I will not remember your sins” - Is. 43:25), then it will retain all its power as a source of deification, continually renewed life in Christ, the marriage of the Bride and the Lamb, the Song of Songs of creation. And the reflection of this wedding feast shines in the world. When understanding the Eucharistic consecration, one cannot help but be struck by the feature of the Eucharistic rite that in it - without an obvious compulsory need - not only is it allowed, but even directly prescribed the union with the Body and Blood of Christ of cosmic substance belonging to the earthly world, such as wine, water and bread 50 The attraction of these earthly elements, which remain in an unchangeable state even after their external union with the Saints Gifts, does not find a sufficient explanation for itself in our liturgy, unless we consider external likening as such: for example, “warmth” is poured into the Chalice in order to outwardly liken the Holy Communion to warm human blood, water at the proskomedia, that is, before the Transfiguration, is added in memory of the blood and water poured out from the side of Jesus (however, not at the Last Supper, but on the Cross, after the death of Christ). The influence of water in the immutable, but only sanctified wine through union with the Holy Gifts at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts can be explained, so to speak, in symbolic attraction - by analogy or imitation of what is performed at the full liturgy. The particles that are cut out of the Eucharistic bread “for” the living and the dead and placed on the paten around the Lamb receive a commemorative meaning, as if representing the corresponding personalities of those commemorated, starting from the Most Holy Theotokos and the Forerunner, as well as all those listed by name, the living and the dead. The meaning of this symbolism of particles (as opposed to water and wine) is that they are equated with the presence of the living individuals themselves, who are connected with them through appropriate naming. However, to reveal this symbolism, a number of intermediate links are required. Firstly, earthly bread here represents the earthly thing that lived or is living on earth, humanity or human corporeality belonging to the earthly world, which testifies to the connection that exists between the world and man, the humanity or humanization of the world 51 Secondly, such symbolism, in which an inanimate being (bread) is equated with a living one, as a container of human life, testifies to the fact that in the world there is nothing inanimate or dead at all. In it, everything is generally capable of living, being included in living corporeality, becoming a body, animal or human. This happens because one thing passes into another earthly substance and generally becomes food, bread. Thirdly, thereby this viable and life-creating substance of food becomes inherent in vitality or soulfulness, since the soul is the beginning of life in man (as well as in the entire animal world in general). Therefore, the grain particle not only externally signifies, but also ontologically means humanity, alive and living in the world “according to its kind.” Fourthly, if animal life is entirely exhausted by soulfulness or animation (so that in relation to it, “inanimate” matter does not exist at all, for it is the place or potency of the “animate” world, like animation), then this, in turn, is the place or dwelling of the spirit, a kind of body for it. Man is not only characterized by spirituality along with soulfulness, but also by hypostasis, although this latter, as invisible, yet perceptible as a special beginning of life, does not have a tactile signification for itself, but is ontologically, so to speak, implied. The image of this union of the spirit and soul with the body, the embodiment of the spirit, is the mystery of the creation of man in the image of God, and it is also a kind of ontological self-evidence of human life. Of course, it is possible to equate, at least only symbolically, signifi- cantly, a particle on the paten with the personality of a living or deceased person only in the general ontological context of the Eucharistic miracle, which is, of course, not a transformation, but evidence of the humanity of the world. Bread is human even without transformation, but after it it becomes “God-human,” because transformation means the Incarnation of God. At the same time, the very fact of the primacy of the Most Holy Theotokos on the paten, which expresses the fullness and holiness of humanity in the Incarnation, receives corresponding meaning and interpretation. She is that human nature which, while remaining itself, is worthy of becoming the humanity of Christ in His God-manhood. So, the paten and the chalice, with all their content, represent the symbolism of the created world of all cosmic and human matter. His symbolic presence and, so to speak, participation in the Eucharistic action must be understood in its necessity as essentially belonging to the Eucharistic presentation, as the nature in which it occurs. Translation is not only a transcendence, a transcensus of the created-human world into God-manhood and in this sense a rupture, separation of one from the other, but also together their connection and connection. In transformation, as we know, the world is transformed into a super-peaceful existence, not only by a single and universal transcendence, but also multi-stage, as the “sanctification” of cosmic elements. The need, along with transfiguration, also of different degrees of sanctifications, stems precisely from this interpermeability of the Divine and created worlds, which is characteristic of the Incarnation, is actualized in transformation in connection with sanctification from the natural-created world, and is connected with it by a number of transitions. The meaning of such transitions, their necessity, and at the same time their inevitability, must be understood and expressed sophiologically, as the relationship between the Divine and created Sophia, the prototype and the image, or the image and likeness. In being in general there is nothing unsophical that does not have a basis for itself in God and would not be therefore divine. However, in the uncreated Sophia, or in the Divine, the sophicity of this Divine essence is absolute, in it the life and essence of the Divine is adequately and unalloyed: “God is light (that is, self-revelation), and in Him there is no darkness” (that is, non-existence or half-being, that “nothing” from which the created world was created with all the correlation of its partial and diverse elements. Divine existence is also completeness itself and simplicity: John 1:5). On the contrary, created Sophia, that is, the created-human world (of course, this includes the angelic world as a co-human one) in the positive basis of being also contains divine principles, they are the light that in the darkness of her creation, creation from nothing, shines, although it is not encompassed by it, is not extinguished by the darkness of non-existence or nothingness. However, darkness is a necessary container of creation (Plato’s ἐκραγεῖον), that is, the relativity of being, the correlation and limitation of its elements. This darkness in which the light shines is not only a synonym for the limitation and relativity of created being in all its forms, but also the possibility of its sinfulness on the basis of created freedom. This possibility turns into reality. It is necessary to emphasize with equal force these, both positive and negative, properties of created sophia. The first make the transformation generally possible and at the same time natural in the presence of all its supernaturalness. Translation, we repeat, is not a new creation out of nothing, like some addition to an uncreated creation of still new elements that are missing in it. Translation refers not to creation, but to transformation: that which exists pre-eternally as the basis of the world, but dissolved with non-existence and, as it were, hidden in it, is revealed in the fullness of reality, perceiving its power. And this perception is a consequence of the union of the Divine nature, as the prototype of being, with created being: the Divine sophia of being shines in creation and through this makes it itself, introduces it to the fullness of sophia. Translation is in this sense fulfilled “God will be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:26). But this same thing is the Incarnation, in which the divine basis of being is revealed in its dyadic essence - the Word and the Spirit, the Truth and Life of the Father. This transformation, as the realization of the Incarnation of God, in its manifestation or revelation has different images for itself: now it is manifested only in secret, in the sacrament, but in the coming Epiphany, associated with the transfiguration of the world, it will be a clear reality for everyone: “the glory of God illuminated it (the city) and its Lamp is the Lamb. The saved nations will walk in its light” (Rev. 21:23–24), “and they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no night there... for the Lord God gives them light” (22:4–5). But this transmutability of nature, associated with its transfigurability, manifests itself not only in the direction of intensity or measure of its accomplishment, but also extensiveness, in the sense of its expansion. The wall separating the transformed and deified being from the natural, being impenetrable, has, however, also a gate of sanctification and consecration. This is manifested in general in all the sacraments of the church, 52 in particular in the sacrament of the Eucharist, where this passage of the wall through the gate is accomplished through the consecration of the Eucharistic, although not the Eucharistic elements. It is in their presence that the existence of the created world is expressed, although not yet sanctified, but in its created sophistry already predetermined for sanctification, and then for deification. Here, the presence of elements that are not offered, but co-sanctified in the sacrament, is just as characteristic as the very uncertainty of their sanctification, which is especially clearly manifested - both theologically and practically - in the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, and indeed not in it alone. The nature of things strives for transforming and sanctifying fire and light, it flows towards it and through it. We can say that she experiences the hunger of sanctification and deification, and in this sense we can say: the hunger of the Eucharistic. The introduction of sanctified elements into the Divine Eucharist is not an arbitrary and mechanical act, but justified from within by the potential of sanctification that lurks in the depths of natural matter, like the robe of created Sophia. According to the beliefs of the Orthodox Church, in the Divine Eucharist bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, in which the Lord himself is present. Bread and wine cease to be themselves, becoming the body and blood of Christ: “this (τοῦτο) is My body,” “this is My blood.” The power of mysterious transformation penetrates the nature of bread and wine and changes it. It becomes other than itself, not what it is, as a thing of the physical world. However, bread and wine do not lose their materiality within this world; their graininess and wine quality remain unchanged: smell, taste, weight, color, physical and chemical properties. The change in nature that has occurred does not affect their physical existence. Miracle of the Transfiguration of St. Therefore, gifts are not physical, but metaphysical. It is not expressed in the replacement of one substance with another in the field of the physical world, in the same way as, for example. in Cana of Galilee, the substance of water turned into the substance of wine, or, with the miraculous feeding of the people, the very quantity of bread increased. There is not and cannot even be such a substance in the world into which bread and wine could be transformed when they are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Such a transformation does not correspond to any change within this world, for among the things of this world there is generally no substance of the body and blood of Christ. A change understood in this sense would mean a completely new creation, accompanied by the destruction of the previous one, but in this case it would not be a transformation, μεταβολή, presupposing a certain identity of the terminus a quo with the terminus ad quem, with their complete difference at the same time. A new creation, in place of the previous one, abolishes this connection, destroys the terminus a quo, and thereby the terminus ad quem, in their relationship. The idea of ​​transformation, therefore, contains an antinomy that overcomes the law of identity, but not only without abolishing it, but even affirming: transformation is the identity of the different or the difference of the same. It is not a transformation with the absorption of one by the other, but there is a unity and at the same time the opposition of both, an antinomian miracle. And this is expressed directly in the words of the Lord: “this (i.e. bread) is My body” and “this (i.e. wine) is My blood.” This (albeit in the neuter gender, τοῦτο) is a designation of the bread and wine present, as things or objects accessible to sensory perception (and not just a verbal indicating gesture in relation to the body and blood). This is My body, this is My blood, this is the formula of antinomy, the identity of the different and the differentiation of the same, transformation - as identification in astu, and not a fixed identity, in which different things remain in their difference and isolation, alien to any identification. The miracle of antinomy, transposition, consists in the fact that something is what it is not, and is not what it is: bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, just as vice versa, body and blood are this (Eucharistic) bread and wine. Conversion is not a physical transformation that we have in metabolism: firewood burns, transforming and being replaced by heat, gases, ash; there is no firewood anymore, they were there. The transformation consists precisely in the removal of the opposition between terminus a quo and terminus ad quem, and after the combustion of the wood they simply no longer exist, and therefore there is no place and transformation. Eucharistic miracle of the transfiguration of St. gifts cannot be understood as the physical transformation of bread and wine into the human body, just as we have in nutrition, during the assimilation of food by the body and its assimilation (although this analogy is of no small importance for the Eucharistic dogma). Proposition of St. gifts, such a physical transformation even directly excludes 53 True, among pious legends aimed at affirming faith in the divine Eucharist, there are those in which such a transformation is confirmed by a special vision for the reassurance of non-believers or for the consolation of believers. (Such, for example, is the legend from the life of St. Gregory the Dialogue, Pope of Rome in the 7th century, and then the legend that traveled in the west and east, about the vision of the slaughter of the Child and the shedding of His Blood by angels). However, these legends cannot be given dogmatic meaning when understanding the Eucharistic miracle itself; they can be accepted at most as having only symbolic meaning as evidence of the truth of the Divine Eucharist. (The well-known vision from the life of St. Sergius has a similar meaning: that during the blessing of the holy gifts, a twining flame of fire entered the chalice, and the saint communed with fire. The holy gifts are often called fire in prayers, although this does not mean that bread and wine are put into the fire, but this only indicates the divine fieryness of the saint. gifts from the Holy Spirit resting on them). Miracle of the Transfiguration of St. gifts are not physical, but metaphysical. Μετά – pre (in the word μεταβολή, transformation), does not mean a change from one state of matter to another within the physical world, but the connection of two worlds, two areas of existence, separate from each other, metaphysical transcensus. Translation in this sense cannot and should not become an object of sensory perception relating to this world. Therefore, this transformation itself, completely invisible to the bodily eyes and inaccessible to the bodily senses, can only be an object of faith, which is “the evidence of things unseen” (Heb. 2:1), the knowledge of metaphysical evidence, contrary to or independent of physical evidence. In addition to St. gifts, one can and must believe with all the strength of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the real power of His institution: “I believe that this is Thy most pure body and this is Thy most pure blood.” The content of this faith cannot become the subject of natural, experimental or scientific knowledge, “natural science,” although it is accessible to internal, spiritual knowledge with its self-evidence, which victoriously testifies to itself in holy communion. Confession of Faith in the Transfiguration of St. gifts have been the common property of the Church since the first centuries of Christianity. It is firmly and invariably expressed in paternal writing, sometimes vaguely and imprecisely (as with the Alexandrians Clement and Origen), but usually clearly and unambiguously, starting from the apostolic men to St. John of Damascus and later (for example, St. Simeon, the new Theologian). During the entire first 1000 years in the history of the Christian Church, in the midst of Christological disputes, the question of the Eucharistic dogma did not arise, which was confessed by the Church directly and vitally, without deliberate explanation and definition (which once again testifies to the secondary and derivative meaning of dogmatic definitions in the Church: primum vivere, deinde dogmatizare). Attempts to express the Eucharistic dogma and, so to speak, to comprehend it theologically, appear, as usual in the history of dogmas, with the appearance of heresies, which in turn, as usual, were a consequence of the dogmatic ferment that began in this area. This fermentation was discovered first in the west. The East, which bore the brunt of Christological disputes, remained passive on the Eucharistic issue, rather only defending itself against heresy, and, as often happens, at times it itself fell into dependence on the attacking side. The East has not yet said its own word on this issue, which, however, still needs to be said. In the Western Church in the 9th century. the early representatives of future scholasticism (Paschasius, Radbertus Corbiensis, Rabanus Maurus) appeared the first dogmatic reflection on the Eucharistic dogma, which in the 11th century. (represented by Berengarius de Tours) turns into doubt, and then into outright heresy (in Wyclef, XIV century, and further in Huss). The teaching of Berengaria (although it cannot be established precisely) is the beginning of the Eucharistic disputes, which continue in the Reformation and cannot be considered completed to this day. On the general attempt to interpret the proposal of St. gifts only symbolically, or tropice, the Catholic Church responded with a crude and straightforward definition, which Berengarius had to swear to Pope Nicholas at the Council of Rome in 1059: panem et vinum quae in altari ponuntur post consecrationem non solum sacramentum, sed etiam, verum corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri Jesu Christi esse et sensualiter, non solum sacramento, sed etiam in veritate manibus sacerdotis tractari, frangi et fidelium dentibus atteri. Here the utmost Eucharistic realism was proclaimed, striving to completely materialize the sacrament, to look at it through the eyes of this world. And this has already predetermined the further path of Western Eucharistic theology, which can be defined as cosmological immanentism, the desire to interpret the sacrament within the confines of this world. The Eucharistic theology of the West has its classical expression in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae, I, Qu. LXXV, LXXVI LXXVII), which retains its decisive significance to this day. It is not only a theological theory, but is canonized as a binding creed for the entire Catholic Church in the canons of the Council of Trent, as well as in the Catechismus Romanus. Moreover, the Reformation Eucharistic teachings in Lutheranism and Reformation can also be understood only in connection with it, as the denial and overcoming of the same teaching. In a word, all Western Eucharistic theology is a positive or negative Thomism, which has a guiding significance here. Moreover, his influence also spread to the east, for the newest Orthodox theology on this issue is still under the indirect, although not sufficiently conscious, influence of Thomism, which must be finally overcome. The main bewilderment, and further doubt in the Eucharistic dogma relates to the meaning and significance of the conversion of St. gifts. Here there is, as indicated above, a clear discrepancy between the evidence of experience and the evidence of faith: the first speaks of the immutability of bread and wine, which is verified by our senses, while the second testifies to their complete and true change through transformation into the body and blood of Christ, in which “truly, authentically and essentially - vere, realiter et essentialiter” - the Lord Jesus Christ is present. How to combine these two evidences, which are united in the sacrament of the Eucharist? We are talking, obviously, about the power of transformation as the identification of the non-identical, the combination of different things. As said, the Eucharistic problem in the West focused on the question of changing the Eucharistic substance and through this it became reified. Thus, she received a one-sided cosmological formulation - about the fate of the things of this world (bread and wine) in connection with their mysterious transformation into the body and blood of Christ; what happens to these things, as belonging to this world, as a result of transformation? This is a question, so to speak, of sacramental natural science. At the center of the question here is the thing itself, the Eucharistic matter. Western theology about the Eucharist is distinguished by such materialism, both in Catholicism and in Protestantism, which is antagonistic to it, but dependent on it, with its spiritualism. This problematic received its classical expression in the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, the main ideas of which we will now dwell on. The teaching of Thomas Aquinas has, as a philosophical premise, the Aristotelian distinction in the nature of things between substance and accident. The first is what the second belongs (inhaeret) - signs, properties, qualities. It is the abstract of a thing, its non-qualitative basis, to which independent existence belongs, while accidents can only exist in something, having for themselves a “subject”, a substance. Each thing has its own substance, of which there is an indefinite number, and, according to the meaning of the teaching, they arise and disappear along with things. The fate of a substance is connected with the fate of things, and substances are inseparably connected with their accidents, which belong to the substance. The inseparability of substances and accidents is the very basis of this doctrine. Thomas Aquinas applies this distinction between substance and accident when resolving the question of what happens with the Eucharistic substance, with the thing of bread and wine, when it is transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. Like things, bread and wine also have substance, i.e. abstract fundamental principle or “place of properties” as well as accidents, i.e. the very properties, in other words, what can be called the breadiness of bread and the wineiness of wine. This breadiness and this winefulness, according to the evidence of external senses, remain unchanged even after transformation. Catholic theology, starting with Thomas Aquinas, very consistently develops the idea that the unchanged accidents of bread and wine, even after transformation, fully realize all their graininess and wineiness, with all their physical, chemical and even nutritional properties, to such an extent that a change in substance does not affect this in any way. These accidents exist as if absolutely, without substance, which is one of the manifestations of the Eucharistic miracle. In the text of St. gifts, according to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas and all Catholic theology, while the accidents remain unchanged, although they remain sine subjecto sive substantia, their substance changes, a transsubstantiatio occurs, and miraculously this change is not reflected at all in the accidents. Instead of the substance of bread, the substance of the body of Christ appears, and instead of the substance of wine, the substance of the blood of Christ appears, and with them, due to the inseparability of the nature of Christ, per concomitantiam, the Lord with His soul and the Divine spirit, the entire God-man (totus et integer), indwells. This change in substance, the replacement of the substance of bread and wine with the substance of body and blood, is an action of the creative omnipotence of God, similar to that which took place at the Incarnation in the seedless conception of the Virgin through the influx of the Holy Spirit. Through transsubstantiatio in the accidents of bread and wine the body of the Lord is present 54 Christ is present in St. in the gifts is the same one who sits at the right hand of the Father with His Body: totus Christus est in sacramento... totum corpus Christi, scilicet ossa, nervi et alia cuiusmodi (S. th. III, qu., XLXXVI, a. I. ad secundum) 55 In heaven Christ is present by His body not only by substance, but also by accidents, dimensive or circumscriptiv 56 in the form in which He was in the ascension. At the transubstantiation of St. Christ, of course, without leaving heaven, returns, as it were, to earth, dwells and is present in the host. So, the Doctrine of Transsubstantiation affirms the bodily indwelling of the ascended Christ, together with His Divinity, in the Holy Spirit. gifts, and only the accidental side of this presence is missing, that is, spatial extension and sensory tactility. Christ, in whom substance and accidents are also distinguished, dwells in the host substantially, but without His accidents. This image of only substantial being receives further clarification in Catholic theology. First of all, being present substantialiter, the body of Christ is free from all spatial determinations; one can even say that it is not present in the place, localiter (Qu. LXXIV, a. V.), which is occupied only by the speciebus sacramentorum. This explains the possibility of the sacramental presence of Christ simultaneously on many altars, as well as in every part of the Holy Church. gifts holistically and inseparably, for the substantial presence is super-spatial (and also, of course, super-temporal 57 and only the Eucharistic gifts, the species in which He is present, move (in contrast to la presence corporelle du Sauveur dans le ciel, ou se realise la localization proprement dite) 58 Thus, the substantial presence of Christ in the holy gifts is connected with the Eucharistic substance (species), which, in turn, exists sine subjecto, without substance, and in this sense represents only a certain appearance (Descartes), although it retains the ability to influence our sensuality and its place in the world. So, the Eucharistic miracle, in the understanding of Catholic theology, consists of a supernatural, and in a certain sense unnatural, union of the substance of the body and blood of Christ, deprived of their accidents, with the alien accidents of bread and wine, which have lost their substance. Being mutually alien to each other, the substance of the body and blood of Christ and the accidents of bread and wine in the sacrament are, however, inseparably united to such an extent that with the destruction of the accidents, the substantial presence ceases. For clarity, it should be added that in this case, the accidents of bread and wine, in their separate form, return to the category of things of this world, that is, they again receive their own substance - a trans-transsubstantiatio occurs (as Ockham says: quod ex non substantiis potest fieri substantia). At the same time, bread and wine - although non-substantial, but still the original, unchangeable existence of the Eucharistic elements remains evident, and thus dualism is introduced into the understanding of the sacrament: body and blood are taught under the guise of bread and wine, not only a difference is established, but also an opposition between substantia and species (apparences), which Catholic theology is still proud of today as its special advantage 59 The general result is this: to the doubt raised by Berengarius, Wyclef and rationalism in general regarding how to understand the presence of unchanged bread and wine in the sacrament of body and blood, Catholic theology responded only with a new confirmation of this same doubt. The theory of transsubstantiation is one of the varieties of the theory of impanatio, that is, the doctrine that the body and blood of Christ are taught in pane, sub pane and cum pane. The recognition that bread and wine retain only their accidents is essentially equivalent to the general statement of Protestants that they remain themselves, but when they are eaten, the communion of the body and blood of Christ is united with them. Protestantism limits this connection only to communion, while Catholicism extends it beyond this point. Just everything. The doctrine of transubstantiatio is based on the Aristotelian distinction between οὐσία. – substantia and συμβέβηκός – accidentia, and in connection with this distinction it stands and falls. Together with the dogma of transsubstantiatio, the Catholic Church has dogmatized this teaching, because outside of it this whole structure loses its meaning. It seems strange in itself such a degree of dependence of a dogma at its core on the purely philosophical doctrine of some philosopher, and a pagan one at that. True, it is impossible to deny the connections of Christian theology with Hellenic philosophy, which developed in its concepts ready-made terms and logical facets for expressing dogmas. Such concepts as οὐσια - essence, ὑπόστασις - hypostasis, ένέργεια - energy, φύσις natura - nature, etc., which were included in dogmatic definitions, belong to the Hellenic philosophical lexicon. However, by introducing them, dogmatics does not introduce into the church teaching any purely philosophical doctrine, be it Plato or Aristotle or the Stoics or Neoplatonists; it uses the concepts they developed, giving them its own use and at the same time sometimes significantly changing it from the original. (as for example ὑπόστασις in trinitarian definitions). The dogmatic definitions of the Church lay the foundation for completely new teachings of Christian philosophy (both in the patristic and modern eras), which, based on ancient philosophy, does not at all repeat it. However, we have a completely opposite case in the doctrine of transubstantiation, where it is not philosophy that serves theology, but theology enslaves philosophy, perceiving one of its doctrines as truth, and making all Eucharistic theology dependent on it, as a special case of the general relationship between substance and accidents. Such slavery in itself is generally reprehensible for theology, but in this case the matter is aggravated by the fact that we are talking about one of the most untenable teachings. Aristotle himself, although he expounds the doctrine of categories in Metaphysics, however, gives this doctrine a rather logical or epistemological meaning, which in grammar corresponds to the distinction between subject and predicate, subject and predicate, noun and adjective. In epistemology (in Kant), this may correspond to the distinction between Ding an sich or noumenon, as the unknowable and transcendental basis of experience, and experiential knowledge, which does not penetrate into the world of things in themselves, but is limited to coordinating the data of experience. Another epistemological meaning of the distinction between substance and accidents may be that substance is a general category of objectivity, a formal unity of attributes (or accidents), which has its basis in the transcendental unity of consciousness, in a word, “the category of pure understanding.” But, obviously, the Catholic interpretation by Aristotle does not coincide with any of these understandings; none of them would be sufficient for the purposes of the Catholic doctrine of transsubstantiation, for substance, as a category, logical or epistemological, cannot be subjected to any conversion (conversio). To do this, substance must be transformed into metaphysical reality, which generally speaking corresponds to only one of the possibilities in Aristotelism, by no means the best and not the only one (although it is used in the same sense, and also not always successfully, in patriotic triadology). energies operating in the world. Moreover, every thing without distinction, great or small, animate and inanimate, table and man, plant and angel, everything in creation equally has substance and accident. Moreover, the number of things constantly fluctuates, because things perish and arise and constantly pass into one another, and with them their substance, so that an incessant transsubstantiatio takes place in the world. In addition, there are simple and complex things in the world: a sheep and a herd, a tree and a forest, the top of Mont Blanc and the Swiss mountains, a star and the starry sky, a person and a nation, etc., etc. all this has a substance with its accidents. In a word, the world is a flow of substances and their incessant dance, some kind of endless trans... This theory, considered purely philosophically, is so crude and incompatible with modern philosophical the knowledge that to impose it as self-evidence, as the Catholic dogma of transsubstantiatio does, is direct violence against reason, a completely unnecessary and unjustified archaization. At most, one can see in it one of the metaphysical possibilities of cosmology, along with others, although even this is difficult to accept, but here it is made the only obligatory norm. The history of philosophy knows different possibilities for the doctrine of substance, up to their complete denial by Hegel 61 Spinoza’s Substantia sive Deus, Leibniz’s monadology, materialistic atomism and hylozoism, spiritualism of various shades, Kantian phenomenalism, etc. 62 Between these possibilities, there is least room left for only one, according to which each host or piece of bread and each small share of wine has its own substance, which knows its own destinies. 63 Philosophical conscience does not allow us to accept such a teaching. What is required here is not a feat of faith and humility before the mystery, but the acceptance on faith of a rational and untenable definition that has no direct relation to the Christian faith. The doctrine of substance and accidents extends not only to the things of this world, but also to the Body of Christ, which is in heaven, belonging to the Son of God who sits at the right hand of the Father. And it has its own substance and accidents, and in the sacrament, substantial being can be separated from the accidental, replacing the substance of bread and wine, which retain their own appearance, in transsubstantiatio. Thus, the body and blood of Christ, existing in heaven, are involved in a number of earthly things and share their main fate - variability: earth - grain - flour and water - bread - the body of Christ - the human body (into which it enters when eaten) - earth again, etc. This placing of the Divine Body in a number of earthly things (its immanentization) degrades it and does not correspond to the glorified state of the Body of the Lord existing on heaven. The reference to the omnipotence of God, which is used here so indiscriminately, is also inappropriate, because omnipotence overcomes factual impossibility, unbearability for man, but not incongruity, logical or metaphysical absurdity 64 We have already indicated that cosmism is a distinctive feature of the theory of transsubstantiatio; it determines its problematics and doctrine. Between the glorified body of the risen and ascended Lord and bread and wine, no more distinction is made here than between different things or substances of this world, it is placed in a row with them and in direct correlation. The further construction corresponds to this: the body and blood of Christ, as things that have replaced with their substance the substance of bread and wine, together with themselves “per concomitantiam”, establish the presence in the host of both the soul and spirit of the Savior, that is, the whole God-man, totus Christus. So, on the one hand, transsubstantiatio is considered as the replacement of the substance of one thing with the substance of another, from which it is clear that both of them are, as it were, on the same ontological plane. On the other hand, the accidents of bread and wine remain, although emptied in their substantiality, without subjectivity, but retaining their reality, graininess and wineiness, that is, roughly speaking, they remain themselves, bread and wine, into which Christ indwells in some mysterious (“substantial”) way, allowing Himself to be eaten “in bread, with bread and in the guise of bread” (inpane, cumpane, subpane). This is what is directly (and, of course, more consistently) expressed in the theory of impanation by M. Luther (who was bitter towards the Aristotelian theory of transsubstantiation in Thomas Aquinas). Transsubstantiatio, like impanatio, denies the proposition, and does not affirm it (as some even Orthodox theologians think). In general, the Reformation heresies in the Eucharistic dogma were not only legitimate and, in their way, consistent conclusions from the reifying cosmism of the theory of transsubstantiation, but at the same time they were also a legitimate reaction against its hopelessness, as a search for a way out of the impasse of diphysitism, which denies transformation, which is contained in the doctrine of transsubstantiatio. But another feature of the theory of transubstantiation, associated with the denial of the transubstantiation of St. gifts, is a special understanding of the real presence in St. gifts of the Lord. According to him, we have in them not only the body and blood of the Lord, given by Him for communion, but also the Lord Himself, mysteriously (substantialiter) returning to earth and remaining in the Host. We have here something more than the transfusion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ for the communion of the faithful, but the direct indwelling of the Lord into the host. Thus, the power of the Ascension of the Lord is actually rejected, since the Lord returns to earth to dwell on countless altars and in countless hosts, although invisibly, or rather “under the guise”, in pane, cum pane, sub pane. Communion in this understanding is only one of the goals of this new descent of Christ and His indwelling into the Host. Christ is generally present as a guest on earth, in a certain place, on a certain altar. And from such an understanding a special cult of St. naturally arises and develops. gifts, which has become so typical of modern Catholicism. Thus, here too the theory of transsubstantiation does not achieve its goal, and therefore goes further than it: instead of translating St. gifts, like heavenly bread for communion, it brings Christ himself down to earth and in a hidden way denies the power of the Ascension. True, all this is covered up by the metaphysics of substantiality, but isn’t it all the same - to have Christ in the host, or in His earthly image, if it is one and the same Christ - totus Christus, moreover, in all the power and in all the fullness of His physicality? However, is another understanding possible if we recognize the reality of the transfiguration of St. gifts and the associated reality of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in St. gifts? Until now, only one answer has been given: in the sense of the theory of transsubstantiation, and Orthodox theologians, especially in the criticism of Protestantism, hesitantly and often without proper consistency repeated this theory, which even crept into other doctrinal definitions of “symbolic” meaning. However, Orthodoxy has not yet said its word here. To do this, we must, firstly, return to patristic theology (1000 years ago), to patristic teaching, and accept it for real guidance, creatively reveal it and apply it to our time. And secondly, this requires something other than a complete change in the very formulation of the question with a renunciation of Catholic cosmism, which materializes the Eucharistic problematic, and in revealing it, rely not on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but on the Gospel. In other words, the question must be returned again to the soil of Christology, for it is essentially and entirely a Christological question. Catholic theological thought is exhausted (and this exhaustion is imprinted in the Tridentine dogma of transubstantiation) before the question of what changes in the things of bread and wine when they are transmuted into the body and blood of Christ, how does one enter into the other, how do they relate in physical coexistence? This question determines the content of the Eucharistic doctrine equally in both Catholicism and Protestantism, and both of them in this respect turn out to be much closer to each other than it seems. It is remarkable that in patristic theology, for 8 centuries, this physical question about the Eucharist does not arise at all, namely about what happens to the bread and wine when they are transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. Reverence for the sacrament seemed to close one’s eyes, not allowing one to look at what was happening and not to ask oneself about what was happening invisibly. At the same time, bold and firm testimony - in spite of, or, more precisely, independent of sensory evidence, and an undoubted confession that bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, is all that we find in the fathers on this matter. And an explanation for such a lack of explanation cannot be sought only in historical circumstances: on the one hand, the natural bewilderment of the mind regarding the overcoming of sameness taking place in the sacrament, with the overthrow of sensory evidence, is accessible to every age (after all, the Jews, having heard “strange words” (Jn. 6, 50) about flesh and blood served as food, they could not accommodate this and departed from Christ); and on the other hand, the teachings of Aristotle were close and well known to the fathers and in other cases were reflected in their works. However, at St. fathers, not only is there no physical theory of transformation (except for individual analogies), but also the very problem that arose on the basis of the rising head of rationalism, the humanistic renaissance with its cosmism, which began in the depths of scholasticism, is missing. Relying on the patristic teaching, we can leave the scholastic labyrinth into the free air, although for this assimilation, efforts of thought must be made. This is generally the path of church tradition: it is always not only protective, but also creative. So, what is the content of the Eucharistic problem? Is it how the physical change of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes place, the replacement of one with the other, in which Catholic theology has always seen it? Or does Orthodox theology here need to “go out of the city”, commit μετάβασις εἰς άλλο γένος, reject the very problem in its Catholic understanding and simply establish that such a question does not exist at all, and that false answers are inevitably given to an incorrectly posed question? Western theology, both in orthodox and heretical teachings, and in Berengar and Thomas Aquinas and in Protestant teachings, is more occupied with showing the real presence of Christ in St. Gifts, His abiding in them, rather than that in St. In the gifts the true body and blood of Christ are given to those who partake, and through this communion they are united with Christ physically and spiritually. Communion of body and blood, as the purpose of the sacrament established by Christ himself (“take, eat... drink of it, all of you”), does not occupy the central place in Catholic theology that it should. It is viewed rather as an implied consequence of the completed descent of Christ into the Host, which is primarily occupied by theology, albeit in relation to communion. What is being discussed here is not the translation for communion, in relation to it and in direct connection with it, but in itself, and one of its consequences, not the only and not even the primary one, is communion. However, the body and blood of Christ are given to us, first of all, as divine food at the Lord’s Table, “the bread of heaven and the cup of life,” and all teaching about the Eucharist must proceed from this purpose established by the Lord. The promise of the Lord does not refer to the abolition of the power of the Ascension by a new descent to earth, even sacramental, but to the giving of divine food, which is the body and blood of the Lord. Chapter 6 Ev. from John contains the Lord’s teaching about the bread of heaven, which “comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33), about the “bread of life”) which is the flesh and blood of the Son of God. “For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him, and whoever eats Me will live through Me” (57). And the Lord actually revealed this truth (“Amen, Amen, I say to you”) at the Last Supper, when He gave the disciples to taste the bread and wine as His body and blood. This idea of ​​divine food - the body and blood of Christ, served for consumption, is revealed primarily in patristic writing. As explanatory considerations given regarding the fact that earthly bread, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit on it, is no longer ordinary bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things - earthly and heavenly έκ δύο πραγμάτων συνεστηκυία (St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, against heresies, IV, p. 34) we find in some saints. fathers thoughts that can provide a point of support for the construction of Eucharistic theology, namely in St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John of Damascus. The first (in the Great Catechetical Word, chapter 37) reasons as follows: “I truly believe that bread, sanctified by the Word of God, is transformed into the body of God the Word, for this body was bread, but was sanctified by the indwelling of the Word. So, for the same reason that in that body the transformed bread changed into divine power (i.e., ordinary bread and wine, eaten by the Lord to quench hunger and thirst, were transformed into His Body and Blood), and now the same thing is happening. For just as the grace of the Word made holy the body, the composition of which was made of bread, and which in some way was bread itself, here also bread, according to the word of the Apostle, is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (1 Tim. 4:5), not through eating and drinking becoming the Body of the Word, but immediately being transformed into the body of the Word, as the Word itself says: this is My body. At St. John of Damascus (in the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter 13) we read: “It is not the ascended body that descends from heaven, but the very bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of God... just as bread through manifestation, and wine and water through drinking, are naturally transformed into the body and blood of the eater and drinker and become not another body different from his previous body, so bread, wine and water, through the invocation and influx of the Holy Spirit, are supernaturally transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, and constitute not two bodies, but one and the same.” Both passages contain the same instruction - to understand heavenly food in connection and analogy with earthly food. Let's take a closer look at this thought. What is our usual diet 65 what does it mean to eat? In nutrition, a person communicates with the world external to him, a certain identification with it. Food, a thing of the external, non-human world, becomes the human body and blood, a natural transsubstantiation occurs in which bread and wine, like other food substances, enter the human body (and, by its connection with the soul, we can say that the non-self enters the self). When they are removed back from the human body, in metabolism, we have a further “transsubstantiatio”: the body and blood of a person partially cease to be themselves - the world returns (or, one can also say, the self becomes not-self). In nutrition, we thus have a constantly occurring image of the natural transformation of food and drink into the human body and blood, which is replenished by the reverse process of removing its particles from the body. Life in this sense is a transformation that occurs partially or completely (in a certain number of years). Life, as the metabolism that occurs in nutrition, is such a constant transformation of world matter into the body and blood of a person, which has its justification in the divine institution (Gen. 1, 29-30). This food in itself, although it supports mortal life, does not provide immortality, for which the tree of life was planted by God - in all its mysterious meaning. In the church it exists like the bread of Heaven, the Divine Eucharist. St. the fathers pay special attention to the fact that both the body and blood of the Lord, by virtue of His true incarnation and incarnation, were subject to the action of this natural transformation during His earthly life. Upon eating, the bread became His most pure body, without losing its breadiness, but precisely according to its strength, for not every worldly substance has this natural ability of transformation, but only in the form of certain food. The same applies to wine and water, which turn into blood. The body of the Lord grew (“the child expanded” Luke 2:40) and lived, obeying the general law of human nature, doomed to depend on nutrition, that is, on the constant transformation of the world’s substance into the human body. This revealed not only the authenticity of human flesh perceived by the God-man, but also the reality of the incarnation of God, for the Lord accepted a living and living body, with all the fullness of corporeality, which is potentially connected with the whole world, and in the metabolism it actually manifests this cosmism. Also at the Last Supper, the Lord ate bread and wine, and they were naturally transformed into His body and blood and adored, according to the inseparability of His divine and human nature. The transmutation of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, performed by Him at the communion of the disciples, differs from this natural transformation in that this identification of bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ, or transfiguration, took place not in the Lord’s consumption of them, but independently of him, and this is the miraculous, mysterious, supernatural (although not unnatural) nature of the transposition. St. Grigory Nissk. and John Dame. They definitely compare the natural transformation of food when eating it with the Eucharistic transformation, which the Lord performed independently of eating, as if expanding His corporeality by the power of His omnipotence beyond the limits of His body. And this food, although not tasted by Him Himself, but nevertheless already deified, He teaches His disciples to eat: “Take, eat,” “drink all of it.” The omnipotence of God here makes the non-existent existent, that is, the bread and wine not eaten by Christ and, therefore, not accepted into the nature of His body and blood, accepted and sanctified. But it extends further: that which has not yet happened, although it had to happen, becomes existing, which again removes the boundaries of time, and the future becomes the present. It is the Lord who communes His disciples with His body and blood, as an atoning sacrifice (“which is broken for you,” “which is poured out for you and for many”) before His saving death, before Golgotha, and even more so before His glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven). What was determined in the eternal council of God about the slaughter of the Lamb, what was already designated as inevitable in the chain of temporary events - the Calvary sacrifice, is here testified as already accomplished. Here the boundaries of time are removed, for at the Last Supper the Lord performed a sacrament, which already has all the power of the Incarnation (“remembering everything that happened to us: the cross, the tomb, the three-day resurrection, the ascension to heaven, sitting on the right hand, the second and glorious coming again,” - the priest’s prayer before pronouncing the words “yours from yours.”) At the Last Supper, the Lord presented Himself in His body and blood as saving food, through the eating of which union with Him is accomplished. But He not only did this in a single act, but also established to create in His remembrance, when He Himself would no longer be on earth, for all time. This opens up a new side to the question of the Eucharist. When the Lord established it, He Himself was on earth in His body, here, in the upper room of Jerusalem, among His disciples. Communion with bread and wine, as His body and blood, He had His body and blood before them directly, and bread and wine would only be a special way of partaking of the most pure body and blood. The Eucharistic food was completely identical with this body and blood, so that in essence the disciples partook of this body and blood. But the question changes significantly as soon as we introduce into consideration the fact that the Eucharist is established for all times when the ascended Lord will no longer be physically present on earth. And first of all, to what time should the actual beginning of the celebration of the Eucharist be attributed in fulfillment of the Divine institution, what is this possibility connected with and when will it occur? The Eucharist, like all church sacraments, became possible only through the descent of the Holy Spirit, and in Acts. Apostle The first mention of the “breaking of bread” naturally occurs only after Pentecost: 2, 42: “and they (those who believed) continued constantly in the teaching of the apostles, in fellowship and the breaking of bread and in prayers.” On the contrary, before Pentecost (but after the Ascension) it simply says: 1, 14: “they all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with (certain) women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren” (as well as about the very day of Pentecost, just before the descent of the Holy Spirit, it is simply said: 2, 1: “they were all with one accord together”). The Holy Spirit, with His perfect power, makes the presence of Christ palpable in the Church and in the sacraments. And, in particular, the transposition of St. The gifts are accomplished by “Thy Holy Spirit” (Literature of St. John the Golden and Basil V.). The transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist no longer takes place in the personal presence of Christ, for the ascended Lord, having departed from the earth, dwells at the right hand of the Father in heaven. And thus, a different, new relationship is established between bread and wine, as things of this world, earthly food, and the body and blood of the Lord in the glorified state of resurrection, ascension, sitting at the right hand of the Father, i.e., a premium, supercosmic or superphysical presence. Of course, this Body is essentially identical with that conceived in the womb of Mary, born and lived on earth, suffered and buried, resurrected and ascended. The tomb was empty after the Resurrection, and there was no body in the tomb, only shrouds and cloths remained, as in the Ascension, “a cloud took Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). However, this self-identity is combined with such a change in the glorified body in comparison with the earthly one that this is reflected in its relation to the world: the body of the Lord, which belonged to this world before the resurrection and even before the ascension, now no longer belongs to it, is supra-worldly, metacosmic. This is where the formulation of the Eucharistic problem follows. We need to pay close attention to those features that the Gospel contains regarding the resurrected body of the Lord. First of all, it should be established that, although the Lord remains on earth until His Ascension, however, in a different way than before the Resurrection: He does not live with the disciples, but only appears to them (“showed Himself alive... appeared to them for forty days.” Acts 1:3), and these appearances of Him do not depend on the laws of the natural world, but are subject only to His will. He appears to the disciples through closed doors (John 20:19, 26), and He disappears from their eyes, becoming invisible to Luke and Cleopas when they recognized Him. It is remarkable, by the way, that these phenomena do not have the compulsion that is characteristic of physical evidence: even the disciples “began to doubt” (Matthew 28:17), so that the Lord, appearing to the eleven, “reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who saw Him risen” (Matthew 16:14). It is also worthy of attention that even in His appearance Jesus is not immediately recognized, and not only by two disciples on the way during a whole day of conversation, but also by the loving and faithful Mary Magdalene, who takes Him for a gardener (John 20:15). This phenomenon was obviously so far from immediate, physical, self-evidence that it left room for uncertainty, doubt, and bewilderment, as is quite clearly evidenced from the story of Luke. 24:36–40: “While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They, confused and frightened, thought that they saw a spirit. But He said to them: Why are you troubled, and why do such thoughts enter your hearts? Look at My hands and My feet, it is I myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see Me. And having said this, he showed them his hands and feet.” It is noteworthy here that the Lord also condescends to this in bewilderment and offers them the opportunity to sensually (“touch”) verify the authenticity of the phenomenon. And this same feature (“showed them His hands and feet and His side” John, 20, 20) is repeated in the story of the Gospel of John about the appearance to the disciples (either the same or different from the appearance of the eleven described in the Gospel of Luke), and the story about the apostle has the same sense of special sensory identification. Thomas (10, 20, 26–27). All these features necessarily suggest that the appearance of the Risen Lord differed from His bodily presence, which never raised doubts and did not need to be confirmed, possessing indisputable self-evidence. 66 Here is added another feature that confirms the low inaccessibility of the resurrected body of Jesus to direct sensory perception, in the appearance of Mary Magdalene, when she wanted to touch Jesus’ feet with her usual movement. “Jesus says to her: Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father, but go to My brothers and say to them: I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.” (John 20:17). This elimination of the very possibility of touch establishes a qualitative, fundamental distinction between our corporeality and the corporeality of the Risen Lord, and this distinction is directly associated with the special state of ascension to the Father. This does not contradict this, however, that the Lord, here showing the inaccessibility of His body to touch, in other appearances deliberately allowed Himself to be touched. For the sake of assuring the disciples, the Lord made obvious the connection between Himself and the material world, between His body resurrected before the resurrection, revealing their identity, but not destroying their otherness (while in His words to Mary Magdalene it is precisely this otherness that is indicated). This combination of the sameness and otherness of the Lord’s body during the days of His earthly ministry and in glorification after the Resurrection is affirmed here as a dogmatic antinomy 67 This connection of His resurrected and glorified body with the earthly one belonging to this world, this antinomic sameness combined with otherness, the Lord confirms, according to the Gospel of Luke and John, in the most obvious way: through eating food. “When they still did not believe for joy and were amazed, He said to them: “Do you have any food here?” They gave him part of the baked fish and honeycomb, and he took it before them” (Luke 24:41–43). It is highly likely that on Lake Tiberias the Lord, who took part in dinner with the disciples, also ate before them (John 21:12–13). Of course, eating food is unnecessary for the Lord himself, for His resurrected and already immortal body does not depend on it. And, of course, this eating of food could not have any nutritional value for the glorified body of the Lord. However, this opportunity to eat food testifies to the presence of the remaining connection between the earthly, mortal, and the resurrected, immortal, body of the Lord. The eating of food by the risen Lord, which has such fundamental significance for the dogmatic teaching of the Eucharist, is close in meaning to the provision of hands, feet and ribs for touch: it certifies the identity of the earthly body of the Lord, which belonged to this world, and His resurrected body, which does not belong to it, establishes a direct connection between them to such an extent that one passes into the other without violating its own existence. Eating food was not an illusion or an appearance that did not correspond to reality, as if a kind of hypnotic suggestion, but it was not the kind of eating that was characteristic of Christ in the days of His earthly life (in particular, even at the Last Supper). Also, the hands, feet and ribs, although they could be shown by the Lord and, of course, had their own reality for this, however, they were no longer available for kissing, washing with tears and myrrh and wiping them with hair, in general they were no longer subject to our sensuality, although, by the special will of God, they could become accessible to it. And the same can be said in general regarding the appearances of the Lord after the resurrection: they were not purely spiritual, like the appearances of angels (and, perhaps, the posthumous appearances of the departed, as far as they are valid), but they were not sensually material, like the body of the Lord, which was no longer bound by the spatiality and impenetrability of matter. The Lord could manifest Himself through matter, but not in matter. The body of the Lord itself was not material, although it retained a connection with the substance from which it rose by the power of resurrection. This was the Transfiguration of the earthly, spiritual body into a spiritual body. This transphysicality of the body, which, however, maintains a connection with the world, simultaneous belonging and transcendence to this world, religious philosophy has still not been able to express in its own terms. However, by this distinction between the body in the physical and in the superphysical state, Theosophists, who are unconcerned with philosophical precision, distinguish these states as “planes” or “bodies”: the physical and the etheric. Christ appeared to the disciples after the resurrection in the etheric body and they saw Him on the etheric plane, in a special way of clairvoyance. The problem of the relationship of the resurrected body of Christ to the world with its corporeality is not exhausted. The Ascension forms a new facet here. The Lord himself establishes this line in His words to Mary Magdalene: I did not “ascend,” but “I ascend to the Father,” and this ascension takes place in the Ascension. After His Resurrection, the Lord, although he did not live with the disciples, but only appeared to them, nevertheless remained on earth, within the confines of this world, belonged to it, being in a mysterious state of ascension, taking place (“I am ascending to My Father”), but not yet accomplished (“I have not yet ascended to My Father”). This ascension is finally accomplished in the Ascension, which means the removal of Christ from this world. He briefly reports on the Ascension of the Lord. Mark (16, 19): “The Lord ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God,” more extensive than ev. Luke (24:51): “And when he blessed them, he began to depart from them and ascend into heaven,” and in Acts. (1:9): “He was lifted up before their eyes, and a cloud took Him out of their sight.” Here the event itself is only indicated in images of external distance with being lifted into the air (as is depicted on the icon). But it marks a removal, a complete disappearance from this world: and earlier the Lord hid from the eyes of the disciples after His appearance, becoming invisible (Luke 24:21), as if melting away before them. Now this removal takes place not into space, not into the distance, but into the heights, “into the sky.” It was experienced and felt by the disciples as a departure from this world, which was predetermined for them. In his farewell conversation, the Lord speaks about this: “Children, I will not be with you long... where I go, you cannot come (John 13, 33)... when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to Myself... a little while longer, and the world will not see Me (14, 3)... I am going to My Father (14, 12, 16, 16)... it would be better for you that I go, for if I do not go, the Comforter will not come to you; and if I go, I will send Him to you (16:7)... I came from the Father and came into the world, and again I leave the world and go to the Father (16:28)... and now You, Father, have glorified Me with Yourself with the glory that I had with You before the world was” (17:5). In the Gospel of John there is no direct account of the Ascension of the Lord, as in St. Mark and Luke. True to his usual rule, he does not repeat, but completes their narrative. In this case, he gives, so to speak, the theology of the Ascension, which constitutes the central axis of the farewell conversation: the removal of Christ from the world, that is, the Ascension, and the coming of the Comforter. In other words, what was symbolically marked as an event in the physical world is given metaphysical or metacosmic meaning and power here: the removal of Christ from the world, which naturally begs comparison with His coming into the world - (“he was in the world” (John, 1, 10) and His new, second coming into the world. The cloud that took Christ (Acts 1, 9) is the Glory of God, according to the farewell prayer (John 17:5), just as in the Transfiguration of the Lord “a bright cloud overshadowed them” (Matthew 17:5 - Mark 9:7 - Luke 9:34), and from it the voice of the Father was heard, testifying to the Son. The Cloud in the Old Testament is a sign of the presence of God and the Glory of God 68 and the concealment in. cloud means the reception of Divine Glory. What does this mean? First of all, after the Ascension, is the same situation restored as it was before the Incarnation? Obviously not, for the incarnation has a permanent meaning. The end of the Gospel of Matthew 28, 18, 20 tells us about this, “and Jesus approached and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me... and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen". Here it is witnessed, as given again, not only Divine, but also Theanthropic power on earth and a new inseparability with humanity, and therefore the Ascension does not mean an absence, but a new presence, the presence of Christ with the disciples. At the same time, the Ascension also testifies to the inviolability of the Incarnation, for it took place precisely with the body and in relation to the body, and this bodily existence refers to: “and I am seated at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19), which constitutes the firm belief of the Church. So, the Ascension does not mean disincarnation, but, so to speak, the perpetuation of the incarnation of God, which has power in heaven and on earth: this is precisely the meaning of the image “at the right hand of sitting.” The glorified body of Christ, having completed its “ascension,” has acquired perfect spirituality, and this spiritual body is able to be present in heaven at the right hand of God the Father. It is not incompatible with the absolute spirituality of God, with the truth that God is Spirit. However, such spirituality of the body does not mean its complete spiritualization, tantamount to disembodiment? No, it doesn't, and that's the point. Although completely spiritual and therefore absolutely alien to worldly matter or flesh, the body of the Lord retains all the strength of the body, it is a body, albeit only a dynamic one. But this dynamic state is not just potentiality, as if due to powerlessness, but, on the contrary, complete mastery of corporeality (“to Me is given all power in heaven and on earth”), which no longer needs any particular image of the body, being a body in general. It has the power to put on a bodily image according to the needs of the spirit, which is always individual, since it is hypostatic. And the body in general therefore exists or becomes, has within itself the energy to become a definite individual body. Therefore, the body of Christ retains the wounds and the general identity of its image both after the resurrection and at the second glorious coming, as is expressly confirmed by the angels: “this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The essence of the body lies not in the material particles of the world entering and leaving it (and in this sense the body is not closed in itself, but is open to the world), but in the special power that is inherent in the spirit for incarnation. This ability of the spirit to create its own body and live in it consists of the nature of man as an embodied spirit. In this incarnation of the human, as well as the divine spirit, two sides can be distinguished: the spiritual body, as the ability and power of the spirit to incarnate, and the material body, as the implementation of this spiritual energy, this mental image, from world matter, from the “earth” as the single common source of all corporeality. In this implementation there may be different degrees of adequacy: the mortal body is generally inadequate to its idea, due to the weakness of the spirit to master its substance; on the contrary, the glorified, resurrected body of the Lord is characterized by such adequacy to the highest degree. He was given “all power in heaven (as God) and on earth,” as a man, which is why this glorified body acquires all the properties inherent in it. During the “ascension” that has not taken place, but is still taking place, between the Resurrection and the Ascension, obviously, this incomprehensible spiritualization for us occurs, the transition of the Lord’s body into a state of pure spirituality. This “victory of the Lord over death,” this “all power” given to Him, was acquired by Him not by the power of God’s omnipotence of the Creator over creation, but by His human nature, the feat of human effort and human life, although inseparable in Him with the Divine. As a truly human being, He realizes through obedience to the end such ultimate adequate humanity that it is expressed in the perfect mastery of His corporeality, and therefore, in liberation from it, as a limiting, inert, disobedient principle. The spiritual body, the body of Ascension, no longer depends on physicality. This does not make it formless, as if incorporeal, but it itself has its own form, there is this pure form. The ascended body of the Lord, separated from the world and thereby losing its corporeality and materiality, does not lose its energetic properties as an individual image of the spirit, its external form (although here we have to distinguish between the external and the internal already in the spiritual realm). Nevertheless, in its state it is, indeed, separated from the material corporeality of this world, which it left behind during the Ascension. However, this separation or abandonment is a state, and not the essence of this glorified body, and it will change at the second coming, when this body will again be dressed in earthly clothing in order to be available to the sons of this world, when the Lord appears or comes again to this world visibly, that is, He will give His spiritual body a cosmic robe, characteristic of it, although not necessary for Himself. This is the relationship between the Ascension and the Parousia, the Second Coming. A body becomes a body not through its material composition, but through an internal form that has the ability to dress in the substance of this world, like an artistic image, embodied in plastic material. The said distinction between the body in itself, or spiritual, and the body in earthly, inadequate, limited incarnation finds a direct dogmatic basis in the teachings of St. Paul on the resurrection 1 Cor. 15. Here the apostle compares the power of the resurrection body to grain: “when you eat, you eat not the body to come, but naked grain... but God gives it a body as he wants, and to each seed his own body” (37-38). Further, the apostle distinguishes between “heavenly bodies and earthly bodies” (40), and “mental bodies and spiritual bodies” (44), and “as we have borne the image of the earthly, we will also bear the image of the heavenly” (48), “this bodily must put on the immortal” (53). This distinction between two bodies, or two aspects of corporeality, which are expressed by the opposition of the heavenly (in accordance with the Lord's body of Ascension) and the earthly, spiritual and physical, especially in connection with the comparison of the grain and the body growing from it, confirms us in a double understanding of the body. The spiritual body is characteristic of all embodied spirits (as opposed to disembodied forces), while the spiritual body is characteristic of the bodily state of a person, when he does not own the body, but on the contrary, the body owns him. In the next century, spiritual bodies, having put on incorruption, will become capable of holding their form, and all the substance of the world will become common matter, a body for all humanity (through which spatial fragmentation, impenetrability and division will be overcome). Here we should once again return to the Catholic understanding that underlies the theory of transsubstantiation. According to this theory, Christ is present in the sacrament substantialiter, but not accidentaliter, on the contrary, in heaven, at the right hand of the Father, He is present in His own form descriptiveetdefinitive, therefore accidentaliter. According to this understanding, the earthly body of the Savior in a spatial image, as it was on earth, now occupies a place in heaven, at the right hand of the Father, and both “heaven” and “right hand of the Father” are understood in the same way as a place, only different from the previous place of his stay on earth. The rudeness and, one might say, superstitiousness of such a presentation is amazing. The metaphysical removal from this world with all its temporality and spatiality in the Ascension is here equivalent to the physical removal of the body of Christ to another place, namely from earth to heaven. But “heaven” is not at all a place in astronomical space; on the contrary, the Ascension consists of a complete abandonment of the world, which is accompanied by the transition of the body of Christ to a spiritual state, free from cosmic matter. This is not just embodiment, but in a certain sense dematerialization. In Ascension the “ascent to the Father” is completed. The resurrected and glorified body of the Lord acquires such a spirituality for which removal from the world becomes natural. Therefore, according to the state (i.e. accidentaliter and descriptive) between the earthly and the glorified, ascended body of the Lord, there is not identity, but opposition, and heaven, where the Lord ascended, is not a place, but a state of spiritual corporeality, just like sitting at the right hand of the Father. It means that the Lord, having retired from the world, did not cease to be a man with a body, but this body became so spiritual that it does not interfere with His presence in heaven at the right hand of the Father, as before the incarnation. It retains all its energetic physicality, but this does not prevent it from being in heaven, i.e., the spiritual world. 69 The Second Coming of Christ, in relation to the Ascension, has the meaning that the Lord again makes His body not only spiritual, but also earthly, becomes accessible, visible to the world, appears to it. However, this transition of the Lord's body from earthly flesh (σάφξ) into a glorified and spiritual state does not violate its unity and self-identity in all states. First of all, this identity is established in the relationship between the body before the resurrection and after the resurrection. In particular, the gospel evidence boils down to the fact that after the resurrection of Christ, the tomb was empty, and there was no body in it. According to the Gospel of Matt. 28:6, the angel who rolled away the stone said to the myrrh-bearers: “He is not here” (And then follows the story of how the high priests and elders, having learned about this, bribed the soldiers to spread the rumor that the disciples stole the body: 28:11-15). Also with Mk. 16, 6. In Luke. 24:3 also says that the myrrh-bearing women “when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (cf. 24:23). The Evangelist John complements this story with even new features: when Peter and John came to the tomb, then there were visible “only the linen cloths lying on His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but especially rolled up in another place” (John 20:7-8). When the Lord appeared to His disciples, He confirmed to them the reality and identity of His body, showing His hands and feet and offering Himself to everyone to touch (Luke 24:39–40, John 20.20), and especially to the Apostle Thomas (John 20:24–25). How to understand this identity of the body lying in the tomb with the resurrected body? They do not eliminate the distinction between them according to their condition, which is so expressively and indisputably attested to by the same Gospels. Obviously, here there are different images of the Lord’s corporeality, which pass from one to another, while simultaneously preserving this difference and identity. If the body of the Lord did not remain in the tomb after the resurrection, this still does not mean that the resurrection is like an awakening from sleep or fainting of this very body. The resurrection is accompanied by a profound change in this same body. 70 Therefore, the absence of the body in the tomb after the resurrection does not mean that this particular material body was preserved and immortalized in the glorified body, it has changed significantly. In His appearances to the disciples, the Lord makes His physicality tangible, as if returning His flesh to the world. In Ascension, this appearance ceases. The “ascension” to the Father, which mysteriously and unknown to us took place during the 40 days of the Lord’s stay on earth after the Resurrection, took place in the Ascension. In it, the Lord physically separates from the world, leaves creation in order to return to the glory that He had with the Father “before the world was” (John 17:5), to His divine transcendence. The Ascension in this sense is the direct opposite of the Nativity of Christ. In it, the Lord enters the world from His pre-mundaneity, the Creator is identified with creation through incarnation, the Incontainable is contained, the Eternal lives in time. Ascension is the reverse transition from the temporary and created world to the eternal, divine existence. However, the connection with the world, the power of God’s incarnation remains unbreakable even after the removal of Christ from the world, and this thought is expressed in such a way that the Lord ascended to heaven with His most pure flesh and sits with it at the right hand of the Father, and the creation gained access to the realm of divine existence (“having fulfilled the vision of us and uniting those on earth with the heavenly” - kontakion of the Ascension). Here we again have an antinomian definition, both members of which, thesis and antithesis, are inextricably linked: the body of Christ, belonging to human nature and this world, ascends, moves away from this world, the peaceful becomes supermundane, already belongs to divine life, revealing the perfect deification of human nature, but also the perfect incarnation of the divine. Here we find the basis of the Eucharistic dogma. Having withdrawn from the world, the Lord retains all connection with it: “all power has been given to Me in heaven and on earth,” and this connection exists not only spiritually, through the spiritual indwelling of Christ in man) “I do not live for this, but Christ lives in me”), but also bodily. Ascending from the earthly state of the body to the glorified and resurrected one, the Lord does not abolish this state as a step passed and completely abandoned, but includes it in His God-manhood. According to the strength of this correlation, the Lord, being in His resurrected body no longer accessible to the sensory perception of the disciples, appears to them, again taking on the image of His earthly body, even giving it full tangibility, although it no longer corresponds to it. Even more striking is that the Lord eats earthly food in front of the disciples, of course, no longer having any need for it, which He also had in the “days of His flesh” (Heb. 5:7), when He, after a 40-day fast, “finished a hunger” (Matt. 4:2 - Luke 4:2). Now, of course, not to satisfy his own needs, He asked His disciples: “children, do you have anything edible”? (Luke 24:41), but in order to show all the more clearly that He is not a “spirit” who “does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). In other words, although He possessed a spiritual body, He did not therefore become an incorporeal spirit; He did not separate from His body, but maintained contact with it. And as evidence of this, “I took up before them the poison” (Luke 24:23) part of the fish and the honeycomb. This part, eaten by the Lord, was thereby transformed into His flesh and blood according to the power of this eating, just as the food He ate “in the days of His flesh” (which was noted in the already cited texts of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John of Damascus). Having no material body, He accepts it according to His will. In this sense, the Lord’s stay on earth after the Resurrection reveals this connection of His glorified body with the world; it is this very connection in actu. The Lord, during the days of His sojourn on earth, in His suffering and resurrection, acquired “all power” on earth according to His divine-human nature, so that the body no longer has power over the God-man, but is completely obedient to Him. The direct connection with the world ceases with Ascension, but it itself is not destroyed. The fact that the Lord ascends with the body means that His connection with the world not only does not cease, but receives final indestructibility for eternity. The sitting of the Son in heaven at the right hand of the Father with His body means the possession of all the power of corporeality, the spiritual energy of the body. This is the spiritual body, which from the point of view of earthly materiality is not even a body, for it is completely free from matter, but obedient to its command. This dematerialization of the spiritual body, which retains full capacity for new re-materialization, is different from disembodiment. The latter is ontologically completely opposite to the spiritual body, for it completely denies the possibility of new materialization, supposedly overcoming it (in Origen, as in various theosophical teachings). The developed doctrine of the spiritual body has nothing in common with Protestant ubiquitas, according to which the body of Christ, not being limited by place, is present everywhere, ubique, like the world’s ether or electricity, although this presence becomes clear and tangible only in communion. The Lord is not present with His spiritual body in any place, especially in His superspatiality above the place, but by His will He can enter space and then reveal Himself in a certain place. The theory of ubiquitas regarding the Eucharist suffers from the same Catholic materialism that it wants to overcome. Now we can turn directly to the Eucharistic dogma, to the doctrine of the transposition of St. Darov. The Lord performed the Last Supper during the days of His earthly ministry and communed His disciples in bread and wine with His body and blood, and both His body and blood and the bread and wine belonged to this world. And what was mysterious here was the image of the transmutation of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, which was not accomplished in the usual way, i.e. through their eating by the Lord (this is the usual and, so to speak, natural transformation that St. Gregory of Nyssa and John of Damascus point to), but by the word of the Lord: “this... is.” And communion was established by the Lord not only for the Last Supper, when He himself was still in the world, but for all times, “until he comes” (1 Cor. 2:26). We can say more definitely that it was established precisely for the time when the Lord departs from the world through the Ascension, and, consequently, His body and blood will no longer be in the world. However, communion for the sons of the earth, as before, as at the Last Supper, must have as its “matter” the substance of this world, in particular bread and wine. And the Lord establishes the celebration of the sacrament, despite His removal from the world, in earthly matter - bread and wine, despite the fact that the Ascended One no longer eats earthly matter as food and does not transform it through eating into body and blood. My. However, the Lord retains His connection with the world and power over it. The Lord demonstrated this power already after the resurrection, when he ate (and of course, not ghostly) food before His disciples, obviously thereby making it His body, although in this case not for the purpose of communion. (The tangibility that the Lord gave to His glorified body, when He showed His hands and feet to the disciples and allowed St. Thomas to touch His wounds, has a similar meaning. 71 And this power over the substance of the world is preserved, of course, in the Ascension. The ascended body of the Lord, glorified and spiritual, in itself, of course, is free from the “earth”, from the substance of this world, but it retains the power to reveal itself through this latter, and it thereby becomes body and blood of the Lord 72 The establishment of the Eucharist during the Lord's sojourn in the world connects its accomplishment with bread and wine, as the substances of this world. The Lord, by the power of His spiritual body, makes them truly His body and blood. Bread and wine, according to the word of the Lord, are the very body and blood of Christ, and this identification is not subject to any restrictions of doubt and reinterpretation. Here it is impossible to distinguish between the substance, which was supposedly transformed, and accidents, which were not transformed, but remained by themselves. Bread and wine completely and completely, without any restrictions, become saving body and blood. And yet, it is bread and wine that are offered, i.e. not the unqualified, abstract substance of this world (“earth”), which does not exist at all, but a qualitative, specific kind of this substance, namely bread and wine, which, as the substances of this world, remain without any change, however, they no longer belong to themselves and not to this world, but to the spiritual glorified body of Christ. The entire problematic of the theory of transsubstantiatio, completely alien to the undivided Church, stems not from the difficulty of accepting the transformation of world substance into supermundane being, but to explain the transformation of one substance into another, within the limits of world existence. But no transformation occurs, and there is no place for it at all. Various things of the same natural world can transform, and not those belonging to different areas of existence. The latter can only be transformed into one another, while maintaining their own way of being in their area. The Body of Christ, appearing in bread and wine, does not cease to be a spiritual body that exists above this world. Both bread and wine, becoming Christ’s body and blood, already belonging to His premium, glorified physicality, do not lose their existence in this world, because otherwise the very transformation μεταβολὴ) would be abolished, which requires the presence of both terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. Bread and wine in this world and for the life of this world remain bread and wine, their transformation is not physical, but metaphysical, it is beyond this world. For him it simply does not exist, why St. gifts even after transformation retain all the properties of natural matter. But these substances directly, as such, without any transformation, become the corporeality of Christ. The transformation does not mean the physical transformation of bread and wine into body and blood through a physico-chemical process. The Catholic transsubstantiatio wants to explain why this does not happen, excusing the absence of the miracle of natural transformation. But such an understanding of transposition degrades the sacrament and distorts its meaning. The latter does not consist in the fact that believers partake of a particle of body and blood in its natural form, but they partake of the one and indivisible corporeality of the Lord, uniting with Him physically, and through this spiritually. We would not be able to partake of the spiritual glorified body and blood of the Lord if He had not made His physicality material for us in the sacrament. Eating food before the disciples, the Lord showed the substance of this world united with His glorified body; in the sacrament, on the contrary. He allows Himself to be eaten, uniting with the substance of this world. Bearing in mind the meaning and power of the transformation, we can not only say that bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, but also vice versa, that the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament are bread and wine. Therefore, in the liturgy of St. Basil the Great (like Apostle Paul) already consecrated gifts are still called bread and wine. No transformation is required for transformation, because according to the will of God in this world, in a given place, on a given altar, the body and blood of Christ are bread and wine, as they are, and they do not need to be transformed into anything for this; on the contrary, they should precisely preserve their nature, with the destruction of which they lose their power and sacrament. This relationship is best expressed in the words of St. Irinea, bishop Lyonsky, that in the Eucharist heavenly food and earthly food are united (see above). Not every substance can be food, but only certain ones. The Eucharistic substance, bread and wine, are eaten, and the spiritual body of Christ is also eaten in them, having received them into itself and in this sense identified with them. At the same time, questions about whether the whole (integer) Christ with all His parts of the body is present in the Holy Spirit completely disappear as impious and thoughtless questions. sacrament. The decisive significance here is that bread and wine generally belong to the body of Christ, spiritual and glorified, and represent in the world the existent corporeality of the pre-worldly body. However, there still remains the difference and separation of the body and blood of Christ. Doesn't this contradict what we say when we object to Eucharistic physiology in Latin? The separation of body and blood in communion, established by the Lord, is, first of all, important for the Eucharist, as a sacrifice that reproduces the death of Calvary. The dismemberment and separation of body and blood, its posthumous outpouring on the cross, means sacrificial death, acceptable by the Lamb of God for the sins of the world. Therefore, in the Eucharist, insofar as it is a sacrifice, there must be this division. And this separation is completed by a new union of body and blood (in Eastern liturgy this is expressed in the lowering of the particle “IS” into the Holy Chalice with the words: “filling of the Holy Spirit,” and then in the lowering of particles for communion or in the drinking of the blood of the spare Lamb and in general spare gifts). This union corresponds to the resurrection of the Lord by the Holy Spirit, and believers are taught the body of Christ, not dead in the tomb, and the blood of Christ, not poured out after death, but a body with blood, although it passed through this sacrificial, mortal separation, through death, but resurrected, glorified, spiritual. The distinction and union of the body and blood of Christ do not have the meaning of opposition and, together, the juxtaposition of solid and liquid parts of the body, but mean his path from earthly life through death to resurrection. The body and blood separately are not yet a life-giving, although viable substance, which when combined forms the body. The biblical usage of words also corresponds to this understanding. Blood has a special sacred meaning in the Bible. In the law of sacrifices, the shedding of blood, sometimes the sprinkling of blood, the anointing with it has sanctifying, cleansing and generally fulfilling power, which is not characteristic of meat. And in accordance with this sacred meaning of blood, God strictly forbids Noah and his descendants from eating blood: Gen. 9.4 and the same prohibition is found in the Law of Moses: Lev. 3, 17, 7.26–7, 17.14, Deut. 12.16–23 15.23. This is motivated by the fact that blood is the soul of the flesh: “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life or its blood” (Gen. 9:4). “For the life of every body is its blood, it is the life thereof.” (Lev. 17.14), “Blood is soul; do not eat the soul with the flesh” (Deut. 17:14). So, blood is the “soul,” the life of the body, which has a material substrate in the blood. Accordingly, in the New Testament, in the Gospels and Apostolic Epistles, the Savior’s atoning sacrifice is usually spoken of as the shedding of blood for atonement (Eph. 1.7, Rev. 5.9), propitiation (Rom. 3.25), justification (Rom. 5.9), pacification (Col. 1.20), cleansing (1. John 1.7; Heb. 9.14), sanctification (Heb. 13.12), whitening of robes (Rev. 7.14), victory (Rev. 17.11) by the Blood of Christ. All these expressions have the general meaning that the Lord “gives His life” (John 10:17) for the sins of the world. Likewise, during the establishment of the Eucharist, the remission of sins is directly spoken of only in relation to the outpouring of blood, but not about the body. 73 We can say that the body is the place of the life-giving action of blood, for blood does not exist outside the body if it is alive, and is shed only at its death. It contains the strength of the victim, her soul. This distinction can also be interpreted in a Christological sense. According to the definitions of the IV and VI Ecumenical Councils, in rejection of the heresy of Apollinaris, Christ took on human flesh, animated by a rational soul (άρδρωπον ἀληθῶς τὸν αὐτὸν ἐκ ψυχῆςλογικἦςκαὶ σώματος) two principles corresponding to the reception of flesh and blood from the Virgin Mary. All this together corresponds to the tripartite composition of man: spirit, soul and body, and the hypostatic spirit in the God-Man eats the Logos himself, and blood and body correspond to the human soul and flesh. This is also confirmed by the image of Christ’s death on the cross, according to the Gospel of John: He “gave up his spirit” (19:30), and as a sign of his departed life, blood and water flowed from the piercing with a spear, so that a bloodless, lifeless body was lowered into the tomb. His human soul left his body along with his blood. From here, by the way, the dogmatic meaning of communion under two types becomes clear: what is essential here is not the actual eating of both types (which may not be the case, for example. with the communion of infants with one blood, and to a certain extent also with the communion at the liturgy of the presanctified gifts, where the preliminary drinking of the lamb with blood does not quite still carry out communion under two types), but the union of body and blood, corresponding to resurrection and glorification. Those who receive communion are not taught the dead, bloodless body of Christ, resting in the tomb, but the living, resurrected and glorified one. Therefore, the preliminary omission of the particle IC is so significant, in “the filling of the Holy Spirit,” corresponding to the new union of body and blood upon the return of life to the body, i.e., in resurrection 74 So, the transmutation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ does not mean the infusion of the heavenly Christ substantialiter into these accidents, as some kind of unchangeable shell, but their direct conversion, without any limitation or remainder, into the body and blood of Christ - a true transformation. In this case, it does not matter at all that bread and wine in their earthly nature remain what they were. They, as such, have become different from themselves, no longer have an independent existence, like a thing of this world, but belong to the body of Jesus, just as the loaves and fishes that He ate before the disciples belonged to it. The Lord, in His spiritual and glorified body, existing at the right hand of God and the Father, creates for Himself a body out of bread, the substance of this world, and animates it with His blood. For this transformation, not only does the “transubstantiation” of the thing itself (the bread of wine) not be required, but even this is excluded, for there is no such thing at all in the world into which they could be converted: the glorified body of the Lord resides outside this world. The Lord established the sacrament of the Eucharist in His earthly sojourn, when He had an earthly body. But this body was transformed in the resurrection, and then in the ascension it became supermundane. Therefore, the transposition of St. gifts should be understood not as the “transubstantiation” of one substance into another, but as the connection of the spiritual body of the Lord with the Eucharistic substance (“matter”) of this world, and the establishment of this connection is transmutation, an act not physical, but metaphysical. It represents a direct analogy of the Incarnation and means the appearance of Christ on earth after the Ascension, and the Eucharistic substance is the mediating image of this phenomenon. If we understand the transformation in this way, all puzzling questions regarding how the Lord allows himself to be eaten in many altars, simultaneously and at different times, and is present entirely in every part of the Holy Spirit, disappear. sacraments: these are the essence of images of His appearance, and, of course, there are no, and there cannot be, limits to this appearance. At the same time, no single Eucharistic meal exhausts this manifestation of Him in the world; it cannot be said: here and only here Christ is fully present, so that he is no longer present elsewhere. Indeed, in His earthly existence the Lord, having accepted genuine human flesh, together with it accepted its spatial limitations. According to His Divinity, residing super-spatially in heaven, in the bowels of St. Trinity, on earth He was subject to the boundaries of space and time, and, being present in one place, He was already absent from all others. However, at His resurrection He is freed from spatial limitations and appears and hides from the disciples contrary to the law of spatial impenetrability. In the same way, divinely transcending the boundaries of time, the Lord celebrates the Last Supper, at which he communes with body and blood “after much that is poured out,” before the outpouring itself, as well as the resurrection and removal from the world. The Last Supper, although performed by the Savior in time, rises above time and times, for in it the union of the heavenly and the earthly is established. So, for the appearance of the Lord there are no earthly boundaries of space and time, and the Lord appears on earth in all the countless Eucharistic sacrifices, “fragmented, but not divided.” This is the so-called. Eucharistic presence of Christ. It is not diminished in its power by the fact that the Eucharistic presentation is understood by analogy with the appearances of the Lord after the resurrection: just as these appearances were not illusory, but completely real, according to the testimony of the Lord himself (Luke 24:37-40), so the appearance of the Lord in St. gifts are His true presence. However, there is a difference between these phenomena. The appearance of the Lord to the disciples belongs to the transitional time of “ascension”, and they are also distinguished by their transitional character: the Lord who appears still belongs to this world and no longer belongs to it, which was characteristically expressed, on the one hand, in the prohibition of Mary Magdalene to touch Him, and, at the same time, in the command to the disciples and Thomas to touch Him. The Lord has physicality when he assimilates it for the sake of his disciples, and, as it were, frees himself from it when he hides from the disciples, and, in the end, ascends from them. After His Ascension, the Lord no longer belongs to this world and does not appear in it as He appeared while still abiding in it. Now He appears differently, not in His own glorified image, but only in earthly matter, by the power of the connection of His spiritual body with the world. And this appearance of the Lord in the substance of this world is the transformation of the Holy One. gifts. However, this appearance of the Lord is different from the appearance to the disciples after the resurrection, both in character and in purpose. In His appearances, the Lord then appeared to the disciples clearly, with sensory evidence, in order to overcome their unbelief. With these phenomena, He testified to His presence on earth, although in a different state than before. And the appearances of the Lord were external, which left the possibility of unbelief and doubt (Matthew 28:17, Mark 16:14, Luke 24:37). The presence of the Lord in St. gifts are not externally manifest - they do not have the potential to become such - but only mysterious and internally obvious. And so it becomes in St. communion. The body and blood of Christ are given to us in St. the sacrament is not irrelevant, but for communion, and only for this specific purpose of the appearance of the Lord in St. gifts are defined and limited. In the west, after the heresy of Berengarius, starting around the 12th century, the practice of worshiping St., completely alien to the ancient church, developed. gifts and their special display for this purpose. She strives to turn the appearance of the Lord into St. gifts for the purpose of communion at the appearance of the Lord to remain on earth in a certain place (Christus in pyxide). Here there is opposition both to the Last Supper and to the command of the Lord, with which He gave His body and blood to the disciples: “take, eat... drink of it, all of you,” and at the same time the Ascension, which ended His stay on earth 75 Worship of St. the gifts, which are the true body and blood of Christ, are given in the Orthodox Church only at the liturgy, when St. the gifts are worn for communion, and then when transferred to the altar for consumption (which corresponds to the Ascension). In them they worship the Lord himself in His appearance in St. Communions. The holy gifts left for the communion of the sick are the so-called. spare ones (which corresponds to the allocation of the moment of communion outside the time of the liturgy) are not displayed, but are hidden in the tabernacle located on the altar. True, when they open for communion, they are given adoration (as at the appropriate moment in the liturgy), but this is limited to that. Orthodox attitude towards spare St. gifts is practically expressed in the desire not to see or show, but to keep them safe not only as the greatest shrine, but also as the greatest secret - the Eucharistic presence of Christ on earth is revealed only when communion occurs The stated difference between Catholic and Orthodox understanding is well expressed in the following words of St. John of Damascus: “It is not the ascended body that comes from heaven, but the very bread and wine that are transformed into the body and blood of God. 76 Also in. Last eastern Patr. member 17: “And this is not because the body of the Lord, which is in heaven, descends on the altar, but because the showbread, which is prepared separately in all the churches and, after consecration, is translated and transposed, is made one and the same with the body which is in heaven.” The descent of Christ to earth corresponds to the erection of earthly matter until reunification with the glorified body of the Lord. The world is not closed and beyond the control of the Lord, and He is free, out of love for man, to raise the substance of this world to union with Himself, so that believers can through this be united with Himself. How to say St. Irenaeus of Lyons, bread, receiving the blessing, is "the Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly and heavenly." St. the mysteries are given to us for communion, and only in communion is unity with Christ given to us: “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (10.6,56). This, of course, does not mean that the body and blood of Christ are such only in the eating of simple bread and wine, as is understood in Protestantism. Communion is the partaking of the body and blood given by the Lord for communion. From the absolutely correct position that the bread of heaven is not ordinary food and requires worthy eating (otherwise it will lead to judgment and condemnation), an incorrect, because exaggerated, conclusion is drawn that the sacrament is actually established by faith, and in order to free its understanding from mechanization, it is subjectified. 77 The Church therefore believes that the transfiguration of St. gifts are performed for communion, but the bread and wine are already the body and blood of Christ, earlier and outside of communion, which only therefore becomes possible. The Lord is present in St. mysteries, and this real His presence is the common belief of both the Orthodox and Catholic worlds. However, the understanding of this real presence of “praesentia realis” requires the most precise explanation, especially since this is a concept of scholastic, and not patristic origin. What exactly is this real presence? The dominant concept in Catholicism is that the Lord is present in the Host, though invisibly, without “accidents,” however, essentially exactly as He is in heaven at the right hand of the Father. Therefore, His appearance is tantamount to His return to earth after the Ascension. In this sense, the host is displayed for worship on the altar, worn in processions, signifying the Lord who is on earth. The Orthodox understanding of the real presence is that the Lord is actually present in the holy. gifts, however, given only for a specific purpose, namely communion, and only in relation to this purpose, from which it is completely wrong to separate this presence. The presence of the Lord is revealed only in communion. It is impossible, following the Catholics, to completely separate this presence from its deliberate purpose and equate it with the general appearance of the disciples. This difference can be shown even for the Last Supper: the Lord was present among the disciples here, just as He was present among them in His appearances after the resurrection. But at the same time, with this, so to speak, direct presence, the Lord communed the disciples with His body and blood, i.e. He showed them the image of His mysterious presence in communion. By this the Lord distinguished and even contrasted both images of His presence, and their indistinction or even tendentious confusion and identification constitutes the main vice of the Catholic understanding. It cannot also be said that this distinction between the images of a phenomenon, the immediate and the mysterious, exceeds the measure of knowledge accessible to man. We are given this distinction: the Lord, after the Ascension, is not personally present on earth and does not appear to us as before, but He gives Himself in the Holy Spirit. communion, and to that extent is present in it. Therefore, we have in St. communion, on the one hand, is the true presence of the Lord himself and we worship Him, and on the other hand, this is a certain, specific presence of the Lord only for communion, and we do not they must try to spread it, separating from this goal what is being done in the Catholic adoration. From here it follows that to worship St. gifts, it is possible to prayerfully contemplate them only at the Last Supper, i.e. at the Divine Liturgy, where, in addition to direct communion, all the faithful commune spiritually through this presence. A general doubt may arise as to whether it is appropriate to limit this presence of the Lord in the Holy Place in such a way. gifts for the direct purpose of communion. However, this is the direct will of the Lord: eat, eat and drink. Here we need to remember in general that, although in all the sacraments of the church the gift of the Holy Spirit is taught equally, it is nevertheless different in all, and this distinction, so to speak, the specification of the phenomenon, is combined with the unity and self-identity of the Appearing. Likewise, in the Eucharist we have the appearance of Christ on earth, however, also only limited to the purposes of communion. We worship St. gifts in the sacrament of communion, for in them Christ is present, giving Himself to those receiving communion, but we cannot “touch” Christ in them and do not seek to keep Him in our communion. Here a comparison arises, and at the same time a distinction between St. gifts and St. icons. As is known, it played a big role in iconoclastic disputes, since the iconoclasts revered St. gifts of the only icon of the Savior to which worship should be given. The Orthodox (St. Theodore the Studite and others) objected that it was St. gifts are not an icon, for the Lord himself is present in them in His body and blood. An icon, although it is a place of the Lord’s gracious presence in His image, is not a personal presence, like the appearance of the Lord Himself. It is only a manifestation of His power or action, which is why it is not appropriate for the icon to be worshipful of God, but for “relative” worship, as a place of the presence of the Lord. This presence of the power of Christ in His icon is also associated with a certain meaning, namely for prayer in front of it, addressed to Christ himself, and in connection with this, for worship (through kissing, placing candles, censing, etc.). The holy gifts were given not for prayer before them, but for communion, and they should not be turned into an icon 78 So, the question of the transposition of St. The gift of gifts is not cosmological, but Christological; it is established and resolved within the limits and on the basis of Christology, precisely on the basis of the teaching about the body of the Lord, earthly and glorified, before the resurrection and after the resurrection. This doctrine of the relationship between both states of the Lord’s physicality has been least considered in theology. This study represents an attempt to return the question to its real content, which is reduced to the following provisions. I. In the sacrament of the Eucharist, the earthly substances bread and wine are truly transformed into the body and blood of Christ. II. As a result of this transformation, bread and wine with all their properties generally cease to be the substance of this world, to belong to it, but become the true body and blood of Christ. III. This transformation is accomplished through their union with the spiritual and glorified body of the Lord, ascended from the world, which appears in them on earth. IV. As earthly substance, the Eucharistic elements remain bread and wine for the world, while being transposed they already belong to the body of Christ, located outside and above this world, and are thereby raised to the metacosmic existence of this body, representing the corporeality of Christ on earth. V. In view of the fact that the body of Christ after the Ascension remains outside the world in a spiritually glorified state (and, therefore, has no earthly “accidents”), the transfiguration of St. gifts and cannot manifest itself sensually to the world. Bread and wine, becoming bodies of the blood of Christ through union with the glorified spiritual body of the Lord, should not change their earthly image, for this metaphysical change does not apply to it. However, they are completely, without any distinction between substance and accidents or essence and “species,” transformed into the body and blood of the Lord. VI. Based on this completeness of transformation, all theories of impanation disappear, since they deny transformation, replacing it simply with the actual union (consubstantiatio) of the incompatible: bread and wine, the substances of this world, and the supernatural body of Christ. In other words, this connection can only be expressed in a preposition, which is actually implied, although not successfully expressed, in theories of impanation. However, their merit lies in the fact that they overcome the idea of ​​physical conversion (or transubstantiation), which is substituted for transposition, and thus the question of true union comes to the fore. VII. The general basis for the Eucharistic Translation is that the Lord came from earth, where he had an earthly body, to heaven, where he has a heavenly body, maintaining a connection with all the states he has passed through. Therefore, He can return to the earthly state of His body through transformation. He established the Eucharist, while still on earth, for earthly people, and for this he gives them an earthly body. But beyond the resurrection, when this earthly church burns down, communion will be administered directly from the spiritual body, which is what we pray for before St. gifts: “Give us the opportunity to partake of You in the eternal days of Your Kingdom. Sophiological interpretation of the Eucharistic dogma The content of the Eucharistic dogma, as we have seen, is revealed through the distinction, and at the same time the identification of different images of the Savior’s corporeality. This raises the question of this corporeality in general, which was not sufficiently discussed both in the era of Christological disputes and later. According to the generally accepted opinion, the Lord became incarnate in order to become human, and the incarnation is viewed primarily as a means to incarnation, as the humiliation of the Lord, who took upon himself that which was unusual for Him: “He made Himself humble, and took on the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of mankind, and being found in the likeness of man” (Phil. 2:7). However, humiliation refers only to taking on the created “image of a slave.” But the incarnation of the Lord also has an independent meaning, in addition to redemption. The incarnation of the Word - ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, the Word becoming flesh - is an act, although supernatural in relation to the world and to man, but not unnatural either for the world or for the Divine. For it is unnatural and impossible, and the humiliation of the Lord must be understood only in the sense of freely belittling oneself, but not depriving oneself, to any degree, of one’s Divine nature (as is understood in kenotic theories). In other words, the incarnation in a certain sense corresponded to the own nature of the Word, which from the beginning was human, it was “the light of men” (John 1:4), “enlightening every man who comes into the world” (1:9). Man, who bears the image of God within himself, has for him a Prototype in Adam from heaven, and in this sense we can speak of the humanity of God, who is the Prototype of man. This general idea about the godlikeness of man and, therefore, the humanity of God when applied to the incarnation means that, although it carries out the divine plan of redemption, it has a basis for itself in humanity itself. By its creation, it is called to accept the Logos, and in this no violence is done to human nature, but only its entire primordial depth is revealed. In particular, here our attention should be focused on the question of physicality. Incarnation as the acceptance of the human body from the Holy Spirit. and the Virgin Mary, isn’t it unnatural for God as the Spirit, as if it were some kind of ontological contradiction? If God is Spirit, is it even possible for Him to incarnate? Doesn't it contain not only kenosis or self-abasement, but also self-negation? Can the hypostasis of the Logos become a hypostasis for the human-corporeal nature of Christ, and does the Chalcedonian dogma about the duality of natures with the unity of hypostasis not contain a direct ontological contradiction? This is the question that inevitably arises in Christology, connecting it with sophiology. Does the nature of the absolute divine Spirit eliminate physicality as its negation, or, on the contrary, embrace it within itself and justify it? In other words, when applied to man, is the image of God denied or limited by his physicality, or, on the contrary, is it affirmed and revealed in it? This question is answered positively by the very fact of the Incarnation, which, of course, would otherwise be ontologically impossible. Angels are disembodied spirits, but this disembodiment is not only the basis for their hierarchical height due to their closeness to God, but also their limitations in comparison with man. The disembodiment here is also a certain impotence (ontological) of the spirit, its natural limitation, i.e. the incompleteness of the image of God in angels compared to man, although they also have it. Here we must free ourselves from the usual prejudices and associations that have obscured the essence of the question of the corporeality of God, reducing it to crude anthropomorphism and paganism. Christianity, as a belief in perfect God-manhood, remains equally alien to both false spiritualism and materialism. The body and corporeality in its essence are not at all a material and inert principle, flesh that suppresses and closes the life of the spirit. On the contrary, the body is the image and self-revelation of the spirit, and the Absolute Spirit can also have absolute corporeality, which is nothing other than the Glory of God. It is the life of the divine trinitarian subject, the consubstantial Trinity, which has it not only in ideal possibility, in potentia, but also realizes it in reality, in actu, as absolute content, the divine world. To reject this would be to limit the life of the Divine to subjectivity, potentiality, non-being. God, by living the Divine life, you reveal Your Divinity. This Divinity in God, the Glory of God, Sophia, is this Divine corporeality, which not only does not contradict the spirituality of God, but absolutely realizes it. This corporeality is as spiritual as the being of God, from which it does not differ, but at the same time it is completely concrete, as the image of all images, an organism of ideas taken not only in their ideal content, but also in real existence, by the power of the Word, by which all things were, and the Holy Life-Giving Spirit, and in this sense, as if embodying ideal images. Corporality is the unity of idea and image, content and being, thought and life, Word and Spirit, which reveal in Their dual unity the Father, the revealed God. This corporeality, the Divine Sophia, is inherent in the Holy Trinity, as the single life of the Three and the life of each of the hypostases separately, as in connection and unity with others. The outline of the Image of God in it is directly given by the Son, as the image of the Father, but is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, as the “image of the Son,” and this is the image of the “heavenly man,” for the corporeality of God, Sophia, is eternal humanity existing in the Divine. Therefore, it is the Son of God who is incarnated and incarnated on earth, as a cosmourgic hypostasis primarily, however, through the Holy Spirit, inseparable from Him (although the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit is not incarnated). Human corporeality, which microcosmically contains the “compressed world,” is only an image of Divine corporeality. It enters into the fullness of the image of God and is correlated with it. Therefore, the incarnation of God is the absolute realization in man of the human image through the combination of the image and the Prototype, and this is the true meaning of the Chalcedonian dogma. The sophistry of man is revealed and realized through the incarnation of God, through the union of the created Sophia with the Divine. God the Word, who came to earth, in His pre-eternity is not a God alien to corporeality; on the contrary, He pre-eternally has it in the Divine Sophia, in the Divine world. This is Glory, which is hidden in created, human corporeality. This Divine corporeality, or Glory, appears in the Transfiguration. And the Lord speaks about this in His high priestly prayer. 79 What exactly did the Lord perceive during His incarnation in relation to physicality? Not physicality itself, as such, but a created, world-specific image of physicality, “flesh”. Earthly man, Adam, in whom the Lord clothed himself, although he has the image of Heavenly Adam, but in created nature, in a body of flesh created from “earth”, which was created from something non-existent, from nothing. Therefore, both temporality and perishability belong to him. But at the same time, the body of flesh is inherent in universality; it is the world in human form. It is inherent in it further to be a body, i.e. the image of the spirit, its artistic form and real existence, the ideal-real revelation of the spirit. This is the essence of the properties and tasks of absolute physicality. However, these tasks were in part not fully implemented, and in part were not feasible by the person himself. The creation of man, in particular his physicality, was not completed in the 6 days of creation, for the image of creation was still to come, not from the outside, by the omnipotence of God, but from the inside, through the incarnation. The main property of human corporeality is its creatureliness and its inherent weakness of half-being. The human body, although it came out of the hands of the Creator, already having within itself the fullness of its destiny, was weak, primarily in relation to the power of life. It needed food, thereby testifying to its incompleteness and incompleteness, and it was, if not directly mortal, then not immortal. It was not a spiritual body completely obedient and transparent to the spirit, but inert, plump, material, which with its life captivated and fettered the spirit. It was imperfect and incomplete, for it allowed carnal reproduction. And with all this created incompleteness it was connected with the insignificance from which it was created, with the earth: “As you are earth, you will return to earth.” This separation, and at the same time the rapprochement of the earth and the body, testifies to the incompleteness of the body. However, in this earth, as the first mother, lies the ontological privilege of the world and man, his extra-divine self-existence, which outside of God could rest only on nothing, fertilized by the word of God and becoming earth. 80 The earthly body is at the same time the own body of man and creation (hence the instinctive pathos of materialism). The human body is the “contracted world” of the earthly creation, which in man has a hypostatic existence for itself. The hypostasis of the human spirit lives and realizes itself through it in this world. However, through original sin, the human body lost its Sophian “glory”: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). From the royal greatness in the world, man is cast out into captivity of his body, which has submitted to the elements of the world, instead of serving the spirit. However, this loss by a person of his sophia, which is directly expressed in the loss of control of his body, its solidification, refers only to the state, and not to the essence. The Sophia dignity of man, and in particular the human body, is indestructible, just as the image of God is indestructible. “I am the image of Your ineffable glory, even though I bear the plagues of sins.” Therefore, it can and must be restored, which is accomplished through the incarnation, for Christ is the “savior of the body” (Heb. 5:23). The Lord, in the perception of human flesh, unites His Divine corporeality, Sophia, Glory, with the created corporeality of human nature. He accepts her truly and completely, however, except for sin, that is, the damage that was introduced into her condition by Adam’s fall. Born of a Virgin, without a husband, the Lord takes on the body of Adam as it is outside the Fall. He lives in the midst of a world damaged by sin, but this damage affects His life only from the outside, not from the inside. Thus, He shares with all humanity the need for food, which is no longer given to man directly from the tree of life and from the trees of paradise, but is obtained by the sweat of his brow. He needs clothing and shelter (although he does not have it all the time). He becomes weary and suffers. However, His own body remains pure and immaculate, alien to sinful movements, not subject to disease and free from the inevitability of natural death, for the Lord accepted death on the cross. With regard to immortality, the body of the Lord was in a state corresponding to Adam before the Fall: Adam might not die, but he was capable of dying, which possibility for him after sin became a reality. He still had to become immortal. So, the Lord accepted the physicality of the unfallen Adam in His Nativity from the Virgin and lived the life of this body. Having two natures, He also had two corporeality, divine and human, which have one foundation in Sophia. The first corporeality, Divine Sophia, is the eternal Glory of God, the uncreated Light, which covers the Divinity “like a robe” (divine “energy”). Strictly speaking, it is not a body, and in no sense is it flesh (therefore, of course, it cannot be said that the Lord had two bodies). The second corporeality, created Sophia, is a body created from earth, human flesh σαρ. The human body covered the Divine Glory, which the Lord, as God, had before the creation of the world, eternally and, of course, according to Divinity, never lost it and could not lose it. But according to His will, He could reveal His Glory, Divine, spiritual, luminous physicality, through the veil of His human body, making it transparent for this phenomenon. It was on the Mount of Transfiguration. The “cloud,” the Favorian light, is a tangible manifestation of the Glory of the Divine. This “appearance of the Kingdom of God coming with power” represents a preliminary to what is generally the work of the Savior in the salvation of the body. This is that He will transform the body of our humiliation into conformity with the Body of His Glory by the power (κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν) by which He acts (ποῦ δύνασδαι) and puts all things in subjection to Himself” (Phil. 3:21). Even without the Fall, Adam’s body should not have remained in its unchanged, original state. It had to receive the positive power of immortality and be clothed in glory, to actually realize its primordial sophia. We do not know what the paths would have been for this transformation of Adam’s body from mental to spiritual, from mortal (at least potentially) to immortal, if the Fall had not occurred. After the Fall, this transformation took place through redemption into the incarnation of God. The Lord accomplished it in His own body, and through it in all humanity, in the “salvation of the body” through His resurrection. The Lord, the new Adam, carried out spiritual mastery of the body, completely subduing it to the dictates of the spirit and thereby making it conformable to the divine Glory inherent in Him by Divinity. The Lord speaks about this conquest, which was expressed in victory over death, before His passion in a farewell conversation as His Glory, both at the beginning of it (“now is the Son of Man glorified”), and especially at the end, in the high priestly prayer. Here the Lord prays to the Father to glorify Him with the Glory that He had from the creation of the world. Of course, this prayer relating to suffering and resurrection does not remain unfulfilled, it itself testifies to its accomplishment. However, at the same time, it also testifies to the fact that in the state of earthly humiliation (kenosis), putting on the old Adam, this Glory was not characteristic of the Lord, of course, not His Divinity, but human nature, in everything similar to ours, except for sin. In other words, there was a discrepancy between the state of the body and Glory, Divine and human corporeality, and this discrepancy is precisely the humiliation and self-deprecation of the Lord. His glorification consists in establishing a correspondence between divine and human nature. It was miraculous, in anticipation of what was to come, revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration, and it already became unchangeable and constant in the Resurrection. The Lord's saving feat is carried out, first of all, and directly in His own human corporeality, which has changed, glorified, while remaining self-identical. The feat of the Lord's earthly life, completed by His death on the cross, obedience to the Father even to death, reveals such completeness of the spirit's possession over the body, in which the body itself completely submits to the spirit. That internal norm is restored that predetermines man at creation, but which was violated in his existence after the Fall. And by this feat, together with the dwelling of His Divinity in the body of Christ, this body was sanctified, became spiritual, in a word, received the ability to become itself until the end in the Resurrection. The resurrection took place by the complete power of the Holy Spirit, in response to the complete victory of the spirit over the body, revealed by the incarnate Word. Descent of St. The Spirit, at the Annunciation, which precedes the Incarnation, at Baptism, which precedes earthly ministry, reveals its perfecting power at the Resurrection, and after a 40-day stay on earth, at the Ascension and at Pentecost. In the Resurrection and the Ascension inextricably linked with it, one must see not only the victory over death, but also the glorification of the body, its transformation; it acquired the state of a spiritual, immortal, eternally living body, which, although, like everything created, arises in time, it already acquires the immutability of eternity. It thereby becomes, although not identical to the uncreated (as the created always remains different from the uncreated), but corresponding to it, but to the state in the life of the single hypostasis of the Word, which unites inseparably and inextricably both natures - divine and human. Human nature reaches that correspondence that it did not yet have in Adam, and is clothed with glory (This is what in theology is called περιχώρησις). True, even before his fall Adam was clothed with glory, which, together with his descendants, he lost in the Fall (Rom. 3:23). However, this was only her anticipation, which therefore could have been lost, but the glory of immortality is inalienable and passes into eternal life. It is very important to establish that the resurrection, as the glorification of the body, although it is the saving action of God over man and in man (like his creation), is not ontological violence against him, in contradiction to his nature. On the contrary, it is the fulfillment of that task, which, as a creative task, was invested in human nature at creation: man in the resurrection becomes god by grace, but this is because he was created in the image of God, that is, as a man-god. The human body was destined for the glory of immortality at creation. The body of Christ in the resurrection is the human body that has become itself as it was destined to be, that is, Glorious by the glory of the Divine. Christ has His Glory, His Sophian corporeality, so to speak, the same, but twice: as uncreated, divinely, and as given to the deified creation, createdly. The pre-eternal and created Sophia is the one self-identical Sophia, existing in God and in the world, and Christ in His incarnation united the Divinity and the world in a hypostatic unity. His corporeality, (or, in Eucharistic language, body and blood) is the divine Sophia, the Glory of God, revealed not only in God, but also in creation 81 Just as the world created by God is sophia in its foundation and ultimate task (“God will be all in all”), so the human body in general, and in particular the human body of Christ, is sophia and in accordance with the Divinity, destined for glory and is completely glorified in Christ, in whom the created and Divine Sophia are identified. The Lord, fulfilling all truth, fulfills in Himself the truth of the body, giving it all the glory that belongs to it, perfect sophia. In this sense, the body and blood of Christ, given by Him in divine communion, has the power of Divine sophia, which connects the heavenly body and earthly matter. The Lord, ascending to heaven and departing from the world, does not abolish His connection with the world, but affirms it, raising it to a premium eternal existence. His corporeality, existing in heaven, permeates all creation (“all power has been given to Me in heaven and on earth”) and is inseparable from it. Therefore, the substance of this world, bread and wine, can be raised by the Holy Spirit, according to the commandment of the Lord, into a state of bodily sophia, i.e. become the body and blood of the Lord. In the light of these relationships, the conversion of St. The gifts can be understood as the complete sophization of the world's substance, bread and wine, through their union with the glorified, spiritual body of the Lord. Bread and wine, belonging to this world, are thereby ontologically involved in the earthly body of Jesus, which He had while in this world, and the ontological possibility of their transformation is based on this participation. But this participation in their body of Jesus also testifies to their original sophia, which is the basis of the creation of the world. But this sophistry is hidden by all the inertia and lack of enlightenment of the world’s matter, disobedient and resisting the dictates of the spirit. However, she has already defeated and overcome through the Resurrection of Christ and does not exist in the new Adam, concealing within himself a new earth and a new heaven, a new world in His glorified corporeality. This transformation of creation, corresponding to the second coming of the Savior, takes place mysteriously in the Divine Eucharist, i.e. obviously only for the eyes of faith, over the Eucharistic substance. What is accomplished in the sacrament will at the end of time be accomplished throughout the whole world, which is the body of humanity, and the latter is also the Body of Christ 82 Even in the Tridentine definitions, the decretum de S. S. Eucharistia is stated (Sess. XIII) separately from the doctrina de sacrificio Missae (Sess. XXII), distinguishing and comparing them with each other. Also, the Orthodox Confession (Part I, v. 107) adds to the presentation of the teaching about the sacrament of the Body and Blood: “This Sacrament is also offered instead of a sacrifice for all”; in the Message of the Eastern Patriarchs it is said, after expounding the doctrine of the Eucharistic presentation: “We also believe that this is the true and propitiatory sacrifice offered for all...” (chapter 17). The same inaccuracy is observed in theological treatises. Thus, in “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” Met. Macarius (T. II, § 219) we read: “Believing and confessing that the Most Holy Eucharist is a true Sacrament, the Orthodox Church also believes and confesses... that the Eucharist is at the same time a true, valid sacrifice, i.e. that in the Eucharist the Body and Blood of our Savior are both, on the one hand, offered as food for people, and on the other hand, they are sacrificed for people God." Compare: Malinovsky. Orthodox dogmatic theology, vol. IV, p. 194–199: “The Ecumenical Church invariably confesses that the Eucharist is not only a sacred meal, but also a sacrifice to God.” These “on the one hand” and “on the other”, as well as “not only, but also” express the complete helplessness of theology in determining the relationship between the Eucharist and sacrifice. The character of the Eucharist as a sacrifice appears in the rite of the liturgy of St. Basil the Great even more clearly than in the comparatively abbreviated liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Here, from the beginning of the Liturgy of the Faithful, the priest prays that by the power of the Holy Spirit it would be given to him to offer a “sacrifice of praise” “for our sins and for human ignorance,” and it is likened to its Old Testament prototypes: “Abel’s gifts, Noah’s sacrifices, Abraham’s fruitfulness, the Mosaic and Aaronic priesthood, Samuel’s peace.” Cases of peaceful sacrifices, especially noted in the Bible: Judgment. 6:19–24, sacrifice of Gideon; 1 Sam. 11:15, at the election of Saul to the kingdom; 2 Sam. 24:25 – David’s sacrifice; 1 Kings 7:63 – Solomon. This use of blood is quite epically described in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. 9: 18–22): “... the first covenant was not established without blood. For Moses, having pronounced all the commandments according to the law before all the people, took the blood of bulls and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying: this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded you (see also: Exodus 24:8). He also sprinkled the blood on the tabernacle and all the liturgical vessels. And almost everything according to the law is purified by blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Isn’t this what Christ’s direct words about the upcoming Cross mean, which testify, of course, not just to prophetic foresight, but for Himself to a pre-event? “Behold, we are ascending to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and hand Him over to the pagans, and mock Him, and beat Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him; and on the third day he will rise again” (Mark 10:33–34; Matt. 20:17–19; Luke 18:31–33). And here are direct words about the same thing: “I came to bring down fire on the earth, and how I wish it would already be kindled. I must be baptized with baptism, and how I languish until this is accomplished” (Luke 12:49–50). And another text with similar content: Jesus said to the disciples (the sons of Zebedee): “You do not know what you ask. Can you drink the cup that I will drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? They say to Him: We can. And he says to them: You will drink my cup, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized...” (Matthew 20:22-23). Here praesens and futurum seem to be mixed in indifference: “the cup that I will drink” = “My cup”; on the contrary, baptism is spoken of only in praesens, as already occurring throughout the entire earthly life of the Lord: “the baptism with which I am baptized.” In modern times, this idea has become the property of the best theologians who devoted their attention to the teaching of the sacrifice of Christ, in particular M. de la Taille. Mysterium Fidei de augustissimo corporis et sanguinis Christi sacrificio atque sacramento. Paris, 1924, as well as M. Lepin. L'idée du Sacrifice de la Messe d'après les théologiens depuis l'origine jusqu à nos jours. Paris, 1926. See: A. Michel. Messe. Dict. de Théol. Cath. T. X, I, 1272. However, this opinion was expressed earlier by individual writers. For a summary of patristic evidence relating to this, see Taille, op. cit. Elund. XIII, 153–165. See his comparison of the texts of Revelation, where Christ stands before the Father in the form of a sacrifice: 5: 8, 9, 10, 12, cf. I, 5, 6. The altar is erected before the throne of God: VI, 9; VIII, 3, 5; Wed XI, 1; XIV, 18, – alive and burning: XVI, 7, 17. This issue is especially discussed in the essay “Christ in the World” in the chapter “The High Priestly Ministry.” In order not to repeat ourselves, we refer to this essay, limiting ourselves here to a brief presentation of the main ideas necessary for connection with what follows. Even blessed. Augustine turns out to be not free from occasionalism in understanding the High Priesthood of Christ according to the order of Melchizedek: “nam secundam it quod natus de Patre Deus apud Deum, coaeternus gignenti, non sacerdos, sed sacerdos propter carnem assumptam, propter victimam quam pro nobis offeret a nobis acceptam” (Enar. in Ps 109, n. 17. P.h 37, 1460). This understanding of the High Priesthood contradicts its definition as eternal, that is, according to the originally Divine definition. See the essay “Christ in the World,” chapter on the high priestly ministry. This same idea is further expressed in even more bold and meaningful comparisons: “The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second person is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, so are the earthy; and as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of earth, we will also bear the image of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47–49). The Apostle distinguishes first of all between “heavenly bodies and earthly bodies” (1 Cor. 15:40). Without giving a direct definition of the heavenly, he explains them through comparison with the earthly, which are defined as different types of seeds and fleshly bodies: “when you sow, you sow not the future body, but a naked grain, which happens to be wheat or something else; but God gives him a body as he wishes, and to each seed his own body. Not all flesh is the same flesh; but... cattle have different flesh, fish have another, birds have another” (37–39). The common feature of these earthly bodies is that they are all flesh, which, however, is not synonymous with corporeality in general as its only image. On the contrary, there can be non-carnal bodies that surpass the flesh, and vice versa, the carnal character of the body, its excessive fleshiness, is a sinful perversion of the flesh, its improper state: “And the Lord said: My Spirit will not forever be despised by men, because they are flesh” (Gen. 6:3). So, there are different bodies and flesh, as one of the varieties of corporeality. And then, the apostle continues his distinctions, there are “heavenly bodies” and “earthly bodies,” and then further explains: “there is another glory of the heavenly and another glory of the earthly” (40). These predicates with a member (τῶν ἐπουρανίων and τῶν ἐπιγείων) in the context can only refer to bodies - (σῶματα), which are spoken of in the second half of the same 40th verse. This same idea is further - somewhat unexpectedly - explained by the following comparison: “there is another glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another of the stars; and star differs from star in glory” (41). Here various images of carnal corporeality are indicated, but still within the confines of this world. Next, the apostle moves on to the world, beyond us, to life after the resurrection, which will also appear through transfiguration: “So also at the resurrection of the dead: it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption... the spiritual body is sown, the spiritual body is raised. There is a spiritual body, and there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: the first man Adam became a living soul” (see: Gen. 2:7), and the last Adam is a life-giving spirit. But not the spiritual first, but the spiritual, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth... the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, so are the earthy; and as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of earthly, we will also bear the image of heavenly things” (42–49). The contrast between the spiritual body, characteristic of Adam after creation, and the spiritual body, characteristic of him after the resurrection, are two different images of a single corporeality. Thus, the imaginary opposition between body and spirit, which is usually taken for granted in theology, is eliminated here, and, on the contrary, their connection and correlativeness is affirmed. And this general idea about the corporeality of the spirit is further confirmed by the reference to the fact that the “second” man is the “Lord from heaven” (47), Himself having the “image of the Heavenly” man and communicating it to us. In vain will we see here only the thought of the Incarnation of the Lord through the incarnation of man, because here something else, more, is said, namely, about the Heavenly Man, who is the Lord from heaven. Here, in other words, there is evidence not of the incorporeal spirituality of this Heavenly Man, but of His spiritual corporeality, according to which He also assumed the earthly corporeality of Adam the first, which is why He is true God and true Man. The fullness of the Divine presupposes spiritual-divine corporeality, while the fullness of humanity presupposes spiritual-soul-carnal corporeality, which, however, could be united in one and the same Hypostasis of the Logos. See our work “On the Name of God” (manuscript), chapter on pronouns. ? On this occasion, it should be repeated here once again (cf. “Eucharistic Dogma”), how inconsistent with the essence of the matter are the superstitious stories about the visible presence of the Body and Blood of the Lord in the Holy Gifts, that is, about the transformation of bread and wine into earthly meat and blood, and related stories about the visible slaughter of the Child, and the like. We must understand once and for all that the Eucharistic “translation” does not consist in this physical transformation of some earthly substances into others. This did not happen at the Last Supper either. Such a transformation would be both too much and too little for a “translation”: the first is unnecessary, the second is insufficient, since the “transformation” includes the glorified body of the Lord. Nota bene: in the Chalcedonian formula there is an understatement, and therefore an ambiguity: it is not clear what exactly this τὸν αὐτόυ refers to here: whether it is only to man (where this expression is directly adjacent), or whether it applies equally to God, more precisely, to God and to man. The latter interpretation is completely reconciled and even corresponds to the general intention of the dogma, with its statement about τελειότης both in the Divinity and in humanity. With the same interpretation, it turns out that “the body and the rational soul” are acquired not only by man, but also by God. In this case, this new and extremely bold and important dogmatic idea requires a special interpretation. In the opposite interpretation, that is, if the composition “of body and rational soul” is attributed only to human nature (and historically such an interpretation is still more probable), the result is incompleteness in the parallelism of both natures, Divine and human in the God-Man, but this does not quite correspond to the meaning of the entire dogma. The dogma of the VI Ecumenical Council, directed against monothelitism and monoenergism, once again confirms the same duality of natures in the God-man, but in terms of will and energy, θελήσεις or θελήματος and ενέργεια, however, without clarifying the scope and composition of the concept of humanity and Divinity in their ratio. This very thought is expressed by theologians as a matter of course (although far from being recognized and revealed in all its fullness and meaning). “Although the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Eucharist are actually transformed into the Body and Blood of the Lord, He is present in this Sacrament not with His body and blood alone, but with His whole being (?), that is, with His soul, which is inseparably united with His body, and with His Divinity itself, which is hypostatically and inseparably united with His humanity” (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Arch. Macarius, vol. II, p. 402; the same in a summary p. 274). This includes numerous texts of Revelation about the Lamb: in the vision of the heavenly throne and Him who sat on it (chapter 4) “to the Lord God Almighty, who lives forever and ever, who was and is to come” (8-9) “who created all things” (11), in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and in the midst of the elders) “stood a Lamb as if slain” (5:6) and to Him all creation said: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever” (13). For further texts about the Lamb, see: 6: 1, 16; 7: 9–10, 14, 17; 14:1, etc. (see chapters 15, 17, 19, 21, 22). Although there are pious stories about the appearance of the body and blood of the Lord at the Eucharist, as well as visions of the slaughter of the Baby by angels, they should be classified as superstitious fabrications based on an incorrect understanding of the Eucharistic transposition. It should be noted that the repeated feeding of the people with bread in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew 14: 17–19; 15: 34–36; Mark 6: 41–42; 8: 6–9, as well as Luke 24: 30, 35) is also accompanied by a blessing: “he looked up to heaven and blessed” (ἀναβλέψας εἰς τόν ὀυρανόν εὐλόγησεν) and has something Eucharistic in it. Similar to this is the blessing of the loaves at the lithium, as well as the consecration of the Eucharistic bread at the proskomedia - prosphora. All of these are different images and degrees of transformation. M. Lepin, 1. N. 741–743. A. Michel. Messe, oblation et immolation mystique. Dict. de Théol. cat. vol. X, 1272, also confirms the general idea that oblation et donation du Christ is an act that extends to all His actions in earthly life and therefore begins from its first moment and continues in His Kingdom, which will have no end. In the usual understanding of the Eucharistic transformation, the latter is nothing more than the physical transformation of one thing or substance into another, although in reality this is precisely not the case, so that the appearance of meat and blood should be considered deception. The “translation” is also not some kind of miraculous hiding of Christ – totus et integer Christus – “under the guise” of bread and wine with all the members of the body, teeth, hair, etc. And this is also a fantasy that arises as a result of a false expansion of the meaning of the expression. The latter is performed only for the purpose of communion, according to the direct instructions of the Lord: “Take, eat...” “drink from it” (cf. John 6). Catholic theology interprets it as a general Epiphany, albeit “under guise,” which corresponds to the exaggerated practice of displaying the Holy Gifts for worship - in ostensory and processions. “...Oblatio, incepta in coena, per totam iam passionem persenerat. Durat enim necessario ilia oblatio, quae semel acta, non retractatur, sed aliter continuis voluntatis ac libertatis actibus se in externat prodentibus per tot tantasque actiones ac verba Domini ad mortem usque" (de la Taille. Op. cit. clucid. IX. P. 102). Sacrificium enim non in recipiendo aliquo bono a Deo consistit sed in offerendo; sacramentum autem, ut tale, non in offerendo, sed in recipiendo. Passivi sumus respectu sacramenti, activi respectu sacrificii. Agit circa nos Deus in sacramento, agimus nos erga Deum in sacrificio (de la Taille. 1. pp. 320–321). Of course, here the question arises about its redemptive power for the fallen angels, who need it, and therefore have it, since and when they themselves are able to accept it. It can receive a complete explanation only in connection with the doctrine of their apokatastasis (see eschatology). “Are they not all (angels) ministering spirits, sent to serve those who are to inherit salvation?” (Heb. 1:14). We find a naive explanation for this, which does not explain anything, in de la Taille (1. C. Eluc. XLI 52): aliter Christus est caput angelorum aliter caput Ecclesiae (as if angels do not enter the Church as its heavenly part). Gratiam autem ut quam angelis influit... tantummodo ut elevantem, non autem ut sanantem, neque influit per corpus suum dat... gratiam talem qua ipse usus est in corpore quam et per corpus suum nobis meruit (and further). The result is a strange limitation of the power of the Eucharist, as if the Body of Christ remains alien and impenetrable to the angels, while it, ascended into heaven, receives all the power of spirituality, which is unusual even for the angels. C'est le sacrifice du ciel, rendu présent sur notre autel: non pas de façon pure et simple, mais dans les conditions toutes spéciales. Le Christ s’offre présent en ce moment du temps bien determiné, en ce point d’espace nettement circonscrit, pour cette portion de son Eglise que constituent la génération qui vit actuellement et plus particulierement l’assistance qui est là. Ainsi le sacrifice du ciel est adapté à nos conditions terrestres. Il a pris la forme qui convient à nos besoins. Il est devenu notre sacrifice propre d'Eucharistie (Lepin, 1. C. 750). Le Christ a offert (le sacrifice) avec une perfection exemplaire et à titre spécial. Il l'a offert non seulement en son propre nom, mais au nom de tous les hommes et pour tous les hommes, en qualité de Prêtre veritable et sonverain. Car il est premier-né de toute créature et le Fils de l'homme par excellence, le Chef et le Prêtre de l'universelle création. Ses frères en humanité ne peuvent s’offrir dignement qu’à son imitation (1744). De la taille. Op. cit. elucid. XVII. P. 205: ex edem instutionis lege sequitur etiam, non esse Ecclesiae sacerdotibus competiturum potestatem conscerandi post indicium ultimum; siquidem non est illis demandatum munus commemorandi Christi mysterie nisi usquo ad adventum eius alternum donic veniat. Priestly service is depicted as equal to the angels in the wonderful “Akathist for the communion of the Divine Mysteries, only suitable for priests.” “Coming to You usually as Your disembodied angel. I am burdened with many sins, so I dare to approach this task of the highest angelic service” (canon, paragraph 3). “Thou hast commanded the prophet to make angels his spirits, to call man of flesh an angel, saying: The mouth of the priests shall preserve reason, and shall require the law from his mouth, for there is an angel of the Lord Almighty. By Thy mercy Thou hast introduced me to this rank of angels” (Akathist, Ikos 1). “You chose a man like a certain Seraphim, appointing him” (kontakion 10). We have a separate feature that can be attributed to the spiritual growth and growing deification of even the angelic world in the story of Revelation about the struggle in heaven, in which “(the angels) defeated him (the dragon) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and did not love their souls even to death. Therefore, rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them” (Rev. 12:11–12). By the way, this understanding of the parable of the separation of the sheep and the goats also belongs to criminal theology, and from it is adopted both in liturgical books and in everyday use. Easter canon, canticle 1. Nevertheless, she is not alien to Catholic piety. Thus, in the Louvre there is a wooden sculpture of the Amiens school (1437) Le Sacerdoce de la Vierge, depicting the Virgin Mary at the altar in vestments, surrounded by angels and people giving communion: Les peintures du Moyen Age, par Charles Jacques, Paris, tabl. CXXX. What is striking in this sense is the insensitivity of Protestantism to the mystery of the Mother of God: everything there comes down to the Nativity of Christ, which, obviously, could not take place without the Mother. But this is already enough for him to completely forget about both the Mother and the Mother of God. See about this in my sketch “The Burning Bush”. And this silence becomes even more expressive when compared with the deliberate (and, moreover, the only) mention of the Mother of God in the Acts of the Apostles (1: 14), namely about Her presence “in the upper room” together with the apostles at the prayer meeting after the Ascension, but before Pentecost, that is, obviously not the Eucharistic. Lamb of God, chapter on the Resurrection of Christ (“On the Miracles of the Gospel”). This expression did not receive the meaning of an exact dogmatic formula, which is found in the words of the Nicene symbol: “and he who sits at the right hand of the Father.” However, even without such authority, it is sufficiently attested in Church Tradition, its use in dogmatic presentation is sufficiently justified. Here, too, it would be appropriate to apply the Chalcedonian formula: “indivisible and unmerged,” although in a different sense than the one in which it is used in the Christological definitions of the IV and VI Ecumenical Councils. There it refers to the union of the Divine and human natures in Christ Himself, but here it refers to the union of the natural nature of human flesh with the nature of the Mother of God deified through the influx of the Holy Spirit, that is, to the unity not of two natures, for the nature of human nature in both states remains one, but of its two potencies. The deification of the human nature of the Mother of God makes Her capable of the conception of God and the birth of the God-Infant with the union in Him of two natures: Divine and deified human, that is, the highest potency of humanity. So, in the Mother of God, that is, after the Annunciation, the universal human nature, in this sense carnal, is preserved, and she is also deified, spirit-bearing, Mother of God, and both of them remain without confusion, although not in separation or isolation. In the God-man, along with the Divinity, with the Divine nature, there is human nature, but in a state of deification, the Mother of God. Their inseparability and non-fusion refers to two natures, and not to two states of a single nature, as in the Mother of God. The Catholic Church does not have such an order, perhaps partly because Western liturgy in its current form does not even know the proskomedia, and therefore does not have the Mother of God prosphora, as well as our antidoron in general. Here its peculiarity is manifested that it is performed on unleavened bread. However, even this would not be technically insurmountable; it is such against the background of the general belittlement of the participation of the Mother of God in the Western liturgical rite (compared to the Eastern, in which the first place near the Lamb on the paten is given to the particle of the Theotokos, and Her special commemoration - “fairly about the Most Holy Ones” with the singing of “Worthy” or “worthy” immediately after the consecration of the Holy Gifts - is dedicated to Her glorification. In the Western rite there is a blessing of the loaves before the Mass, which comes closest to our blessing of the loaves at the liturgy, but not at the liturgy. In the prayer of this consecration we read: “benedicere dignare sicut benedixisti quinque panes in deserto ut omnes ex eo gustandes, inde corporis et animae percipiant sanitatem.” Relatively unexpectedly and not without exaggeration, in the French edition of the missal the meaning of eating the blessed bread is defined as follows: “se sacrementel remplace de quelque facon la sainte communion” (Missel quotidien - par Dom. Caspar Lefebure, 1924. P. 72). In this rite (according to the Great Book of Breviaries) we read: “Thy belly became a holy meal, having heavenly Bread, Christ our God, from the Unfitness of everyone who eats poison does not die, as everyone said, the Mother of God, the Nourisher.” Could there be a more expressive confirmation of what is said in the text? However, this practice is not the only one or dominant at all times. Until the half of the 17th century, in the Russian Church “the prevailing belief was that wine is sanctified by the addition of Holy Bread, which is therefore not first watered with Blood; the latter custom arose from imitation of the practice of preparing reserve Holy Gifts” (Karabinov N.A. The Holy Chalice at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts // Christian Reading. 1915. VI). Karabinov N.A. Quote op. VII–VIII. P. 951. About this we only have this indication from the Trebnik: “the priest accepts part of the Holy Mysteries, puts it into the chalice and pours in a little wine, as if he were powerfully sick.” According to the terminology adopted here, we call eucharistic consecration that which is accomplished through the sacramental transformation and is intended for sacrifice, and in particular for communion; Eucharistic we call such sanctification that occurs in connection with the Eucharistic, but is not a direct, but only its indirect consequence, finding in it its basis according to the general power of the Incarnation. It is noteworthy that in the Catholic Mass, which, to a much greater extent than the Orthodox liturgy, is actually focused on communion, such a connection is completely absent, according to the entire sequence of the Mass. The latter deals only with the host and wine, which are offered in full and in equal force during the celebration of the sacrament, and therefore, in the Latin Mass there is nothing corresponding to the prosphora and antidoron with particles, water and wine, which are not offered, but only consecrated in our liturgy. “A person is what he eats,” as well as vice versa: human food is a person. This is the non-Eucharistic philosophy of food (see my “Philosophy of Economics”. M., 1910). On this, see the essay “Sophiology of the Sacraments.” In the so-called "Teaching News" by Jerome. Euthymius (XVII century), which is now printed in the appendix to the service book, there is, among other things, an indication that if St. the gifts take the form of meat and blood, then they must be put aside and not partake of them until this sign is over. For us, this warning seems to have more of an educational, dogmatic, rather than practical meaning. The important thing is that such a supernatural sign, even if it existed, seems unnatural for the divine Eucharist, and not at all the fulfillment or revelation of its authenticity, the reality of the Eucharistic miracle, which does not consist at all in such a transformation. It should be noted that Catholic theology in the doctrine of transsubstantiation generally has difficulty with both types: Body and blood, and, in essence, does not know what to do with the second type - blood, although it usually does not notice this difficulty. All his reasoning relates to the first type, to the host, in which the Lord is present entirely, and the second type is somehow simply forgotten, which corresponds to both its removal from communion and the impossibility of preserving it for worship. When speaking about the presence of Christ in St. gifts, then, of course, usually only the consecrated host is Christus in pyxide, and His blood is forgotten. However, we will not dwell on this side, so as not to complicate the reasoning. Same thing in Cathechismus Romanus: Quare dicitur totius substantiae? Resp. Quia omne illud, quod pertinet ad substantiam et intergritatem corporis, ut ossa et nervi, vere et realiter in Eucharistia reperitur. You can find the following comparisons in Catholic literature: au cielle corps de Jesus Christ occupe parses dimensions un lieu correspondent à sa grandeur naturelle parce que auciel it possede sa présence locale par l'extension. (G. BARIELLE. Le catechisme romain ou l'enseignement de la doctrine chrétienne,. t. IV, 2nd partie, 1909, page 463.). At the same time, Catholic doctrine strives to preserve all the realism of this presence. See the articles Eucharistie, Apparences, Messe in Dict. detheolcat. Wed. my chapters on the Trinity, Theologian. Thought. I. Vl. Soloviev cheerfully chorused: “There are no substances, Hegel destroyed them, but even without them we will live happily.” However, he forgot at that moment that substances found a quiet refuge in the Tridentine canon, which dogmatized the teaching of F. Aquinas, and this should not have been indifferent to Vl. Solovyova. The doctrine of substances and accidents introduces a naive and unnecessary duplication of reality, against which empiricism is right, seeing in things a “bundle” of attributes. Substance has to be the hypostatic spirit, ὑπόστασις - substance, the subject of all its states, or “accidents,” but this does not apply at all to things, but only to individuals. Substance can be considered the whole of the world, as spiritual or material (ὕλη), being, as a single whole or as an organism of substantial monads, which equally, individually and in their correlation, have an original, “pre-established” being, and not at all accompanying things in their changeable formation. Finally, substance can also be understood in a formal epistemological sense, as a transcendental subject or a categorical synthesis that determines objectivity. To become understandable and convincing, Aristotle's theory must, firstly, be translated into the language of modern critical philosophy, and, secondly, philosophically substantiated. In its current form, it remains so problematic that it is, in any case, an unsuitable tool for Eucharistic theology, and the whole theory of transsubstantiation is, at the very least, “an attempt with unsuitable means.” True, Catholic theologians assure that the fathers of the Council of Trent did not intend to connect their definition with any philosophical doctrine. However, outside the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, based on Aristotle, it simply cannot be understood, and, therefore, accepted. Such an absurdity is, for example, the opinion of Duns Scotus that by the omnipotence of God matter can be transformed into form, bread into soul, etc., expressed by him in connection with the doctrine of transsubstantiatio. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see my Philosophy of Economics. M. 1910. As it is said: “about what was from the beginning, what we heard, what we saw with our eyes, what we looked at, and what our hands touched, about the Word of life, for life was revealed and we have seen and testify.” (1. 10. 1, 1–2). This same antinomian identity is otherwise confirmed in the words of St. Paul, where he equates the appearance of the risen Lord before the Ascension with His appearance to himself already in heavenly glory: “(Jesus) appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve; then he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time... then he appeared to Jacob, also to all the apostles, and after all he appeared to me as (a certain) monster.” (1 Cor. 15:5-8). Wed. my Burning Bush, an excursion about the Glory of God. In relation to this body, Catholic judgments about sitting at the right hand of the Father, descriptive and defenitive, with the presence now of their properties or accidents, are obvious anthropomorphism. This change in attitude towards all humanity establishes the ap. Paul: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption, it is sown in humiliation, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in strength; The natural body is sown, the spiritual body is raised” 1 Cor. 15, 2–44). At the same time, the question that occupies Catholic theology cannot arise: do we have here an adductio, that is, a spread, as if an increase (augmentatio) of the body of the Lord beyond its own limits. With this formulation of the question, the different are compared and the incommensurable is formed (the exemplary and spiritual, indivisible and integral body and the image of its own material phenomenon). It is also inappropriate to further Catholic wisdom that the totus Christus, with all parts of His body, is present in the Host. This very distinction between parts and the reification of the bodily image is completely inapplicable here, where we are talking about the appearance of body and blood, the corporeality of Christ on earth, in earthly matter. Here it is appropriate to talk about the body (and blood) only as about corporeality in general, just as when eating food naturally, it, entering the body, becomes its integral part in general, and, content with this, we no longer try to establish into what part of the human body each particle of food has been transformed. Therefore, the sensuous-materialistic idea of ​​the totusinteger Christus, present, even if only substantialiter, as if folded in the Host, must be completely rejected. So, every particle of bread and wine, transferred into the body and blood of Christ, holistically reveals His corporeality, and, consequently, the Lord is present in it. An understanding close to this is expressed by Rosmini (which was condemned by the Vatican: Denziger 1919, 1920). Rosmini uses precisely the patristic image of the transformation of food into the body, seeing in transub-stantiatio that “Christ makes (gifts) the place of His sentient principle and vivifies with His life”). It should be noted in this regard that the spiritual body is not an abstract body in general, but a completely individual one, which contains within itself a certain form, even if it is as universal as the body of the Lord. And in this sense, His resurrected and ascended body, residing at the right hand of the Father, is His personal body, which He had in the days of His earthly existence, and it bears traces of the saving passion of the cross. Only at app. Paul (1 Cor. 11:24) we find: “what is broken for you.” And then the same is done with the remaining part of the lamb, through lowering into the chalice with immersion in blood or through drinking blood (as is done when preparing the lamb at the Liturgy of the presanctified, as well as reserve gifts). The Catholic deprivation of the chalice to the laity corresponds to the fact that it is not the body of the risen Lord who is communing, but the one who is in the tomb, separated from the blood. True, here, too, part of the host is lowered into the chalice, with which the priest receives communion, and the meaning of this immersion can be extended to all the hosts being consecrated. However, they themselves are deprived of the life-saving connection with the blood. And this difference further increases the advantage of the priest, who alone has all the power of communion, while the laity are left with communion, not having full power. And the whole point of sub utraque lies precisely in this reunification of body and blood, soul and body. In Catholicism, there is even a custom of consecrating the Host deliberately for the ostensorium, that is, not for communion (it is only consumed by the priest after a certain time, but in a different order than for communion: in other words, it is never used for communion). True, here too the desire of Catholics is to keep Christ on earth, not content with communion, to have Him among us and to worship Him. Hence the special “Eucharistic” piety. However, Catholic violence is not allowed to change the will of Christ himself, who wanted to give himself only in St. communion, but not in another appearance, and the exhibition of St. gifts for worship remains only an excessive expansion of the Eucharist through communion not only with the lips, but also with the eyes. (so-called “spiritual communion”). Wed. Izl. Right faith. IV, 13. This is also due to the denial of the sacrificial meaning of the Eucharist in Protestantism. The Lord himself connected and identified the communion of His body and blood with their sacrificial separation and His death on the cross: “You proclaim the death of the Lord” (1 Cor. 2), the apostle speaks of the Eucharist. Paul. In addition, the icon is a clear image, but without the physical presence of the Lord, St. gifts are such a physical presence, however mysterious, that is, without a clear image. “And now glorify Me, O Father, with You, with the Glory which I had with You before the world was.” (10, 17, 5, cf. 24). This refers directly to the future glorification in the Resurrection and Ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father. And this same glory is communicated in the resurrection to deified human nature: “The glory” that You gave Me, I gave to them.” (22). Wed. about this in my “Non-Evening Light”. Along the way, it can be pointed out that the Mother of God, glorified in Her resurrection and ascended to heaven with her body, has the same glorified, Sophia-like physicality as Her Son, to whom She gave a human body. Christ's glorification of the human body, before manifesting itself in the entire human race in the resurrection (“sown in corruption, raised in glory”), is manifested in the Mother of God, who, like the Mother, has, as it were, one body with the Son. However, this resurrection and glorification has a different basis, it is not initial, but derivative, accomplished by the power of the Resurrection of Christ and is a reunion with Him in His Glory: the Mother of God sits at the right hand of the Son, who sits at the right hand of the Father. At the same time, in the glorification of Mary, who is also the Mother of all human nature, the entire human race has already been resurrected). In connection with this, one should also understand the osophification or ultimate sanctification of the creature in the glorification of the Mother of God. The flesh of the Mother of God is the very earthly body of the Lord, which He received from Her by the Holy Spirit. Of course, the flesh of the Lord is alien to original sin and is sanctified by unity with His Divinity, but at the same time, like the flesh of the Mother of God, it belongs to the very world to which the Eucharistic substance, bread and wine, belongs. And in this sense, by partaking of the body and blood of Christ, we mysteriously enter into natural communion with the Mother of God, we partake of the body and blood of Christ and the flesh of the Mother of God. On the other hand, Her resurrection by the power of Christ and, of course, the Holy Spirit, together with Her ascension in the flesh to heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Son, testifies that Her body became similar to the body of the Son, Her, that is, glorified, spiritual, special, capable of remaining in heaven. If so, then a transformation happened to him, which is also a change, but the opposite of what we have in the Eucharist. There the glorified body of Christ, descending into the world and returning to nature, transforms into itself the worldly substance of bread and wine, and here the earthly body of the Mother of God is transformed into the heavenly, similar to the body of Christ and coexisting with Him. But after the general resurrection, the transformation of the earthly or mental body into the heavenly or spiritual will spread to the entire human race, and the sons of the resurrection will, being in direct bodily unity with the Mother of God, be led by Her, and, being in direct communion with the Lord, will begin to partake of Him no longer by external, but by internal partaking in the communion of life, i.e. the path from heavenly Sophia to earthly Sophia passes in two directions: from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth.