The Eucharist as the focus of Christian life

“Make me, Lord Jesus Christ, by Thy grace always to believe and understand the greatness of this mystery, to feel and firmly hold, to speak and think in a manner befitting Thee, and useful to my soul.” St. Ambrose of Milan This report was compiled by me for Russian Christian youth who gathered last summer for a conference in the Pechersky Monastery in Estonia, where they fasted and received Holy Communion. For that moment and for those youth, the topic of my report was appropriate and timely. But it seems to me that it is appropriate and timely for a wider circle of Russian readers, which gives me the determination to publish my report on the pages of “Put.” We all now seem to have approached Christianity and the Church even closer and more heartily. Life in the Church ceases to have external, formal meaning for us. Christianity takes possession of souls and, naturally, our thoughts should turn to the Eucharist as the focus of Christian life. And if the Eucharist is truly felt by us as the center, as the core of our spiritual life, then this will undoubtedly create a completely new look and character not only of our personal inner life, but also of our general self-awareness. A profound transformation has taken place in both our souls and our lives. A new center of our spiritual and moral existence has been created. We didn't look in this direction for a long time. We have always been busy with intellectual, philosophical or scientific understanding of our lives. The 30s and 40s, the 60s, the 70s, and all the other years of the 19th century passed through this. Even Tolstoy, although he spoke about the Gospel, approached it exclusively rationalistically. It did not understand or recognize the inner life in Christ. It knew only the fulfillment of the “commandments.” Then everyone was sure that philosophy and science covered and explained all aspects and the entire depth of life. And if not now, then soon they will answer all the mysteries of life. But this did not materialize. I felt dissatisfaction and emptiness. And the same Tolstoy felt and expressed this with special strength and mental pain. And after many years of wandering and painful searches, the consciousness grows that the intellectual way of knowing the truth is insufficient. It cannot satisfy the soul, because it does not cover the entirety of man’s spiritual nature and bypasses a significant and most essential part of it. The spiritual nature of man has now revealed itself in such fullness of its content that it has become clear that neither Darwin, nor Spencer, nor Marx, nor any sociological and political theories can satisfy its spiritual hunger, quench its spiritual thirst. In addition to the intellectual path of knowledge of the truth, in its field and within its limits completely legal and inevitable, there must be another way of knowledge of the truth, an internal, spiritual path, capable of revealing to a person his true position in the world, and the meaning of his existence, and the order of life, consistent with his nature, and providing him with true, inviolable good. And such a way of knowing the truth exists. The Church of Christ knows him. They were and are followed by the saints and all those who live the life of the Church. The Russian intelligentsia, which had not previously noticed this source of truth, is now turning to it more and more and taking a closer look. How does the church’s path to knowledge of the truth differ from the previous intelligentsia, intellectual path? It differs in that the Church does not consider human reason to be the only and indisputable judge of truth. The insight and depth of the human mind depend on the true and correct structure of the entire human spirit, that is, all its hidden depths, and its heart, and its will. Therefore, the human mind only acquires true insight when the entire spiritual nature of man is in a healthy and correct state. Therefore, it happens that the strongest and most educated minds, belonging to a sick spirit, do not see the truth where ordinary minds, not enriched with knowledge, but belonging to a healthy spirit, see it. The scribes and lawyers, with all their education, with all their knowledge of the law and prophecies, did not notice in Jesus Christ what the harlot and the man born blind - His deity - “felt” in Him. And now the same thing happens. The Church teaches that one must have purity of heart, combined with humility, in order to see God. Therefore, it establishes a completely different path to the knowledge of the truth than the path followed by the Russian intelligentsia, namely, the path of patient and persistent cultivation and education of the spirit in the grace-filled atmosphere of the Church of Christ. In this way, a person comes to the knowledge of truth, but not that truth, for the knowledge of which every mind is suitable, and which consists in understanding the external relationship of things, but that truth that is accessible only to a healthy spirit and which consists in knowing the place of man in the world and his true purpose, and which gives man the knowledge of God. Thus, Russian society is now coming to the Gospel and to the Church, but it is no longer coming with the childish simplicity that was characteristic of our ancestors; it is coming, having experienced a long and difficult period of departure, wandering and searching; it is coming, finding in the Gospel and in the Church, as it were, some treasure long lost and found again. They say that the Gospel rises too high above our lives, makes demands on people that are too unrealizable, and therefore, for all its height and beauty, it is unvital, impractical, and inapplicable to life. This is not true. Undoubtedly, the Gospel introduces principles into people’s lives that are contrary to the spirit of “this world.” It is enough to recall at least the words spoken by I. Christ to his disciples during his farewell conversation: “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you” (John 15:19). Of course, this is not about the primordial world in which everything was “good and green” (Gen. 1:31), that world was not opposite to the Gospel; here we are talking about that world into which sin has already entered, which, according to the Apostle, “lies in evil” (1 John 5:19), and about which it is said: “Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world” (1 John 2:15). There certainly can be nothing in common between the sinful world and the Gospel. And in this sense, the Gospel is irreconcilable and incompatible with modern life, since sin reigns in it, for it is impossible to serve God and mammon at the same time; and he who does not gather with Christ scatters. However, this opposition between sinful modernity and the Gospel should not be interpreted in the sense of the non-life of the Gospel. The vitality of the Gospel does not consist in adapting to existing evil, but in the fact that without it life loses its meaning and its beauty. The Gospel is necessary in order to transform this sinful life, spiritualize and renew it with its light and truth. The Lord Jesus Christ brought the good news of the kingdom of God to the world, not in order to mechanically mix it with the sinful customs of the world, but in order to instill a new life, holy and eternal, into a world permeated by sin. He put the Gospel into the world as the eternal leaven of new life, and this leaven is the more effective the less it resembles the spirit of the world, adulterous and sinful, the better it retains its purity and freshness. The power of the Gospel lies not in the words and concepts contained in the Gospel, although, undoubtedly, the words of the Gospel captivate and attract many to Christ, and even more attracts to Christ His very historical image, filled with divine greatness, holiness, wisdom, truth, humility and love, but still the source of life and salvation is not words and memories, but the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God, who mysteriously and gracefully influences humanity at all times soul. After all, Christianity is not only a teaching (we need to renounce our usual belief in the salvific nature of ideas and theories - at least not exaggerate their significance), Christianity is life; it is not only a sermon about love, it is Love itself, embodied on earth, and crucified for us. This is the essence and effectiveness of the Gospel. In this way it has won and is conquering the world. And if we say that the Gospel is impracticable, we say this only because we look at the Gospel from the outside, see in it only the letter of Scripture, only a theory, and do not take into account the life experience of the Church. We do not notice that the Gospel itself shows us the condition under which it gives rest to our souls, makes its yoke good, and its burden light; The Gospel seems difficult and impossible only when we try to go to it with our own, weak strength, but it also becomes easy and accessible when we walk along it with Jesus Christ, who said: “Abide in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it is in the vine, so neither can you unless you are in Me. I am the Vine and you are the branches; He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing”... (John 15:4–6). This is the secret of the Gospel path, to walk along it with Christ. The secret of the Gospel path is not to rely on one’s own strength, but to deny oneself, come to Christ, love Him, entrust oneself to Him, walk with Him, as St. Apostle walked to Him through the waters. Peter, and from Him to receive strength to easily and joyfully fulfill all those words of His that, without His help, without His closeness, seem so terrible and impossible to us, for example, to forgive offenses, to pray for our enemies. This constant unity with Christ lies the saving way out of the apparently hopeless situation in which the height of the demands placed on us by the Gospel places us. Faith in the living Christ, the Son of God, love for Him, closeness to Him, life in Him - this is the path to the assimilation and implementation of the Gospel. The Gospel is not learned through abstract reasoning, but through living, heartfelt faith and love. This path was followed by the Apostles, martyrs, and saints; this path is followed by every Christian; this path lies before both the Russian intelligentsia and Russian youth, who are moving from exclusive intellectualism to the fullness of spiritual life. But how can a modern, lonely, weak person find Christ and be in unity with Him, amid the indescribable noise of modernity, sometimes truly anti-Christian?! After all, Christ lived so long ago... Yes, this would, indeed, be completely impossible if there were no environment or element that connects us with Christ and completely abolishes the barrier of time and space. This element or environment is the Church of Christ, His Body inseparable from Christ, in which, as in His Body, the Head of this Body, the Lord Jesus Christ, always invariably resides. As members of the Body of Christ, we in the body of Christ are inextricably linked with His Head Jesus Christ. And this connection is neither imaginary nor dreamy, but genuine, living and real, as the Apostle Paul speaks about it. According to him, the Church is a living union of love, the Head of which is Chrostos, “from whom the whole body, composed and copulated through all kinds of mutually fastening bonds, when each member acts to its extent, receives an increase to create itself in love” (Eph. 4:16). The Church is not a simple earthly human society like other societies. It is something incomparably greater, deeper, holy and mysterious. She is a heavenly-earthly organism, which is enlivened by the Holy Spirit, in which the Lord Jesus Christ lives and acts. And each of us, being a part of this organism, is in the same closeness and in the same connection with Christ as the Apostles were during His earthly life. In all centuries of its existence, the Church preserves one unchanging life, one unchanging essence. Throughout the existence of the Church, one Spirit blows in it, as the Apostle said: “We were all baptized into one body by one Spirit, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, and all were given one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor. 12:13). The feeling of churchliness has generally faded away in us, we live an individual religious life, we find ourselves alone in the world, we do not feel our place in the universal House of Christ. For others, alienation from the Church reaches the point that they are ready to oppose the Church to Christ, they are ready to assert that the Church does not lead to Christ, but leads away from Christ, and covers Christ with its rituals. The shortcomings and weaknesses of church society, the mistakes of the church hierarchy are blamed on the Church, the Church is confused with the hierarchy. The boundary between the divine nature of the Church and Her human side, between the essence and the shell, is lost. We forget the words of the Savior: “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). The nature of the Church, as a heavenly-earthly organism, determines its meaning and purpose in Humanity. She is, in the words of the Apostle, “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). The Church is the guardian of the Gospel. Without Her we would not have a reliable testimony of the truth of the Gospel. There would only be fragmentation of individual opinions, each defending its own truth, disagreeing with each other, denying each other. A person who wanted to know Christianity would not know where to turn and who to listen to. If now each of us calmly picks up the Gospel, in the confidence of finding the truth of Christianity in it, then he owes this only to the Church, which preserved the Gospel and carried it intact through the centuries. The critics of the Gospel themselves use no other Gospel than the one they have from the Church. But the Church not only preserved the Gospel truth. She is, at the same time, an inexhaustible source of eternal life, poured out from God through Her and in Her. It revitalizes and sanctifies human souls, gives them the fullness of spiritual life, puts them in the right relationship with God, the world and people, gives them true self-knowledge and spiritually healthy well-being. No one can do this work except the Church of Christ. Christian life is not created by books and instructions alone. It is created in man by the incomprehensible action of the Holy Spirit. The entire structure of church life is aimed at awakening and nurturing spiritual life in people. The whole environment of the Church, all its rituals - icons, lamps, candles, the sign of the cross, holidays, fasts, divine services, sacraments - all this is not just an external form of church life, not a simple remnant of church antiquity, but grace-filled educational means of spiritual growth and communion with Christ. That conversion and coming to Christ, which for a person who grew up outside the Church is accomplished through long and difficult experience, a whole series of falls and errors, for a person living in the Church occurs easily and naturally, joyfully and peacefully, since from childhood he already lives in a grace-filled Christian atmosphere, unconsciously absorbing its spirit. The church environment imperceptibly connects him with Christ through diverse and often completely elusive influences, imprinting the image of Christ deep in his soul. Anyone whose childhood was spent in a church atmosphere knows this well from personal experience. So, the Church is that grace-filled environment that connects us with Christ. But this connection between us and Christ is not personal. Together with us, countless hosts of members of the heavenly and earthly Church enter into communion with Christ. And thus an immense union of believers is formed, bound by mutual love and mutual prayer. In the church, individual, individual prayer and collective, church prayer are equally necessary. “But when you pray, go into your room and, having shut your door, pray to Your Father who is in secret” (Matthew 6:6). By repeated repetition of the word “yours” (“go into your room, pray to your Father”), Jesus Christ especially notes the intimate, internal, personal nature of the prayer that He is talking about here. And it is not in vain that the Fathers of the Church mean “room” in this case, the interior of the heart, because it is there, in the depths of the heart, that the true, intimate, deepest prayer of a Christian should take place. But along with individual, secret prayer, communal, church prayer, offered with one mouth and one heart of many believers, is also absolutely necessary. Such prayer is an expression of church unity and church love. “Truly... I say to you... if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:19, 20). All of the above allows me to now approach my main question about the Eucharist as the focus of Christian life. If Christianity is not a theory, but is genuine life with Christ and in the Church, then naturally there must be a center of this life, something around which this life is concentrated. Christian life is centered around the Redeeming Golgotha ​​sacrifice of the Son of God, as the greatest manifestation of Divine love and justice. Around this greatest Mystery of Christianity, earth and heaven, people and Angels are connected together. Here is the focus of their spiritual life, here is the source of human salvation. The Eucharist, or the Sacrament of Body and Blood, is only an extension of the Calvary Redemptive Sacrifice for all centuries. Jesus Christ said this to his disciples at the Last Supper: “Take, eat, this is My Body, which is broken for you... for the remission of sins” (1 Cor. 11:24; Matt. 26:28), “drink of it, all of you: this... is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). These words contain a clear indication of the redemptive meaning of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The same thing is clearly indicated in the canon for Holy Communion: “Christ is, taste and see... He brought Himself alone, as an offering to His Father, He is ever slain, sanctifying those who partake” (1st Troparion of the 9th Canto). Thus, the Eucharist is a continuous manifestation in the world until the end of the age of that love of God, which was manifested in the incarnation and redemptive Passion of the Son of God, as it is said in the Gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The contemplation and experience of the redemptive love of God is associated in the Eucharist with the offering of a prayer of gratitude to God for this love, revealed in sending His Only Begotten Son into the world, as well as for all other blessings of God listed in the Eucharistic prayer. Due to its connection with the Calvary sacrifice, the sacrament of the Eucharist is the prayer center for the entire Church of Christ, not only earthly, but also heavenly, not only for people but also for Angels. Already in the first part of the Liturgy, at the proskomedia, when the priest takes out part of the prosphora as prescribed, we see on the paten figuratively united around the Lamb-Christ, slain in a cross, the entire church - heavenly and earthly, living and dead. The conciliar, ecumenical character of the Eucharist is also noted in the liturgy of the catechumens in prayers read secretly by the priest: “Those who have granted us prayers that are common and agreeable, like the two or three who agree in Thy name, have promised to grant petitions for taxes, Thy servant Himself and now Thy petitions have been fulfilled for the benefit.” And further: “Create holy angels at our entrance, serving us and praising Your goodness.” But with particular fullness and depth, the meaning of the Eucharist, as the universal focus of Christian life, is revealed in that secret prayer of the priest, which constitutes the content of the Eucharistic canon at the Liturgy of the Faithful. With great divine inspiration, this prayer is set forth in the liturgy of St. Basil the Great. In it, first of all, all the great mercies of God shown to the human race from the creation of the world until the coming of the Savior are remembered - and thanksgiving is offered for them. For the laity, this wonderful prayer remains unknown, because it is read secretly by the priest at a time when the choir sings: “It is worthy and righteous to worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity Consubstantial and Indivisible.” These words constitute the essence of the prayer that the priest quietly pronounces at this time. The laity should be familiar with the content of the Eucharistic prayer, because only under this condition can they imagine the meaning and significance of the sacrament being performed. This prayer is too large to include here in full. But I will still cite some passages from it for those who have not read it from the service book. So, while singing “Worthy and Righteous,” the priest, more fully revealing the content of these words, says: “It is worthy and righteous to praise You, to sing to You, to bless You, to bow to You, to give thanks to You, to glorify the only truly existing God, and to You with a contrite heart and a spirit of humility, we offer this verbal service to You: for You have granted us the knowledge of Your truth. And whoever is pleased to proclaim Your mighty powers is heard to do all Your praises, or to tell all Your wonders, Master of all, Lord of heaven and earth and of all creation, visible and invisible... Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great God and Savior of our hope, who is the image of Your goodness... to whom the Holy Spirit has appeared, the Spirit of truth... life-giving power, source of sanctification, from All creation, verbal and intelligent, is strengthened by Him, serves You and sends everlasting praise to You.” When the singers sing “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of hosts,” the priest, continuing the Eucharistic prayer, remembers the creation of man, his blessed life in paradise, the fall, expulsion from paradise, and says: “but you did not turn away from the end of your creation, you forgot the work of your hands, you visited (him) in many ways, for the sake of the mercy of your mercy... Thou hast spoken through the mouth of Thy servant the prophets, foretelling to us the salvation that would be, Thou hast given the law to help, Thou hast appointed guardian angels. When the fulfillment of times had come, Thou spoke unto us by Thy Son Himself, in whom Thou didst create the worlds, and Thy Light of glory appeared on earth and lived among men.”... Having pointed out everything that was accomplished for us by the Son of God, His preaching, Death, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension, the priest especially dwells on the Last Supper. “Although you go out to your free and ever-memorable and life-giving death, in the night, in pain, give yourself up for the life of the world, receiving the bread in your holy and most pure hands, showing you, God and Father, thanking, blessing, sanctifying, breaking, giving to the saints your disciples and apostles, saying: “Take, eat, this is the body Mine, broken for you for the remission of sins.” “Likewise, he took the cup of the fruit of the vine, dissolved it, gave thanks, blessed it, sanctified it, and gave it to his disciples and apostles, saying: “Drink of it, all of you, this is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this in my memory. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim my death and confess my resurrection.”... This first half of the Eucharistic Prayer ends with the offering and consecration of the Holy Gifts. Then follows a prayer for the heavenly Church and for the earthly Church, the petitionary and propitiatory part of the Eucharistic prayer. When the composed Rev. is sung in the choir. John of Damascus, the hymn to the Mother of God: “Every creature rejoices in you, full of grace”... The priest prays: “Unite us all, from the one bread and cup of communion, to one another in the one Holy Spirit... And remember all those who have fallen asleep before about the hope of the resurrection of eternal life... And we still pray, remember, O Lord, the Holy Thy Catholic and Apostolic Church, from the end even to the end of the universe, even to the end of the world, even to the end, Thou hast given the venerable blood of Thy Christ... Remember, O Lord, those who brought these gifts to You, and about them, and by them, and for them you brought these gifts. Remember, Lord, those who bear fruit and do good in Your holy churches, and those who remember the poor... Remember, Lord, those who are in the deserts and mountains, and the dens, and the abysses of the earth. Remember, Lord, those who are in virginity and reverence, and fasting, and in pure living... Remember, Lord, every principle and authority, and those in the chamber of our brethren, and all the army: keep the good in goodness, create the evil with Your goodness... Remember, Lord, the people who are coming, and for the sake of the blessed wines of those left behind, and have mercy on them and us, according to the multitude of Your mercy... keep their marriage in peace, raise babies, instruct youth, support old age, comfort the faint-hearted, gather up the scattered, convert the deceived, and unite the saints of your catholic and apostolic Church; freedom acquired from unclean spirits, sail to those who swim, descend on travelers, stand before widows, protect the orphans, deliver the captives, heal the sick. At judgments, and in ores, and in imprisonments, and in bitter works, and in all sorrow, and in need and in the circumstances of those who exist, remember, O God... And all who demand your great compassion, and those who love us, and those who hate us, and who commanded us, unworthy, to pray for them, and remember all your people, O Lord our God, and pour out riches upon all Your mercy. And we do not remember them through ignorance, or oblivion, or a multitude of names; remember them yourself, O God, who knew each age and name, who knew each one from his mother’s womb; For thou art, O Lord, a help to the helpless, a hope to the hopeless, a Savior to the broken, a refuge to those floating, a doctor to the ailing; be the one who knows everything, knowing his request, and his house, and his needs. "... All of the above teaches us to see in the Eucharist the focus of the life of the entire Church of Christ, for in the Eucharist both the great mysterious Calvary sacrifice of God's endless love, and the unification of the heavenly and earthly Church in reverent, grateful adoration before the greatness of this Mystery, and the conciliar prayer for living and deceased members of the Church. Little knowing the content of the Eucharistic prayer, we little feel this deep inner meaning of the Eucharist and remain indifferent to it even when we stand before the throne of God during the liturgy, and even when we approach the Holy Chalice. It is not surprising, therefore, that for some the all-night vigil gives more spiritual satisfaction and nourishes them more prayerfully than the liturgy. This is because the all-night vigil is simpler and more understandable. The meaning of the Eucharist indicated above reveals its general, objective meaning in the life of the Church of Christ. But in addition to this general, objective meaning, the Eucharist has the same central spiritual meaning in the private, personal life of every Christian, a subjective meaning. We are not only objective contemplatives of the Mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ, even if we contemplate it deeply reverently and prayerfully, but we ourselves approach the cup of Christ, we become partakers of the Body and Blood of Christ. And this communion of each of us with the eternal Divine life makes the Eucharist for each of us individually the focus of our personal spiritual Christian life. Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ is for each of us the most essential, the most fundamental moment of our spiritual life, in the absence of which our spiritual Christian life becomes impossible. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My Flesh is truly food, and My Blood is truly drink. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:53–56). It would seem that whoever believes in Christ and believes His words cannot help but have a constant thirst for communion with the Body and Blood of Christ, with which our soul and our body are illuminated and enlivened. But we are so far away internally from Christ that we do not vividly feel this need for constant communion. The first Christians could not live without communion for even one week. They “continued with one accord every day in the church, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with joy and simplicity of heart” (Acts 2:46). I remind you of the example of the ancient Christians not because I consider it very easy to restore this ancient practice in our church life, although we have had attempts to restore it in Russia. Frequent communion of the Holy Mysteries can easily serve not for salvation, but for condemnation, when it turns into a habitual, ordinary thing, when it is done without the necessary reverence, without fear and joy, when it ceases to be an extraordinary holiday of the soul. It is precisely this circumstance that, perhaps, keeps many from frequent communion of the Holy Mysteries. Communion of St. The Mysteries of Christ cannot be consistent with the general level of the spiritual life of a Christian. It is not in vain that when we are about to receive communion, we renounce our usual vain ways of spending time for a whole week, begin to attend Church every day, read books of spiritual content, fast, and make peace with each other. Obviously, we believe that this particular way of life is necessary for someone who wants to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. Our ordinary life is so vain, so filled with the hustle and bustle of life, all sorts of squabbles and troubles, empty entertainments, that without freeing ourselves from all this, it naturally seems blasphemous to us to approach the Holy Chalice in such a spiritual state. Therefore, more frequent communion is possible only with a simultaneous general upliftment of our Christian life. The stricter our Christian life becomes, the more persistently the need for frequent communion will speak to us. And then frequent communion will further increase the rigor of our Christian life. In connection with the question of more frequent communion, the question also arises about confession - should each communion necessarily be preceded by a confession before a priest? One of the famous Petrograd archpriests, who allowed his spiritual children to receive frequent communion, found it possible to allow them to receive communion without prior confession in those cases where the person wishing to receive communion did not feel on his conscience such a sin of which he would like to repent. Allowing communion without confession, Fr. the archpriest wanted to avoid that truly sad and painful phenomenon when a person went to confession only because without it he could not receive communion, although he did not feel any sin weighing on his soul on his conscience, and this gave his confession a formal, blasphemous character. However, we cannot agree with this. In addition to the fact that at confession resolution of sins, both involuntary and unknown, can be obtained, sinful impurity, with the feeling of which it is painful to begin communion, can be generally washed away, it is impossible for a person to not commit something bad in deed, word or thought within a week or even less time. If his conscience does not reproach him for anything, it is not because he is really not guilty of anything, but because his conscience is not sensitive and attentive enough to his condition. Fleeting irritation, insufficient attention to people, etc. - all this is already a sin, which a sensitive person feels the need to repent of before receiving the Holy Mysteries. And this sensitivity must be encouraged and developed, and not drowned out by exemption from confession. I knew people who had to confess two or three times a week, and they always found something to repent of, and did it not formally, but quite sincerely and contritely. Therefore, admission to communion without prior confession cannot be considered an action that is spiritually correct. And although our priests do not always confess before celebrating the liturgy, in monasteries before the start of their week, hieromonks always confess. Recognizing that it is very desirable to receive the Holy Mysteries as often as possible and taking into account that given our existing level of Christian life, it still cannot be too frequent, I would still believe that we could still receive communion four times a year, everyone could, without exception. For this, first of all, only one thing is needed - for us to really understand and feel that in accepting the Body and Blood of Christ lies the focus of our spiritual Christian life, that without this there is no Christian life in us, even if we do Christian deeds. Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ should become for us the foundation of all our Christian work. It will establish our close internal connection and communication with the Lord Jesus Christ, the source of eternal Divine life, it will give us firm moral support for our actions, it will bring peace and purity into our heart, it will cleanse the air of our heart from all unkind and malicious influences in it, it will give us moral freshness and vigor, it will strengthen our faith, it will bring us bright joy. All this has been tested, all this is true. Who read the diary of Fr. John of Kronstadt, he could find in him confirmation of what was said. If it is joyful to see just one person receiving communion, then how can one depict the joy when the whole Church receives communion! Then the church of God is truly likened to the upper room of Zion, in which the Lord gave communion to his disciples. Unfortunately, we don't see this very often. Meanwhile, in reality, each celebration of the liturgy must be accompanied by the general communion of those present. In the first times of Christianity, this was the case: everyone present, with the exception of the catechumens and those excommunicated, proceeded to the Holy Chalice; everyone was united in the close brotherhood of Christ, according to the words of the Apostle: “There is one bread, and we, who are many, are one body; for we all partake of one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). I saw something similar among the Anglicans. Will we also wait until the time when the growing Christian life in us will give us the opportunity, if not every Sunday, then at least once a month to see the general communion of all those present in the church? This would be real evidence that the Eucharist has become the focus of the spiritual Christian life not only of individual Christians, but also of Christian society. October 1 (14) Intercession of the Most Holy. Mother of God. You might be interested in: