Proper Preparation for Holy Communion

Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Etna

 

One important issue of observant Orthodoxy is the state of purity in mind, body, and soul with which we should approach the Eucharistic Mystery, when the Body and Blood of Christ are mingled with our blood, flesh, joints, and organs. The goal of Orthodox Christianity, which is the deification of man by Divine Grace in union with the Theanthropos (God-Man) Jesus Christ, the Archetype of human perfection, is typified magnificently and strikingly in the deed of taking into our bodies, through the Mystery of Holy Communion, the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ—Christ Himself. This participation in Christ is achieved in a deliberate act of κένωσις (kenosis), an emptying-out of the self by physical and spiritual cleansing, so that the vivifying elements of the Eucharist might enliven our bodies and souls and facilitate our theosis, or deification and sanctification in Christ.

Many Orthodox, both converts from western Christianity and whole Orthodox bodies under the influence of western thought and ecumenical ideology, have lost a clear understanding of the Eucharist and its reflection of the mystical teachings of Orthodoxy that are so intimately connected to the Church’s Hesychastic traditions. Thus, they approach the Eucharist in a superficial way and with an inadequate awareness of the necessity and indispensability, in so doing, of purity in thought and body, fasting (including, for married couples, fasting from the flesh), the Mystery of Confession, the asking of forgiveness from, and reconciliation with, those whom we may have caused offense, almsgiving, and every practice—including dressing modestly and properly when communing, women with heads covered—that separates us from our fallen selves and empties from us that which is incompatible with the entry of the Divine into our spiritually diseased hearts and bodies during Holy Communion.

The consequences of availing ourselves of Holy Communion without proper preparation are starkly set forth by St. Paul, who attributes to the unworthiness of unprepared communicants the source of many of their illnesses and even, in some cases, deaths. The Fathers of the Church are also sedulous in excluding from Holy Communion those who fail to prepare their bodies and minds for the experience by the cessation of fleshly activities and the cleansing of filthy desires. The Holy Canons similarly offer strict guidelines for the reception of Holy Communion. While advising frequent Communion (the “Medicine of Immortality”) for the cure of spiritual disease, they outline a regimen, as would a physician in administering certain physical medicines, that the faithful must follow in order to refrain from all that is incompatible with the therapeutic nature, purpose, and action of Holy Communion. Those things that can impede the transformative effects of the Eucharist, or that might lead to dangerous side-effects, they diligently exhort the communicant to avoid.

When approaching the Holy Cup, this should be done individually and not as part of a family ritual—a popular western idea that has crept into Orthodoxy, placing in a sick perspective the undeniably good but specific role of the family in human life. This is not to say, of course, that families cannot prepare together for Holy Communion, if conditions so permit, but the spectacle of husbands and wives holding hands in the communion line, which sadly occurs, is a perverse mockery of spiritual propriety and sobriety. Salvation, if gained always with others, is initiated only in the individual encounter with God. Just as each of us departs this life alone, even as family and friends bid us farewell, in the same way our inner encounter with God in this life is always an intensely personal and individual one, even if it leads to our spiritual fellowship with others. The communion of every man and woman with God, as St. Alonios, the ascetic Abba of the Egyptian desert, affirms, begins in personal isolation, at the moment when we sense that “only I and God exist in this world.” [1] Whatever the meaning of our earthly ties in the next life, where our kinship will be with God and where marriage will not exist, as Christ Himself avers, they assuredly rise above, and are different from, what we know them to be in our fallen existence.

I would like to use this general portrayal of how and why one should properly prepare for the reception of Holy Communion as a platform for discussing a very specific issue of personal and individual purification that is widely misunderstood and misrepresented in the Church today. This is the practice of avoiding Holy Communion, in the case of a male, after a nocturnal emission and, in the case of a woman, during menses. Various Church Fathers have differing views on the subject, though all agree that human sexuality and its physical and behavioral features are characteristics of post-Lapsarian existence and human imperfection. If marriage positively sanctions the procreative sexual impulse, even it must yield to control and limitations, if the ascent to spiritual transformation is to be genuine and effective. Hence, as I noted above, we see the prohibition of marital relations during fasting periods and for a period before Holy Communion, as determined by one’s Confessor.

In a world addicted to elevating human sexuality to something akin to spirituality—and especially among individuals for whom sexual issues and the fragile human ego are virtually inseparable—Orthodox Patristic teachings on human sexuality are at odds with the social pathology of our obsession with the flesh and the distortion of our natural love of God (true eros) after the Lapsus or fall of man. Our natural love of God has been transformed into a procreative impulse akin to an animalistic instinct (a base usurpation by man of God’s creative powers). In understanding the Church’s tradition of prohibition against Holy Communion even after licit marital relations and after a nocturnal emission or during menses, one must focus keenly on the distinction between efforts to restore both our natural love of God and human nature—through discipline, ascetic practice, and noetic intercourse with Christ—and the sinful proclivities of the fallen flesh towards physical intimacy of a sexual kind.

With regard to involuntary nocturnal emissions in men, the consensus of the Fathers, standard canonical guidance, and the stance of most Confessors affirm that, while a trait of the fallen and sinful nature of males, such occurrences are not a sin, as long as one is otherwise avoiding improper stimuli and thoughts, during waking hours, to provoke them. Nonetheless, in accordance with the discretion of one’s spiritual Father, one should not commune for a short period after a nocturnal emission (sometimes as little as a day in the case of monks who commune on a daily basis). Once more, this is in keeping with the goal, by way of separation from things of a worldly kind through the exercise of self-control and with ascetic practices, of approaching Holy Communion in the purest possible state: restorative maximalism.

With regard to the issue of menstruation in females, there is, one must admit, a range of opinions expressed by the Church Fathers and by Confessors about the phenomenon. They range from assertions that menstruation is a trait par excellence of the fallen and sinful nature of women to views very much like those held about involuntary emissions in men; i.e., that while menstruation quite vividly illustrates the decline of human beings from a Divine being in Paradise to a creature sharing many of the traits of lower creatures in the animal world, women are not blameworthy in any way for this fact. The guidelines offered by the canonical witness—and especially in interpretations of relevant Canons in the Πηόάλιον (Rudder)—refer to the uncleanliness of the menses (a concept inherited from Jewish tradition) and prescribe the avoidance of Holy Communion during a woman’s period, if not absence from the Church.

In the spirit of political feminism, which has no place in the Church—though women do have rights and roles in the Church and are the equals in Christ of men (Galatians 3:28)—some Orthodox modernists have taken offense at the canonical witness concerning menstruation. Indeed, in a spirit completely foreign to Holy Tradition, which never seeks to find contradiction and opposition in the Church’s teachings, but to draw on the consensus of the Fathers and to highlight the consistent and complementary aspects of doctrine and practice, they have sought out and misinterpreted Patristic texts that—they claim—negate the custom of women avoiding Holy Communion during menses. The text most frequently cited, often deliberately mistranslated from the Latin original, is a letter written by St. Gregory the Dialogist, Patriarch (Pope) of Rome (fl. 6th century), to his contemporary, St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury. It supposedly argues for the communion of women during their periods. In fact, while he allows for exceptions (specifically for nuns) where “profound piety” prevails, the Saint disfavors women communing at such times. What he rejects is the prohibition against their entering the Church. [2]

In fact, most traditionalist clergy today, understanding that the Canons are guiding principles and not rigid laws (thus the title of the Greek collection of the Canons: The Rudder); that the matters at hand are pastoral and not dogmatic; and resting on the consensus of the Fathers, exercise οικονομία (oikonomia), or economy, and would rarely ask a woman in menses not to enter the Church. (In witness to the antiquity of such discretion, in historical and a few present-day traditional Orthodox Churches, one can find a γυναικεϊον, or gynaeceum, [3] where menstruating women may stand.) As with men after a nocturnal emission, however, they are asked not to commune (with exceptions). While the witness of one Church Father does not a consensus make, ironically Pope Gregory’s true views thus reflect contemporary traditionalist practice. Yet, it behooves me to say that not a few pious men and women (the question of their sinfulness or uncleanliness aside) prefer, in many cases, to forgo economy when in a state of “impurity.” [4]

I would ask all who are reading my words about preparation for Holy Communion to examine carefully what I have written, keeping in mind that observance in Orthodoxy demands sedulousness in internalizing the sublime goals of our Faith and the wisdom of the Fathers. I ask that you also humbly and piously submit to the wisdom of the Fathers in striving for those goals, readily setting aside egoism for Personhood in Christ and guarding your souls, while setting a correct example for others.

 

1. The Evergetinos: A Complete Text, eds. and trans. Archbishop Chrysostomos, Hieromonk Patapios, et al. (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), Book I, p. 199.

2. This text is quoted by the Venerable Bede in his Historia Ecclesiasticus Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical history of the English people), in the Patrologia Latina, Vol. XCV, col. 63C. The passage in question reads, in Latin: “Quae tamen mulier dum consuetudinem menstruam patitur, prohiberi ecclesiam intrare non debet; quia ei naturae superfluitas in culpam non valet reputari.” Properly translated, it simply states die following: “However, such a woman, while she is experiencing her usual menses, should not be forbidden to enter the Church; for the excess of natural fluids cannot be reckoned in her case as blameworthy.”

3. Just such a gynaeceum at St. Sophia in Constantinople, where he lived from 1403 to 1404, is described by the Spanish nobleman, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo (t 1412), Lord Chamberlain to Henry III of Castile. He locates it in the “upper galleries...which overlook the nave of the Cathedral,” galleries “supported on columns of marble and green jasper, their ceilings visible, looking from the nave.” Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane: 1403-1406, trans. Guy Le Strange (London: Routledge, 1928), p. 40.

4. Some years ago, a woman educated in theology, belonging to one of the modernist Orthodox jurisdictions in this country, visited me at our monastery here in Etna. She belonged to a group of women who, infuriated by the restrictions against Communion during menses, told me that she and the other members of her group had resolved to commune only during their periods, in defiance of the Church’s alleged misogyny. As I explained to her the folly and danger of their position and the reasons for this proscription, she became outraged and refused to listen. I have never forgotten this, and it illustrates perfectly the depth of humility and piety that we must develop, if we are to commune to the benefit of our souls.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. 30 (2013), No. 3, pp. 9-13.