The Holy Proskomide, the Holy Anaphora, and the Obligatory Nature of Walling Off

Protopresbyter Dimitrios Athanasiou | August 23, 2024

 

The Holy Proskomide is the now independent service that precedes the Divine Liturgy and has the purpose of the preparation and blessing of the eucharistic elements, the bread and the wine, so that these may be transformed during the Divine Liturgy into the Body and Blood of Christ.

The Holy Diskarion as a miniature of the Church

The Diskarion contains:

1. The Lamb
2. The portion of the Theotokos
3. The portions of the angels and all the saints, and they are placed to the left of the Lamb. The saints commemorated are the Prophets, the Apostles, the Hierarchs, the Martyrs, the Venerable Ones, the Unmercenaries, the Ancestors of God together with the saint of the day, and lastly the Father of the Church who composed the Divine Liturgy being celebrated.
4. The portion of the Bishop
5. Portions of the living
6. Portions of the departed

Just as we see gathered upon the Diskarion the Lord and beside Him the Theotokos, all the holy angels and justified men, the living and the departed members of the Church as one spiritual family, a gathering around Christ, it is as if we are seeing the image of the ecumenical Church, both the militant and the triumphant, assembled together as one in every Divine Liturgy, so that in each Liturgy the prayer of the Lord to His Father may be fulfilled: “that they all may be one.” This constitutes the ecclesiological character of the Holy Proskomide. An excellent description of this image is given to us by Saint Symeon of Thessaloniki.

A Basic Prerequisite for the Commemoration of Names in the Holy Proskomide is that those Commemorated (Living – Departed) Must be Orthodox and not Heretics.

However, at the same time, this gathering upon the Holy Diskarion in a mystical and eschatological manner is an image, a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, where the Lord–King, as upon His throne, is seated upon the Diskarion and around Him the whole Church is gathered, awaiting the final judgment and vindication—something which is excellently depicted iconographically in the theme of the Second Coming of the Lord and the Last Judgment, especially in the narthexes of monastic churches.

Accounts from the Synaxaria of the Saints

From the life of Saint Melania the Roman (338–439 A.D.):

Preserved in the pages of her life is also the ecclesiological (critical) protest of the Saint toward a priest celebrant, who commemorated a heretic in the Holy Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy.

The celebrating priest narrates:

“As I commemorated, then, in the Holy Anaphora the name of the wife of a consul together with the departed—she having ended her life in exile, in the Holy Lands (for it is our custom to do this, so that they may intercede for us at that dreadful hour)—and because she had ecclesiastical communion with us, with us the Orthodox, some informed us that she was a heretic. The blessed one (that is, Saint Melania) was so indignant that immediately, at that very moment, she cried out to me spontaneously: ‘As the Lord lives, if you name/commemorate her, I will not commune from your offering.’ And when I gave her my word upon the holy altar that I would never again commemorate her, she replied: ‘Even once is too much! Because you commemorated her, I will not commune.’”

(Source: Materikon, Volume VI – Published by “Holy Hesychasterion of the Forerunner, Akritochori,” on pages 205–323, where the life of Saint Melania is found [extensively])

Comments

1. The commemoration in the Holy Anaphora (aloud) presupposes CORRESPONDING COMMEMORATION in the Holy Proskomide (secretly). That is, the names that are commemorated aloud have been commemorated secretly in the Holy Proskomide with the extraction of a portion.

2. The Saint considered it a violation of the Orthodox faith (and a defilement of the faith) to commemorate heretics (even laypeople) at the time of the Holy Anaphora. At the moment of the conjoining of the Precious Gifts (the union of the Body and Blood, during which the Celebrant places the commemorative portions into the Chalice), then the defilement of the Mystery arises, because a spiritually unclean portion has been placed into the Holy Chalice.

3. Only ONE TIME was the heretic commemorated in the Proskomide and in the Holy Anaphora, and this was the reason for Saint Melania to break sacramental and therefore ecclesiastical communion (walling off) with that particular local church.

What do we learn from this? That, when HERETICS are commemorated, we break ecclesiastical communion with those who commemorate them.

Mr. N. Sakalakis also wrote the following on the occasion of this event from the life of the Saint:

“The confessional weight of the ecclesiological stance of Saint Melania is ‘dealt with’ by the faithful today in two ways, one direct and one indirect. The direct way is based on complete ignorance (uninformed) of the history of the saints; the second (indirect) way is reflected in the attempts to formulate theories with the aim of evading their duty, as sacred warfare, against the pan-heresy of Ecumenism. That is, they invent ‘optional’ justifications, such as the claim that schisms will supposedly be caused in the Church by the cessation of commemoration of today’s heretical bishops, or that we should become more sensitive to personal purification, or that we should remain within the church, etc.

In the perspective opened by the confessional – ecclesiological stance of Saint Melania, it is necessary for every believer to re-evaluate his relationship with heretical shepherds. That is, to imitate Saint Melania.

The mindset of Saint Melania concerning “not naming heretics in the Holy Anaphora” constitutes an obligation to cease the commemoration of today’s ecumenist bishops. If one wishes to assess the current monastic – monastery reality by the standard of Saint Melania, the observation of confessional inadequacy will be manifold. They shield themselves (hide) behind ascetical texts, tolerating heresy in the name, alas, of sanctification and obedience!

Today, even the thoughts (alone) of non-ecclesiastical communion with heretical bishops are repelled. They do not even reach the conscience. They are regarded as rebellion against the Church. Unfortunately!”

Another example that proves the AGREEMENT of ancient and newly-revealed Saints is the following from the life of Saint Eumenios (Saridakis) in the book of Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou, “Saint Nikephoros the Leper and Elder Eumenios Saridakis.”

Monk Ierotheos (spiritual child of St. Eumenios) writes:

“My Elder confided to me that he commemorated in the Prothesis the well-known European humanitarian Raoul Follereau, papist in doctrine, because he had benefacted the Leper Hospital and was a very good man. Then, an angel of the Lord cast out the portion from the Holy Diskarion three times. The third time, he appeared to him saying that only the members of the Church have a place there (in the Prothesis). He explained to him that on his prayer rope he may include everyone—heretics, non-Orthodox, murderers, criminals, the unchaste, the living and the departed—the entirety of the world’s population. But in the Eucharistic Anaphora, only the Orthodox, because they alone constitute the members of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” (p. 89).

 

Greek source: https://apotixisi.blogspot.com/2024/08/blog-post_31.html