Question: How should we partake without scandal of communion of the holy mysteries when we happen to hear and see that the priest is falling into sins of the flesh?

 

Answer of Saint Anastasios of Sinai (+ 7th c.)

1. It is only a bishop, and not a lay person, who can judge and condemn a priest, even if some people nowadays have imagined that they can try to do this. If we were to give leave to condemn in our mind the life of priests, then Satan would set about arranging things so that taking scandal from all of them, we would inflict harm on our souls and remain without communion. However, if a priest requires to be condemned and corrected, then let us bring to the bishop what is against him, but for us, who hold the rank of sheep, it is impossible to condemn the shepherd, unless he is at fault in some matter of faith.

2. Indeed, if we are worthy of the divine mysteries, the reception of communion becomes a source of light for us and the unworthy life of the priest cannot do us any harm. On the other hand, if we are unworthy of the gift and communion of the holy mysteries, even if an angel were to distribute them to us, we would not profit in any way. For even Judas, who received communion from the divine hands of Christ, found no help there. A sinful priest resembles a man who has leprosy in his hands and is distributing coins; the leprosy stays with him, but the gold and those who receive it remain spotless and unharmed from the leprosy.

3. But listen once more to a story which is profitable for the soul from the period of Arkadios, who became bishop about fifty years ago.

4. There is a place called Trachiades about fifteen signposts from Constantia. There was a priest in that place and through the devil’s workings, he was led astray and became a sorcerer; he was so irreligious that in the company of whores and harlots he would eat and drink from the sacred church plate. Then after some years, word got about, he was denounced, arrested and interrogated. The Governor’s adjutant questioned him under torture, “Tell us, most wicked man, unworthy of any human pity and worthy of every punishment and retribution! Granted that you despised the coming dreadful judgement and had no regard for any present tribunal, but how did you not hold in awe the fearful sanctuary with the altar when you offered up that awesome and bloodless sacrifice, considering that perhaps fire would come down from heaven and burn you up, or the earth would open its mouth and swallow you?”

5. The sorcerer replied to this saying, “By the God who now punishes me through your hands, and who will punish me in the other place by His own hands, <I swear> that I did not present the holy offering, nor did I distribute communion to the people ever since I abandoned God and became a sorcerer. Instead, an angel of the Lord would come and tie me to a pillar of the priestly area [the sanctuary], and then offer and distribute to the people; and when he said,  “Let us go in the peace of Christ”, then he would untie me and I would go out. However, none of the people saw this secret except for me alone, and the people thought that I was the one making the offering and distributing communion to them.

6. No less worthy of being written down for future memory is something that the blessed Isidore, the lawyer, who died three years ago, recounted to me. He said that he had a certain brother-in-law, while he was still a layman in Alexandria, who had on his forehead a tumour that had formed there, the size of a large apple. He said that this man had the custom, each time that he received the holy mysteries in communion, to anoint the hard swelling of the tumour with the holy blood.

7. Now one day he came for his daily midday communion to the church of the holy Mother of God, the church in the Theonas district, and moved by some diabolical impulse he peeped through the keyhole of the door and saw the chaplain inside in the sacristy copulating with a woman. Drawing back a short way away, when he saw that the woman had left, he did not become critical or shocked but thought to himself, “If the clergyman has just sinned, still tomorrow he can make his repentance and be saved, and it is not my business to judge him until Christ judges him. In any case, my belief is this, that the holy mysteries are given to us not from the hands of human beings but from the hands of holy angels.” And so, approaching for the communion, no sooner had he opened his mouth and said the “Amen”, at once the tumour on his forehead was cured and became invisible.

8. However, if those who are really super-critical say that these are mythical tales, let them be put to shame before the holy and ecumenical synod of the three hundred and eighteen holy Fathers in Nicaea; in connection with this the following story is recounted concerning the blessed and saintly Emperor Constantine. After the condemnation of the foul Arius and the definition of the true faith, the devil, who could not bear to see the holy churches in peace, set some bishops against others, and they handed in to the Emperor accusations in writing, one accusing the other and vice versa, about sins of the flesh and other foul and impure causes.

9. Then the Emperor Constantine, that divinely inspired imitator of Christ’s kindness, having accepted and read such disgraceful tracts, called together the bishops; then he had the papers brought in and ordered wax to be brought to bind them together and that they should be burned, uttering a dictum that is worthy of God: “If I were to see with these eyes of mine some priest of Christ committing a sin, I would spread out my purple cloak and cover him, so that Christ may also cover my own sins. Anyone who publicly makes mockery of a priest of God makes mockery of the faith of the Christians and of the Church, to the delight of the pagans and the enemies of the cross.”

 

Source: Anastasios of Sinai: Questions and Answers, translated by Joseph A. Munitiz, Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, Belgium, pp. 63-66, minus footnotes.