The Orthodox Church has always
promoted the Eucharist at its centre of existence. The Church is where the
Eucharist is. Metropolitan Kallistos in his talks always explains how we, the
faithful, are Liturgical Beings (Ζώον Λειτουργικόν).
The Eucharist is central because it promotes a life in communion, not only
between us, the living faithful, and God but also between the faithful who
comprise the Body of Christ. Christos Yannaras, in his book The Freedom of Morality gives a great
explanation of how the Eucharist is life as communion, explaining:
‘The eucharist is life as
communion – not an abstract life, but the precondition for earthly life which
is food, that object of contention which tears life apart. Within the eucharist,
partaking of daily nourishment is to partake in Christ’s sacrifice, to partake
in that death of individual demands and claims which raises life up into the
miracle of communion. The bread and wine of the eucharist are the body and
blood of Christ, the reality of His theanthropic nature – a participation and
communion in His mode of existence. It is the first-fruits or leaven of life,
for the transfiguration of every facet, every activity in human life into an
opportunity for communion and an event of communion. As people live the
sacrificial ethos of the eucharist, it suffuses economics, politics,
professional life, the family and the structures of public life in a mystical
way – in acts with a dynamic indeterminacy beyond the reach of objective predetermination.
And it transfigures them – it changes their existential presuppositions, and
does not simply “improve” them.’ (pp. 217-8).
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