www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Eucharistic Adoration

Originally posted by harmon3110:
In Eucharistic Adoration, I can adore Jesus Christ and I can be with Jesus Christ by looking at Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. I love the Christian East, and the Christian East does much well with the Gospel, but in this they seem to fail. To the best of my knowledge, they do not have Eucharistic Exposition or Adoration. They don�t do so because they believe the Eucharist is only for eating; they believe that icons are for looking. This is so sad. An icon is a picture of Him. The Eucharist IS Him. I would much rather be with and look at a loved one rather than a picture; how much more true is that for Christ our God? For God is good, and He loves mankind. Eucharistic Exposition and Adoration is the crowning achievement of Western Christianity; and it is the great gift of the West to the East and to all the world. For �it� is Him: Jesus Christ, God is with us.

-- John

Originally posted by JeffCR07:
However, this does not mean that a tradition without Adoration is in any way worse or "lacking." Rather, it simply means that it is different. Indeed, the East has a great number of very beautiful, wonderful, devotions that bear just as much fruit as Adoration.

Originally posted by Our Lady's slave of love:
John - you didn't cause [b]me any offense - we just look at things slightly differently. [/b]

Question:

I am a recent Singaporean convert to Orthodoxy from Roman Catholicism. I notice that although Orthodox holds the same belief with Catholics that the Eucharist is really the Body & Blood of Christ, there is more veneration given to icons then to the Holy Gifts. For example, why does Orthodox christians not adore the Body & Blood of Christ? I asked my parish priest & he said that the Eucharist is meant to seen in a context of a meal and there is no need for veneration outside of the Liturgy.

I understand that even after the Liturgy, the consecrated Gifts remains the Body & Blood of Christ. Is it all right for me, an Orthodox to adore our Lord Jesus in the Eucharist?

Answer:

Dr. Alexander Roman alex@unicorne.org

You raise a very interesting question.

The adoration of Christ in Holy Communion is, first of all, something that the Orthodox Church truly DOES participate in, but within the context of the Divine Liturgy itself.

We adore Christ Who is truly Present on the Altar following the Epiclesis, the culminating point that completes the Eucharistic Canon during which bread and wine become the Body and Blood of our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

We bow down before the Incarnate Word of God and adore Him - absolutely!

We prepare zealously for the reception of Him in Holy Communion by fasting and the long prayers of preparation, as you know, and of thanksgiving afterward. Upon receiving our Saviour-God in Holy Communion, we kiss the edge of the Chalice that represents the Wounded Side of Christ from which flowed Blood and Water as we are nourished from that Same Side.

We are blessed by the priest or bishop with the Chalice, in other words, with the Incarnate Son of God present in the Eucharist Himself immediately following.

The entire Church, East and West, prior to the schism of 1054, and in the West, even later, knew ONLY this form of adoration of Christ present in the Holy Eucharist.

Later, as a kind of reaction against Protestantism and its denial of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, there began the Western practices of Eucharistic Adoration outside the Mass. Devotions included placing the Reserved Eucharistic Host in a monstrance so that people could "see the Lord Jesus" and also for purposes of Eucharistic processions.

Such processions in the West also developed from the Church processions with the Holy Eucharist to the homes of very sick people so that the priests might give them Holy Communion and prepare them for their meeting with God after death.

In the West, people would decorate the path the procession would take with flowers and ribbons, praying the entire way etc. Something similar occurs in the East with certain Icons that are brought regularly to private homes for veneration (e.g. the Icon of the Kyivan Caves Mother of God in Bryanske).

The East sees the Holy Eucharist as a great Mystery and therefore "covers up" what the West prefers to look at and "see."

The East has a more dynamic understanding of the Eucharist within the context of the Liturgy and our union with the Holy Trinity through our communion with the Sacred Mystery of the Eucharist.

In addition, with the use of Latin in the West, the laity tended to develop their own devotions of a "paraliturgical" nature with prayers in the language of the people etc. Some see the development of the Eucharistic Monstrance precisely as a lay form of devotion.

This led to an entire category of Western lay services that were outside the liturgical life of the Church. Vatican II tried to address the problems that this developed as Catholic laity tended to emphasize private prayers over and above liturgical prayer.

The Western "Supplication" Eucharistic service involves the blessing of the people with the Host in a monstrance. As we have seen, the East has ALWAYS had the blessing of the people with the Chalice immediately following Holy Communion. Catholic liturgists, at one point, actually tried to bring this blessing into the body of the Western Mass, but this clashed with its liturgical structure.

However, with the coming of Greek Catholics into Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe at various times, a number of Western practices, including the paraliturgical adoration of the Holy Eucharist, came to be "tolerated" in certain areas.

This was especially true in western Ukraine following 1946. In the Orthodox Churches there, even to this day, one can find the Eucharistic Supplication Services with the monstrance in certain Orthodox parishes, the Stations of the Cross and even devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary!

In the time of St Alexis Toth in the United States, converts to Orthodoxy there were also allowed to keep their private Latin devotions and St Alexis was very understanding in this regard - he being himself a convert to Orthodoxy from the Greek Catholic Basilian Order!

All in all, the Orthodox Church does indeed adore Christ in Holy Communion and the Divine Liturgy is the best context in which that is done.

You may adore Christ on the Altar any time you are in Church for any service, or when you just come in to pray by yourself.

When we pray the Jesus Prayer, we also commune spiritually with Christ Who enters our hearts and minds at that time by way of what the Fathers called the "Epiclesis of Jesus Christ."