www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Lay eucharistic ministers

That may be the case in your area, Kurt. Out West in most OCA, Greek and Antiochian parishes the percentage is closer to 85 per cent who receive Communion. In fact, I cannot think of a SCOBA parish I've attended that would match the description you gave. I believe many ROCOR parishes do not practice frequent Communion.

At any rate, even at the "mega" parishes with ultra long communion lines there are still no lay eucharistic ministers. They seem quite content to sing hymns during this time (can be up to 20 or more minutes in length!)

Dave Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

Dear Thomas,

Do these deaconesses sing the parts reserved for a deacon, proclaim the Gospel, cense, etc.?

Slava Isusu Christu!

Thomas can you provide real-documentation regarding your post, I would be interested in some cites.

In the Theotokos:


Robert

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for your post on Deaconesses!

Wow - is all I can say! I thought that women weren't allowed into the Sanctuary, something that a deaconess would have to do to fulfill the exact same liturgical function as a deacon.

I too would be interested in learning more about this and will keep a completely open mind until you or I are proven right.

(Unfortunately, one of us will be wrong . . .).

God bless!

Alex

Dear Dr. John,

I have no problem with the early Jesus (but really, what's wrong with the Ukrainian Jesus?).

But there's the rub and the difference between a theologian and a sociologist.

My point would be that one can NEVER separate Christ from the historically conditioned prism through which we, weak and sinful humans, view Him.

Therefore, the Imperial Christ or other is just as valid for the people that construct their own cultural icon of Jesus as yours.

Your Jesus is no better, no worse than the others you mention.

As for the WWF, I was an amateur wrestler in high school and regularly invoked St Nestor, the friend of St Demetrius, to assist me.

I am happy to report that he did on occasions too numerous for this humble sportsman to recount . . .

Alex

Par. 73: Whoever is enrolled in a minor order is no longer a lay person.

While the Code of Canon Law speaks of ministries that can be permanently assumed by the laity, "through the prescribed liturgical rite"(Canon 230 Sec.1), the minor orders, rather, are inserted in the ecclesiastical hierarchy according to the level of each one. Whoever has received these orders, therefore, is no longer a lay person, but becomes what the liturgical books of most Eastern Churches call the "clergy" or "Sacred orders....."

Par. 74: The ancient practice of minor orders is to be maintained

It does not seem appropriate that the different churches sui juris change their customs regarding minor orders, once shared by all the Churches.... Far from abandoning them, the reforms of particular laws of the different churches should rather restore them to greater significance and vitality...

Instruction for Applying the Liturgical Prescriptions of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, Page 67.

anastasios

Dr. John:

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Thank you for your response. I agree with you (especially, with the Feast of His Nativity approaching, on the awe-inspiring, deer-in-the-headlights fact that God became man). But I would prefer not to spearate the two "conceptions" of Christ -- man and God: Christ as baby in the Cave, Christ circumcised (think about that one!), Christ as hungry, thirsty, etc. together with Christ as the eternal Logos, Christ as the only-begotten of the Father, Christ as King. I think both images need to be balanced against one another. There is a dialectic at work that we simply cannot resolve, I don't think, but which is nonetheless fruitful. In proper apophatic spirit, perhaps we are not meant to rationalize it, but to contemplate it, to pray on it unceasingly.

That said, my reason for insisting that we not lose sight of Christ as Emperor is this (and correct me if I stray). In St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, we read that man was created as what? As a king! Human beings, according to Gregory, constitute a "royal race"! Listen to this exposition:

"For as in our own life artificers fashion a tool in the way suitable to its use, so the best Artificer made our nature as it were a formation fit for the exercise of royalty, preparing it at once by superior advantages of soul, and by the very form of the body, to be such as to be adapted for royalty; for the soul immediately shows its royal and exalted character, far removed as it is from the lowliness of private station, in that it owns no lord, and is self-governed, swayed autocratically by its own will; for to whom else does this belong than to a king? And further, besides these facts, the fact that it is the image (eikon) of that Nature which rules over all means nothing else than this, that our nature was created to be royal from the first." (De hom. op., iv.1)

So what does this suggest? From the standpoint of theological anthropology, if Christ is true man, the perfect human, and is -- despite his lack of purple robes, etc. (see Nyssa, again, or Chrysostom, Comparison of a Monk and a King) -- truly king, then all men are likewise called to royalty, to become kings. If we lose sight of Christ's true kingship (which I never suggested was akin to Byzantine or Roman or most other human expressions of empire) we lose sight of the fact that man -- be he carpenter, electrician, or what have you -- is himself called to royalty. Christ Pantokrator = Christ as true and perfect Emperor.

Perhaps this has taken us off the subject, but I thought it important to clarify.

Yours in Christ,
Theophilos

Dear Alex and Mor Ephram,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I hope that you are having a glorious Feastday of St Nicholas today!

Thank you for both of your responses. Here is a little more information about the Orthodox Deaconess from an Article written in the Orthodox Herald.

"The office of deaconess is described in the New Testament and Phoebe was called a deaconess in Romans 16: 1. This office is codified in the "Didascalia" written in the first half of the 3rd century and in the "Apostolic Constitutions" written in the later part of the 4th century. It is also mentioned at the 4th Ecumenical Council which met in Chalcedon in 451.

At first, only widows who had been married only once were admitted to the office. Later, virgins were also admitted. The age of admission varied through the years from 40-60 years of age. Once admitted they were not allowed to marry.

Deaconesses were ordained in the altar by a bishop by the imposition of hands. They were robed in a stichar and an orarion (deacon's stole). They were addressed as "reverend", "Most honorable" or "most pious". The episcopal prayers of ordination of a deaconess have not been revoked by the Orthodox Church and they can still be found in the books.

The deaconess had specific duties. Among them was to instruct privately female candidates for baptism, to assist at their baptism which was by total immersion, they did the anointing with oil at the baptism as it was not considered proper for the male clergy to touch a woman, they visited and cared for the sick, they were present at interviews of women with the bishops or priests, they dismissed women catechumens from the church and kept general order in the women's section of the church (men and women were segregated as they were up to about 25 years ago in our churches in America), and they did other duties delegated by the bishop like helping the poor. They were in a sense the educators of women in the faith and social workers. Deaconesses were ordained in the Eastern Church as late as the 12th century. The office was disused in the Western Church somewhat earlier."

Other resources indicate that they communed at the altar after the Deacon and that they were the only women allowed there. They were viewed by many bishops as men in "all manner except for their physical appearance".

The following are some excellent websites that more fully develop the historical Orthodox Deaconess. The first is probably the best with excellent Bibliographies of full books written on this matter, biographies of Deaconesses from Church History, and many articles addressing this issue. The site is www.angelfire.com/pa/deaconess/ [angelfire.com]

The second is the website for the St. Nina Quarterly, an Orthodox jouranl pertaining to women and their ministry within the church. It has excellent articles written by respected female theologians of the Orthodox Church and interviews with Kalistos Ware, Patriarch Bartholomeos, and others. The site is www.stnina.org [stnina.org]

The third site is not my favorite as it is an ecumenical site advocating for the ordination of women to the priesthood (something I am Not for) however their site on the deaconess ordination is an excellent site with multiple citations of historic documents noting how, why, and when deaconesses were ordained and some of their historical duties. their site is www.womanpriest.org/traditio/deac_ord.htm [womanpriest.org]

Many orthodox bishops have gone on record wishing to restore the historic ministry of the Orthodox Deaconess but they also want to assure that this does not become a tool for modernists and feminists to get their foot in the door pertaining to the ordination of women to the priesthood.


Mor Ephram--- yes in the Greek Orthodox Convents that have Deaconesses, they function fully as deacons with the Proclaiming the Gospel, the prayers, and the censer. As I understand it--- it is and was only in Convents that the deaconess functioned in this capacity as a deacon as compared to the description of their duties noted above.

As I understand it the Patriarch of
Constantinople, Antioch, and Georgia have agreed in principle on the need to restore the office of the Deaconess. As is the norm in Orthodoxy the actualization of this as an active office in the Orthodox Church could take years. Most Slavic Churches are not interested in this renewal, probably because it was not actively used prior to its suppression in the slavic churches.

Holy Saint Nichols Pray for us!
Your brother in Christ,
Thomas

[ 12-06-2001: Message edited by: Thomas ]

Actually, in the womens monastery that I visited, (St. John the Baptist, GOA in Goldendale, WA) the nuns frequently went into the altar to do stuff.
I think that's fairly common for convents, but certainly not in the average parish!

In Christ,

Michael

Thanks for the reply, Theophilos.

I agree wholeheartedly with your idea that there is a type of dialectic going on, where we use the basic information of the Scriptures and some of the early writings to establish our foundation for our knowledge of the Lord. It is surely possible for each successive generation (and each successive geographic region) to somewhat superimpose analogues upon the foundational image. Thus, Sts. Gregory, John Chrysostom, Basil and the other Doctors of the Church, will naturally interpret the personage of Jesus in terms that will be easily understood by their contemporaries. Such it is with the quotes that you provided. Since they were still living in the shadow of the Great Roman Empire, these metaphors would surely have been appropriate.

But for us today, although the concept of "Emperor" or "King" is still understandable (though only through the mythology that has come down to us, and then only as filtered by "history"), I don't think it's quite the powerful image that it was "in the good old days". Most of the current European royalty exists only as symbolic appendages to constitutional governments; what's that mean? The only "Emperor" left is the guy in Japan. And he is really only a symbol of "what once was".

So, for me we absolutely must rely upon what the Gospel writers tell us. That's the base. What else we do beyond it has got to be in complete harmony with the Scripture, otherwise we'll be discovering golden plates in upstate New York, or finding revelation in a Brooklyn building. Or making Jesus into Sun Myung Moon.

So, I'll keep with the Carpenter's Son, Mary's boy-child, and the Teacher.

Blessings!

(By the by, Panto-Krator is actually "All Powerful", or "Ruler of All", not really emperor. The emperors thought they ruled all. Unfortunately for them, only God really rules all.)

Dr. John:

You will note that I correctly translated "pantokrator" above, and did not mean to suggest it was the same as "basileus."

I thank you for your comments, but worry about your historicism. What does it matter that no real emperors exist today? Does that mean we can't understand God as the true and only Emperor? Should we instead refer to him as the great and omnipotent CEO, who rules with justice and mercy over all us stockbrokers and portfolio managers? Perhaps we use the term Christ as King because that's the best we can do with our all-too-human language; I think that's what Nyssa, et al. were doing, and I think that's what we need to do today (especially in a radically anthropocentric world such as ours, in which my will is the -- and the only -- measure of all things).

As for relying on what the Gospels say: Is St. Mark's usage of the appellation "Son of Man" not a testament to Christ's Kingship? While it is true that Jesus the Christ-Messiah did not turn out to be the political revolutionary and king the Zealots hoped for, he was nonetheless the Messiah, and was nonetheless King in a very real sense. In brief, he transformed the very meaning of kingship -- an idea we find in all four Gospels, no?

Yours in Christ,
Theophilos