Orthodox Reflections

— Augustine Martin

Something almost universally taken for granted in American Orthodoxy is the inherent good of frequent communion. This wasn’t commonly practiced for many centuries. Yiayia might complain, but with the monastic resurgence in the 1800s and the “neo-patristic” revival in the 1900s, almost everyone assumes that more is better. You get Jesus in His actuality in the Eucharist with all the health and salvation that comes with it, so why would you not receive as frequently as possible? It’s the central, most definitive act of the Church. It’s in the Eucharist that we become deified.

I’m not saying that’s wrong. But I’ve really been rethinking it in recent months.

Part of the argument of St. Makarios of Corinth is that people will constantly be reconciling with each other. They just took communion two days ago and will again in five, and so they will always be freely offering apologies.

Obviously that doesn’t happen. We go to communion every week with broken relationships that we convince ourselves don’t really matter. Often these are the very people we are in the communion line with or even the priest himself.

I have been Orthodox for over a decade. What has never once happened, in all these years, is someone coming to me at the beginning of Lent and saying, “Hey, I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry.” We have our Forgiveness Vespers ritual, where we get in a circle and hug people we barely know, but no one has ever come to me with something specific and apologized at the beginning of Lent. I would imagine it hasn’t happened to most of you either.

Thus we have lost the sense that Lent is about repentance. We repeat the Prayer of St. Ephraim and do our prostrations, but we don’t mean it. We continue in our self-righteousness and broken relationships and receive communion every week anyway.

But what used to happen is that people only received communion a few times a year, maybe only on Pascha. During the year they have the normal conflicts they have with people. But by the time Lent comes around, they have had a few months to cool down. They can look back soberly and see where they were wrong, or maybe they just no longer care about the issue as much. Then they have some two months to go to everyone they are at odds with and apologize.

What St. Makarios said is a wonderful idea in the world of ideals, and I’m not really criticizing him. Maybe that works in a select few monasteries with six people isolated on a mountain. But obviously his vision failed at the parish level. We live in a world of broken hearts and abandoned relationships, especially in America. Even with the best of intentions, three days isn’t enough time to calm down and soberly reflect so that we can actually live in right relations with everyone around us.

Another issue is that we treat communion casually. We all confess that it’s truly the Body and Blood of our Lord, but effectively it becomes the sacramental water fountain. If we only took communion once a year, it would have that much more importance to us. It would be the culmination of the entire year, and we would feel the total sacredness of the day. You would feel the anticipation for weeks, and especially the few days before you would make sure you don’t commit any sin.

In contrast to that, my understanding as a new convert was that the only real requirement for going to communion was skipping breakfast, and it was really a matter of whether you wanted to eat that morning or not. So yes, I received communion more frequently, but I was also very casual and dismissive of it. I would skip communion for a reason as petty as hunger. Probably everyone reading this has been guilty at some time of having taken a casual approach to communion, with broken relationships that we should have done more to repair.

Frequent communion also cheapens the rest of the liturgy. We suffer and daydream through an hour of liturgy so that we can get to the part we really came for, as though we have to pay an entrance fee. We’re told that the purpose of liturgy is the Eucharist itself, which is true, but the effect is that often we view the rest of the liturgy as just a prologue that doesn’t really matter. That people are still filing into the church after the Creed shows how little we value the liturgy as a complete whole.

Tucker Carlson recently said, “The most liberating thing in the world is to admit that you were wrong.” And that’s why we have confession, which is a sacrament in itself. There are only and exactly seven sacraments, despite what your convert priest may have told you. There’s a reason for that limitation. Out of all the blessings and rituals that the Church performs for our benefit, only seven are categorized as mysteries (synonymous with sacraments in Orthodox theology). Confession is one of the few rituals of the Church with that special quality to it that makes it a sacrament, in a way that isn’t true for monastic tonsure or house blessings. It exists as a self-contained sacrament, and has its own good that it does. This was the universal tradition of the Church until 20^th century academic theology.

But frequent communion turns confession into a chore or an admission requirement. You have to go to confession with some regularity in order to go to communion. Often ROCOR priests and monasteries want you to go every single week. And so the two become closely linked.

But the effect is that you aren’t going to confession to look for healing. You’re not seeking the catharsis of vocalizing your sins and having the priest announce forgiveness. Instead, you’re just doing the rote requirement necessary to receive your portion of the Eucharist, as though it’s really more for the priest’s benefit than yours.

Especially in the Russian-tradition churches, you have this practice where you hurriedly whisper your sins to the priest before liturgy while the hours are being read. In one church I attended it would happen in the communion line itself. I’m not saying that that’s categorically wrong and should never be done, but it can easily rob you of the psychological benefit of vocalizing your failures. It’s an assembly line model of what is probably the most intimate sacrament. You’re never more vulnerable than when you are telling another human the worst things about yourself and trusting him to not share that with others, and maybe it’s not appropriate to rush people through that in such a formal, detached way.

In conclusion, I’m not saying that we should do away with frequent communion altogether. But maybe we should roll it back a little and not teach that it’s an absolute essential for all people, in all seasons of life, and that the liturgy is a waste of time without it.