The "eastern orthodox" (hereafter, "EO") liturgy revolves entirely around the Eucharist rather than preaching the Word. Every liturgy the Eucharist is served, without exception. You won't find the Word or the Gospel preached in an EO liturgy, so this is it...
Some Points about the Ritual:
Before the liturgy takes place, a congregant brings a loaf of bread to the priest. This loaf of bread (now referred to as “the Lamb”) is then used to reenact the sacrifice of Christ on the altar shortly before the beginning of the liturgy. The priest takes the Lamb, stabs it with "a spear" (which is how they describe the special knife they use for this), and then divvies up the bread into various triangular-shaped pieces, which get placed on a gold platter, blessed, and then thrown into the chalice, which is then mixed with wine and warm water.
Oh, but before any of this takes place, there is one item that is absolutely required in order for this sacrificial ceremony to commence: the antimins, which is a piece of cloth containing dead body parts, er, I mean relics, of a saint, which is almost always the patron saint of the church in question, such as St. George.
No antimins, no dead body parts of saints...no Eucharist, and no liturgy!
Hmm...
Once the chalice is filled with the bits and pieces of the Lamb, the warm water and the wine, the priest performs the “epiklesis" wherein he calls down the Holy Spirit onto the chalice, to transform the wine-and-warm-water-bread-brew into the actual body and blood of Christ. This can only be done on the altar, which, BTW is hidden from the congregation by the iconostasis, which divides the area of the altar from the nave of the church. (The iconostasis is the Temple analogue of the veil separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the sanctuary, and EO "theologians" make a point of how the EO liturgy and church architecture recreate the Tabernacle/Temple. They are back in the OT, apparently, and they brag about this.)
After the epiklesis, the priest brings the chalice out into the nave; everyone bows and crosses themselves and many will also do full body prostrations at this time. There's quite a LOT of over-the-top displays of Phariseeism at this point as some love to be seen folding like cheap suits to the floor at this point in the liturgy. Seems the EO church enables this kind of behavior, frankly. One also will often hear "OH THEOTOKOS SAVE US!" by some congregants. Not sure why they say that at this point in the liturgy; there are plenty of intercessory prayers to Mary throughout the liturgy, including right after the priest has finished serving the Eucharist. Why can't they just wait until then???
After the chalice is brought out into the nave, the pre-communion prayer is read. I won’t bore you with the details of that, but the concluding line is “Not unto judgment nor unto condemnation be my partaking of Your holy Mysteries, O Lord, but unto the healing of soul and body.” This last part is emphasized by the EO, who view the bread and wine (and warm water?!?) as LITERAL “spiritual medicine.” Also, one of my former priests used to tell me how he would sweat and tremble while doing the epiklesis because he realized that, at that point, in his words, “the power of 100,000 atomic bombs was in his hands” and he feared every Sunday that, if he were to give this to someone who didn’t commune worthily, it might kill them!
Needless to say, he never witnessed anyone to whom he gave communion burst into flames or fall down dead in all the years he served the Eucharist, so there’s that. Plus, doesn't going around saying "I am holding the power of 100,000 atomic bombs in my hands!!!" smack of.... pretension and arrogance? You must be a really powerful priest to be able to do THAT!!! That priestcraft must be some powerful magick!!
After the pre-communion prayer is finished, congregants line up and, one by one, approach the chalice, with the usual bowing and prostrations, and then, when they reach the chalice, the priest dips the spoon in and gives them a spoonful of the wine-warm-water-bread-brew; there has to a piece of bread mixed in the wine with every spoonful! Never did get an answer to why they do it this way, when the Lord (and everyone else it seems) has the two elements served separately. (I'd probably get some magickal-mystical gobbledygook about divine energies and whatnot, knowing them...)
After you’ve taken the spoonful, you have to kiss the chalice and the cloth that the priest uses to wipe your mouth/chin afterwards, followed by more crossings and prostrations before departing back to where you were in the nave.
Paedo-communion:
This idea of literal “spiritual medicine” explains why the EO insist on paedo-communion. I have seen infants as young as 40 days old have a spoon with bread and wine shoved in their mouths for their first communion (though, many priests will just use wine so as to not risk choking the baby to death). But seeing this also led to some inconsistencies in the EO practices. For example, I have also seen a priest accidentally drop a chalice on the floor. The tiles that were stained from the wine had to be cut out and then smashed and burned in order to be "properly disposed of." There were also a lot of tall tales of people such as John Maximovitch, who once served communion to a person with rabies. Right after she received communion, she immediately threw it all back up onto the floor of the nave. What's an EO priest to do? Well, he promptly got down on all fours and licked the floor clean! He explained later that since he was licking the literal body and blood of Christ off the floor, there was no way he could have contracted her rabies!
And we were told by our priests that that is precisely what an EO priest is SUPPOSED to do in that situation!
Oof.
However, somehow these same rules went out the window during paedo-communion, as I saw a few babies promptly spit up the elements onto their mother's clothes when the priest gave them communion. The look on the mother's face was always one of sheer horror! Oh no!! What am I to do!!? For the sake of consistency according to what they were told and taught, they should have had their clothes that were spat upon removed and then burned (at least, once they got back home). But, every...single...time....the priest's response was always "fuggedaboutit! Just go home and throw it in the wash!!"
Hmmm....things aren't adding up.
Then 2020 rolled around...
Hocus-Pocus Views...and Covid-19
This also led to a big rift within EO churches here in the States during the Covid crisis beginning in 2020. Because of this hocus-pocus magickal view of the sacrament, many EO’s insisted that straying from the formula above constituted blasphemy. Nonetheless, many EO churches started adopting disposable spoons, 1 per congregant, instead of using a common spoon for all. This showed that those priests really didn’t buy all the hocus-pocus to begin with. Sure, they preached it and taught it to their catechumens, since it's all part of the EO mythology, but when push came to shove, reality overran their mythology and they had to adapt "practical measures" such as CDC guidelines. Yet it was funny then seeing how these same priests got put on full blast by some of their own congregants, as well as other bishops, priests, and monks, who REALLY DID believe in all the hocus-pocus, magickal views of the sacrament and would not change their practices. I also saw many congregants leave the parishes of EO priests who adopted these practical measures; some even left the eastern church altogether because, once they saw all this about-face, they realized they were sold a false bill of goods.
You can go online and find all sorts of these hocus-pocus views I am referring to, especially from the Monks on Mount Athos, who insist that the Eucharist can never transmit disease to anyone, because of its inherent (magickal) properties. Of course, these same monks also believe that the very NAVE of an EO church is “filled with the divine energies” and even BEING in an EO nave is a protection against any and all communicable diseases!
So, they should all be Covid-free zones! And they openly said so, matter-of-factly....
Well, unfortunately, there were more than a handful of Orthodox priests who contracted Covid during 2020, some of whom passed away. Not sure if that theory of the EO nave being able to prevent and protect against all infectious diseases holds any water. When others pointed to these dead priests (and some monks on Mt. Athos who also died of Covid), the response was always: "Meh!! They HAD to have picked it up elsewhere! Certainly not in the nave/altar!!!" But, as usual, all EO claims are ultimately unverifiable and unfalsifiable.
Final Summations, Reflections, and Questions:
Some Points about the Ritual:
Before the liturgy takes place, a congregant brings a loaf of bread to the priest. This loaf of bread (now referred to as “the Lamb”) is then used to reenact the sacrifice of Christ on the altar shortly before the beginning of the liturgy. The priest takes the Lamb, stabs it with "a spear" (which is how they describe the special knife they use for this), and then divvies up the bread into various triangular-shaped pieces, which get placed on a gold platter, blessed, and then thrown into the chalice, which is then mixed with wine and warm water.
Oh, but before any of this takes place, there is one item that is absolutely required in order for this sacrificial ceremony to commence: the antimins, which is a piece of cloth containing dead body parts, er, I mean relics, of a saint, which is almost always the patron saint of the church in question, such as St. George.
No antimins, no dead body parts of saints...no Eucharist, and no liturgy!
Hmm...
Once the chalice is filled with the bits and pieces of the Lamb, the warm water and the wine, the priest performs the “epiklesis" wherein he calls down the Holy Spirit onto the chalice, to transform the wine-and-warm-water-bread-brew into the actual body and blood of Christ. This can only be done on the altar, which, BTW is hidden from the congregation by the iconostasis, which divides the area of the altar from the nave of the church. (The iconostasis is the Temple analogue of the veil separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the sanctuary, and EO "theologians" make a point of how the EO liturgy and church architecture recreate the Tabernacle/Temple. They are back in the OT, apparently, and they brag about this.)
After the epiklesis, the priest brings the chalice out into the nave; everyone bows and crosses themselves and many will also do full body prostrations at this time. There's quite a LOT of over-the-top displays of Phariseeism at this point as some love to be seen folding like cheap suits to the floor at this point in the liturgy. Seems the EO church enables this kind of behavior, frankly. One also will often hear "OH THEOTOKOS SAVE US!" by some congregants. Not sure why they say that at this point in the liturgy; there are plenty of intercessory prayers to Mary throughout the liturgy, including right after the priest has finished serving the Eucharist. Why can't they just wait until then???
After the chalice is brought out into the nave, the pre-communion prayer is read. I won’t bore you with the details of that, but the concluding line is “Not unto judgment nor unto condemnation be my partaking of Your holy Mysteries, O Lord, but unto the healing of soul and body.” This last part is emphasized by the EO, who view the bread and wine (and warm water?!?) as LITERAL “spiritual medicine.” Also, one of my former priests used to tell me how he would sweat and tremble while doing the epiklesis because he realized that, at that point, in his words, “the power of 100,000 atomic bombs was in his hands” and he feared every Sunday that, if he were to give this to someone who didn’t commune worthily, it might kill them!
Needless to say, he never witnessed anyone to whom he gave communion burst into flames or fall down dead in all the years he served the Eucharist, so there’s that. Plus, doesn't going around saying "I am holding the power of 100,000 atomic bombs in my hands!!!" smack of.... pretension and arrogance? You must be a really powerful priest to be able to do THAT!!! That priestcraft must be some powerful magick!!
After the pre-communion prayer is finished, congregants line up and, one by one, approach the chalice, with the usual bowing and prostrations, and then, when they reach the chalice, the priest dips the spoon in and gives them a spoonful of the wine-warm-water-bread-brew; there has to a piece of bread mixed in the wine with every spoonful! Never did get an answer to why they do it this way, when the Lord (and everyone else it seems) has the two elements served separately. (I'd probably get some magickal-mystical gobbledygook about divine energies and whatnot, knowing them...)
After you’ve taken the spoonful, you have to kiss the chalice and the cloth that the priest uses to wipe your mouth/chin afterwards, followed by more crossings and prostrations before departing back to where you were in the nave.
Paedo-communion:
This idea of literal “spiritual medicine” explains why the EO insist on paedo-communion. I have seen infants as young as 40 days old have a spoon with bread and wine shoved in their mouths for their first communion (though, many priests will just use wine so as to not risk choking the baby to death). But seeing this also led to some inconsistencies in the EO practices. For example, I have also seen a priest accidentally drop a chalice on the floor. The tiles that were stained from the wine had to be cut out and then smashed and burned in order to be "properly disposed of." There were also a lot of tall tales of people such as John Maximovitch, who once served communion to a person with rabies. Right after she received communion, she immediately threw it all back up onto the floor of the nave. What's an EO priest to do? Well, he promptly got down on all fours and licked the floor clean! He explained later that since he was licking the literal body and blood of Christ off the floor, there was no way he could have contracted her rabies!
And we were told by our priests that that is precisely what an EO priest is SUPPOSED to do in that situation!
Oof.
However, somehow these same rules went out the window during paedo-communion, as I saw a few babies promptly spit up the elements onto their mother's clothes when the priest gave them communion. The look on the mother's face was always one of sheer horror! Oh no!! What am I to do!!? For the sake of consistency according to what they were told and taught, they should have had their clothes that were spat upon removed and then burned (at least, once they got back home). But, every...single...time....the priest's response was always "fuggedaboutit! Just go home and throw it in the wash!!"
Hmmm....things aren't adding up.
Then 2020 rolled around...
Hocus-Pocus Views...and Covid-19
This also led to a big rift within EO churches here in the States during the Covid crisis beginning in 2020. Because of this hocus-pocus magickal view of the sacrament, many EO’s insisted that straying from the formula above constituted blasphemy. Nonetheless, many EO churches started adopting disposable spoons, 1 per congregant, instead of using a common spoon for all. This showed that those priests really didn’t buy all the hocus-pocus to begin with. Sure, they preached it and taught it to their catechumens, since it's all part of the EO mythology, but when push came to shove, reality overran their mythology and they had to adapt "practical measures" such as CDC guidelines. Yet it was funny then seeing how these same priests got put on full blast by some of their own congregants, as well as other bishops, priests, and monks, who REALLY DID believe in all the hocus-pocus, magickal views of the sacrament and would not change their practices. I also saw many congregants leave the parishes of EO priests who adopted these practical measures; some even left the eastern church altogether because, once they saw all this about-face, they realized they were sold a false bill of goods.
You can go online and find all sorts of these hocus-pocus views I am referring to, especially from the Monks on Mount Athos, who insist that the Eucharist can never transmit disease to anyone, because of its inherent (magickal) properties. Of course, these same monks also believe that the very NAVE of an EO church is “filled with the divine energies” and even BEING in an EO nave is a protection against any and all communicable diseases!
So, they should all be Covid-free zones! And they openly said so, matter-of-factly....
Well, unfortunately, there were more than a handful of Orthodox priests who contracted Covid during 2020, some of whom passed away. Not sure if that theory of the EO nave being able to prevent and protect against all infectious diseases holds any water. When others pointed to these dead priests (and some monks on Mt. Athos who also died of Covid), the response was always: "Meh!! They HAD to have picked it up elsewhere! Certainly not in the nave/altar!!!" But, as usual, all EO claims are ultimately unverifiable and unfalsifiable.
Final Summations, Reflections, and Questions:
- The whole liturgy revolves around a magick-priestcraft ritual, which not only magickally transforms elements hocus-pocus like into something completely different, but you also need a rag with dead body parts to accompany the magick ritual, or else it is invalid.
- The result of magickal ritual is the literal body and blood of Christ, localized in a chalice, which becomes a literal “medicine” which they claim is "spiritual", but they view it very carnally.
- The naves of EO churches are magick zones that will protect everyone in them from all infectious diseases, including Covid.
- The naves of EO churches are also reconstructed according to the pattern of the Tabernacle/Temple, which ties in with how the EO have brought back the sacrificial system, despite everything the Book of Hebrews says about this.
- The antimins has always fascinated me because:
- First, why would you need a rag with dead body parts sewn into it to perform the ritual? Never did get a good answer for this, but instead just the usual unverifiable and unfalsifiable claims that this is a “tradition going back to 33AD!!” Apparently the apostles and their immediate successors were cataloguing dead body parts of saints and collecting them to be used in all future liturgies. EO's literally believe this! (BTW, does the Roman Church do anything like this? That is, specifically requiring there to be dead body parts on the altar in order to perform the ritual? I mean, I know the Roman Church loves relics too, but not to this degree?? I have been told by some Romanists "NO!" and that this is just another example of how much further down the road into folk-superstition and pagan-idolatry the EO church has gone, even compared to the Roman Church.)
- Second, I went to two "St. George Orthodox Churches” in my time. Thus, both churches claim that their antimins have THE literal relics of THE St. George, who supposedly died in 303 A.D. Thinking that some of St. George’s dead body parts made it to Ohio in the 21st century seemed to be a bit of a stretch to me even then, but you absolutely had to buy it. It’s “Tradition”, after all! Just like all those "relics of the True Cross" (which the EO are also really into!) I now suspect that there are probably enough “relics” of St. George to reconstruct 100 bodies out of them, if not more. Which makes one wonder: if it is extremely likely that these are NOT the dead body parts of St. George to begin with, then just WHAT are they and WHY are they there? What is their point and purpose? What are they doing??? My occult-tuned senses were tingling, developed during my younger days dabbling in Crowley, which is why I still spell "magick" with a "k." I sensed something sinister, perhaps demonic, going on with this whole antimins business. Or, perhaps, it's just human stupidity and superstition, and nothing more? I still wonder about this...
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