Orthodox Christianity, Vol IV, Chp 6: The Formation of the Yearly Cycle of Worship

Remembrance is an important teaching and practice in the holy scriptures and in the divine liturgy. Orthodox Christians keep a daily and yearly note of commemorating saints and memorable victories over heresies and schisms and disasters, and we note them especially in our calendar by making fast and feast days out of them. Christ commands us to “do this in remembrance of me,” in participating in the Eucharist, not just as a symbol, but as a reality. Christ fulfilled the Jewish prophecies and scriptures so that we can inherit the “feast of feasts,” Pascha (Easter) and Pentecost – the major movable feasts of the Church. These are one of the most ancient feasts observed by Christians in the 2nd c. AD. The first Apostolic Council and the early controversies over the date of Pascha both dealt with the problem of Jewish adherents and Christians converts from Gentile or partially Jewish heritage. The Church in Ephesus and the local churches of Asia Minor celebrated Easter on a date that coincided with the Jewish celebration of Passover, which probably wouldn’t cause immediate suspicion in today’s Christian world. The Church in Rome, Alexandria, Corinth, and Palestine celebrated Pascha on the same fixed day. Bishops Victor of Rome and Polycrates of Ephesus came to the forefront to debate the dating of Easter for the whole Church. Metropolitan Hilarion doesn’t mention any motives behind the controversy that involved issues of authority or uniformity, but both sides seemed to have good arguments for their observance. The Ephesians were practicing a local tradition they attributed to the Holy Apostle John the Theologian. The Romans were following the shared tradition of remembering the day of the resurrection of Christ that begins on Saturday evening that continues into Sunday morning. Both churches wanted to give honor to God. St. Irenaeus of Lyons helped resolve the dating of Pascha. Eusebius Pamphilius remarked wisely, “the disagreement in regard to the fast confirms the agreement in the faith.” 

Although it’s known by tradition that forty days of fasting for Pascha was widespread in the Church, there wasn’t always a completely uniform way of fasting in terms of length. Even abstinence from certain kinds of food varied by local tradition, according to St. Hippolytus of Rome in the writing called Apostolic Tradition. Sometimes only three days of fasting was enough to prepare for Pascha, and some churches didn’t allow certain fruits. By fasting during Great Lent for Pascha, we remember Christ’s sufferings and tribulations. It would be difficult to recall in our heart Christ or anyone we love if we were distracted by enjoyments and entertainments and the commotion of daily life. Through the Typikon and the holy fathers of the Church prescribes fasting to remember not only intellectually but physically we become involved in the remembrance of holy things. After fasting during “the pascha of the cross,” we celebrate with inner feasting and joy “the pascha of resurrection” along with some foods that we have denied ourselves – most importantly we’ve abstained from the passions that we have denied ourselves to do. There are two paschas in Holy Orthodoxy. These two paschas seem to help to resolve the issue of the dating of Pascha and its estrangement spiritually from Judaism and its association with the 14 of Nissan. To celebrate the resurrection of Christ on a Jewish day of Passover might cause offense to Christians who wish to remember the true type of the Resurrection – Christ Himself. The cross and the resurrection are combined mystically in the Eucharist at the Last Supper, although they happened chronologically in a different order. We fast first, then we feast like Lazurus did when he entered his heavenly home in Paradise, where he lived in his heart during his earthly suffering and daily struggles before the Rich man.

But the Old Testament prototypes help us to understand the Orthodox celebration of Pascha. The service began on Saturday evening and ended on Sunday morning – a Jewish and Byzantine way of keeping time. The beginning of the paschal lighting of candles symbolizes the reality of how Christ’s gentle light penetrates the gloomy chaos just as the resurrection comes through the cross. The Old Testament prophets are read out loud because they foretold of Christ as the Light of the world and the Lover of mankind. The connection between the two paschas is powerful. Oddly to our logic, love increases with trials and temptations just as the Theotokos and Christ experienced life. In the West, the Catalan, medieval mystic, Ramon Llull, wrote a religious book called the Lover and the Beloved that is a dialogue between the Christ and the Christian. A poem is written for each day of the year. Poem 9 reads, “Tell me, my lover, said the beloved, will you have patience if I double your misery? Yes, if you just double my love.” Poem 10 reads, “The beloved said to the Lover: Do you know yet what love is? Replied the lover. If I did not know what love is, would I know what hardship, sadness, and pain are?” And poem 13 reads, “Tell me, crazy for love, who is the most visible, the beloved in the lover or the lover in the beloved? And he said, the beloved is in love, and the lover is seen in sorrow, in weeping, in hardship and pain.”  In the dizzying array of repetitious forms of the Latin root word am- meaning to love, to be a friend, we arrive at our mind’s heart, and we begin to remember by faithful hardships and fellowships. What we feel or grasp as “love” are often manifestations of fear, control, or trauma induced fawning. But through Christ’s resurrection, we conquer joyfully and with ease our fears, sins, and the last enemy – our death.  The Orthodox Church incorporated the poems of Melito of Sardis into the paschal celebration. In his work On Pascha, he teaches poetically, “But he arose from the dead and mounted up to the heights of heaven. When the Lord had clothed himself with humanity, and had suffered for the sake of the sufferer, and had been bound for the sake of the imprisoned and had been judged for the sake of the condemned and buried for the sake of the one who was buried, he rose up from the dead, and cried aloud with this voice: Who is he who contends with me!” 

In this chapter, no mention is made of a direct corresponding festival between Pentecost and Judaism except through the images and prototypes of the Old Testament, and no mention of any controversies over the celebration of Pentecost between churches. One of the purposes of this feast is to remember the descent of the Holy Spirit. What we begin to discern is that God crazily empties himself by descending and going down to us over and over in history. Christ descends to earth in the form of our flesh and becomes a real man; then, Christ descends to Hades and conquers it. The Holy Spirit descends on Christ at his voluntary baptism out of love for us, not because he needed to be cleansed. The Holy Spirit descends as fire on the Apostles and the Theotokos in the book of Acts. God the Father’s kingdom of heaven in the age to come will appear descending from the sky. In a sense, the kenosis of the Holy Trinity -- the self-emptying and descending – could be described as a kind of suffering for our good. At the end of this chapter, Metropolitan Hilarion has a section on the views of the holy fathers of the Church in the 4th c. St. Basil the Great has written many homilies, and he teaches, “Each person receives a share of sufferings, but Christ’s life consisted of sufferings and sorrows.” The book called My Elder Joseph the Hesychast has a similar teaching to the parable of Lazurus and the Rich man as well as the view of the 4th c. holy fathers. Elder Joseph imparted his wisdom to his disciples at his deathbed and Elder Ephraim recounts that, “Elder Joseph taught us the following ‘equation’ he had deduced from his own experience: the amount of grace we are entitled to receive is proportional to the severity of a temptation we can bear with gratitude towards God” (p.606). Both the Rich man and Lazurus receive God’s loving light; they receive whatever is “due to them,” and that experience of His glory always shining is felt differently by each person. We are taught humility no matter what course we take in this life; we will have to face our conscience when all is uncovered. St. Gregory the Great teaches that the word mystery comes from the Greek word meaning to cover, hide, and conceal. A covering can be a protection, but it also means “to remove the veil” from our birth that associates pleasures, success, and riches with goodness and beauty and truth while we associate suffering with misfortune, rejection, and evil. A mystery is a hidden triumph. Real circumcision is a heart that can enter Christ’s life and the protection of the Most Holy Theotokos. We not only participate in Pascha through mental efforts that help us to identify with the Gospel characters we hear in the liturgical readings, but also, we offer our own sufferings and trials that will come either in this life or the next life. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol IV, Chp 5: Sunday Services and Daily Services

Marshall McLuhan is often quoted in The New Media Epidemic written by Orthodox writer Jean-Claude Larchet, which we read a few years ago here at St. John the Forerunner. McLuhan said, “I live right inside radio when I listen.” All forms of technological media have the power to change our orientation. Now the loss of perspective and the distortion of our sense of time and wakefulness are happening rapidly. The culture of print seems closer to the day when books will seem like scrolls to future generations. In the preface of Metropolitan Hilarion’s five volume series, he states that the Orthodox divine liturgy teaches theology. When we enter the liturgical texts and poetry with our heart and ears, and we look with our eyes at the icons during the chanting and praying, we live right inside of Christ and His life, which is commemorated in the Sunday and daily services. Prayer could be the most “subversive action” a Christian can take in this electric and economic age. 

Many of the liturgical prayers are put into liturgical verses called stichera – a chanted poetic medium that is both oral and textual. Some of them originated in Constantinople and others in “the mother Church” of Jerusalem. Not only the stichera, but also the canons, sedalens/kathisma, troparia, and kontakia “reveal” the substance of the texts and prayers of the daily services in the Octoechos cycle that runs from the Sunday of All the Saints in Pentecost time to the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee in Triodion time. The first service of the week is Saturday vespers (evening), which is the eighth day of the resurrection – so, the verses often sing of the resurrection of Christ and its meaning for Christians and all humanity. Christ is sung as the “heavenly King.” Earthly kings that we’ve read about or have heard about tried to unite people based on politics, ethnicity, economics, nationality, or whatever else is convenient. Many rulers and emperors have used religion to unite countries and diverse groups. We intuitively understand that a ruler ought to have a divine character and to be able to transcend social structures to judge and protect. Often saints transcend society’s expectations and pressures like Perpetua and Felicity of Rome did under the imperial pagan state. We rally around leaders and inspirational individuals and rulers; we adorn kingly places and queens because we are trying to approach Beauty. All these cyclical patterns of history and human behavior can be answered adequately in the resurrectional stichera and “songs of ascent” during resurrectional orthros that were drawn from St. Theodore the Studite. The bishop and priest, the choir, and the people work in common toward this goal of the next life during this life. Universities and hospitals are wonderful ways of bringing the kingdom of God to those who are in need; to fulfill the commandment to love others. We also fulfill the commandment to love God when we pray and worship in the divine services, and it’s where “we are doing the work that no else in the world is doing.” Christ Himself is the Resurrection – the summit of divine and human beauty.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol IV, Chp 4: The Formation of the Weekly Liturgical Cycle

Chapter 4 briefly discusses the cycle of weekly services and prayers of the Orthodox Church with its roots in the Old Testament and New Testament traditions. Whenever the Jews would gather for worship, they read the scriptures and prayed together. The Mosaic command “to remember the Sabbath” was kept by the Jews and continues to be fulfilled in the keeping of the Sunday service of the Lord’s Day – called kyriake in Greek. The Jewish religious authorities had conflicts with Jesus’ observance of the Sabbath is obvious in reading the New Testament. In Holy Orthodoxy, Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath. He never broke any commandments because the true Sabbath isn’t for idleness, indulgence, or indifference toward our neighbors, John Chrysostom teaches. 

The Sabbath or Saturday is the day of resurrection for Christians. The Messiah didn’t come first as an earthly ruler like a Caesar or Herod. Christ was renowned for his rabbinical learnedness, healings, divine authority, and many other miraculous events recounted in the Gospels. Most of all, he was regarded as the “king of the Jews” who is known with the plaque over his head “the King of Glory” in Orthodox temples. Christ accomplished much more than what most Jews and scribes expected the Messiah to be and to do for them. Christ taught us to carry our own crosses in self-denial. He also taught us to love both our brothers and sisters in faith as well as our enemies who haven’t held any faith in God. 

The Eucharist came to the forefront in Christianity since it was the reality of so many Old Testament prophecies and typologies in the holy scriptures. For example, just as the story of Joseph can be used to teach us God’s providence and control over events in history and our personal lives, to teach us to love those who hate us and persecute us, to teach us to have steadfastness in God’s plans, so Christ also became our servant, he was sold into being captured by the religious scribes, and he suffered as a righteous and innocent man who came to teach us to do the same today. Christ is the Master and Teacher of the Holy Scriptures through his teachings and example of his life. Sabbath means “he rested,” and it refers to Christ who rested after his works were done – his resurrection and ascension into heaven. Christ created the world for all people before the Jewish nation existed. The worship in the synagogue at times conflicted with the openness of Christians to allowing Gentiles into worship without requiring them to adopt certain customs like circumcision or abstinence of foods. The first Apostolic Council met over their growing issue of these Jewish practices and customs and what Gentiles needed to do to gain entrance into worshipping the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The exchange between the Sabbath observation on Saturday for the Sunday observation of the Eucharist and the remembrance of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ fills up the meaning of all the commandments. But also, Ignatius of Antioch writes in his letter to the Magnesians, “It’s outlandish to speak of Jesus Christ and to Judaize. For Christianity did not put its faith in Judaism but Judaism in Christianity.” The Messiah wasn’t about the preservation of a cultural legacy of the Jewish nation – not to make it great with wealth and earthly power, which are in fact enslavements to passions, as John Chrysostom teaches. True rest is a clean conscience and loving everyone without inquiring into their situation. It is joy in poverty of some kind and faith in God’s complete control over all turn of events. It is being able to see with our noetic eyes the so-called punishments and hardships of life as gifts waiting to be opened or a doctor’s medicine, like Lazarus thought to himself in his own sufferings. Christ had to be from the Jewish nation is prophetic and necessary. But the mission of Christ wasn’t an ethnic parade for a single group of people just at isn’t for any of today’s cultural categories. Today to judaize could mean putting anything as an obstacle to faith in Jesus Christ. It might be something seen as necessary for daily life or even needed to be a good Christian. Judaizing could be any cultural practice that would block us from discerning how “the Holy Trinity never stops communicating with us.” Timothy was half-Jewish, and Paul allowed him to be circumcised, but others like Titus, who weren’t Jewish at all, Paul forbade them to be circumcised, depending on how it would help or hinder someone’s faith and growing up in it. In the canons of the Church, “judaizing” meant circumcising Christians and resting on Saturday instead of Sunday to remember Christ and put our faith in Him, and not trusting the old customs to heal us, which Christ has fulfilled in his works on earth. The Eucharist heals us. In some places of the Near East, Saturday and Sunday continued side by side as distinct liturgical services and days of remembrance without replacing each other in meaning or observance. The Church in Constantinople observed Sunday as a day of remembering the departed as well as the remembrance of Christ in the tomb.  Ignatius also says that the Sabbath existed at the beginning of creation. In a similar way, at the end of time, we will no longer need the heavenly stars, the sun, the moon to mark our daily existence because Christ will be our Light – Christ is the Cosmos. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol IV, Chp 3: The Divine Liturgy pp.196-214

This last section of chapter three in part three covers The Conclusion of the Liturgy and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. The chalice is taken to the altar table, after communion is received, where previously the offering of the proskomedia was made for the living and departed at the beginning of Sunday liturgical services. A prayer of the priest reads, “Wash away, O Lord, the sins of those commemorated here, by the precious blood, through the prayers of thy saints.” On the level of people’s being and, in our nature, we enter friendships, clubs, groups, monasteries, and marriage to be in community with others. To be in community is to remember and to be remembered by others, especially through our relationship with the Most Holy Trinity and the Most Holy Theotokos. We commemorate all without leaving out the living or the departed, and remembrance runs as deep as eternity – our thoughts and prayers should live in the recesses of our heart. Our mental life tends to focus on the sensate world of analyzing the painful past or the fatalistic future; both concepts in fact tend to push us into living in a fantasy not the presence of Christ. And God is called “I am” and we proclaim “Christ is risen” to emphasize that it is right now that salvation is given, and love is possible.  Christ’s blood at the Cross and simultaneously in the anaphora where we offer and give thanks for the Holy Eucharist cleanses us from sins, and not only Christ Himself but through the prayers of other holy and healed people we call saints. Prayers make present all people in the Church like an electrical conduit connecting everyone in an instant. Rather than asking why God cannot just forgive and do everything Himself directly without saints, which He can, it’s better to ask what it means that we are called to become holy and help others through Christ’s power, and how our commemorations during liturgical worship can heal others through Christ’s Precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist. 

The source of all life is found in a relationship with the Holy Trinity and the Theotokos that isn’t dependent on chronological time – the past and future. The injustices of the past and the fears of the future are where the demons live, and they flee to the periphery in the presence of Christ and the Theotokos. But wherever we are and in whatever moment, Christ is with us here. His presence is neither what happened to us before or what will happen on earth in unforeseeable events. Remembrance pulls in everything to the presence of a person – it is an approach and attitude that isn’t affected by reactions or worries. Remembrance reaches out and takes all points of time into the face to face exchange of the person and people we love. To remember is to collapse all the boundaries of chronological order and allows us to enter loving relationships with everyone. So, the priest crosses his arms with the chalice toward the people and blesses saying, “Blessed is our God, always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.” These specific words aren’t accidental or coincidental. Remembrance is continuous without division or stopping points; we repeat ourselves to remember ourselves in Christ. We pray again and again the same prayers out loud so that what we say with our mouth goes into our ear and descends into the heart to complete the circuit of loving memory. 

In an electric age full of flickering lights, a secular vigil is visible from airplanes above and across cities. But in response, the choir sings, “We have seen the true Light.” This Light we have beheld in the liturgy, and we have partaken of in the Holy Eucharist is the same Light that preceded the creation of the world written in the Book of Genesis before the existence of the sun or moon or stars. “Light came before the creation of the world.” The Light is pure vision. It is healing sound. It is the true spoken word of intimacy and identity. The prayer of St. Basil the Great sums up the meaning of the liturgy, and the priest reads it in the sanctuary, “The mystery of Thy dispensation, O Christ our God, has been accomplished and perfected as far as it was in our power … we have had the memorial of Thy death … we have enjoyed Thine inexhaustible food, which in the world to come be well-pleased to grant to us all …” The prayer doesn’t necessarily have to be understood as “food” that we haven’t yet eaten or not yet granted to us now like many Protestant Christians understand heaven to be – a place where they are waiting to eat and drink but have not any access to it now. In Holy Orthodoxy, we have already been granted it. We go into the “world to come” when we go to the liturgy to worship God. Some Christians have emphasized a “not yet” aspect, but it is maybe more accurate to emphasize it as not fully revealed to us what we have received already; we will see clearer after our departure. It is not like other Christian groups who understand it as a “not yet” at all but a “not yet” more to be enjoyed. Like Christ lived in the next world while in an earthly body, so we live in the next age with the same kind of an earthly body. The kingdom of heaven is the Heavenly King. We have already seen, we have already been filled, we have already enjoyed the food of heaven, and there is more heightened enjoyment after death. We learn to eat the food of heaven rightly here to receive more food in the heavenly kingdom. The true Light and the true Faith are connected to the Heavenly and Holy Spirit, in the anamnesis (remembrance) and in the epiclesis of the divine liturgy. 

“Going to Church” isn’t only a private experience like reading alone in silence. Liturgical prayer is fully visible, and it happens bodily before other people’s presence, whether they are alive or have passed away. “Everyone exists because God never stops thinking about us; He always remembers us.” If that is true about God and about everyone’s existence, even after death, then “the damned” continue to exist only because God hasn’t stopped remembering them. God has one mind. If that kind of remembering is connected to feeding us and sustaining every person who has ever existed, then there is a great and bold hope in the ages to come. All other services such as vespers, matins or orthros, the hours – they all prepare and help us remember those who need our prayers in the liturgy. The next chapter discusses the Sunday Services and Daily Services in part four. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol IV, Chp 3: The Divine Liturgy pp.174-195

This next section of chapter three covers The Prayer of Intercession, Preparation for Communion, and Communion. In the diptychs of local Orthodox Churches, bishops pray for other bishops as a way of remembering each other in communion and expressing universality. They pray, “Again we offer unto Thee this rational worship for the whole world; for the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church …” The martyrs are also remembered in the prayers of the Church. The prayers have no clear distinction between the living saints and the departed saints as a separate category of people needing prayers. Molebens are done for the saints and the panikhidas are done for the departed. Nicholas Cabasilas outlines several kinds of prayer in the liturgy: intercession, thanksgiving, and petition. Whether in English or any other modern language, there doesn’t seem to be an adequate and specialized vocabulary for translating and expressing these different kinds of prayer when we discuss Orthodox worship. We tend to reuse the same word, prayer, for different words. For example, we don’t offer petition to the Theotokos and the saints, but we do offer them thanksgiving prayers. The hierarchs commemorate other hierarchs, a country’s safety, all the armed forces everywhere, all the civil authorities, and generally for a “quiet a peaceable life,” whether under a monarchy or democracy or some other form of government. These prayers are as practical as the American documents that write of our life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Then, the bishop prays, “Again we entreat Thee: remember … [the Church], which is from end to end of the universe.” Remembrance is something Christ commanded us to do at the Last Supper, and it means “to have someone live within your heart” just as the Wise Thief prayed to the Lord on his cross and just as the Apostle John the Theologian and the Most Holy Theotokos understood when they leaned on the chest of Christ hearing his heartbeat. Remembrance helps us prepare for communion. Atonement means the same etymologically as communion (at-one, with-one). Atonement is the communion of God and man, not a means but the end that is finished. 

Then, the Our Father is prayed together. We ask God the Father for bread that is supersubstantial – the Greek word that is originally used in the New Testament prayer of Christ taught to us his disciples by word of mouth. Christ’s body is deified, transfigured, and this Eucharist, the bread and wine that becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, nourishes our nature of body and spirit. The Apostle John the Theologian teaches, “that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” This communion with Christ makes us holy. The bishop or priest says, “the holy things for the holy” before the faithful receive communion. The holy ones are the faithful, the brethren, the brothers and sisters, the martyrs of the Church. The catechumens are connected to the Church since all people have a kind of relationship with the Church whether they despise it or are outside of it. Whether they are in it and can participate in it or not. But they are not ready to receive communion, which is the major way of telling whether someone is or isn’t in communion with the Church. The Didache teaches speaking to the faithful members, “He who is holy, let him draw near, and he who is not, let him change himself.” Are Christians made holy by first not sinning at all? Are Christians made holy by the eucharist? St. Symeon the New Theologian – one of the handful of men and women who have that title and ability to teach as one in Orthodoxy – teaches, “So, how is this to be understood? He who is not holy is not worthy? Not at all. But he who does not confess daily the secrets of his heart, he who does not show necessary repentance for these secrets … he who does not weep constantly … is not worthy.” Belief is a verb, an action, a fully involved movement toward the desire of a person with faith. When we surround ourself with faith, we are only able to hear and follow; a person surrounded in reasonings, fears, and shrouded with dark, esoteric philosophies, sees many exit routes. St. Cyril of Jerusalem teaches his catechumens, “After this priest says, the holy things are for the holy. Holy are the gifts presented, since they have been visited by the Holy Spirit; holy are you also, … the holy things correspond to the holy persons [the Trinity] … For truly One is holy, by nature only; we too, are holy, but not by nature, only by participation, and discipline, and prayer.” Faith fully involves a person’s space and time, one’s body and mind are at one, not divided into separate sensory experiences, outlined by St. Cyril above as involvement, partaking, ascetical efforts, and praying. In general, a philosopher, a critic, a scholar, a journalist, a lawyer – these were jobs that tended to have difficulty becoming completely involved in their environment since they must take a step back from the situation to gain a perspective. Faith doesn’t attempt to count the stars or view the sky’s measure; it follows with some understanding, and it takes sure action with the correct image in mind. St. Symeon the New Theologian also teaches that a person who lives, “… life in groanings and tears is fully worthy not only on a feast day, but on every day, although it is bold to say, from the very beginning of his repentance and conversion to be in communion with these divine mysteries (185-186).” 

The way of receiving communion has changed a little over time depending on the circumstances. Infants couldn’t receive solid food yet, but they could receive it mixed in a cup. By mixing the bread and wine, it also protects the body of Christ from being taken away. St. John Chrysostom teaches that the faithful should say “Amen” after receiving communion, and that some people would touch one’s eyes with the eucharist. The custom of using a spoon for communion of the faithful – the clergy still partake of the Eucharist by hand and mouth separately – derives from the 7th c. most likely in Constantinople, according to John Meyendorff and Robert Taft. The Council of Trent, a dogma for Roman Catholics, taught that anyone who doubted that receiving only the body or only the blood was insufficient for salvation was anathematized, and up to present day, receiving communion is often talked about as “obligation” or “duty.” An unfortunate result not always existing in Western Christianity is the consequence of infants not being able to commune. Another consequence came of it when communion became obligatory for sins committed after baptism due to a “loss of baptismal grace” and incurring unworthiness, which must be preceded by confession first. In this way, Western Christians have adopted a very linear, logical, and visual point to point correspondence in liturgical life and eucharistic theology. Interestingly, Roman Catholics require that baptism be separated from communion until “the age of reason” when a child can grasp the mysteries and when they can read. That literacy or rationality become the requirements for communion is a strange consequence of this dogma – probably unintended. There is an order and prerequisite: faith and baptism. Infants can meet both of those requirements in their natural state, according to the eastern fathers of the Church. Holy Orthodoxy receive infants with all the mysteries simultaneously, and they pray noetically in their God-given innocence. Although infants do not have strong visual control and developed cognitive abilities, they are able to hear all from their surroundings; their ear catches everything and their heart prays ceaselessly. Whether the age, level of cognition, degree of sinfulness, communion is saving. Today, at least since ca. 600 AD, Orthodoxy always gives us both the bread and the wine at the same time in the divine liturgy. Dionysius the Areopagite teaches that infants communed with baptism and chrismation, and parents have the gift and upmost reverent and honorable position in the Church of raising children with holy communion. The effects of the Eucharist on children are profoundly life changing, especially when parents pray for them too. Dionysisus the Areopagite teaches, “Children raised up in accordance with holy precepts will acquire the habits of holiness.” A crucial and enormous divine role married Christians have in Orthodoxy, “to avoid all errors and all the temptations of an unholy life” for their children. The Most Theotokos was raised in the temple and kept “away from men” and she was dedicated from youth. Her upbringing might be a good model to follow for Orthodox families as much as it is possible in this quick moving electronic age. The next section discusses the conclusion of the liturgy and the liturgy of the pre-sanctified gifts to complete this chapter on the divine liturgy.