Schmemann on Fasting and Liturgy

Lent began yesterday for us Byzantines, and Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. So it's an appropriate time to think about fasting.

On Sunday at coffee hour I learned about this article by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, "Fast and Liturgy." He argues, based on the typikon, that the length of the Eucharistic fast was intended to vary with the character of the occasion. The Divine Liturgy was to begin at the third hour on Sundays, the fourth hour on Saturdays, and the fifth hour on other days when it was celebrated. Given that the Eucharistic fast was to begin at midnight, it would be longer on days of a less festal character.

On a few particularly solemn days, the Liturgy was not to be celebrated until after Vespers - either a Vesperal Liturgy or a Presanctified Liturgy. On a day of strict fasting (such as the Beheading of St. John the Baptist or the Exaltation of the Holy Cross), there was to be no celebration of the Liturgy at all, and thus it would have to be postponed until the start of the next liturgical day, which began with Vespers. (My acquaintance at coffee hour said these would originally have been Presanctified Liturgies before such services were restricted to Lent.)

The Christian life is defined by the complementary poles of fasting and feasting. We pray and keep vigil, watching and waiting for our Lord's parousia. But we also experience a foretaste of the messianic banquet in the Eucharist. So we fast in preparation for feasting. We keep a Eucharistic fast before every Liturgy, and we keep a season of fasting before major feasts.

Of course Schmemann says it better. Read the article.

Schmemann on Fundamentalism and Secularism

In his essay, "Worship in a Secular Age," Father Alexander Schmemann traces the origin of secularism to a medieval Western theological error. In condemning Berengarius of Tours for his teaching that "because the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements is 'mystical' or 'symbolic,' it is not real," the Lateran Council simply reversed the formula and proclaimed that because Christ's presence in the Eucharist is real, it is not mystical or symbolic. Both sides in the debate accepted the mutual exclusivity of verum and mystice, which undermined "the fundamental Christian understanding of creation in terms of its ontological sacramentality." Schmemann continues:

Let us not be mistaken, however. This Western theological framework was in fact accepted by the Orthodox East also, and since the end of the patristic age our theology has been indeed much more "Western" than "Eastern." If secularism can be properly termed a Western Heresy, the very fruit of the basic Western "deviation," our own scholastic theology has also been permeated with it for centuries, and this in spite of violent denunciations of Rome and papism. And it is indeed ironic, but not at all accidental, that psychologically the most "Western" among the Orthodox today are precisely the ultra-conservative "Super-Orthodox," whose whole frame of mind is legalistic and syllogistic on the one hand, and is made up, on the other hand, of those very "dichotomies" whose introduction into Christian thought is the "original sin" of the West. Once these dichotomies are accepted, it does not matter, theologically speaking, whether one "accepts" the world, as in the case of the Western enthusiast of "secular Christianity," or "rejects" it, as in the case of the "Super-Orthodox" prophet of apocalyptic doom. The optimistic positivism of the one, and the pessimistic negativism of the other are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. Both, by denying the world its natural "sacramentality" and radically opposing the "natural" to the "supernatural," make the world grace-proof, and ultimately lead to secularism.

From For the Life of the World, by Alexander Schmemann, pp. 128-130.

Sacramental Validity

[The priest's prayer for himself] is important because it denounces and corrects the tendency to understand sacraments somewhat "magically," a tendency widespread among the Orthodox and whose spiritual danger and consequences in the life of the Church are often overlooked. Since, according to the Church's teaching, the validity of sacraments does not, in any way, depend on either the holiness or the deficiencies of those who perform them, one has come little by little to view and to define sacraments exclusively in terms of "validity," as if nothing else "mattered." The whole point, however, is that the Church does not separate validity from fullness and perfection. "Validity" is merely the condition for fulfillment, but it is this latter that truly "matters." The Baptism of a man like Stalin was probably a perfectly "valid" one. Why then was it not fulfilled in his life? Why did it not prevent Stalin from sinking into incredible abomination? The question is not a naive one. If millions of people, "validly" baptized, have left the Church and still leave it, if Baptism seems to have no impact on them whatsoever, is it not, first of all, because of us, because of our weakness, deficiencies, minimalism and nominalism, because of our own constant betrayal of Baptism? Is it not because of the incredibly low level of the Church's life, reduced to a few "obligations" and thus having ceased to reflect and to communicate the power of renewal and holiness? All this of course applies above all to the clergy, to the priest, the celebreant of the Church's mysteries. If he himself is not the image of Christ, "by word, by deed, by teaching" (I Tim. 4:12), where is man to see Christ and how is he to follow Him? Thus to reduce sacraments to the principle of "validity" only is to make a caricature of Christ's teaching. For Christ came into this world not that we may perform "valid" sacraments; He gave us valid sacraments so that we may fulfill ourselves as children of light and witnesses of His Kingdom.

From Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism, pp. 44-45.

Words of Power

We speak to the Devil! It is here that the Christian understanding of the word as, above all, power is made manifest. In the desacralized and secularized worldview of the "modern man," speech, as everything else, has been "devaluated," reduced to its rational meaning only. But in the biblical revelation, word is always power and life. God created the world with His Word. It is power of creation and also power of destruction, for it communicates not only ideas and concepts but first of all spiritual realities, positive as well as negative. From the point of view of a "secular" understanding of speech, it is not only useless, it is indeed ridiculous to "speak to the Devil," for there can hardly be a "rational dialogue" with the very bearer of the irrational. But exorcisms are not explanations, not a discourse aimed at proving anything to someone who from all eternity hates, lies and destroys. They are, in the words of St. John Chrysostom, "awesome and wonderful invocations," an act of "frightening and horrible" power which dissolves and destroys the evil power of the demonic world:

   [Here follows the First Prayer of Exorcism from the Byzantine baptismal service.]

Exorcism is indeed a poem in the deepest sense of this word, which in Greek means creation. It truly manifests and does that which it announces; it makes powerful that which it states; it again fills words with the divine energy from which they stem. And exorcism does all this because it is proferred in the name of Christ; it is truly filled with the power of Christ, who has "broken" into the enemy territory, has assumed human life and made human words His own, because He has already destroyed the demonic power from within.

From Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism, pp. 24-25.