Holy Communion and the Coronavirus : Faith, Fear, and Fame in a Pandemic by Evagelos Sotiropoulos,
Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
Βut God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty (1Co 1:27). For You, Christ our God, are the Offerer and the Offered, the One who receives and is distributed… (from the Divine Liturgy)
The tsunami of change caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has not spared communal Church life. From temporarily closing parishes to contain spread of the virus, the focus has quickly shifted, like a thief in the night, to the mechanism of offering the Offerer , of providing parishioners Holy Communion, which Orthodox faithful believe and confess is the holy Body and precious Blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.
Lay commentators and all order of clergy counting prominent hierarchs among them are opining on this subject. Historical liturgical developments and contemporary rationalistic-based arguments are leveraged to promote a pre-defined agenda, namely, that the millennium-long tradition of using a communal liturgical spoon for Holy Communion should be eliminated to assuage a small minority of individuals who fear the perceived transmission of disease.
This agenda has gained a particular foothold in North America, and to a lesser extent in Europe, as opposed to nation states with their own autocephalous Orthodox church, which have strongly supported and reiterated the traditional practice of Holy Communion.
The apparent wise and mighty words of some writers reminds me of the above passage from First Corinthians, where St. Paul says that God chose the foolish things … to shame the wise . What is required during the panic of a pandemic is not scare tactics but simplicity, not fear-mongering but faith.
The example of simplicity that comes to my mind is that of St. Nicolas Planas (+1932). The Synaxarion states the following about him:
Humble and lacking any education, Father Nicolas nevertheless became the most popular priest in Athens. For fifty-two years, he celebrated the Divine Liturgy every day in various of the city's churches, and most often in half-ruined country chapels. And what a Liturgy!
When he went along a road, walking slowly and with difficulty because of his endless standing in church, children went with him, women crossed themselves and men removed their hats and stood respectfully aside to give him room to pass…
A model of an Orthodox celebrant of the Divine Liturgy – a man whose being and Holy Tradition have become one and the same – a shepherd of the simple and humble, Father Nicolas had so greatly acquired among the people the authority of a new Apostle that, when he gave his soul into God's hands after a short illness on 2 March 1932, with a smile on his lips, a crowd beyond counting came to venerate his mortal remains for three whole days.
The Synaxarion : The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church. Volume Four, March & April. Holy Convent of The Annunciation of Our Lady, Ormylia ( Chalkidike ), 2003.
Think about this: every day for fifty-two years (almost 20,000 days) before even the most common vaccines were developed. St. Nicolas is not the exception: although a unique personality, he is but one of literally millions of people with lived-experience of the communal spoon for the remission of sins and for life eternal . Let those who employ the surface-level pretext of science to force innovation consider the following: what is more scientifically sound to prove the efficacy of a medicine than a clinical trial involving millions of patients over hundreds of years with no adverse effect?
How would this truly holy man, Papa Nicolas, react to the present situation? Having lived through the influenza pandemic of 1918 (that is, the Spanish flu), what would his advice to the faithful and clergy be during COVID-19?
Basic questions should be asked and considered in the proper historical context, without hysteria, to help us all navigate the current challenge and created controversy regarding Holy Communion.
One question is what makes COVID-19 distinct from other recent pandemics such as SARS (2002) and H1N1 (2009), to say nothing of hundreds of years of pandemics, which would necessitate such an impulsive change to the distribution of Holy Communion? In other words, why are some hierarchs recommending change now, where their predecessors in similar situations d id not? Did the latter put themselves, the faithful, and the broader public in constant danger?
The H1N1 pandemic is of particular significance and relevancy today: only 10 years ago did the world experience a somewhat similar challenge, but without the hysteria that is fueled by the ascendancy of social media and the associated echo chamber that it often produces. Tellingly, there was no major outcry then to change the communal spoon and in fact many hierarchs issued statements reinforcing the traditional Orthodox practice.
Another question that arises is are priests in constant danger since they always consume the remaining consecrated elements following every Divine Liturgy? Should not Orthodox priests be constantly sick and infected? Is this the case? A simple examination of one's local parish priest will reveal the answer to be a credible and convincing no . Further, lay people who commune frequently or even semi-frequently – especially infants and those with compromised immune systems such as the elderly – should regularly fall sick as a result, particularly during great feasts when hundreds or thousands commune from the same holy chalice, as well as during the annual flu season. Again , however, this is demonstrably not the case, highlighting once more the Church's lived-experience with a common spoon.
So then who is proposing and propagating this change and more importantly why? While the motives may not be clear, one hypothesis is the desire to appear modern, innovative, and in the social media spotlight; but hastily responding to fads is usually not the prudent long term approach. Lay and clergy leaders alike should refrain from seeking popular acceptance and advocating for certain policies to be seen by men.
“For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12:43).
Some argue the communal spoon keeps people away from approaching Holy Communion with the fear of God, faith, and love . This, though, is a straw man argument, because even among those who advocate for change concede that disease cannot be transmitted through the common spoon, but since people fear that it could, the change is justified. If, however, every fear and concern is cause for change, we will begin the long descent into fragmentation, disunity, and chaos.
Doubting is normal, we are human after all. Did not one of Christ's disciples, the Apostle Thomas, doubt His Resurrection, before confessing “My Lord and my God!” Do we not read in the Gospel of Matthew that, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41)? The doubt of the faithful, the fear they have, actually speaks to a larger, more fundamental problem: a lack of knowledge of the faith among believers. The process to develop and implement extensive catechism to educate the faithful about the Orthodox faith including the sacredness of Holy Communion requires significant effort. It is a long term process and does not lend itself to instant outcomes or popular media headlines. It is the time-consuming, but necessary work of both pastors and individual Christian families to strengthen their faith and safeguard the Church like the Fathers and Mothers did – often with their own lives – in the past.
 Another challenge that has confronted the Church on this issue is the ad-hoc and often unilateral approaches and pronouncements absent any semblance of a pan-Orthodox approach. It is not a little ironic that we Orthodox, who often criticize the Pope of Rome for unilaterally enacting reforms, are seeing individual hierarchs trying to implement similar changes with regards to Holy Communion. As a result, the faithful – many of whom are rightly scandalized – are seeing different opinions and witnessing conflicting advice, which leads to an important question: who is right and who is wrong? These decisions cannot be made at the whim of each metropolitan or archbishop. The current challenges of intra-Orthodox unity are considerable enough without the need to introduce inconsistencies in the sacramental life of the Church, which has the Eucharist at its centre.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the First Throne of Orthodoxy, sent a letter to all of the primates of the autocephalous churches requesting feedback on this issue. Instead of unconsidered and reflex reactions, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew exemplified the mature and judicious ecclesiastical phronema (mindset) unique to the Phanar . His All-Holiness wrote the following discerning commentary to his fourteen brother primates:
We have obeyed the exhortations of the health and political authorities, and as is natural, we obey, to the point, however, where the essence and the center of our faith is not touched. The condescension of the Church goes to the cross, but nevertheless it refuses to descend from it by obeying the magistrates and authorities of this world when the mystery of the mysteries of her life, the divine Eucharist, is being questioned.
To this point, I have seen no government legislation in any country that has legally mandated changes to Orthodox liturgical practices (note: recommended guidelines are just that, guidelines – they are not laws). It should be noted that legal protections including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms here in Canada records as its first “Fundamental Freedom” that of conscience and religion ; and, in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance for communities of faith specifically addresses that any directives are “subject to the protections of the First Amendment,” which guarantees the free exercise of religion.
If governments are not legislating change, then it is worth re-asking who is proposing this reform and why. The importance of Church unity, which is epitomized by the Common Cup of the Eucharistic offering, should not be threatened by rash pastoral judgment.
As we commemorate the four-year anniversary of the Holy and Great Council of Crete, let us highlight the following: the first formal step towards the Council began with a pan-Orthodox conference held in 1961 on the Greek island of Rhodes (although the first preparatory step took place with a congress in Constantinople in 1923). Since then many pre- synodal and pan-Orthodox conferences, including a number of synaxis of primates, were held; in fact, in the more than half-century since Rhodes, dozens of agenda items and sub-themes were proposed and discussed by all local Orthodox churches. There is no record that I could locate to indicate that the issue of a common communal spoon was raised by any local church or by any individual hierarch – ever. Given that there were both national or regional and even international pandemics during this time, is it not instructive that the issue of Holy Communion was never raised? Pastoral discussions try to balance between akribeia and oikonomia in order to avoid binding heavy burdens on the faithful that are hard to bear (cf. Mt 23:4); it is therefore worthwhile to examine what the Council in Crete – the most recent authoritative pan-Orthodox declaration – said about the Eucharist and compare just two representative samples from the official Council documents with the speech of some today (emphasis in bold added):
According to St. Cyril, Christ is our “common person” through the recapitulation in his own humanity of the entire human race, “for we were all in Christ, and the common person of humanity comes to life again in him” ( Commentary on the Gospel of John , XI, PG 73. 157-161), and hence also he is the sole source of man's sanctification in the Holy Spirit. In this spirit, holiness is man's participation both in the sacrament of the Church and also in her sacred mysteries, with the holy Eucharist at the center, which is “a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to God” (cf. Rom 12.1). “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.' But rather, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8.35-37). The saints embody the eschatological identity of the Church as an eternal doxology before the earthly and heavenly Throne of the King of Glory (Ps 23.7), providing an image of the Kingdom of God.
The tradition of the Apostles and Fathers – following the words of the Lord, the founder of the Church, who at the Last Supper with his disciples, instituted the sacrament of the holy Eucharist – highlighted the Church's characteristic as the “body of Christ” (Matt 25, 26; Mark 14.22; Luke 22.19; 1 Cor 10.16-17; 11.23-29), and always connected this with the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son and Word of God from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. In this spirit, emphasis was always placed on the indissoluble relation both between the entire mystery of the divine Economy in Christ and the mystery of the Church, and also between the mystery of the Church and the mystery of the holy Eucharist, which is continually confirmed in the sacramental life of the Church through the operation of the Holy Spirit.
The issue is a matter of faith; most people understand this and have no reservations to receive Holy Communion with a common spoon. The priest, holding the Holy Chalice, invites parishioners to approach not with fear, as some are preoccupied with today, but with the fear of God . This may be a stumbling block for some and that is not unreasonable. But instead of having a minority of hierarchs attempting to change things for a minority of individuals, Church leadership should see this challenge, and the pandemic more broadly, as a magnificent opportunity to glorify and preach Christ crucified (cf. 1Co 1:22). The same Christ who spat on the ground and took (dirty) clay to anoint and restore the sight of the man born without eyes. Hierarchs of the Church should leverage the public health-driven closure of society to demonstrate to the faithful the importance and indispensability of the Church, of the spiritual life, of communion with God. In the wise words from the Paschal Encyclical of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew :
The present pandemic of the novel coronavirus has demonstrated how fragile we are as human beings, how easily we are dominated by fear and despondency, how frail our knowledge and self-confidence appear…
This communion with God, this offering of the Offerer , is given to us freely as His gift and we receive it, without reservation, as the Body of Christ, together becoming one and knowing it is the medicine of eternal life from which we need no protection. Christ called us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (cf. Mt 513:14). The Church exists to raise people up; Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, came so that we may have life and have it abundantly (cf. Jn 10:10) and we experience a foretaste of this when we prepare and use our freedom to partake in the holy Eucharistic offering through the Common Cup (and spoon).
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