Holy Mysteries (Sacraments)
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EssentialHoly Mysteries (Sacraments)Holy Eucharist (Communion)The Mystery of Christ’s Body and Blood, the centre of the Church’s life, and in the Orthodox understanding not a symbol of Christ but Christ: the bread and wine offered are changed by the Holy Spirit at the epiclesis into His true Body and Blood. The Church has generally declined to define how; the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 used the word metousiosis, and the older and commoner word is simply change. The bread is leavened, as it always has been in the East, and warm water is poured into the chalice before communion. The faithful, infants included, receive the Body and Blood together from a spoon, having fasted from the night before and prepared by prayer and, according to local practice, confession. How often to receive has been argued in every age, and the saints have usually argued for more often.EssentialHoly Mysteries (Sacraments)Holy BaptismBurial with Christ and rising with Him, in water: the Mystery by which a person is born into the Church. The Orthodox rite begins with exorcisms; the candidate, or the godparent for a child, faces west to renounce Satan and blows and spits against him, then faces east to unite with Christ and says the Creed. The water is blessed, the candidate anointed with oil, and immersed three times in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There follow at once the white garment, the cross, chrismation, and first communion, and a few locks of hair are cut as a first offering. Infants are baptised and communed as members of the Church in full. The Creed confesses one baptism for the remission of sins, and converts from other churches are received by baptism or, by economy, by chrismation or by confession of faith, as local practice decides.ImportantHoly Mysteries (Sacraments)Holy Chrismation (Confirmation)The anointing that follows baptism at once, with the words the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, on the forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, breast, hands and feet: the personal Pentecost of every Christian. The West separated it from baptism and delayed it to adolescence as confirmation; the East has kept it one rite with baptism, so an infant is baptised, chrismated and communed on the same day. The chrism itself, the myron, is consecrated by the patriarch of a church - in Constantinople on Holy Thursday, and sent from there to many of the churches - from oil and dozens of aromatics, so that every Christian is anointed with oil that binds them to the whole Church. Chrismation is also how many converts are received.ImportantHoly Mysteries (Sacraments)Holy Confession (Repentance)The Mystery of repentance, in which sins committed after baptism are confessed and forgiven. The penitent stands before an icon of Christ, often with the priest beside rather than facing them, and the Slavonic rite makes the priest say plainly that Christ stands here invisibly receiving the confession and that he is only a witness. At the end the priest lays his stole over the penitent’s head and reads the prayer of absolution. The Orthodox understanding is medical rather than judicial: the priest is a physician and confession is treatment, which is why it is so often joined to the counsel of a spiritual father. In the early Church sins were confessed publicly; private confession grew out of the monasteries.ImportantHoly Mysteries (Sacraments)Holy Matrimony (Marriage)The Mystery of a man and a woman made one in Christ, whose centre is not an exchange of vows - the Orthodox rite has none - but the crowning. The priest sets crowns on the heads of the bride and groom, crowns of a small kingdom and crowns of martyrs, because a marriage is a life laid down for another. They drink from a common cup and are led three times round the table while the Church sings the hymns of the martyrs. St Paul calls marriage a great mystery concerning Christ and the Church. The Orthodox Church allows a second and a third marriage by economy, after a divorce or a death, with a service of a penitential character, and forbids a fourth. Mixed marriages with other Christians are permitted; marriage outside Christianity is not blessed.ImportantHoly Mysteries (Sacraments)Holy Orders (Ordination)The Mystery by which the Church sets apart its deacons, priests and bishops, by the laying on of hands of a bishop during the Divine Liturgy, each at the point of the service that belongs to his order. A bishop is ordained by several bishops, which is what apostolic succession means in practice: not a private line of descent but the recognition of a whole college. Readers and subdeacons are appointed outside the altar. Married men may be ordained deacon or priest, but a man may not marry after ordination, and since the Quinisext Council bishops have been chosen from the celibate, in practice monks. At each ordination the bishop proclaims Axios, he is worthy, and the clergy and the choir repeat it. The ancient order of deaconesses, to which St Olympias belonged, fell out of use in the Middle Ages.Holy Mysteries (Sacraments)Holy Unction (Anointing of the Sick)The anointing of the sick, for the healing of soul and body and the forgiveness of sins, as St James tells the elders of the Church to do. The full rite is served by seven priests, with seven readings from the Epistles and seven from the Gospels, seven prayers and seven anointings; in practice fewer priests often serve it. It is not only for the dying, as the West came to use it: in the Orthodox Church it is given to anyone who is sick, and on the evening of Holy Wednesday it is offered to the whole congregation as a preparation for Pascha, since all are sick. The prayers name the unmercenary physician saints, St Panteleimon among them.