My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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PREPARATION BEFORE RECEIVING HOLY COMMUNION
Our Holy Tradition offers the Orthodox Christian believer guidelines on how one is to spiritually prepare to receive Holy Communion. All Orthodox Christians should have a father confessor, whether be his/her parish priest or a monk-priest in one of our monasteries who will serve as his/her spiritual guide and counselor. The father confessor is the one who will guide the penitent Christian on what spiritual steps he/she needs to take in order to prepare for the reception of the Precious Body and Sacred Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To prepare to receive our Savior's Precious Body and Holy Blood the believer needs to first examine himself. This includes participating in the Mysterion (Sacrament) of Repentance/Confession the 'second baptism'. The believer confesses his or her sins believing that our Lord Jesus Christ is present and that He is the only One Who forgives sins. The Almighty God who awaits the return of the prodigal child to return to his true household.
Saint Paul reminds us, "But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's Body. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you and may sleep" (die) (1 Corinthians 11:26-29). To receive in an unworthy manner means coming to Him with hidden immorality (6:18-20). Failing to see the Gifts of God as the Holy things for the holy ones.
The purpose of the father confessor is to protect his spiritual child from approaching Holy Communion spiritually unprepared and therefore to bring "judgment to himself." The father confessor and/or spiritual father wants what is best for his spiritual child, in other words, to lead him or her to Lord of mercy and compassion. To reconcile his spiritual child to Christ our Savior. The father confessor does not ever judge the penitent for he is not a judge. There is only one judge, Jesus Christ. The spiritual father teaches his spiritual child, when approaching the Lord, to be totally honest and not to withhold anything from Him, knowing that He knows us from "our mother's womb". We have no secrets from our Creator and Redeemer.
The attitude of the father confessor toward his spiritual child is that of the loving Father in the Lord's Parable of the Prodigal Son. "In opening to us the door to the Kingdom of heaven, the Parables help us to love God and to know Him, to understand and believe His grace, mercy, and forgiveness, and to order our lives according to His Holy Word."
I am prayerfully optimistic that you are all familiar with the Prodigal Son. After the son squanders his living in the foreign land he finds himself alone and hungry. When he sees the reality of his situation he says, "I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your servants.
And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son..." (Luke 15:17-21). This is how we sinners truly repent. This is how we approach the Mysterion (Sacrament) of Repentance/Confession). It is with a genuine spirit of repentance, a feeling of unworthiness, and a profound sense of contrition that we approach our Savior Jesus Christ, His Sacred Body, and Precious Blood. Holy Communion is Christ! When we receive Holy Communion, we receive Christ our Lord. We become one with Him and with one another through Holy Communion.
Another way of preparing to receive Holy Communion is by prayer and fasting. When we speak of fasting it is natural for some people to think of abstaining only from certain kinds of foods. Indeed, our Church tradition teaches that on Wednesdays, Fridays, Nativity fast, Great Lent, Dekapentavgousto (fifteen days of August), Apostles Fast; are days and seasons of abstaining from foods such as meats, dairy products, oil, fish, fowl, eggs, cheese, etc. However, Saint John Chrysostom writes, not only to abstain from things that go into your mouth but more so from words that come out of your mouth, i.e., slander, gossip, ugly rumors, lies, and other. Saint Paul writes to the Romans, "Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts" (Romans 13:13-14).
"The experience of receiving the Lord within us should overwhelm us and lead us to the fear of God, to contrition and to tears. Saint Symeon the New Theologian says that we should not commune without shedding tears. Unfortunately, many Christians approach the Heavenly Banquet as they are, without the proper wedding garment. For the lack of preparation and total disregard of their host, they are tossed into the outer darkness." Let us not forget that 'we prepare with fasting before the Divine Liturgy so that we may feast with joy and thanksgiving at the marriage supper of the Lord..."
"...We must, therefore, have an awareness of what we receive, we must be conscious of our participation of the 'medicine of immortality' or else, it would mean, as Saint Symeon again points out, that 'the Living Water has passed through you as though a channel, because it did not find in you a cistern worthy to retain it. In reaching out for your part, while touching the untouchable Mysteries (Sacraments) and thus imagining that you eat, you continue to take nothing, to eat nothing, to have absolutely nothing.'"
The last words of Saint Cyril's lecture on the Holy Eucharist are, "Sever not yourselves from the Communion; deprive not yourselves, by the pollution of sins, of these Holy and Spiritual Mysteries. Only grave sins should keep us away from the Eucharistic Supper.
In order not to offer condemnation instead of life, the Orthodox Church excludes those who do not share her faith and have no other impediment. This was the practice of the Church since the beginning. That is how the Church Fathers interpreted the words of the Lord: "Do not give what is holy to the dogs". The Letter to the Hebrews states, 'We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat". (The Heavenly Banquet by Fr. Emmanuel Hatzidakis)
"With the fear of God, with faith and with love draw near!"
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" - Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God,
+Father George