www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology What type of wine should be used

I was under the impression that red wine was suppose to be use in the divine liturgy.

On several occasions in a Roman Catholic church the wine used was either white or rosa.

In a Byzantine church the wine might have been red with a great deal of water or it was a rosa

Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind I remember learning it should be red.

Red wine is preferable (I suggest Mavrodaphne of Patras), but since some people (including priests and deacons) find that red wine gives them severe headaches, white wine is permissible.

Fr. Serge

It should be red. There are good commercial wines (Mavrodaphne, Kagor, Nama, Commandaria) that are appropriate, and there are several sacramental wineries such as Mont La Salle that sell decent domestic altar wines.

Basically the wine should be "pure" meaning from the grape, and fortification by distilled alcohol not of the grape is not allowed.

I would agree with our brothers, it should be red which conveys more the idea of the blood of Christ.

I once read that it could also reflect the experience of a persons life and the liturgy.
Sweet at feasts, regular wine for the ordinariness of life, and something more harsh for penitential seasons.

Stephanos I

Pleading for your forgiveness for my bad spelling since learning so many foreign languages it has gone out the window.

As a purely practical matter my Lutheran parish uses white wine on Sundays and Festivals when the vestments are white because stains are more readily removed. Red is used with any dark vestments--about 3/4 of the time.

Slava Isusu Khrestu

I have a question and it comes from the use of wine in the Divine Liturgy.

Does the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
or the Byzantine Catholic Church
or the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
or the Greek Orthodox church
or the ACRO church
accommodate those who can not receive the Precious Blood because that person is an alcoholic?

I ask for I have experienced a situation that still, to this day, (Lord forgive me), has made me bitter and angers me.

Truly unworthy
Kolya

Slava Isusu Khrestu

I must apologize for allowing my anger to come through just a few seconds ago.

Sorry

Kolya

Any Catholic priest if approached before hand should be willing to reserve a particle of the Holy Gifts from the chalice for such people. If not I would contact your bishop.

Reserving a part of the Holy Gifts from the Chalice would not help. Instead, it is best to reserve a Particle of the Body of the Lord before adding the rest of the Lamb to the Chalice. The reserved Particle may then be used unobtrusively to communicate the alcoholic parishioners.

This does require asking the Priest in advance.

Fr. Serge

In the Melkite tradition we use intinction so that the Body of Christ is not immersed in the Precious Blood until the communicant is ready to receive -- thus it is always possible to ask that the communicant receive just the bread.

With regard to the original question, the Latin Rite has no directives on the color of the wine, it may be either red or white provided it is pure wine. In the Eastern tradition is should be red because of the symbolism, but this is not mandatory.

Fr. Deacon Ed

Having served as an altar server on and of for several years in both Tridentine and Novus Ordo Masses, I have never encountered white wine being used in the Mass. I know that white wine used to be favored prior to the Council (yes, one of the pre-Conciliar practices that I hope will disappear), but I didn't suspect that it is still widely used today.

I have certainly been aware of white wine being used in many parishes.

Another use has been in Schools

There is nothing to indicate that one type of wine was preferred over another in the early Church. Indeed, since the wine was brought to the church by the people and selected for liturgical use by the deacons before the liturgy, the wine used was what was locally available. Similarly, whether the wine was mixed with water, how much water was used, and whether hot water was added separately simply mirrored regional customs.

The admixture of water, or not, came to be considered expressive of theological differences.

Something interesting from Fr John H Erickson, Dean of Saint Vladimir's Seminary

http://www.svots.edu/Faculty/John-Erickson/articles/beyond-dialogue.html/

"...... Particularly instructive are the ways in which certain distinctive Armenian liturgical practices, such as the use of azymes (unleavened bread) and a chalice unmixed with water in the eucharist, come to be linked to Christological doctrine. The origins of these practices are unknown, but they certainly antedate any division of the churches. By late sixth century, however, they were becoming symbols of Armenian identity vis-a-vis the Greeks, who used leavened bread and wine mixed with warm water in the eucharist.

"Refusing an invitation from Emperor Maurice to come to Constantinople to discuss reunion, Catholicos Movses II in 591 declared: “I will not cross the River Azat nor will I eat the baked bread of the Greeks or drink their hot water.” [9]

"By the late seventh century these distinctive liturgical practices, already symbols of national identity, have become even more potent symbols of Christological doctrine. Reflecting the aphthartodocetism of Julian of Halicarnassus, which was then in the ascendency in the Armenian Church, Catholicos Sahak III (d. 703) writes: “Now we profess the body of Christ [to be] incorrupt and all-powerful always and constantly from [the moment of] the union of the Logos. This is why we take azymes [unleavened bread] for the bread of holiness with which we offer the salvific sacrifice, which signifies incorruptibility.” [10] Then, after a barrage of typological and moral arguments supporting the use of unleavened bread, Sahak goes on in like manner to associate the unmixed chalice, free from the adulteration of added water, with the incorruptible blood of Christ.

"The Byzantine Church quickly enough responded in kind. The Synod in Trullo (691-92) almost certainly had Sahak’s treatise in mind when it decreed that any bishop or presbyter who does not mix water with the wine in the eucharist is to be deposed, on the grounds that he thus “proclaims the mystery incompletely and tampers with tradition” (canon 32). [11] Very possibly Trullo also had Armenian liturgical practice in mind when it decreed “Let no man eat the unleavened bread of the Jews...” (canon 11). In any case, in subsequent polemical literature the issue of the bread and wine of the eucharist figures prominently, frequently to the exclusion of deeper theological reflection.

"Thus, despite their common rejection of Chalcedon and the generally Severan orientation of their shared Christology, the Armenian and Syrian churches in the Middle Ages sometimes attacked each other precisely because of such liturgical differences. So also, as schism yawned between the Byzantine and Latin churches in the eleventh century, Byzantine polemicists transferred their anti-azyme arguments from the Armenians to the Latins, notwithstanding the latters’ manifestly Chalcedonian Christology. Use of leavened bread and mingled wine, or conversely of unleavened bread and pure wine, immediately marked a community as either heretic or orthodox, no matter what Christological doctrine the community in question actually held!"

It might be of interest that the comingled Chalice was one of "useages" that set Anglican Priest John Wesley (founder of the Methodist movement) at odds with many of his contemporaries while a student at Oxford.

The other "useage" germain to this forum was the inclusion of an epiclesis in the Eucharistic canon.