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Later in the same book the following is attributed to Patriarch Michael of Constantinople (1143-1146) in his Report to the Emperor:

"According to holy tradition and teaching, the Presanctified Breads are consecrated on each of the Sundays of the holy days which we devote to the Fast. From the Holy Breads consecrated in this way, which are perfect, life-creating and filled with every divine grace, a quantity determined by need and circumstances is set aside. To these Breads, which are recognized as and truly are the very life-creating Body of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, not a drop of the Divine Blood is added; they are set aside without any sprinkling with the Holy Blood. And each day of the fast, when full Liturgy is not celebrated, they are transferred from the chapel of the prothesis to the altar table in the sanctuary. No sacramental or consecratory prayers are said over them; the priest merely prays that he be made worthy of being a partaker of the Holy Mysteries set forth. Just before Holy communion takes place, the deacons touch the holy cups standing there and direct the priest not to "Fill, master" as at the full Liturgy, but to "Bless, master." When the priest replies, "Blessed is our God, always...," the Holy Bread which had been presanctified and made perfect earlier is placed into the Mystical Cup, and the wine contained in it is transformed into the Holy Blood of our Lord and is recognized as having been changed."

It is clear the original teaching was the wine is consecrated by means of union with un-intincted Holy Body. Given that teaching it is clear communion of the clergy would procede as normal.

I am sure the Latins and Latin schooled Byzantine clergy who published the Liturgicons down to this time could not imagine a consecration without the Words of Institution nor allow the clergy to commune as at a full Liturgy.

I presume that the parenthetical statement is not what was intended. What was? What specifically did Trent say about the Presanctified liturgy that is an issue here?

Great post!

Thank you Fr. Deacon.

Apart from the presumed appraisal of theological schools and movements, what is the current teaching (if any) of the Catholic and Orthodox on " the Holy Bread which had been presanctified and made perfect earlier is placed into the Mystical Cup, and the wine contained in it is transformed into the Holy Blood of our Lord and is recognized as having been changed."

But the faithful do communicate just as at the Divine Liturgy in the Mohylian Sluzhebnik. I don't always see a de facto scholastic boogeyman in St. Peter, especially with something the Church hasn't really been specific about. In his Liturgikon St. Peter instructs that the communion of the clergy should follow the usual order of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Just this inconsistency between his Liturgikon and Euchologion should give pause with regards to any presumptive judgement of St. Peter's intent.

There are two essential historical facts regarding the development of the Presanctified, as agreed to by Uspensky himself, namely that it arose from self-communion and that the self-communion was only made of the Holy Bread exclusively sometime during the Roman persecutions and was nearly universal afterwards. Many other aspects in the development are subject to conjecture and this is within the realm of theologumena rather than dogma. St. Peter seems to have understood these basic concepts.

Regarding the idea that somehow the Greek order is "more pure" with regards to "latinizations", much of the early Greek references appear to rely heavily on the Latin Sacramentary of Pope Gregory.

The reality is that the historical sluzhebniky are all over the place on the Presanctified as the service itself is an accretion of various other services, including Vespers, a self-communion service, etc.

When the Lamb is reserved, it is dipped into the Precious Blood, and then dried before reserving. When Pearls of the Lamb are placed in the unconsecrated wine, the Blood used in the Lamb mixes with the wine, making it all Blood. The least recognizable portion of the Blood is enough to consecrate the whole cup, for the Blood mingles with the wine. Who can tell which are the molecules of Blood and which are molecules of wine?

The sinner Brendan

Rev Father,

It can be established that not all traditions within the Byzantine rite use intinction of the reserved Body prior to reservation.

Further, not all who do intinct for reservation do so by immersion.

Logically, contact consecration when such intinction is done is almost irrefutable; without it, one must rely upon the wholeness of a single species of the Eucharist (itself a dogma for Catholics) for contact consecration.

In any case, it is best to err on the side of caution, and treat the wine in the chalice as if it were, even if uncertain, consecrated.

I was saying that all the wine was changed into Blood. As far as some Byzantine Christians not doing it the way that I described, well, there are always variations from one group to another. I was describing what I was taught

It's precisely because some don't intinct the body that the issue of contact consecration is an issue...

Dear Father Brendan,

If you jump back to message 343823 in this thread, the instructions there from several sources are not to touch the Lambs intended for the Presanctifieds later in the week with the consecrated Blood.

Of course, your milage may indeed vary, as you say, depending what you have been shown and taught as a young priest.

This is not the same practice as when reserving the Holy Gifts in the tabernacle for communion of the sick. In that instance every single particle of the Bread is intincted with a tiny amount of the precious Blood and all the particles are carefully dried before being placed in the tabernacle.

Again, this is how I was taught. I realize that practices vary, so I am not going to get tied up in a knot about whether the Lamb is intincted or not when preparing a Lamb for Presanctified. My original understanding is that the wine is not consecrated until the portion of the Lamb (whether with or without the Blood) is placed into the chalice at the Fraction. As there is no disagreement with anyone here about that, I can breathe.

This was my question: how can the wine be consecrated in the Pre-sanctified Liturgy if the words of institution and epiklesis were not said? Our Communion prayer states that we are receiving the most pure Body and precious Blood because the bread (and wine if consecrated) becomes both the Body and Blood--or don't Eastern Christians subscribe to this theology? Don't Eastern Christians mix the consecrated bread with wine because the consecrated bread has dried out and would be difficult to consume otherwise? This is not the same as mixing consecrated and unconsecrated wine.

You may be interested in the fact that the Holy See (of Rome) has approved for liturgical usage (in the Chaldean Catholic Church) the very ancient Anaphora of Addai and Mari, the text of which DOES NOT contain explicit, traditional words of consecration.

cf. the article by Fr. Robert Taft, SJ in the spring 2004 edition of the Eastern Churches Journal, in which he explains this topic in great detail.

Dr. Henry P--There is the teaching in some places of "contact consecration", that is, that in the Presanctified Liturgy, since a particle of the Lamb dyed with the Precious Blood is placed in the Chalice, the Precious Blood reverts to liquid form, and between the two, the entire contents of the Chalice is thereby consecrated.

But since Orthodoxy teaches the doctrine of Concomitance as well (why else would infants receive only the Precious Blood?) this is ultimately a non-issue.

sielos ilgesys--Actually, if you go to www.kaldu.org, you will see that the Chaldean Catholic Church indeed has the Words of Institution in her recension of Ss. Addai and Mari, and they must be said.

However, CDF, headed at that time by Cardinal Ratzinger, said that the Assyrian Church of the East in her celebration of this liturgy indeed do confect the Eucharist, even without the Words of Institution, and Catholic faithful (under certain pastoral situations where a priest of one church must minister to faithful of both churches) may receive the Eucharist from an ACoE priest.

Your Grace,

Consecration in the Anaphora of Addai & Mari

Daniel J. Castellano (2007)

Extract:

"The doctrinal question before the Pontifical Council is whether the incoherent verbal form of the anaphora's Institution Narrative retains the substance of the sacrament. The Council decides that the "the words of the Institution are not absent in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, but explicitly mentioned in a dispersed way, from the beginning to the end, in the most important passages of the Anaphora." [Emphasis added.] Thus the Council upholds the traditional requirement that the words of Institution must be explicitly present in a valid Eucharistic Prayer. The oddity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari is that these words are dispersed throughout the liturgy, but are nonetheless explicitly present."

_____________________

"In 2001, seven years after the Vatican's common declaration of faith with the (formerly Nestorian) Assyrian Church of the East, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity issued its Guidelines for admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, in order to improve relations between Catholics and schismatics of the Chaldean rite. This document is most noted for its surprising affrimation of the sacramental validity of the Assyrian anaphora of Addai and Mari, a Eucharistic Prayer that does not literally recount the words of Christ at the Last Supper. The product of years of careful analysis, this declaration has been widely misinterpreted, though understandably, as denying the Church's millennial doctrine that the words of Christ spoken by the priest are the form of the sacrament that effects transubstantiation.

"To correct such misinterpretations, and to appreciate the real value of this document, we need only examine the Pontifical Council's words more carefully, in light of what is known about the anaphora in question. First of all, the Council does not say that the anaphora lacks an Institution Narrative, only that it lacks a "coherent Institution Narrative". The Council acknowledges that scholars are uncertain whether the Anaphora of Addai and Mari originally contained a more coherent Institution Narrative. We will examine this question ourselves later, but the Council does not presume to decide this intractable historical question. "The validity of the Eucharist celebrated with the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, therefore, should not be based on historical but on doctrinal arguments."

"Far from setting aside the Church's traditional doctrine, the Pontifical Council explicitly cites the Council of Florence: "The form of this sacrament are the words of the Saviour with which he effected this sacrament. A priest speaking in the person of Christ effects this sacrament. For, in virtue of those words, the substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ and the substance of wine into his blood." This solemn definition by the Council of Florence does not preclude variations in the specific wording of the Institution, as should be evident from the fact that such variations exist among valid orthodox rites, even to the extent of recounting the Institution in the third person. While the Church has no power to change the substance of the sacraments, "the Church does have the power to determine their concrete shaping, regarding both their sacramental sign (materia) and their words of administration (forma)," assuming such changes do not alter the substance of the sacrament.

"The doctrinal question before the Pontifical Council is whether the incoherent verbal form of the anaphora's Institution Narrative retains the substance of the sacrament. The Council decides that the "the words of the Institution are not absent in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, but explicitly mentioned in a dispersed way, from the beginning to the end, in the most important passages of the Anaphora." [Emphasis added.] Thus the Council upholds the traditional requirement that the words of Institution must be explicitly present in a valid Eucharistic Prayer. The oddity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari is that these words are dispersed throughout the liturgy, but are nonetheless explicitly present."

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