www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology receive communion twice this weekend within 24 hours?

I know that the Latin Church allows this if a person fully participates, but I thought that the Eastern Church sort of likes to encourage the faithful to only receive the Eucharist one time per feast/liturgical day. (maybe I am wrong?).
Well, I see that many Orthodox Churches schedule Saturdays liturgy in the morning and then have a service that begins around midnight. I suppose in this way they are receiving on two different liturgical days?
Our Church has the Holy Saturday liturgy at 7 PM and then our Resurrection service is on Sunday morning. Would an Eastern minded Christian given this liturgical schedule then be encouraged to only receive at one of the two services since they are technically part of the same liturgical day, or is this getting legalistic, since they are two different liturgies/celebrations and therefore if that is when they are scheduled the person should receive Communion if in proper standing/grace to do so.
I also noticed that the Agape Matins comes after the Easter celebration in many Churches but I think in ours it is just before the Resurrection Sunday celebration.

In his excellent book "An Extraordinary Peace: St. Seraphim, Flame of Sarov" Archimandrite Lazarus (Moore)mentions that the saint recommended that one receive Holy Communion as often as possible. Anyway it seems to me that, all things being equal, frequent reception - with the suitable dispositions and having tried to fulfill the fasting/prayer requirements of our respective Churches, it would be a beneficial thing to do.

searching east:

Christ is in our midst!!

Keep in mind Who it is you are receiving into your being. If He offers to come into your heart and envelope you with His Love, why would you step back and tell Him it's okay, once was enough?

Communion--"coming into union"--is a building of relationship thing. Our Lord came here to nourish you. Can you tell Him to "backoff"? As our brother-poster notes, if you have kept the fasts and made preparation as best you can, why would you not approach when the call "In the fear of God, with faith, and love, draw near" sounds? It's Our Lord's invitation.

If every believer were not supposed to approach, why would the Church serve the Divine Liturgy? I think we get into a little of that heresy that says we are not worthy, so we should abstain. The real approach is to prepare often and to receive worthily--as worthily as we can, given human weakness--and let the Divine Saving Grace fill up that which is lacking.

The Divine Embrace knows we are imperfect. That's what He loves about us. And that's more than I can understand becaue there are times I don't really like myself all that much.

Bob

Thank you for mentioning this. For the past several days I've wondered what St Serafim might have thought about frequent communion since in his day most Russians went very infrequently (sometimes once a year from what I've read). This topic of frequent communion is still debated in Eastern Europe so it will be good for me to look up this book and see his opinion on the matter. Thank you, Cyril

Thanks for your answers. Though my question was not one of whether one should frequently receive (which I have no issue with) but whether Eastern Christians discourage receiving twice in one liturgical day, which for some reason I thought that they did. I know that it is more common for parishes to only offer one Sunday celebration and I thought it was largely because the whole community participate and be transformed together as much as it is possible.
But the West developed many services simply out of necessity. Even in the West where you are allowed to receive more than once for good reason, it is not encouraged that you go to, say, every Mass on a given Sunday. While each participation in the Liturgy and reception of the Eucharist may be beneficial, they too believe that receiving two times in one day is not giving you two times as much of Jesus or something like that. In any case, I am certainly no expert in things Eastern or Western for that matter. Just trying to keep straight what I have picked up in my head over the years.

But they are not the same liturgical day. The Holy Saturday Liturgy is considered Vesperal, that is it is the "evening" of Saturday (even though it's usually celebrated in the morning).
The Pascha Liturgy is after midnight, and after Matins of Sunday, therefore it is liturgically Sunday.

The Litugical day starts with Vespers so Saturday night Vespers is the first service of Sunday.