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At most Roman Catholic parishes, daily Mass is celebrated, sometimes more than once a day (depending on the traffic of the parish). Roman Catholics, in general, are encouraged to attend daily Mass, if possible, and to likewise communicate daily, if possible. Today, in fact, Roman Catholics are permitted to communicate twice daily if they so desire.

My observation with respect to the Eastern churches (and I grant that my observations are only limited to the area in which I live), whether Catholic or Orthodox, is that the Eucharistic liturgy is not a daily event, but something which occurs on Sundays and holy days, only.

What lies behind this difference? Is the idea of a daily Eucharist actually antithetical to the liturgical understanding of Eastern Churches, or is the absence of a daily liturgy merely a matter of practicality based upon smaller numbers of worshippers?

In the Eastern churches, there is a tradition of daily Eucharist in the settings of the monasteries. However, because priests (who were generally married) were traditionally expected to abstain from sexual relations prior to celebrating the Eucharist, a daily celebration of the Eucharist was not practical in parish settings, where pastors have historically been married priests. Of course, theological explanations arise as well. For example, Wednesdays and Fridays are fasting days, so how can you celebrate the Eucharistic feast on a day of fasting?

Ah. Well, that all makes sense. However...


I wonder why that should be so.

Brother RI, I'm sure there are practical reasons ;), as well as theological. My only wild guess (I'm sure those more capable, will give the theological, canonical reason(s)) is like when we fast, traditionally, from midnight until communion: to prepare our body and souls for service, and hunger for the body, and blood of Christ, who gives us nourishment the world can't give. Again, this is my wild guess.

Well, this is true, but the trouble with daily Divine Liturgies in the Eastern Church is that most of them are held when people are either at work, or on the road to work, which is rather inconvenient. Just sad they don't at least have Evening Vespers or Divine Liturgies for those that want to go during the week at the time when people are home and finished with work and dinner and news, etc... I know the Latin Church I live down the street from has evening Masses at 7 PM every night, as well as two morning Masses at 7 AM and 8:30 AM. I only wish more Eastern Churches would have caught onto the need for Evening Liturgies and/or Vespers services.

It may be of interest that there is one Lutheran church, First Lutheran on Grant Street in downtown Pittsburgh which celebrates the Eucharist every day except Good Friday.

One of the liberties of the Lutheran liturgy is that it is permisable to truncate the liturgy on weekdays to this:

Apostolic Greeting
Prayer of the Day (Collect)
Gospel
Sermon
Prayers
Exchange of Peace
Eucharistic Prayer (Hippolytan Canon--no Preface or Sanctus)
Communion
Post-Communion Prayer
Benediction
Dismissal

This can be accomplished in well under half an hour. In the case of First, Pittsburgh, this allows for a celebration at 12:15 every weekday which can accomodate the downtown workers' lunch hour.

All of the essentials are present in the liturgy as outlined above. However, as I have sometimes mentioned in other discussions and PM, this tendency toward minimalism is one of Lutheranism's Achilles' heels. We serve up a mere appetizer compared with the feast of the East.

Actually, in the Eastern tradition, the married laity are also supposed to abstain from sexual relations the day prior to receiving Eucharist.

Father Robert Taft addresses this issue in Robert F. Taft, “The Frequency of the Eucharist throughout History,” in Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding, 2nd ed (published, I believe, by the Pontifical Oriental Institute as an academic book and therefore not necessarily easy to find or easy to read).

I don't have this book with me now, however, I will address the basic points (both from that book and from others) as I recall:

Historical:

Though daily eucharist is seen in some local churches in the pre-constantinian era, it was not universal. Moreover, in the era from Constantine to the final disintegration of antique Medditeranean culture in the 800s, the records clearly show that most dioceses celebrated the eucharist generally 2-4 times per week (the celebrant was the bishop, the diocese was generally a Roman city. Rome and Constantinople celebrated 2-4 times a week, based on whatever day major local saints' feasts fell on as well as Sunday). As an aside this linkage to major feasts is why, as far as I understand in the Byzantine church's service books, major feasts implicitly have the Divine Liturgy assigned in them, whereas it's presented as an option for lesser feasts.

Instead of daily Eucharist, the evidence is quite clear that daily celebrations were of Matins and Vespers, and that there were even canonical obligations for daily attendance (and much fewer canons regarding attendance at the Eucharistic celebration, though to be fair if you're going to Matins you're also going to Mass).

Moreover, the eucharist as well as Matins and Vespers is celebrated by the people, prompted by various members of the clergy (psalmist, readers) and presided over/led by by a priest/bishop who is assisted by other clergy (deacons/subdeacons/acolytes, though the formers' function is not liturgical). So, in principle, the church's services are a big deal and

Regular daily celebrations of the Eucharist, individual priests celebrating their own eucharist in the same building, and reduction of the eucharist to something that only needs a priest and an assistant is a product of Middle Age Western Europe. The inevitable result of this is viewing the priest as a producer of holy things for the faithful or the scheduling of multiple daily masses to fit a broad range of schedules (the latter being what goes on in the modern US Latin Catholic diocese). The shortening of the Mass to make it comparatively easy to celebrate as well as the reduction of the Liturgy of the Hours to essentially a private devotion are outgrowths of this that reinforce this trend.

In the Byzantine churches, the celebration of the Eucharist continues to be linked with the celebration of Matins, Vespers, and also requires a fairly lengthy preparation liturgy. Also, there are canonical obligations to pray in preparation and fast from food (and, as mentioned, sexual relations).

So, bottom, line on this, the tradition of the Byzantine church retains the ostensibly earlier linkage between the Eucharist and daily morning and evening prayer, retains longer services which require not just the priest but also a cantor and laypeople. This makes daily services much more complicated than in Latin Catholicism.

Pastoral:

All the above is well and good, but at the parish level we must pastorally fit things to what the people will bear and what the clergy can do.

In the Byzantine churches, again Vespers, Matins, and Liturgy ideally should be celebrated together as public gatherings and people should attend all of them. Liturgy without Vespers and Matins is liturgically irregular. Also, several laypeople, at least one reader/cantor and a priest at minimum should celebrate according to the current service books, and ideally deacons, subdeacons, acolytes, and many more readers/people . The priest is also required to conduct the preparation liturgy.

All this requires at least 2-3 people commit 2-3 hours per day from a. Some churches (e..g. the Basilica of Saint Demitrius in Thessalonica) are in the midst of an urban area and have enough priests and cantors who live in easy walking distance to have daily Vespers, Matins and Liturgy, with the clergy taking turns in daily obligated attendance (i.e. Father John and Cantor James are required to attend Monday, Father George and Cantor Stephen on Tuesday...with the other folks coming in as their schedules can bear). Since most of the cantors work and the priests have numerous pastoral duties, I'd imagine their roster has at least 1-2 dozen people. Most monasteries also have the full range of unabbreviated services (5 hours per day, with around 7-8 on major feasts) which are integral to the monastic life. A monastery needs to have at least 7-9 people to have even a basic regular daily liturgical service, the smaller sketes and hermits get by with less.

All this is impossible in the generally small Byzatine parishes in the US, which usually have 1-2 priests and 3-4 people who are qualified to cantor, and who often need to drive considerable distances to get to church (to say nothing of navigating traffic in major urban areas). In such a situation, daily services are impossible.

I'd also note that in urban US Latin Catholic churches, even regular daily mass requires, over the course of a year, shifts of at least 2-3 priests as well as about 3-4 laypeople who live nearby or work at the parish to do sacristan duties. This daily liturgical life generally lacks music, to say nothing of public celebration of morning and evening prayer, which is little known in Latin Catholicism. Even parishes in the tradition which IMO has the easiest-to-implement daily services, the Anglican Book of Common prayer, rarely has daily evensong and morning prayer these days.

Anyway, this is far more than you asked for, but our lack of daily services has to do with the principles and rhythms of the Byzantine liturgical life, as well as the fairly small presence our tradition has in the US.

RI:

Christ is in our midst!!

The Eucharistic fast is a fast from all appetites, food and drink being the most commonly remembered. But the appetite for physical relations is also one that ought to be fasted from when preparing for the Eucharist. The idea being that we should have only one appetite when we are focusing on the Lord: to love Him, desire Him, wait for Him with our whole being focused intently on that moment when He enters us with the whole of Who He is.

It's good to remember that the clergy have no special fasting requirements that aren't also shared by all of the laity. I chuckle as I write this because many of my fellow parishioners would probably not recognise the idea of even the one-hour fast at this date. There are those who must have a last-minute smoke on the way in and those who are having a donut and coffee in the parking lot just before--not to mention those who are giving their children a handful of something or other to keep them quiet until Holy Communion (and I mean those who are of an age that IMHO they don't need to be eating constantly).

I have a book that describes Latin Catholic practice as it was done around 1910. It would amaze people today. The quick sketch of it is that it parallels strict Orthodox practice closely.

Bob