§ 172. Sacred Rites

The sacred rites, or sacred ministrations, comprise, as we have seen (§.134), the holy mysteries and, further, various forms of prayer. The holy mysteries derive from divine right, and the church, in the course of time, has only prescribed the manner in which these mysteries are to be performed. Prayers likewise derive from divine right.[1] Everyone may pray in his own way, but the church, in order to help her sons pray to God rightly and as they ought, and lest anything unorthodox creep into prayer, has adopted fixed prayers composed by various holy men, and has prescribed that only these prayers may be read. Without the approval of the church authority no prayers may be read, nor may any prayer-books be used that have not been issued with the blessing of that authority;[2] just as, without the permission of that authority—that is, of the diocesan bishop concerned—no new prayer may be introduced, nor any extraordinary church service held, nor a litany carried.[3] The central point of the whole liturgical life of the church is the Eucharist (εὐχαριστία).

I. The Eucharist is celebrated at the Liturgy, in a consecrated church, and only in necessity outside a church, but in any case upon an antimins consecrated by a bishop.[4] The right to celebrate the Eucharist belongs only to a bishop or a presbyter, and to no one else; and whoever celebrates it must strictly adhere to the prescribed rite, being liable to punishment if he departs from it in any respect.[5] It must be celebrated with leavened bread and wine,[6] and at a time from dawn to noon, except on certain days of the year, when the Liturgy is combined with Vespers.[7] The celebrant, when he serves the Liturgy, must unconditionally communicate,[8] and must serve it while fasting.[9]

Holy Communion is given to all members of the church who live piously and who have confessed their sins and repented. Priests are bound to encourage those of the faithful who hesitate to communicate, reminding them that everyone must commune at least once a year,[10] and this beginning from the seventh year of age.[11] It is forbidden to give communion to public and hardened sinners, likewise to those who express doubt about any dogma of the Orthodox faith;[12] and in case of doubt whether a sinner may be absolved and given communion, the priest is bound to turn to his bishop for the relevant instruction.[13] Sinners at the point of death, even if excommunicated from communion, must be communicated by the priest,[14] except when even at the hour of death they refuse to repent and be reconciled with the church.[15] But if a priest, through his own negligence, allows someone to die without communion, he is liable to canonical punishment.[16] To take any payment for communion is strictly forbidden to a priest, under threat of deposition, as for simony.[17]

Regarding the communion of the sick there are special canonical regulations. That every sick person, and especially one at the point of death, should be communicated, we have seen; but this can be only if the person concerned repents of his sins sincerely and consciously. Accordingly, one who is unconscious or comatose cannot be communicated;[18] still less can communion be given to one already dead.[19] The sick are usually communicated with the holy particles (the divine mysteries reserved for the sick), which are prepared on Great Thursday, as the day commemorating the institution of the Eucharist, though this may also be done at any other time. These holy particles are kept in a tabernacle, which must always stand upon the altar, and no one but a sacred person may touch that tabernacle.[20]

II. Communion may be received only after confession.[21] By virtue of the supreme power of the bishops to bind and to loose, the right to receive confession belongs to them ordinarily and directly;[22] but presbyters entrusted with pastoral service in the respective parishes may also do so by their authorization.[23] Parish priests exercise this as one of their ordinary duties, imposed on them by the very act of their appointment to the parish, without need of a special episcopal charter for it.[24] Such is the practice everywhere today, except in the Greek Church. In the Greek Church the people are confessed by priests specially appointed for the purpose from among the monastic clergy—hieromonks, who as such are called spiritual fathers (ὁ πνευματιχὸς πατῇρ)—and who receive from the competent bishop a special archiepiscopal charter for the purpose (ἐνταλτήριον).[25] How these spiritual fathers, and indeed all priests, must proceed in hearing confession is governed by precisely established canonical regulations, which each must strictly observe.[26]

They may not hear the confession of anyone who is not of the Orthodox faith.[27] Nor may they hear the confession of several persons together, but each person separately.[28] They must strictly guard the secret of confession, and a priest who reveals a sin that someone has confessed to him is liable to canonical punishment.[29] Every Christian is bound to confess, and this at least once a year;[30] likewise Christian children, beginning from the seventh year of age.[31] All clergy, too, are bound to come to confession. For their confession the church authority appoints, in every diocese, special confessors. In every deanery [protopresbyterate] there must be one general confessor for the clergy, chosen by common agreement of all the clergy of the deanery and confirmed by the diocesan bishop. In larger deaneries there may be two clergy confessors. The confessor is bound to submit to the bishop, every year, a report on the priests who have confessed.[32]

For the sins which the penitent confesses to the priest, the church has prescribed that he must undergo the corresponding penance (ἐπιτιμία). According to the teaching of Orthodox canon law, the penances imposed on sinners are not, in the strict sense, punishments (τιμωρία), but acts of contrition, spiritual remedies, until the sinner is entirely converted and cleansed from sin (§.151). A penance, then, is not some punishment which the sinner must undergo on earth in order thereby to satisfy the offended divine justice for his sins, but only a remedy against sin.[33] This purpose and character of the penance is most clearly shown by the 102nd canon of the Trullan Council, in which it is precisely set out how the respective penances are to be imposed on sinners for the sins committed. Such penances are: prayers, almsgiving, fasts, visiting holy places, prostrations, and the like—whatever is more fitting in the judgment of the confessor—or, finally, exclusion from Holy Communion for a longer or shorter time.[27] If a sinner confesses to a spiritual father some great sin for which the confessor does not know what penance to impose, he turns to his competent bishop for instruction, without of course mentioning the sinner’s name, for the sake of the secrecy of confession; just as the bishop has the power to lessen or increase a penance imposed by a confessor on some sinner, when that sinner, on this account, has recourse to the bishop.[34] One to whom communion has been forbidden by one confessor cannot be granted communion by another confessor before the appointed term of the prohibition has elapsed, except where the first confessor has died, or the sinner concerned is at the point of death and the confessor who imposed the prohibition cannot come in person—in which case any priest may absolve the sinner, even where the prohibition or excommunication from communion was imposed by a bishop.[35] But if it is proven before an episcopal court that someone was excommunicated by his confessor wrongfully or out of partiality, that court has the right, in such a case, to lift the imposed penance and to permit the excommunicated person to communicate.[36]