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Toward a Eucharistic Vision of Church, Marriage, Family and Sex Philip Toward a Eucharistic Vision of Church, Marriage, Family and Sex Philip LeMasters, Ph.D. Light & Life Publishing Company Minneapolis, Minnesota Dedicated to Kate and Annie Light & Life Publishing Company P.O. Box 26421 Minneapolis, MN 55426-0421 Copyright© 2004 Light and Life Publishing Company All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electron- ic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other- wise without the written permission of Light & Life Publishing Company. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. ISBN 1-880971-85-2 Table of Contents Foreword ................................................................................................ iv Preface .................................................................................................. viii Introduction ........................................................................................... ix Chapter One ............................................................................................1 The Eucharist in Contemporary Moral Theology Chapter Two ..........................................................................................11 The Eucharist and the Relationship Between Church and World Chapter Three .......................................................................................27 An Orthodox Understanding of the Relationship Between the Church and Eucharist Chapter Four .........................................................................................40 Toward a Eucharistic Understanding of Penitential Discipline Chapter Five ..........................................................................................52 Toward a Eucharistic Understanding of Marriage and Sex Chapter Six ............................................................................................79 An Orthodox Response to “Same-Sex Unions” Chapter Seven .......................................................................................91 The Place of Contraception in the Eucharistic Life End Notes .............................................................................................105 Foreword By its very essence Orthodox Christian life is “eucharistic.” We consume the Body of Christ in the sacrament in order to become the Body of Christ, the Church. “Holy Communion” – understood in the broader sense of celebration as well as consummation – is the most fundamental and significant action we can perform. On it are based, without exception, all other aspects of Christian life and activity. In the Eucharist, the faithful offer to God both the Holy Gifts and themselves. This is in response to His prior gift, His prior initiative. We first receive from His hand wheat and grapes as “fruit of the earth.” Then we transform them into bread and wine, which we offer back to God with thanksgiving (the meaning of the Greek term eucharistia). God receives these gifts and transforms them in return into a unique and sacred source of nourishment and communion with Himself. The simple Eucharistic ele- ments thus become, in Fr. Sergei Bulgakov’s words, “metaphysical food.” This mutual gift of offering is most eloquently expressed by the pivotal declaration of the Divine Liturgy or Eucharistic Service: “Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.” This implies not only that we return to God what He has already bestowed upon us. It signifies as well that our Eucharistic offering is made on behalf of all mankind. As we declare in the “Proskomedia” or Preparatory Service that begins the Divine Liturgy, we offer these gifts not only for ourselves but also “for the life of the world.” Because of this universal dimension, “on behalf of all and for all,” the Eucharist not only serves as the primary focus of our liturgical celebra- tion and as the indispensable nourishment for our spiritual growth. It also grounds every aspect of our Christian moral life. The Eucharist provides both the rationale and the means for assuming the ascetic struggle that leads to personal sanctification. It offers a vision of God as the unique Source of goodness, justice and righteousness (“God alone is good,” Jesus insists). And it makes possible a depth of communion with God that can transform every human relationship from one based on hostility or self- interest, to one that reflects God’s own compassion, mercy, and sacrificial love. iv Toward a Eucharistic Vision of Church, Marriage, Family, and Sex Philip LeMasters describes this book as an “apologetic” essay that aims to ground sex and marriage in the Church’s understanding of the Eucharist. In the present American social environment, marriage and sexu- ality seem nearly as irrelevant to one another as do marriage and the Church’s sacraments, including Holy Matrimony. Once sexuality was divorced from procreation with the widespread us of contraceptives, mar- riage was no longer treated in the secular world as a means for “legitimiz- ing sex.” Today, lead articles in our nation’s news magazines bemoan the fact that couples are increasingly depriving themselves of the “joy of sex,” a consequence of stress, anxiety and chronic boredom both at home and on the job. Pre- and extra-marital sexual relations are on the rise, while con- jugal sexuality is in decline. Meanwhile, the divorce rate – with resultant single-parenting and “blended” families – continues apace, spurred on by a mentality that insists on pre-marital contracts and no-fault terminations to too hastily formed “relationships.” What possible relevance has the Eucharist in such and environment? We owe Prof. LeMasters a great debt of gratitude for showing pre- cisely the relevance, indeed, the necessity of the Eucharist for grounding and guiding every genuinely Christian conjugal relationship. By so doing, he makes clear as well the tragic gulf that separates a Christian understand- ing of marriage and sexuality from the view held by the great majority of our contemporaries, including many people in the Church. This essay suc- ceeds admirably in restoring a proper vision of marriage as essentially “sacramental,” a primary means by which God bestows His saving grace. At the same time, it provides a moral framework within which the commit- ted Christian couple can explore answers to their own most personal ques- tions regarding matters such as sexual expression, contraception and pro- creation. A striking feature of this study is the convincing way it parallels the meaning of marriage with that of the Eucharist. The aim of both is ulti- mately salvation, obtained as a free gift of divine grace by those who accept the arduous pathway to holiness, one that involves ongoing repen- tance and constant struggle against what the patristic tradition terms the “passions.” The end of that pathway, for marriage as for Eucharistic cele- bration, is eternal communion with the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. This may be described as a participation in divine Life itself, denoted by the Greek term theosis or “deification.” In both marriage and the Eucharist we are offered a foretaste of life in the kingdom of God. Each sacrament, accordingly, serves as an icon or v Foreword image of the Church in its nuptial relationship to Christ. The Eucharist recalls and reactualizes the saving value of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, accepted as the ultimate expression of His love for those who commit themselves to Him. Christian marriage is predicated on a similar act of sacrifice, symbolized by the wedding crowns. In the Orthodox service of Holy Matrimony, those crowns are symbols of victory and joy, realized nevertheless by continual expressions of self-giving, self sacrificing love. They are signs of the particular cross that each spouse is called to bear, out of devotion to the other. If the Eucharist achieves communion through the consuming – the ingesting and digesting – of the gifts of Christ’s Body and Blood, marriage achieves communion with the beloved through sexual consummation, the uniting of man and woman in a new creation of “one flesh.” “Even as the Eucharist restores bread and wine to their intended place of communion with God,” Prof. LeMasters points out, “Christian marriage restores human sexuality to its natural place as a means for growth in holiness.” With this vision of the purpose of marriage, the author proceeds to a paradoxical yet essential truth, that conjugal relations properly embody virtues in the Christian life normally associated with monasticism: poverty, chastity, obedience and, we should add in our present social climate, stabil- ity. The final chapters of the work draw specific conclusions regarding a variety of issues raised by contemporary pressures in American social life, particularly the issues of “same-sex unions” and contraception. With recent developments in the Episcopal Church, where the House of Bishops approved the election of an actively homosexual priest to serve as bishop of New Hampshire, LeMasters’ discussion of the gay lifestyle and the pressures leading towards acceptance of same-sex unions is especially timely and important. His balanced approach accepts a crucial distinction between a homosexual “orientation” and homosexual activity. Insisting that we reject all forms of “gay-bashing,” he accepts and faith- fully interprets the biblical and patristic condemnations of homosexual practice as profoundly harmful to the integrity and purpose of human life as God intends it. As for the matter of contraception,
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