Of Water and the Spirit and Frequent Communion

Of Water and the Spirit (1974) applies Schmemann’s method to baptism: the rite read whole, as a single paschal initiation completed in communion. From the same conviction came his most contested practical campaign — the restoration of frequent communion, argued in his 1972 report to the OCA Holy Synod. This file expounds both, and gives the frequent-communion dispute the both-sides treatment it requires (§4.2), naming the traditional-practice objections and their proponents.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

Of Water and the Spirit (1974)

Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism was published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press in 1974 (hub essay, Fr. Alexander Schmemann; cited throughout the repository, e.g. The Holy Mysteries: The Rite and Its History). Its title is from John 3:5, and its method is exactly that of The Eucharist: take the rite as the Church actually serves it, follow it in order, and let its structure disclose its theology.

The book’s governing claim is that baptism is not a rite of admission but a real death and resurrection — the paschal mystery enacted in the person of the candidate. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3–4): the candidate goes down into the water as into a tomb and rises into the new creation, and everything else in the rite is the unfolding of that (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974; see The Holy Mysteries: The Theology of Baptism).

Several emphases of the book have passed into the repository’s own treatment of the mysteries and are worth naming.

The exorcisms are taken seriously. The rite begins by commanding the unclean spirit to depart, and Schmemann reads this not as an embarrassing survival but as the assertion of Christ’s victory over the whole realm of evil and the recovery of the candidate’s freedom — only a person released from the enemy’s hold can genuinely renounce him and turn to Christ (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, 1974; see The Holy Mysteries: The Rite and Its History, on the exorcisms as the recovery of freedom).

The blessing of the font is a true epiclesis, and it is cosmic. The long prayer over the water — recalling creation, the flood, the Red Sea, the Jordan — makes the font the place where the whole biblical theology of water converges, and the Spirit is invoked upon it exactly as upon the eucharistic gifts. Matter is sanctified and becomes the means of communion: the argument of For the Life of the World applied to a particular rite (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, 1974; see The World as Sacrament; The Holy Mysteries: The Rite and Its History).

Initiation is one unbroken sequence, and it ends at the chalice. Baptism, chrismation, and first communion form a single act; the newly-illumined is led from the font to the table, and in the Orthodox East this integrity was never broken, which is why infants commune from their baptism onward (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, 1974, on the unity of initiation; see The Holy Mysteries: Communion and the Life of the Church; The Holy Mysteries: Chrismation and Reception into the Church). The Western postponement of confirmation and first communion to the years of reason is, on this reading, the dismemberment of a single mystery.

That last point is the bridge to the controversy. If baptism terminates in communion, and if the Eucharist is the act in which the Church becomes herself, then a baptized Christian who does not commune is in an anomalous position — and a Church in which most of the baptized rarely commune has a problem at its center.

The Campaign for Frequent Communion

Schmemann’s advocacy of frequent communion was not a preference about devotional style; it followed necessarily from his ecclesiology (see The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom). If the Liturgy is celebrated for communion, then to attend without communing truncates the very act; the structure of the rite — with its dismissal of the catechumens before the offering — presupposes that all who remain will partake (Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. Kachur, SVS Press, 1988, ch. 1; see The Holy Mysteries: Communion and the Life of the Church).

The historical situation he addressed was real and is not in dispute. Across much of the Orthodox world, and with particular severity in the Russian Church of the Synodal period (1700–1917), lay communion had declined to once or at most four times a year, discharged as an annual obligation of confession-and-communion during Great Lent and reinforced by civil expectation (Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People, Pennsylvania State University Press, chs. 1–2; see Orthodoxy: The Holy Eucharist, on the medieval and Synodal decline). Schmemann was not the first to protest: the eighteenth-century Kollyvades of Mount Athos, with St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and St. Macarius of Corinth and their treatise Concerning Frequent Communion, had pressed the same case, and St. John of Kronstadt had served daily and urged daily communion on his people a century before (see The Holy Mysteries: Communion and the Life of the Church; St. John of Kronstadt: Daily Liturgy and Frequent Communion). Schmemann stands in that line, and it is a line of saints.

The 1972 Report and the Synodal Act

The decisive document is Schmemann’s report “Confession and Communion,” submitted to the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America at its meeting of 16–17 February 1972 (Schmemann, “Confession and Communion,” Report to the Holy Synod of Bishops of the OCA, February 1972, full text at schmemann.org; cited in the repository at Orthodoxy: Confession).

Its argument, in outline: confession and communion are two distinct mysteries with distinct purposes; the Russian rule requiring sacramental confession before every reception is a custom of a particular period — formed precisely when communion was rare — and not an ancient or universal law of the Church; and to keep that rule while restoring frequent communion is to make the two impossible to combine. He therefore urged that the link be loosened, with regular confession maintained as a serious and separate discipline.

The Synod received the report and acted on it, issuing its own encyclical “On Confession and Communion” from the same February 1972 meeting, which resolves “that the report of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann is received with gratitude and approbation” (Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America, “On Confession and Communion,” meeting of 16–17 February 1972, oca.org/holy-synod/encyclicals/on-confession-and-communion). The two documents are one act, and it is worth distinguishing them: the report is Schmemann’s theological argument; the encyclical is the Church’s act of reception.

Two restraints in the record deserve emphasis, because they cut against Schmemann’s reputation as a liturgical radical. The Synod’s encyclical explicitly limits the practice of general confession: “General Confession is not meant simply to replace individual confession, is not and must not be a substitute” (OCA Holy Synod, “On Confession and Communion,” 1972). And Schmemann himself wrote of his proposal that “it would be spiritually wrong and very harmful to impose it in any way” (Schmemann, “Confession and Communion,” 1972). Whatever else he was arguing, he was not arguing for compulsion.

The Dispute (§4.2)

This is a live intra-Orthodox dispute, not a settled question, and the collection sets out both sides at full strength and adjudicates neither.

The case FOR the restoration

  1. The ancient norm. In the early Church all present communed; Apostolic Canon 9 penalizes those who hear the Scriptures but do not stay for the Communion, “as causing disorder in the Church” (Apostolic Canon 9; see Orthodoxy: The Holy Eucharist). The infrequency to be explained is the later practice, not the earlier.
  2. The structure of the rite. The Liturgy is ordered toward communion; a rite whose stated purpose goes unfulfilled for nearly everyone present has become something other than what its own texts say it is (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 1).
  3. The provenance of the rule. The requirement of confession before every communion took its Russian form under specific historical conditions — infrequent reception, state enforcement, and the Ruthenian and Western influences on the Russian practice of penance in the eighteenth century (Kizenko, “Ruthenian and Russian Innovations in the Sacrament of Penance and their Early Eighteenth-Century Consequences,” Vivliofika 10, 2022, 25–37, cited in the repository at Orthodoxy: Confession). A custom of that provenance may be examined.
  4. Communion is gift, not reward. One does not become worthy and then approach; one approaches because one is a sinner in need of the Physician. The pre-communion prayers themselves say so — the communicant approaches naming himself “the chief of sinners” and approaches nonetheless (see The Holy Mysteries: Communion and the Life of the Church).
  5. The saints of the same cause. The Kollyvades and St. John of Kronstadt made this argument before Schmemann, and both are glorified (see St. John of Kronstadt: Daily Liturgy and Frequent Communion).

The case AGAINST, at full strength

The objections are principled, are held by serious Orthodox Christians, and are not answered by repeating the arguments above.

  1. The awe due to the Mysteries. St. Paul’s warning is explicit: whoever eats and drinks unworthily “shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord,” and a man must “examine himself” (1 Corinthians 11:27–29). The elaborate preparatory discipline exists to protect the faithful from casual approach to a fire, and its relaxation risks precisely the familiarity it was built to prevent (see The Divine Liturgy: The Reception and Thanksgiving).
  2. Confession is not a formality to be economized. In the Russian tradition the joining of confession to communion has been a chief engine of the spiritual life: it guarantees that every communicant stands regularly under the eye of a confessor. Loosen it, and the practical result may be not deepened eucharistic life but the quiet disappearance of confession (see The Holy Mysteries: Confession and the Spiritual Father; Orthodoxy: Confession).
  3. The charge of renovationism. From ROCOR and traditionalist quarters, Schmemann’s program has been read as of a piece with a broader modernizing agenda — the same charge pressed against his liturgical historiography (see The Liturgiological and Traditionalist Critique). Fr. Seraphim Rose is the representative figure of the counter-position in America: where Schmemann was critical of elaborate communion preparation and infrequent reception, Rose defended these practices as expressions of genuine reverence (see Fr. Seraphim Rose’s Theological Contribution, which sets the two men side by side on precisely this point).
  4. A named and recent Russian objection. The dispute is not a period piece. When the Moscow Patriarchate’s own journal reprinted Schmemann’s 1972 report in Russian — “О таинствах исповеди и причастия,” Журнал Московской Патриархии, no. 5 (May 2013): 54–63 — Protopresbyter Vladimir Pravdolyubov published a direct reply in Благодатный огонь (September 2013). He charged that Schmemann subordinates personal piety and sanctification (личное благочестие и освящение) to the horizontal communion of the members with one another, and that on Schmemann’s logic communion, being given “for the remission of sins,” would displace confession altogether. He concluded: “Do not invent a new Orthodoxy, and by all means beware of following those who invent it” («Не изобретайте нового Православия и всячески берегитесь следовать тем, кто его изобретает») (Vladimir Pravdolyubov, “Протопресвитер Александр Шмеман в Журнале Московской Патриархии,” Благодатный огонь, September 2013, blagogon.ru/digest/647).

Where the Church’s practice now stands

The practical outcome, as of the 2020s, is a genuine but uneven shift, and the official documents hold a middle position rather than either extreme.

The Moscow Patriarchate’s 2015 document On the Participation of the Faithful in the Eucharist (Bishops’ Council, 2015) retains the connection between confession and communion while permitting the spiritual father to bless frequent communicants to commune without confessing on each occasion; Greek practice does not generally require confession before each communion; and in ROCOR the expectation of confession before each communion remains standard practice, as an inherited custom of the Russian tradition rather than a single synodal statute, which confessors may adjust for frequent communicants (see Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy and The Divine Liturgy: The Reception and Thanksgiving, where the repository sets out these positions; On the Participation of the Faithful in the Eucharist, Moscow, 2015).

[Disputed: whether the twentieth-century restoration of frequent communion is a recovery of the Church's ancient norm or a relaxation of a salutary discipline. (a) The restorationist position — that universal communion at every Liturgy is the apostolic and patristic norm, that the rite is ordered to it, and that the Russian confession-before-every-communion rule is a custom of the Synodal period rather than an ancient law — is argued by Schmemann ("Confession and Communion," 1972; *The Eucharist*, 1988) and stands in the line of the Kollyvades and St. John of Kronstadt; it was received "with gratitude and approbation" by the OCA Holy Synod in 1972 (OCA, "On Confession and Communion," 1972). (b) The traditional-practice position — that the preparatory discipline guards the awe due to the Mysteries, that severing confession from communion endangers confession itself, and that the program belongs to a wider modernizing tendency — is held across ROCOR and traditionalist Russian and Greek circles and is argued in print by Protopresbyter Vladimir Pravdolyubov (*Благодатный огонь*, September 2013) and, on the devotional side, by Fr. Seraphim Rose (see [seraphim-rose](../../seraphim-rose/09-legacy-and-reception/theological-contribution.md)). No pan-Orthodox act has settled the question; the Moscow document of 2015 and prevailing Greek and ROCOR practice occupy different points on the range. The collection reports the positions and does not adjudicate.]

[Corrected: Valentin Gasin's article "О канонических отступлениях в документе «Об участии верных в Евхаристии»" (*Благодатный огонь*, 2 March 2015) is sometimes cited as traditionalist opposition to the 2015 Moscow document on grounds of fasting and confession. It is not: his objections concern the admission to communion of cohabiting couples without requiring that the sin be abandoned, and he makes no renovationism charge against Schmemann. It should not be enlisted on this question.]

See Also

References

  • Schmemann, Alexander. Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974.
  • Schmemann, Alexander. “Confession and Communion.” Report to the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America, February 1972. Full text at schmemann.org. (Russian translation published as “О таинствах исповеди и причастия,” Журнал Московской Патриархии, no. 5, May 2013, 54–63.)
  • Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America. “On Confession and Communion.” Encyclical, meeting of 16–17 February 1972. oca.org/holy-synod/encyclicals/on-confession-and-communion. (The reception of Schmemann’s report “with gratitude and approbation”; the limit on general confession.)
  • Pravdolyubov, Vladimir (Protopresbyter). “Протопресвитер Александр Шмеман в Журнале Московской Патриархии.” Благодатный огонь, September 2013. blagogon.ru/digest/647. (The named traditional-practice reply.)
  • Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Translated by Paul Kachur. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988.
  • On the Participation of the Faithful in the Eucharist. Russian Orthodox Church, Bishops’ Council, Moscow, 2015.
  • Kizenko, Nadieszda. A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. (The Synodal-era norm of annual communion.)
  • Kizenko, Nadieszda. “Ruthenian and Russian Innovations in the Sacrament of Penance and their Early Eighteenth-Century Consequences.” Vivliofika: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies 10 (2022): 25–37.
  • Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Macarius of Corinth. Concerning Frequent Communion (18th c.). (The Kollyvades argument.)
  • Gasin, Valentin. “О канонических отступлениях в документе «Об участии верных в Евхаристии».” Благодатный огонь, 2 March 2015. blagogon.ru/digest/596. (Cited here only to correct a common misattribution; see the note above.)
  • Scripture: John 3:5; Romans 6:3–4; 1 Corinthians 11:27–29. Apostolic Canon 9.