Eucharistic Teaching

St. John Chrysostom is among the most uncompromising witnesses of the patristic age to the reality of the Eucharist — the “dread mysteries” in which Christ himself, not the priest, changes the gifts, and in which the faithful touch and eat the very Body and Blood that flowed from the side of Christ. He urged frequent communion while insisting that the gate is purity of conscience, not a sense of worthiness, and his name stands over more of the Orthodox pre-communion prayers than that of any other father.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

The Dread Mysteries: Eucharistic Realism

Chrysostom’s eucharistic language is realist to the point of vehemence. The mysteries are phrikta — “dread,” “awesome,” things that should make one tremble — and what is on the altar is not a symbol of the absent Christ but the present Lord himself.

The locus classicus is the eighty-second homily on Matthew, on the words “This is my Body” (Matthew 26:26–28). There Chrysostom locates the power of the sacrament not in the celebrant but in Christ: “He that then did these things at that supper, this same now also works them. We occupy the place of servants; He who sanctifies and changes them is the same” — and he presses the realism upon the senses: “How many now say, I would wish to see His form, the mark, His clothes, His shoes. Lo! you see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him” (Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 82.5 [PG 58]; trans. NPNF I/10).

The same conviction that it is Christ, and not the priest, who consecrates receives its sharpest formulation in the homily On the Betrayal of Judas: “It is not a man who makes the gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ, but Christ himself who was crucified for us. The priest stands fulfilling a figure (typos), speaking those words, but the power and the grace are God’s. ‘This is my Body,’ he says — and this word transforms the things set forth” (Chrysostom, De proditione Judae 1.6 [PG 49]; the homily survives in two recensions but is accepted as genuine; it is the passage quoted by the Roman Catechism, CCC 1375). For Orthodox theology this text is doubly weighty: it grounds both the reality of the change and the principle that the celebrant is only Christ’s instrument — consonant with the Orthodox stress on the epiclesis (see Orthodoxy Guide: The Holy Eucharist).

On the cup, Chrysostom is equally blunt. Expounding “the cup of blessing which we bless” (1 Corinthians 10:16), he tells his hearers, “This which is in the cup is that which flowed from His side, and of that do we partake,” and insists that the communicant is not merely touched by Christ but eats him, being made one body with him (Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians 24 [PG 61]; trans. NPNF I/12). His homilies on John 6 press the literal eating of Christ’s flesh, refusing any merely figurative reading and teaching that Christ “mingles himself with us” in the sacrament (Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John 46–47 [PG 59]; trans. NPNF I/14).

The Priest at the Altar

Nowhere is the awe of the mysteries more vivid than in the treatise On the Priesthood. The priest, Chrysostom writes, stands “not bringing down fire from Heaven, but the Holy Spirit,” making prolonged supplication “that grace descending on the sacrifice may thereby enlighten the souls of all” — and “who can despise this most awful mystery, unless he is stark mad and senseless?” (Chrysostom, De sacerdotio 3.4 [PG 48]; trans. NPNF I/9). He reports, with belief, the vision of an aged man who at the hour of the sacrifice “saw, on a sudden… a multitude of angels, clothed in shining robes, and encircling the altar, and bending down, as one might see soldiers in the presence of their King” (Chrysostom, De sacerdotio 6.4 [PG 48]; trans. NPNF I/9). The dignity of the priesthood, for Chrysostom, is wholly derived: it is terrible because of what passes through the priest’s hands, not because of the priest.

Frequent Communion and the Balance of Preparation

Chrysostom was an ardent advocate of frequent communion — and an equally ardent critic of careless reception. The two convictions are held together by a single principle: the qualification for the chalice is purity of conscience, not frequency, and still less a feeling of one’s own worthiness. The classic statement is in the seventeenth homily on Hebrews, where he confronts a congregation accustomed to communing once a year:

“Many partake of this sacrifice once in the whole year; others twice; others many times… Not those who receive once, nor those who receive often, nor those who receive seldom, but those who come with a pure conscience, from a pure heart, with an irreproachable life. Let such draw near continually; but those who are not such, not even once.” (Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews 17 [PG 63]; trans. NPNF I/14.)

The same homily rebukes the presumption that an annual Lent can cleanse a year of sin: “When after a year you partake of the Communion, do you think that the Forty Days are sufficient for you for the purifying of the sins of all that time?” The balance is exact: frequent communion is the ideal, the unprepared should not approach even once, and “worthiness” in the sense of merit is beside the point — no one is worthy; what is required is preparation. The same teaching runs through his rebuke of those who stand at the Liturgy but do not commune (Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians 3 [PG 62]; trans. NPNF I/13) and his exposition of “let a man examine himself” (Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians 28, on 1 Corinthians 11:28 [PG 61]; trans. NPNF I/12).

The Sacrament of the Altar and the Sacrament of the Brother

Chrysostom’s realism about the chalice has a corollary that he draws relentlessly: the Christ who is touched and eaten at the altar is the same Christ who is hungry and naked outside the church door, and reverence for the one is hollow without mercy toward the other. The argument is at its sharpest in the fiftieth homily on Matthew, where he confronts those who lavish silk and gold on the altar vessels while passing the poor by: “Do you wish to honor the body of Christ? Do not neglect him when he is naked. Do not honor him here in the church with silk vestments while neglecting him outside, where he suffers cold and nakedness.” The body received in the mysteries and the body suffering in the poor are, for Chrysostom, one body; the altar of stone within the sanctuary has its counterpart in the “altar” of the poor man’s need, and the gift offered on the one is mocked by contempt for the other (Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 50.3–4 [PG 58]; trans. NPNF I/10). This is not a softening of the eucharistic realism but its extension: precisely because the presence is real, the obligation it lays upon the communicant reaches beyond the rail of the sanctuary into the street. The same conviction animated his episcopate, which emptied the bishop’s residence to fill the hospitals (see The Reforming Archbishop).

Influence on Orthodox Eucharistic Piety

Chrysostom’s eucharistic teaching did not remain on the page; it shaped the devotional life of the Orthodox Church directly. Several prayers in the standard “Prayers Before Holy Communion” — the pre-communion rule in the Horologion and prayer book — bear his name by traditional attribution. Among them is the prayer recited aloud immediately before receiving in much Slavic and Greek usage: “I believe, O Lord, and I confess that Thou art truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who camest into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (drawing on 1 Timothy 1:15 and the Holy Thursday troparion “Of Thy Mystical Supper”). Others under his name include “O Lord my God, I know that I am not worthy, neither sufficient, that Thou shouldst come under the roof of the house of my soul” and “O God, absolve, remit, and pardon me my transgressions.” These attributions are devotional and traditional rather than text-critically secured; but that Chrysostom’s name stands over more of the pre-communion prayers than that of any other father — alongside Basil the Great, Symeon the Translator, and John of Damascus — measures how completely the Church bound its eucharistic devotion to him, just as it named the liturgy itself for him (see The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom; Orthodoxy Guide: The Holy Eucharist).

See Also

References

  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 82 [PG 58]. Trans. NPNF I/10.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on First Corinthians, Homilies 24 and 28 [PG 61]. Trans. NPNF I/12.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies 46–47 [PG 59]. Trans. NPNF I/14.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on Hebrews, Homily 17 [PG 63]. Trans. NPNF I/14.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on Ephesians, Homily 3 [PG 62]. Trans. NPNF I/13.
  • John Chrysostom. On the Priesthood (De sacerdotio) 3.4, 6.4 [PG 48]. Trans. NPNF I/9.
  • John Chrysostom. On the Betrayal of Judas (De proditione Judae) 1.6 [PG 49] — genuine, transmitted in two recensions.
  • Prayers Before Holy Communion, in the Orthodox Horologion / prayer book (traditional attributions).
  • Taft, Robert F. A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. 6 vols. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1975–2008.