03 — The Commentary on the Divine Liturgy

St. Nicholas Cabasilas’s A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy — the Hermeneia tes theias leitourgias, known in the standard French edition as the Explication de la Divine Liturgie — is the classic Byzantine mystagogy of the Eucharist and, with The Life in Christ, one of the two works on which his whole standing rests. This section presents the Commentary itself — its place in the line of Byzantine liturgical commentary, its distinctive method, its structure, and its enormous later influence — and Cabasilas’s celebrated theology of the consecration, in which the gifts are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ by the prayer of the priest invoking the Holy Spirit.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (lay theologian; the sacramental life)

Cabasilas wrote his Commentary as a continuous exposition of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, following the rite in order from the preparation of the gifts to communion. Standing after the Mystagogia of St Maximus the Confessor and the Ecclesiastical History attributed to St Germanus of Constantinople, he brought the Byzantine mystagogical tradition to a kind of maturity: he read the whole liturgy as a unified symbolic representation of the economy of salvation — the life of Christ from Incarnation to Ascension portrayed in the rite — while insisting that the liturgy does not merely depict but truly effects the sanctification of those who share in it. The most discussed part of his work is his theology of the consecration and the epiclesis, presented here as constructive theology and measured argument rather than confessional polemic; the fuller East–West engagement is reserved for Section 07.

Files in This Section

File	Description
The Explanation of the Liturgy	Cabasilas’s Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (Greek Hermeneia tes theias leitourgias; French Explication de la Divine Liturgie): its place after Maximus’s Mystagogia and the commentary attributed to Germanus; his distinctive method of reading the liturgy as a unified representation of the economy of salvation that truly sanctifies; its structure following the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom from prothesis to communion; and its later influence and transmission through the editions of Salaville (SC 4 bis) and Hussey and McNulty.
Liturgy as the Work of Christ	The Eucharist as the action of Christ himself; the consecration of the gifts; and Cabasilas’s celebrated treatment of the epiclesis — that the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ by the prayer of the priest invoking the Holy Spirit, with the institution narrative recited within that prayer — together with his calm engagement with the Latin view that the words of institution alone consecrate.

See Also

• The Sacramental Life — the companion treatise The Life in Christ and the life through the Mysteries
• Union with Christ — the union with Christ that communion in the consecrated Gifts effects
• The Hesychast Synthesis — the Palamite theology of participation behind his Eucharistic realism
• Grace and the Sacraments — the action of the Holy Spirit and the communication of grace through the Mysteries
• The Works and Their Transmission — the manuscripts, editions, and translations of the Commentary
• The Eucharist and the Latins — the fuller East–West engagement over the moment of consecration
• The Modern Rediscovery — Cabasilas and the twentieth-century liturgical revival
• The Divine Liturgy — the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom that the Commentary expounds
• The Eucharist — the Orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist
• St. Maximus the Confessor — the Mystagogia and the mystagogical tradition Cabasilas inherits

References

• Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960.
• Salaville, Sévérien, ed. and trans. Explication de la Divine Liturgie. 2nd ed., rev. René Bornert, Jean Gouillard, and Pierre Périchon. Sources Chrétiennes 4 bis. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967.
• Bornert, René. Les commentaires byzantins de la Divine Liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle. Archives de l’Orient chrétien 9. Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1966.
• Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992.
• Wybrew, Hugh. The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite. London: SPCK, 1989.