The Symbolism of the Prothesis

The preparation of the gifts is not merely practical; it is a dense theological sign. This file draws out its two great meanings: the diskos as the whole Church gathered around Christ the Lamb — heaven and earth, saints and sinners, living and departed — and the prothesis as an enactment of the economy of salvation, from the Incarnation to the sacrifice, read through the mystagogy of St. Germanus of Constantinople and St. Nicholas Cabasilas.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Diskos as the Gathered Church

When the priest has finished the proskomedia, the diskos presents a single, eloquent image: at the center the Lamb, Christ; at his right the particle of the Theotokos; ranged at his left the nine ranks of the saints; and below, the particles of the living and the departed of the whole Church. The paten has become a portrait of the entire Body of Christ, “the whole Church, of heaven and of earth,” gathered about her Head (Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. Hussey and McNulty, SPCK, 1960, ch. 10). St. Nicholas Cabasilas reads the arrangement precisely this way: the bread set on the diskos represents the Church, and the particles set around the Lamb signify the members — the Virgin, the saints, and the faithful living and dead — assembled with Christ in their midst, so that the diskos before the Liturgy is already a figure of the communion of saints (Cabasilas, Commentary, ch. 10). The Church is thus visibly constituted around Christ before a word of the public Liturgy is spoken — a silent anticipation of the truth that the Eucharist makes the Church one Body (1 Corinthians 10:16–17; see what the Divine Liturgy is).

This image carries a pastoral consolation of great depth. Every particle bears a name — a living son or daughter, a departed parent, a sinner asking mercy — and every particle lies on the same paten as the Lamb of God. The commemoration is not a mere list read into the air; it is the placing of each named person, by the Church’s offering, in the immediate presence of Christ, there to be washed in his Blood at the end of the Liturgy (see the reception and thanksgiving; Cabasilas, Commentary, ch. 10). This is why Orthodox faithful bring their commemoration lists (zapiski) to the prothesis: to have their living and their dead set upon the diskos beside the Lamb.

The Economy of Salvation Enacted

The prothesis is also a compressed enactment of the whole economy of salvation, and the tradition reads it on two registers at once — the Nativity and the Passion. St. Germanus of Constantinople’s eighth-century mystagogy fixes the Bethlehem register: the table of oblation is “the place of the skull [Golgotha]” and also the manger and the cave; the diskos corresponds to the arms of the wise men and to the tomb, and the asterisk (the star-cover set over the diskos) is “the star that appeared over the place where the young child was” (cf. Matthew 2:9), while the veils are the swaddling-clothes (Germanus, On the Divine Liturgy, trans. Paul Meyendorff, SVS Press, 1984, §§21–22, 37–38). On this reading the Lamb is “born” from the prosphora as Christ was born of the Virgin, and the whole preparation figures the hidden coming of the Word into the world.

The Golgotha register is carried by the words the priest actually says while cutting: the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, “led as a sheep to the slaughter”; “sacrificed is the Lamb of God”; and the piercing of the Lamb’s side with the lance to the words of John 19:34, “one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water” (see the preparation of the gifts). Here the same rite figures the sacrifice: the Lamb slain, the side pierced, the blood and water flowing into the chalice. Orthodox mystagogy holds these two registers together without contradiction, because the one Christ who is born is the same who is offered — the Incarnation is for the Cross, and the Cross is the fruit of the Incarnation (Cabasilas, Commentary, chs. 6–11, holding the birth and the sacrifice together; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, SVS Press, 1990, ch. 7).

A Caution on Symbolic Reading

The Byzantine commentators loved this kind of symbolic interpretation, and the mature rite is layered with it. But the tradition, and modern liturgical theology, counsel a certain caution about how such symbolism is used. Cabasilas himself, in the fourteenth century, was already concerned to insist that the Liturgy is not a bare drama or allegory in which the priest merely plays the events of Christ’s life, but a real and effective participation in the mystery of salvation: the symbolic actions serve the sanctification they signify and are not ends in themselves (Cabasilas, Commentary, ch. 1, on the aim of the rite; Bornert, Les commentaires byzantins de la Divine Liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle, Paris, 1966, on the development of the symbolic tradition). Fr. Alexander Schmemann warned in the same spirit against a purely “illustrative” symbolism that reduces the Liturgy to a pageant depicting past events, urging instead the older and stronger sense of symbol in which the sign truly makes present what it signifies (Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, SVS Press, 1988, ch. 2, on symbol and the “illustrative” temptation). The prothesis, on this sounder reading, is not a tableau of Bethlehem and Golgotha to be watched but the actual preparation of the gifts of the Church’s offering, into which the meanings of the Incarnation and the sacrifice are gathered.

The Whole Church, Before the Liturgy Begins

The abiding lesson of the prothesis is that the Divine Liturgy is, from before its first audible word, the act of the whole Church and not of the priest alone. The gifts that will be offered and consecrated are the gifts of the entire Body — the Virgin and the saints who have run the race, the living who still run it, the departed who await the resurrection — all set upon one diskos around the one Lamb. When the deacon later cries “The doors! The doors!” and the faithful confess the Creed, and when the priest lifts the gifts saying “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all,” it is this gathered Church, already assembled in figure on the diskos, that offers and is offered (see the Eucharistic prayer). The prothesis teaches, quietly and in advance, what the whole Liturgy will proclaim: that in the Eucharist the Church becomes what she is — the one Body of Christ (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 6, “The Sacrament of Offering”; Cabasilas, Commentary, ch. 10).

See Also

References

  • Germanus of Constantinople. On the Divine Liturgy. Trans. Paul Meyendorff. Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1984. (The Bethlehem/Golgotha symbolism of the prothesis; the asterisk as the star; the veils as swaddling-clothes.)
  • Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960. (The diskos as the gathered Church; the aim of the rite against bare allegory.)
  • Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988. (Symbol against “illustrative” symbolism; the sacrament of offering.)
  • Wybrew, Hugh. The Orthodox Liturgy. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1990. (The symbolic development of the prothesis.)
  • Bornert, René. Les commentaires byzantins de la Divine Liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle. Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1966. (The history of the Byzantine liturgical commentaries and their symbolism.)
  • Scripture: Isaiah 53:7–8 (LXX); John 19:34; Matthew 2:9; 1 Corinthians 10:16–17.