The Holy Eucharist and the penance experience in the Orthodox tradition

Ph.D. candidate Drugan Nicolae Cosmin

According to the teaching of the Orthodox faith and of the church ritual before we share
divine sacraments, there must be a period of repentance which concludes by confession before
the spiritual confessor. Analyzing the entire religious life bearing in mind both aspects (the
Eucharist and the methanoic), I want to bring to discussion the idea that is: life in Christ
according to the Orthodox tradition is centred on the Holy Eucharist and is nourished from
Christ, from within Christ, while through the Sacraments the believers continue their crucifixion
and resurrection, together with Christ in baptism. For the purpose of teaching transmitted by the
church fathers, the wonderful transformation of bread and wine in the Body and Blood of the
human nature through the Word, Who was born of Virgin Mary, we thus become partakers of the
Mysteries of the Cross, the Resurrection and Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary.
The experience of repentance is included in this Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
Looking at the one who brings the Body and the Blood, we cannot separate the passion, the
crucifixion, burial and resurrection, the experience of metanoia.
If Christ the Human,was part of this whole experience without altering the divine nature,
but restoring the human nature altered through the fall, called by Maximus the Confessor
prevention of human nature, which involves the testing of the senses, in saying the same of the
Holy Father: „senses only guided by reason and by act contrary to its evil nature through
passionate exaggeration of their work, abusing of their position”1, then every man must
experience in this way Christian repentance without the slightest harm being done to the
humanity it bears because it strengthens, perfects through repentance until it reaches the divine,
acquiring the pure image of Adam in the lost Eden, the Holy Eucharist, more precisely by union
with Christ, the perfection of the whole process of repentance, as a culmination of their lives
spent in this transitory world as signs of repentance.

St. Maximus the Confessor, Folicalia of the holy labors of perfection, Vol III, translation by Dumitru Stăniloae,
1

Humanitas Publishing house, 2009, p. 13

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 The church during this entire period from the occurrence of the faithful event, marked in
time and space by death, passion, burial, resurrection, rising of Christ, keeps in her memory the
texts that have devoted the time of maximum importance which is being invoked at every liturgy,
movements which in addition to presenting the entire life and activity of the Saviour, historically
speaking, bears in itself the entire emotional load full of spirituality, strengthened by the real
presence of Christ. It should also be noted that at the same time by liturgy both the past, the
present and the future return to a continuous present, where we are still living in, or we foretaste
the joy and the source of eschatological life which shall be updated and turned into present due
to transition of the eternal.
Through this sacrament we are invited to take part in the mystic banquet which recaps the
whole work of salvation accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ. The work of salvation
accomplished by Christ for all humanity, through His humanity taken from Virgin Mary, aims at
restoring graceful obedience of Adam the one who fell into the sin of disobedience, in such a
way that Adam’s act would condition the arrival of the Divine Logos in the world. The role of
Christ’s incarnation did not have as a purpose deification but the reconciliation of man with God,
the sabstitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross that infinitely satisfied her majesty and the
divine justice outraged by sin. 2
How could He make such a connection, if not by taking a body just like ours, a body
which raised at the state of perfection through sacrifice on the Cross, and filled it by His
deification through Resurrection. This gesture could only be made by a loving God, Who showed
his love towards us, once again as He did with the creation, when man was created by God out of
love. That is why, the sacrifice the son of man commits is the living sacrifice, and not a sacrifice
that was made once while its value is inexhaustible, since it is based on the greatest gift that
some can give us, that islove.
Through the Holy and Divine Liturgy, the two sacraments (Eucharistic and penance or
Confession) find their perfection since it calls us to imitate the gesture the great sacrificial has
made, that is to sacrifice ourselves as He did, to be worthy of Him. By Liturgy, God wants
people to be able to taste on the ground the joy of Heaven which is waiting the ones worthy of it.
Therefore, this saving command given by Him, we repeat every time during the Holy Liturgy .,
thus saying: :„remembering therefore this saving commandment, and all that has been done for

2
Panayotis Nellas, Animal man deified, Deisis publishing house, Sibiu 2008, p. 18

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us: the cross, the grave, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, and all you
have done for us, of rightful staying as well as the second glorious returning”.3
Alexandru Schmemannsays that the answer is given to us, precisely by Eucharistic of
living in the church upon a second limitation: identification remembrance of the last supper in
remembrance of the sufferings on the Cross and of Christ’s death, and therefore, explaining the
mystery of the Eucharist as a sacrifice on Calvary. The father states that the Church has never
contested the connection between the last Supper and the twilling passion of Christ , but it was
certified by the entire liturgical tradition and the Gospel (Johnn XXII, 17)4„We receive the Body
and the Blood of the Holy Sacrament in forgiveness state, not in any state. And it also urges us to
share His Cross by communion, „the Apostolic ethos of Christianity and of the Old Church –
spiritual ethos, and in the same time Eucharistic and Ascetic and martyr”5. Connected to this
Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist Father Nicolae Afanasiev, joins Father Stăniloaeand all new
theologians and connects this Holy Sacrament to the centrality of the Church and not to one of
the Seven Sacraments, since it is the central point and the purpose of the Holy Eucharist , being
characteristic to those new theologians, strongly orientated to church experience.
Ioaniss Ziziulas in his essay claims that at, he assigned Liturgical analysis as the main
method of Eucharist treatment upon a series of modern theologians6.Marking the prevailing idea
of the Holy Liturgy as „the Holy Sacrament of Reunion”met at Schmemann as well, which the
Eucharist Ecclesiology vigorously investigated, makes Afanasiev to profoundly search into the
matter, showing us that throughout this canon of the Holy Liturgy, except for the huveric prayer,
it is spoken in the plural, thus providing the possibility to see the celebrated as the language of
the church community. This is a dominant aspect where Liturgy is the holy sacrament of the
communion based on the Apostolic canon number 9, which expressly forbids the participation at
the Divine Liturgy without taking part in the Communion. In addition to the proclamation, of the
Kingdom of the Fathers and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit at the begging of the Liturgy of
catechumens, extremely important for the eschatological understanding of the Holy Mass, John
Chrysostom is the anamnesis of the anaphora.Past history is a history which meets the value and

3
Liturghier, E.I.B.M.B.O.R, Bucharest , 2002, p. 162
4
Alexandre Schmemann, The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom, Anastasia publishing house, Bucharest, 1992, p.
209.
5
Diac. Ioan Ică jr., Continous sharing of the sacraments , Deisis Publishing house, Sibiu, 2006, p. 88.
6
Karl Christian Felmy, Dogmatic ecclesial experience, Deisis Publishing house, Sibiu, 1999, p. 255, apud. I.
Zizioulas, Die Eucharistie, p. 173.

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the sense only through the history of the future, crossing over the lines of Theology, of the
scholar ones which limit the Eucharist only to the memorial significance, since it is not the
celebration of a past event, Christ’s cross, for the future, in Resurrection and in the Kingdom to
come.
In the Holy Eucharist, the Church constitutes the eschatological space where God’s
saving acts, especially the sacrifice of Christ are remembered by God7. The role and the
importance of sharing us the Body and the Blood of Christ within a local Church where the
Eucharist is being celebrated, by sharing with us the unity which is shown in the community, but
also the reality of the Body and Blood, which are the one bread and the one cup: „And those of
us who partake of bread and of chalice, to unite among themselves, the communion of the
spirit”8.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation and of Repentance consist in forgiving sins, sins of
those who confess and who repent for themselves, by the bishop or the priest – seen and unseen
by Christ. The sacrament of forgiveness was shared by the gift of healing and implicitly the sin
of cleansing themselves by fault or by the material which was being touched by His hand and put
into contact with the sick ones or by an irradiated power put of His body or by simply being near
the sick one and through His word full of God’s power, thus into a personal relationship directly
with the sick one. This hypothesis of Christ who forgives sins by mere touching of hand, it is the
intimate union expressed by the sacrificial love of God. The unitary way and inexpressibly
expressed of our humanity is the union of the human nature with de divine nature in the womb of
the Virgin, expressing thereby humiliation (cyanosis) at the outmost reached by divinity, and in
the forgiving of sins granted to the successively humanity in His human body and not the least
the rising of humanity to the first state.
Looking over our entire lives, from the beginning until the end, we are carried under
divine providence, under the effigy fight for acquiring salvation. That is why our Lord Jesus
Christ the Saviour, clearly tells us by the voice of the Holy Sacraments : „That the one who loves
his soul, says the evangelist St. John, shall lose and the one who hates his souls in this world,
shall keep it for eternal life” (John XII, 23). „The one who shall seek to save his life will lose it,

7
I. Zizioulass, Die Eucharistie in derneuzeitlichen ortodoxen Theologie, in Die Anurufung des Heiligen Geistes im
Abendmahl. Viertes theologisches Gespräch zwischen dem Ökumenischen Patriarchat und der EKD vom 6-9.
Oktober 1975 in der Evangelischen Sozialakademie Fredewald. Hrsg. Vom Kirchlichen Außenamt der
Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland(Studienheft 7), = ÖR. B 31. p. 176
8
Litrughier, Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, E.I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucharest, 2002, p. 234.

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says evangelist Luke ; and the one losing it, shall keep it” (LukeXVII, 33). Saint Evangelist
Mathew has clearly put this aspect even more , by saying: „Who cares about his life he shall lose
it, and the one who shall lose his life for Me shall find it” ( Mathew X, 39). Going beyond, we
must say the way of life that Christ is asking us to live, as a way of acquiring „the bread which
comes down from Heaven , the one that can be eaten by those who do not die.” (John, VI, 50).
Expressing such a succession in the texts we observe that in order to receive our
Communion, the true Eucharist one(Christ), we must go through a period of asceticism, or
repentance (sacrifice), which is not very pleasant state for the body, but the Fathers of the church
such as St. John Scăraru, in the Heaven Scale describes repentance as the food of the soul for
preparing the receipt of the Bridegroom Christ. The concrete experience of death, mystic –
sacramental death, is the ascetic mortification as well as physical and spiritual suffering9. This
physical mortification, found in the experience of repentance, is described by St.Apostle Paul,
and it highlights the interior transformation, on the internal weapons, without leaving aside the
bodily asceticism, r-thus being a voluntary means.
To be Christian represents to be called for suffering. And the more the communion with
God deepens, the more Christ’s life dominates yours, it deepens the tension of the “devil”, of the
“world” and of the “flash”, towards oneself and the other way around, the death of the old man
deepens and therefore suffering. This shows us the intensification of living the suffering which is
seen as a sign of intensifying the communion with Christ. Who wants to live within Christ’s plan
must suffer.10. In this suffering lays Jesus Christ Himself, together with us, and if suffering
means sacrifice, and sacrifice penance, they shall be filled in and are dominated by Christ
through the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist.
Coming back to the liturgy text which we invoke at every liturgy, it is observed the basic
idea which dominates the entire Christian world. Remembrance of God, an anamnethical one, is
the praise that the man must bring greatness to worship the Creator, for the gift of life given to
us, to us by all of us for gaining everlasting kingdom, and the Bridegroom Christ, the living
sacrifice and new and all mankind must accommodate the model HE has given to Himself. All
initial elements before resurrection, ascension and residence of the Right, are impossible to
remove, as our archetype and which He has assumed. The beatings, spitting, insults, the cross

9
Nicolae Mladin, Christ, our life, Deisis Publishing house, Sibiu, 2012, p. 169.
10
Iedem, pp. 191-192.

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and the grave site are tools and which make us wake up to a harsh reality that is passed and also
that in order to gain the living bread, we must take a daily cross which is the altar of all, but not
forgetting about the pit that is our connection with heaven, that makes passing away passing into
the "eternal unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of
damnation”11.
Repentance that man must fulfill is embedded in the soul of each of Baptism, because
man is spiritually now taught to fight to win the eternal Eucharist. Removing the human body is
a high level to which God raises us and enables us all to have our own cross and grave, that can
lead to eternal kingdom. Because if we are born "of water and the Spirit" (John 3: 5) we are not
ouselves, we are not soldiers of the Bridegroom, which does not lead us to our identification with
Him. If this cleaning received through baptism is preserved, we can achieve this state by the
baptism of repentance or of the tears. The venerable Paisios said: "If he feels his wrong deeds
and hesuffers for them, he somehow washes off the tears of repentance and the grace of God
comes again”12.
As it can be seen all roads lead to the sacrifice that each must acquire struggling with
their body and with the world as long as stays on earth. Father Dumitru Stăniloae comes and
perfectly stresses again what the Venerable Paisios said that: "The Eucharist is the Sacrament of
Baptism and Chrismation crowning, not only unlimited power and life of the new virtual begun
in Baptism and containing in it the virtual power developed by chrismation (power found in
Paisios, coming from the tears, the grace of God), the Eucharist implies full power of death to the
separate existence of God, begun in Baptism and developed by chrismation”13.Seen from birth to
death, human life is a journey, mingled we would say with sacrifice stitching and adding grace
upon grace, together with the blessings of the Heavenly Father, who have been worthy of him:
"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the
world, for I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink
"(Mat.25,34).
Once I have received as noted above sacraments of initiation, as a start towards gaining
heaven lost, we go out in the struggle that each of us must wear according to St Paul 'the good

11
Euchologion E.I.B.M.B.O.R, Bucharest, 2013, p. 223.
12
Venerable Paisios, Spiritual words III Spiritual pursuit, Evanghelismos Publishing house, Bucharest, 2003, p.
176 ș.u.
13
Dumitru Stăniloae, T.D.O., E.I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucharest, 2003, p.83 șu.

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fight I fought, the journey I have done, faith I have kept. "(Ep. has-II by Tim.). Carrying out the
good or right fight, we celebrate the journey to acquire the "image of God," which indicates the
reason and free will, we forget "likeness" which gives us the opportunity to resemble God in
virtue as much as possible14.
St. John Damascene tells us that God does not require us to fully opt into choosing the
route leading to His likeness, but each of us is endowed with reason and free will, which gives
each creature the right of choosing his part. Echoing all the moments spent with Christ we see
that the cross of Christ is our ultimate model of dedication by sacrifice out of love for the whole
image of God made for us, but "we have been given by her, new absolution of sin, was robbed
hell, resurrection was given, we have been given the power to despise the present, and even
death, the return to the very beginning was committed, they opened the gates of heaven, our
temper right hand of God was loosen, we have become children and heirs of God15”.
In Him we have forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. It's the only place of
communion, twinning of heaven and earth. He is the beginning and the captain of a new
humanity, He is the opener of a new era16. Christ gives birth to us within a new life in the
maternal bosom of the Church. We shall remember that for such a union with Christ,
incorporation into the Church, a transient reality can be accompanied or not by specific
psychological phenomena. The Metropolitan Mladin speaks about the successive mystical union
with Christ through the sacraments, proving that baptism is the beginning of mystical union with
Christ, and the Eucharist is the consummation of this union. To this, all the mystery of the
mystical life, add chrismation, between birth and perfection, as the mystery of growth and
maturity in Chris17, thus the union with Christ is not static, but dynamic.
Our Saviour Christ in all His work led us, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew XVI, 24). With these words the
Saviour Christ shows us all the instruction that He gives to the apostles, that each of us must be
ready to die. In the Gospel of John, says: "If the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains alone; and if it dies, it brings forth much fruit "(Matthew XVI, 23). With these words,
Saint John Chrysostom says that he wants to show us more power of expression of the same

14
St. John of Damasc, Dogmatics, E.I.B.M.B.O.R, Bucharest, 2005, p. 82.
15
Mathew , 5, 9, 45; Romans, 8, 17; 9, 26; II Corinthians , 6, 18; Galatians 3, 26, 29; 4, 7
16
Nicolae Mladin, Christ –our life, Deisis publishing house, Sibiu, 2012, p.52.
17
Idem, p. 125.

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thing; He says that He is not the only one to dies, but His apostles too. Both high gain is this
Christ says to his disciples, that is terrible for you if you do not want to die and good thing if
you're ready to die. "By these words Christ shows us that He does not coerce anyone, even if I
received from the Baptism enrol in his army in order to gain salvation through repentance, not
compel, coerce not, but let the man be master of his own wills.
The road of repentance as we have seen, begins even since Baptism, and it continues
through the actual Sacrament of Confession, being the alternative and the benefit possibility
which God has left the Church, the ministers of holy shrines. In the IIIrd century, Tertullian
resembled confession of sins with injuries showing off before doctors18.In general this problem
was dealt by Saint Cyprian. He was seeing in the person of the priest, a doctor of the soul and
emphasized on the necessity of confession of sins long before the bishop or priest and clean them
before Holy Communion. This cleaning St. Cyprian speaks resembles the foot washing that the
Saviour makes to His disciples at the Last Supper, because they are part of Him, and also for
them to be clean. Sacrament of Confession has a spiritual value, and it is secretly the intimate
frank communication between the penitent and the priest, or even a mystery of communion
among themselves as Father Stăniloaecalls it19.
The mystery of Sacrifice and Passion of Christ, the sacrament by which we share our
intimate and we expose not only injuries to the Great Doctor, but also helplessness that each one
carries. The presence of Christ in the Sacrament is called the Sacrament of Confession or of
Penance, in the first case being marked by the presence of the icon of Christ, or prayer, "Behold,
my son, Christ sits unseen, receiving your most humble confession. So do not be shy, do not be
afraid, do not hide from me anything you did, but all you tell me without doubt and without
diffidence, to get forgiveness from our Lord Jesus Christ "and the other Christ now sits forever,
since this confession, repentance is always and at all times. The Lord rejoices of this sacrament
of penance through Confession, because it is the beginning of the re-penitent communion with
Christ, and with a man who appears in his name. Through this, the penitent recovers a delicacy, a
fine mind, a humble and an embarrassmentof the sin, Christ's anger; We could call it a delicacy
opposite stiffness started from sin, selfishness, careless or desperation.The softness of the that
Father Stăniloae speaks above is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of penance,

18
Ph.D. Prof.. Dumitru Stăniloae, T.D.O., E.I.B.M.B.O.R, Bucharest, 2003, p. 131; apud. Penitential free, chapter.9,
P.L. I, col.1345.
19
Idem, p. 133.

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although we are in the process of purification, the presence of grace is felt by the penitent as the
force to focus not to repeat the sin, and to overcome latent state He was in at the beginning.
Sacrament of Penance tends to report upon the urge of Christ Who makes us all mentioned
above, self-denial, that having nothing in common with oneself. But to give you to distress,
labours may be associated with the desire to confess and download the old man and gain the
opportunity to live in the human face of the new
Taking the cross of Christ, denying the old man and receiving the new man does not stop
the new man to bear the reproaches and the insults, says St. John Chrysostom, as Christ shows us
the extent of the repentance we are called for, that denial must go up death, even shameful death,
but it should not be done only once, not twice, but all life. "To be constant, says Christ, before
our eye death shall be prepared, every day of slaughter”20.
To follow Christ is to be of categorical judgment, since suffering, enduring torments are
some conditions that may be incurred without following Christ, such as suffering from lack, they
lack presence baiting loved one. But above all this, the reason why Christ must suffer is added,
and that is salvation. Our state of sinfulness leads the soul to death, tears, repentance made, have
the ability to resurrect the soul and make him alive again. St. Symeon the New Theologian,
speaking of tears in repentance, states that: "Tears are the true baptism of the Spirit, the
great"light " through which every man becomes light”21. For St. John of the Ladder, "repentance
is a covenant with God to begin a new life ”22. Symbolic books of the Orthodox Church, talk
also about penance, but they insist much more on their pedagogical character. The desert Fathers
insisted strongly on the belief the repentance has a fast effect. For example: Abba Pimen assured
his brother that "the hour when man falls in the wrong, if he says: I have sinned and it soon
23
ended” , and yet the ascetics fountain never runs dry of tears. St. Gregory of Nyssa Penthe
speaks generally about the grieving, as being a sad mood of the soul that is caused by lack of
something desirable. Or, for a Christian, desired work is fulfilled in one word: lack of
communion with Christ through deliberate embrace of sin.
Thus theChristian pathos is being gifted with the sorrow for the lost salvation by
themselves or by others. Varsanufie Abba writes: I have no way to grieve for anything of this

20
St. John Chrysostome, P.S.B, translation, by Ph.D. Dumitru Fecioru, E.I.B.M.B.O.R, Bucharest, 1994, p. 635
21
Tomáš Špildík, Eastern Spirituality of Orthodox Christianity, Deisis Publisging house, Sibiu 2005, p. 238; apud.
O09 o. 68, 69, 74, 75 ecc. , SC 51 (1957), p. 59 sq [FR 6, 1976, p. 83 sq]
22
John of the Ladder, The Ladder to Heaven, Amarcord Publishing house, , Timișoara, 2000, p. 218.
23
Avva Pimen, Apoftegma the fourth, Pateric,......

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world, but only and only for sin, and John Lonely gets to "divide overflow tears into three
categories according to the three stages of Christian perfection”24. Tears of the band are aroused
by thoughts such as: poverty, remembrance of his enemies etc.; the cry of the soul's prayer
sparked the following thoughts: fear of judgment, sin consciousness, meditation on death, etc.;
Regarding human tears, here are the spiritual thoughts that cause them: amazement before God's
majesty, the wonder before the depth of his wisdom, and the many others alike .... The fact that
crying does not come from the movement of sorrow but of immense joy .25.
All sin and repentance that we see as a crushing of the heart is a gift from God. As can be
seen as the full search of all our winning sins’ forgiveness or winning them the good fight, keep
the will of God, who is present in this paper, as in all other things. During the exposure I have
met the idea of confession as a medicine. The medical approach is also alive in the new
Orthodox theology. The conference held during the III the theological dialogue between the
Romanian Orthodox Church and the Evangelical Church in , beard the theme: “Renewal and
healing in the Sacrament of Penance as faithful Orthodox teaching on the basis of the Holy
Scripture and the Holy Tradition, Father Dumitru Stăniloae gives several examples proving
medicinal understanding of the mystery of confession and added: As a physician of the patient,
the priest not only works on his healing recommending him drugs and a cure, and especially in
that it offers understanding and compassion, because in this way Christ gave power to overcome
sin, the ultimate doctor who loves us and who for us took upon Himself death on the Cross”26.
Church tradition perpetuated in her womb by the dwellers of the great monasteries and
holy hermits, memory status we cease from sin, worn by man since the baptism. Prayer waking
consciousness is always related to the lips of both monks and laity. This hesychastic prayer or
prayer of the heart: Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me the sinner "is the prayer par
excellence presenting our full confession, our entire offering that we bring God into time. As I
argued and argued above, the state of sinfulness that we recognize and we are making
repentance, God is present and pours His grace upon those who continually recognize their sin
and desire to change. Through this prayer not only we gain forgiveness, but we gain the grace of
God which spreads all worldly care, all care that it removes man from God.

24
Trans. I. Hausherr, Jean Solitaire(Pseudo-Jean de Lycopolis). Dialogue sur ľ âme et le passions des hommes, OCA
120, Roma, 1939, p. 40 sq.
25
Ibidem
26
În: Buße und Beichte, p. 25-32

10
 So in conclusion, every individual must first pass all the experience of repentance where
he gets into touch, for the first time with the presence of Christ, followed to complete this
presence by tasting the Holy Eucharist, passing the plan of feeling and also of confessing his real
presence, the presence of Christ in his life. We experience repentance with God and enjoy His
presence in our ascent to the great resurrection of eternal life.We experience repentance with
God, enjoying His presence in the ascent to the great resurrection of eternal life. These two
mysteries that the man willing to change undertakes, have the role to unite in organic facet with
Christ and all the people. By exercising personal divine-human virtues of faith through
repentance, bringing prayers, fasting, love, gentleness, self mercy, man strengthens himself
within , keeps himself in this holiness, personally living Christ as the unit of his personality and
as unity of being with the other members of the Holy Body of Christ, the Church, the full union
of Christ's presence27.

27
Panayotis Nellas, Orthodoxy – divine – humanity in action, Deisis publishing house, Sibiu, 2013, p. 66.

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