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Eschatology and the Eucharist in Orthodox Liturgy

CATHERINE ELIZABETH REID

THE REV’D Dr Catherine Reid was the winner of the 2013 AECA Travel Award
in commemoration of the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan. The award
made possible a visit to St Elizabeth’s Convent, near Minsk in Belarus (See the
account in the Ascensiontide 2014 edition of Koinonia) and furthered her Mas-
ters dissertation entitled The Sacrament of the Kingdom: The relation between escha-
tology and the Eucharist in Anglican and Orthodox Liturgy.

Reproduced here is the ?rst of two chapters from that dissertation. This
chapter deals with the subject from an Orthodox perspective, and the chapter
to follow in a future edition of Koinonia will do so from the Anglican perspec-
tive. In her introduction, Mother Catherine writes:

‘The present study wishes to explore the relation between escha-
tology and the Eucharist in the Anglican and Orthodox. The mo-
tivation for this topic arises from personal liturgical experience
and previous study of Orthodox worship, and the desire to better
understand the nature of the Anglican Eucharistic rite. The par-
ticularly striking aspect of Orthodox worship is its ability to
communicate an entirely di?erent liturgical experience from
Western liturgy, especially conveying the sense that everything
that has ever lived and created in the world is now present and a
part of the same destiny and calling as all that is living now and all
that is to come. Out of this experience grew the desire to exam-
ine how the Anglican Eucharistic rite might attempt to convey
the purpose and destiny of humankind and all creation.’

???

ORTHODOX THEOLOGIAN, Dumitru Staniloae, has written a series of books on
Orthodox dogmatic theology called The Experience of God. In volume two, The
World: Creation and Dei?cation, we get an excellent insight into the Orthodox
understanding of creation, the fall, and redemption. As perhaps expected, this
is largely a presentation of the thought of the Church Fathers, especially the
Cappadocians’ and Maximus the Confessor. In fact, this work makes it very
clear just how much Maximus’ thought has in?uenced the Orthodox world-
view. Staniloae begins by making it clear that, in the Eastern tradition, human

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