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use of water, oil, bread and wine. In essence, everything in the world can be
conceived as a gift from God and a means of participation in the new life be-
cause all of creation was originally destined for the ful?lment of the divine
economy – ‘then God will be in all’.24 In keeping with the thought world of the
Church Fathers, Schmemann too writes that sin is a falling away of man, and in
him all creation, from this sacramentality, this ‘paradise of delight’, and into
‘this world’ – a world which does not live to God, cutting itself o? from its
source of life and thus becoming mortal and corrupt. Interestingly, Orthodox
liturgy25 does seem to convey a sense that we have, almost, literally ‘fallen’ from
above and are here, below, in this world, looking up to our creator.26 There is
also a striking con?dence at the heart of Orthodox worship that we can almost
speak with God as equals, or, at least, that there is something we know about
ourselves that means we can come before God. In following his thought
through, Schmemann writes that, as regards Christ and our salvation, he ‘ac-
complishes the salvation of the world by renewing the world and life itself as
sacrament’,27 which, we understand, means that the world is then able to re?ect
its original sacramentality again. Schmemann’s thought, as characteristic of his
works generally, unfolds beautifully and the conclusions drawn at each stage
seem almost natural. Now that we understand Christ to have renewed the
world, making life itself a sacrament, we discover that this new life, this sacra-
ment, is the Church. She is the new creation, and the way she ful?lls herself,
becomes manifest, as the new creation, is through the Eucharist.

Schmemann describes how a sacrament is cosmic and eschatological;
cosmic in that it embraces all of creation, and eschatological in that it is ori-
ented toward the kingdom which is to come. Of course, here, a clear link is being
made between the purpose of creation and its movement towards its ?nal goal.
The Church is a sacrament in both senses, not least because she is the living
experience of the new life here on earth, but she is a sacrament in the cosmic
sense because she manifests in ‘this world’ the original world of God as he cre-
ated it in the beginning, and she is a sacrament in the eschatological sense be-
cause the original world of God’s creation, which the Church reveals, has al-

24 Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 34.
25 Only the Russian Orthodox is referred to here.
26 Of course, Origen’s thought is not an o?cial part of Orthodox teaching, but, some in?uence on
the Liturgy was perhaps unavoidable, especially when we consider the timing of the Liturgy of St
John of Chrysostom.
27 Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 34.

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