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ready been saved by Christ.28 Thus, we can see both the realised eschatology
evident in Maximus’ thought , while also the ongoing movement of the original
world of God’s creation in straining towards its ?nal goal. The end, for the sake
of which the whole of creation was made, that ‘God may be all in all’ (1 Cor
15:28) is never severed from the liturgical experience and life of prayer of the
Orthodox.29 As a sacrament, that is, the living experience of new life, the
Church creates, manifests and ful?ls herself through the sacraments, which are
also sources of this new life, and most of all through the “sacraments of sacra-
ments”, the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the ‘very act of passage in which the
Church ful?ls herself as a new creation and, therefore, the sacrament of the
Church’.30 Schmemann also describes the Eucharist as the sacrament of the
kingdom. Ecclesiology, sacramental theology, liturgy, and eschatology are all
intricately interwoven in the Orthodox theology of the Eucharist. In fact, in
the Orthodox view, the Eucharist, that is, the Divine Liturgy, is at the heart of
everything, it is the centre and source of all authentic life. Its presentation in
Orthodox material is cosmic, all-embracing, completely continuous and ever
going on somehow. Church, the Liturgy and life are intimately connected in
the Orthodox. Indeed, for the believer, the Liturgy is the most precious thing
there is, and Church life – which is itself the life of the Liturgy, determines all
relations to everything else.31

The Eucharist is described as a passage, a procession that leads the
Church into heaven, into her ful?lment as the Kingdom of God.32 The fact that
in the Eucharist, the Church is considered to ascend to heaven, and there to
feast at ‘the table of the Lord’ in his kingdom, has considerable consequences
for Orthodox theology. Interestingly, the Church seems to herself manifest as
‘the world to come’, as well as ‘ascend’ to heaven, to the banquet of the king-
dom. Schmemann wants to make it clear that this passage into the eschaton is
not symbolic either; rather, it refers to what it actually is, for in the full mean-
ing of the word, the Church actually ascends to heaven. This is the reason the
gifts can be said to be truly transformed: ‘it happens because we are in the aeon,
in which the transformation is not a mere ‘miracle’, but somehow the natural
consequence of our ascension into it’.33 Naturally, the Holy Spirit features here,

28 Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 35.
29 Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 35.
30 Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition, p. 78.
31 ?????????, ?????????? ?????????., ????? ???????? (??????; ?????, 2011), see pp. 8-9.
32 Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition, p. 78.
33 Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition, p. 112.

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