Exclusive: Holy Communion and the Coronavirus: Faith, Fear, and Fame in a Pandemic

Exclusive Commentary to The Orthodox World

By Evagelos Sotiropoulos, Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
 

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty (1Co 1:27).

For You, Christ our God, are the Offerer and the Offered, the One who receives and is distributed… (from the Divine Liturgy)
 

The tsunami of change caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has not spared communal Church life. From temporarily closing parishes to contain spread of the virus, the focus has quickly shifted, like a thief in the night, to the mechanism of offering the Offerer, of providing parishioners Holy Communion, which Orthodox faithful believe and confess is the holy Body and precious Blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.

Lay commentators and all order of clergy counting prominent hierarchs among them are opining on this subject. Historical liturgical developments and contemporary rationalistic-based arguments are leveraged to promote a pre-defined agenda, namely, that the millennium-long tradition of using a communal liturgical spoon for Holy Communion should be eliminated to assuage a small minority of individuals who fear the perceived transmission of disease.

This agenda has gained a particular foothold in North America, and to a lesser extent in Europe, as opposed to nation states with their own autocephalous Orthodox church, which have strongly supported and reiterated the traditional practice of Holy Communion.

The apparent wise and mighty words of some writers reminds me of the above passage from First Corinthians, where St. Paul says that God chose the foolish things … to shame the wise. What is required during the panic of a pandemic is not scare tactics but simplicity, not fear-mongering but faith.