Eucharistic Renewal: Fr. Alexander Schmemann

For more than 30 years I have served the Church as a priest and a theologian, as a pastor and a teacher. Never in those 30 years have I ceased to feel called to think about the Eucharist and its place in the life of the Church. Thoughts and questions on this subject, which go way back to early adolescence, have filled my whole life with joy - but, alas, not only with joy. For the more real became my experience of the Eucharistic liturgy, the Sacrament of Christ's victory and of his glory, the stronger became my feeling that there is a crisis in the (Orthodox) Church.

In the tradition of the Church, nothing has changed. What has changed is the perception of the Eucharist, the perception of its very essence. Essentially, this crisis consists in a lack of connection and cohesion between what is accomplished in the Eucharist and how it is perceived, understood and lived.

Perhaps many people will be astonished that, in response to this crisis, I propose we turn our attention not to the its various aspects but rather to the Sacrament of the Eucharist and to the Church, whose very life flows from that Sacrament. Yes, I do believe that precisely here, in this holy of holies of the Church, in this ascent to the table of the Lord in his kingdom, is the source of that renewal for which we hope.

I also believe that, by God's mercy, Orthodoxy throughout all ages has kept and guarded this vision, this consciousness of the Church, this knowledge that "where the Church is, there is the Holy Spirit and fullness of grace" (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies 3:24:1). But precisely because this is so, we the Orthodox faithful must find the inner strength to plunge into this Eucharistic renewal of the Church. It is not reform, adjustments and modernization that are needed so much as a return to that vision and experience that from the beginning constituted the very life of the Church."

- Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to "The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom: Sacrament of the Kingdom"