The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom

by Alexander Schmemann

The Eucharist is the crowning achievement of the well-known liturgical scholar, Alexander Schmemann. It reflects his entire life experience and thoughts on the Divine Liturgy, the Church's central act of self-realization. Father Alexander Schmemann (+1983) was a prolific writer, brilliant lecturer, and dedicated pastor.

Genres: Theology, Christianity, Religion, Christian, Nonfiction, Church, Spirituality

245 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann was a prominent Eastern Orthodox theologian and priest of the Orthodox Church in America.

Reviews

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Kristie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always feel too overwhelmed to be able to write a proper review of Schmemann’s writing. But I am grateful to attempt one this time because I was very compelled and convicted by this book, which is a masterpiece of lived theology and spirituality. I feel indeed that I and everyone is called to a much greater reality and responsibility to the Body of Christ.

I am very touched by the presentation of the Church and her purpose, mission, goal, and essence, which Schmemann experiences and sees in the early church. The Church is the Kingdom of God and she is heaven on earth. The Church is in every way possible, the Body of Christ. The Church is offered with our bread and wine and all the creation of God’s, with Christ and as a part of Christ. The Church is the manifestation and the arm of the Divine Love in the world. The Church is the assembly which ascends to heaven, where the angels and powers and principalities bless God and where the Cherubim cries Holy, Holy, Holy. The Church is the gathering of the saints, those in heaven and on earth, as one. The Church is a proper thanksgiving which is the realization of who we are and what we are in God’s eyes. The Church is the new life who rises to this newness and this true life in the Eucharist. The Church is a transcendent unity and a transcendent freedom. The Church is assigned a duty to ascend and it is a duty that all her members must join together to achieve. The Church is the Kingdom and, her work, the Eucharist, is the fullness, the manifestation, the realization, the sacrament of the Kingdom.

This is a masterpiece.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Alexander Schmemann did not live to polish this last of his works, it is still a major contribution to liturgical theology. Schmemann writes with his usual piety, knowledge, and practical insight. The work is devotional and pastoral, rather than academic. Schmemann points out many areas in which Eastern Orthodox practice has fallen away from its own rich history and legacy. He is not afraid to criticize his own tradition, and I admire him for that. At the same time, I believe we Western Protestants have much to learn from Orthodoxy. Many of the theological "problems" that we obsess over simply aren't that big a deal for Orthodoxy. They have refreshing, and complementary, perspectives on liturgy, the eucharist, and even the meaning of salvation.

[Igor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book that everyone interested in the Eucharist but also in sacraments more generally (irrespective of denomination) should read!
Schmemann reminds us that the sacrament in the “Eucharist” is not just transformation of bread and wine in to body and blood of Christ, but the sacrament of the Eucharist is the Church itself! Gathering of the people of God, in the kingdom of God.
“The purpose of the eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in our partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the body of Christ … Nothing is explained, nothing is defined, nothing has changed ‘in the word.’” p.226

[Bishoy Mansour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book. Took me forever to read. Some parts were so slow and dragged out and I felt like they were ramblings. I think the language was just too complicated for me I’m too peepeepoopoo. There were some very good nuggets in there though.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potent Quotables:

If according to his humanity the priest is only one—and perhaps the most sinful and unworthy—of those assembled, then by the gift of the Holy Spirit, which has been preserved by the Church since Pentecost and handed down without interruption through the laying on of hands of the bishop, he manifests the power of the priesthood of Christ, who consecrated himself for us and who is the one priest of the New Testament: “and he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues for ever” (Heb 7:24). Just as the holiness of the assembly is not that of the people who constitute it but Christ’s, so the priesthood of the priest is not his but Christ’s, bestowed on the Church because she is his body.

Precisely in this sacramental understanding of the world is the essence and gift of that light of the world that permeates the entire life of the Church, the entire liturgical and spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy. Sin is itself perceived here as a falling away of man, and in him of all creation, from this sacramentality, from the “paradise of delight,” and into “this world,” which lives no longer according to God, but according to itself and in itself and is therefore corrupt and mortal. And if this is so, then Christ accomplishes the salvation of the world by renewing the world and life itself as sacrament.

The difference (and it is a radical one) between our contemporary understanding of the symbol and the original one consists in the fact that while today we understand the symbol as the representation or sign of an absent reality, something that is not really in the sign itself (just as there is no real, actual water in the chemical symbol H2O), in the original understanding it is the manifestation and presence of the other reality—but precisely as other, which, under given circumstances, cannot be manifested and made present in any other way than as a symbol.

The true and original symbol is inseparable from faith, for faith is “the evidence of things unseen” (Heb 11:1), the knowledge that there is another reality different from the “empirical” one, and that this reality can be entered, can be communicated, can in truth become “the most real of realities.” Therefore, if the symbol presupposes faith, faith of necessity requires the symbol.

Everyday experience shows us that “illustrative symbolism” is foreign to the living, authentic faith and life of the Church, just as “scholastic” theology remains foreign, in the last analysis, to such faith. “Illustrative symbolism” is at home in that superficial, “showy” and routine religiosity in which a widespread but shallow curiosity toward anything “holy” is lightly taken as religious feeling and “interest in the Church.” But where there is a living, authentic and, in the best sense of the word, simple faith, it becomes unnecessary, for genuine faith lives not by curiosity but by thirst.

Just as he did a thousand years ago, so today the “simple” believer goes to Church in order primarily to “touch other worlds” (Dostoevsky). “And almost free, the soul breathes heaven unhindered” (Vladislav Khodasevich). In a sense, he is not “interested” in worship, in the way in which “experts” and connoisseurs of all liturgical details are interested in it. And he is not interested because “standing in the temple” he receives all that for which he thirsts and seeks: the light, the joy, and the comfort of the kingdom of God, the radiance that, in the words of the agnostic Chekhov, beams from the faces of the “old people who have just returned from church.” ... All he knows is that he has left his everyday life and has come to a place where everything is different and yet so essential, so desirable, so vital that it illumines and gives meaning to his entire life.

The new time, the time of the kingdom of God and its fulfilment in the Church, now enters into the fallen time of “this world” in order that we, the Church, might be lifted up to heaven, and the Church transfigured into “that which she is”—the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit.

At first the three antiphons were sung not in the church, but outside of it and only on the occasion of a solemn procession. What is now called the “Little Entrance” was none other than the entrance of the people and clergy into the church—either at the conclusion of the procession, or without any preliminary procession.

The prayer of the Church is a divine-human prayer, for the Church is Christ’s humanity, with him standing at its head: “I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me” (Jn 17:23).

Unity from above is all that is necessary; the world itself, without knowing it, hungers and thirsts for it from the Church. And all people have always wanted—for ages!—to compel the Church herself to serve all manner of “unities from below,” to bless, to consecrate, to “religiously” sanction them, to be their expression and justification. Precisely these “unities from below”—natural, national, ideological, political—have become the treasure of the heart.

The human personality is love for oneself and thus love for God, love for God and thus love for oneself, the apprehension of oneself as a bearer of the divine gift of knowledge and ascent into the fulness of life. And here it is innate to convert this love for himself that is implicit in man into love of oneself, into self-love, which constitutes the essence of pride. No, man is not enticed by “evil” but by himself, by his own divine image, by the divine miracle of his I… God created us and called us into “his wonderful light” so that we would become “like gods” and have abundant life. What then transformed these words into a lie, into the beginning of the fall, into the source of sin, decay and death? The answer to this question is given precisely by the eucharist, by the thanksgiving that returns us to the throne of the kingdom, grants us to see the face of God and his creation, heaven and earth, the fulfilment of his glory. The eucharist answers not with definitions, with words about words, but with its own light and power. For thanksgiving is the power that transforms desire and satisfaction, love and possession, into life, that fulfills everything in the world, given to us by God, into knowledge of God and communion with him. And thus only thanksgiving convicts, i.e., exposes, sin as the falling away of love from thanksgiving, as unthankfulness.

Life in oneself . . . But only the Father “has life in himself” (Jn 5:26), only God is Life and therefore the life of any life. The horror and finality of the fall lies in this: wanting life in himself and for himself, man fell away from life.

At the last supper Christ did not institute any “authority” or “right” to transform bread and wine—he instituted the Church. He instituted his kingdom, appointed for his disciples and all “who believe through their words,” as abiding in his love. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” This commandment is new, eternally new, because it is Christ himself, the very love of God, who is granted to us in order that we may love one another through it: “even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn 13:34). And this new covenant in Christ, the love of God, is the Church… The last supper, the Church and the eucharist are “linked” not through an earthly cause-and-effect connection, to which an “institution” is so often lowered, but through their common and single referral to the kingdom of God—which is manifested at the last supper, granted to the Church and remembered, in its presence and actuality, in the eucharist.

The word sacrament was never restricted by its identification with our current seven sacraments. This word embraced the entire mystery of the salvation of the world and mankind by Christ and in essence the entire content of the Christian faith. The fathers of the Church perceived the eucharist both as the revelation and the fulfilment of this universal mystery—“hidden from the angels,” but to us, the new people of God, manifested in all its abundant fullness.

The Church is not a doctrine about the world to come but the joyous encounter of the kingdom of God. It is the sacrament of peace, the sacrament of salvation and the sacrament of the reign of Christ.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't read much of Fr. Schememann for several years and it was a joy to read him again (I read the book when it was first published). I don't remember liking the book all that much when I first read it - it is similar to many other things he wrote, so it didn't seem like anything new. But now not having read him much in recent years I really enjoyed reacquainting myself with his liturgical theology. It is brilliant and the best Orthodox understanding of the Liturgy I've ever read. He is critical of the received tradition, but in the end he didn't advocate for putting his ideas into practice. Perhaps he couldn't - many bishops didn't like his ideas and to push that they be put into practice and replace the received tradition was probably more than they could bear. The book is slightly dated in that he was arguing against the trends in liturgical piety of 40-50 years ago. I wish he would have been able to do the Liturgy as he thought it should be done.

[Kate R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this so much. A book for every Orthodox Christian to read and dwell on. Schmemann offers so many insights to help us to deepen our beautiful Faith, and in particular, to improve our understanding and gratitude for the Divine Liturgy. Highly recommend.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely transformed how I see life, the Eucharist, and what it means to be part of the Body of Christ. It may be difficult for anybody who is not familiar with Eastern Catholicism to grasp, but, in a word: WOW.

[Joshua Coolman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a map of heaven.

[Alex of Yoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodness, what a book. What a labor of love. The insight this author had into the deepness of God and Christ in the Church is astounding, beautiful, and profound. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I pray I can realize and remember all the wonderful lessons it holds.

This is a posthumous translation of Fr. Schmemann's book on the Eucharist, originally written in Russian and partially translated by the author into English before his falling asleep in Christ. It is a moment-by-moment deep analysis of the Orthodox Church's main service: the Divine Liturgy. In looking at this service, Fr. Schmemann also touches on nearly every important piece of Christianity: the purpose of the Church, what is truly the Kingdom of God, why is the Eucharist important, what was accomplished at the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, how has the church historically viewed itself and its rites, and what does all of this mean for the everyday Christian, the Church as a whole, and even the whole world.

This is mind-blowingly profound. I mean, this author, in just trying to describe the significance of the Divine Liturgy also goes in depth discussing memory, time, symbol, reality, words, freedom, and unity. It's truly a cosmic work. It's not about the service as an explanation of what it is and what happens in it, but about the service as it defines the entirety of the Christian experience of life itself. It's rich, poignant, insightful, and it helped me so much in understanding not just more of the Divine Liturgy but of Orthodoxy, of Christ, of the faith, of what life even is.

Fr. Schmemann has a scathing view of Western theology, particularly where it focuses too much on the "part" or "definition" rather than on how the parts connect to a whole or the experience of something vs just knowledge about it. He condemns the overbearing scholarization of Eastern theology that has crept in from the West, and this is a reality I can attest to, having been educated in Western theology and finding that it does tend to distract the Christian from the reality of the Christian life, moving it out of the realm of the tangible and into the realm of the cognitive, basically removing the spiritual life from reality. Yet, I was encouraged with how Fr. Schmemann said that the truth of what Christianity is and who God is and what the Liturgy really is can be felt and perceived by any average joe who is open enough to receiving it. In fact, many of the deep things he discussed, I already had an inkling about just from my own experience of the Eucharist. It was so good to hear him confirm many of my thoughts and then take them even further to heights I never even realized.

This book loses a star because, despite how gorgeous and deep and impactful it is, it is a difficult read. The writing is more technical and of a higher level than the casual reader would typically read. It's right up there with most philosophical books as far as complexity goes, and I just don't think it is accessible to the average person. I'm an avid reader who frequently enjoys complicated and scholarly works, and I could only handle maybe 40 pages of this book at a time (which, for me, is rather low. I can average usually 60-80 pages in an hour for nonfiction and 100 for fiction). It should definitely be required reading for seminary students though. Anyone looking toward the priesthood or any sort of ministry within the Orthodox Church should read what this book has to say.

Overall, I was really impacted by this book. It's powerful and full of concepts that me as a Western Christian never truly understood before. If you're in seminary or if reading scholarly material doesn't intimidate you, I hugely recommend this book, and I hope there's a "layman's" version out there somewhere for everyone else because it really should be read by every Orthodox Christian.

[Zack Clemmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ebullient and occasionally exasperating cri de coeur of one of my favorite theologians, patiently doing what he does best--marveling at the depths of the riches of the Church's liturgy, and especially its crown and glory, the Eucharist. Schmemann has his bugbears, (the Western perversion of Orthodox spirituality, "school theology," and fetishistic pietism being the main ones), and can't not hunt them down, but his childlike awe at the goodness of God offered Man in creation and redemption, expressed in the Eucharistic rites of Chrysostom and Basil the Great, his totalizing vision of God's love in Church, world, and kingdom, his fresh and ancient (if occasionally superficial) reading of particular Scriptures in light of the whole, all these make the read an opportunity for worship.

[Austyn Dentry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schmemann is the man!! 🔥🔥
I can’t wait to reread this one!

“The homily can be, and often is even today, intelligent, interesting, instructive and comforting, but, these are not the criteria by which we can distinguish a ‘good’ homily from a ‘bad’ one – these are not its real essence.  Its essence lies in its living link to the gospel that was read in the church assembly.”[1]  He continues by saying, “The condition for true preaching therefore must be precisely the complete self-denial of the preacher, the repudiation of everything that is only his own, even his own gifts and talents.”[2] 


[1] Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladmirs Seminary Press, 1988). Pg. 77
[2] Alexander Schmemann. Pg. 78

[Caleb Hallsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent work of Christian theology for and from the Church. As a reader who is not at all familiar with the Orthodox tradition of the east, it’s nature as deeply situated in this tradition made reading it a bit challenging, but it was well worth the struggle. For, it is not so much situated in the tradition as birthed out of it, so it is doxological, pastoral, historical, and practical, as all theology should be. It is as much a theology of the Eucharist as it is a theology of the Church and the Eucharistic gathering. All in all, The Eucharist is a wholistic exploration of the Eucharist with a great wealth to offer Christians of any tradition.

[Ross Jensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first two chapters are especially strong (particularly on not isolating the eucharist “proper” from the rest of the liturgy), but thereafter, the book peters out into an amorphous welter of details that remains characteristically Byzantine in spite of Schmemann’s best intentions. It doesn’t help that Schmemann keeps returning to a tired anti-western polemic that pretends Vatican II never took place. I would recommend Guzie’s Jesus and the Eucharist as an alternative.

[Dwight Penas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for Christians who celebrate eucharist (communion).

[Youssef Adel · Rating 5 out of 5]

جميل جدا جدا جدا

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book that I have read so far on the Eucharist in the Orthodox Church. Too bad that even today so many "churches" fail to take notice of the author's warnings.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

2022 - ties in a lot with thoughts about frequent communion and the movement towards such.

[Kevin Godinho · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of good stuff in here. Likely would've gotten 4 stars had I realized what I was getting into. I was prepared for a different kind of book, but still good nonetheless.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 3 out of 5]

t is difficult to review this book one level. It is tempting for the reviewer to isolate the different chapters and give an account of them. Perhaps this is necessary, but it also leads one into the trap Fr. Schmemann warned against: dismembering the elements of the Eucharist for private analysis robs them of their power (196). Nevertheless, I shall try.

The purpose of the Eucharist is "partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, our manifestation as the body of Christ" (226). Fr Schmemann orders his thoughts around the anaphora, the movement of ascent into the heavenly places. It is going out from this world into heaven (60). This somewhat explains the intricate symbolism (I know he will shun that word) behind Eastern sacramentology. Fr Schmemann makes numerous, if sometimes vague, criticisms of Western Sacramentology, particularly Catholic transubstantiation. For the East, however, the key moment, if one may use that phrase, is in the *epiklesis,* or the invocation of the Holy Spirit.

Fr Schmemann loosely defines a sacrament as embracing the entire mystery of the salvation of the world and mankind by Christ and in essence the entire content of the Christian faith (217). That is the most important sentence in the book, in my opinion.

Evaluation
This book is much harder to follow than For the Life of the World. He refers to many internal discussions in Eastern Orthodox seminaries, much of which is lost on the outside reader. If he would have briefly defined a few of them, it would have helped out. But no matter, the book was superb and an essential study in liturgical theology. It has many gems within.

[Christian Proano · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is dense, deep, and requires slow reading. Likely the reader is going to encounter concepts and insights that probably won't have heard in many other places, if ever at all.
A must read for every Orthodox who looks into deepening his understanding on the Eucharist, the studious on this topic, or whoever wants to get a purely Orthodox perspective on what the Eucharist is.
The Eucharist is part of a whole liturgic experience therefore it cannot and should not be arbitrarily isolated as an object of analysis as "school theologians" did since that would destroyed the wholeness, understanding, and unity of such experience and reality. So as every aspect of the liturgy is sacramental, just as every aspect of life and creation is sacramental too, therefore to reduce the Eucharist to formulas and external clerical authority is to strip it of its sacramental unity with the rest. The early Church consciousness kept by all until "school theology" (scholasticism subsequently neo-scholasticism) came was that every one is an active participant/concelebrant in it, from the Trinity to the new born baby to creation itself. This is reflected not in the historical study of the Eucharist but in the prayers pertaining to it. The criteria of the lex orandi lex credendi was/is particularly live(d) out through the Eucharist.
The author's explanation on the Orthodox understanding of sacrament/sacramental, and symbol/symbolism is mind-blowing.

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of Schmemann's most important works. Published posthumously, it explores the Orthodox eucharistic liturgy. It is is forceful analysis and theology. For those like me who are Protestant, the book opens up concepts and visions that will be fruitful, even if I'm not fully on board.

It is a reminder of the centrality of the Eucharist, not only to worship, to our vision of God's realm. Not an easy read, but worthwhile for those desiring to explore the meaning of the Eucharist.

[Fr. Thomas Reeves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense read, but an important one for those looking for a grounded and authoritative assessment of the church's theology and practice of the Eucharist.

Definitely a historical-theological and ecclesial-theological study verses and Biblical-theological one.

Very helpful, instructive, thought-provoking and encouraging.

[C.N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book on this subject that I have ever read. Moving. Deep. It will change your perspective of what the Church truly is: its mission, purpose. The presence of the Lord permeates this book. Thank God for Alexander Schmemann.

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads more like a text book. Perhaps a better pick for clergy.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling introduction to the Divine Liturgy by the foremost scholar of orthodox liturgical theology! read with Water & Spirit.

[Marcus]

I didn't technically read this, but you understand.

[The Rev. J. Curtis Goforth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've ever read on the sacrament of communion. If you read nothing else on the subject, choose this one.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read long ago. Reread 2013. Very rich and full.