He suggested that when we take part in the Eucharist, we step outside of Time and into Eternity. The reference point is the “one perfect Sacrifice” of Calvary; the Lord’s Supper is not a “re-sacrifice”. But it is a moment where we are present at the Cross, it’s a moment where we can say with faces lit by the re-emerging sun, “it is finished”. In that moment, we belong to the reality of the “lamb slain before the foundation of the world”, completely outside of the passage of time and the long slow dying of our planet.

When Jesus Himself said, “This is my body…this is my blood”, he was in fact alive and well at the time, sharing a meal with his disciples, possibly a Passover meal. The sacrifice had not yet occurred in time his blood was doing what ordinary human blood should do, his body was whole and not yet broken. And yet, he offered his Body and Blood to his disciples, and to us.

So we share the meal with him, with them, and with the whole Body of Christ at a later date, entering just as they did, into a moment which is outside of Time and united not only in the proclamation of Christ’s death and resurrection, but with all other celebrations throughout time until Jesus comes again.

That’s not a very scholarly attempt to explain what happens; it’s more of a way to explain what I feel about it and where some of us are at, in the hope that others may find it helpful too. I wouldn’t worry if we fail to have a “through the veil” experience of resting in Jesus’ arms, though it can happen. But we should receive with active faith all the same, and awareness of community. I like to say Amen as I receive, in the Anglican way, and also to cross myself as a sign that mind and heart, soul and strength have been blessed and can now, in turn, be given “as a living sacrifice” in Christ Jesus for the nourishment of others.

But however we receive, and whatever the formalities may be, it’s God’s work to draw us into that place of love, forgiveness and new life. What grief it must be to God, when His beloved children fight and wound each other over the very Body and Blood of his Son.

However, our “Orthodox distinctives” are not linked to our “public” clerical garb. Nevertheless, if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_collar you will read that the so-called “Roman” collar is not particularly “Roman.” You will also notice that the cassock is not just Western, but is also Eastern and that the “Greeks” also used to wear a stiff white collar under the cassock. There are many misconceptions about public clerical garb, particularly in the USA. Remember that the Church was One for 1,000 years, so it ought not to be surprising that many things are the same between Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox.

On one hand, you want to maintain “Orthodox” distinctives while on the other hand, you are happy to blur the line. Just because just about everyone wears what is Catholic clerical garb; it does not destroy the fact that there are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I would not wish to be so critical of the West that I would deny any health there. After all, there was only One Church for nearly half of Christian history. There are significant amounts of shared theology. The critiques of the East do not try to destroy or utterly repudiate either the Roman Catholic Church or the rest of the West. But, because there are definitively differences in approach and theology between the East and the West, we speak our critiques. They are, however, not all that we do. We also reach out to the poor and needy. We evangelize. We teach new converts. We have youth groups. We train up chanters, etc., etc., etc. Church life is much more than just critiques.

Finally, I would suggest that you ask Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Church of God in Christ, etc., whether they consider that collar to be a Roman collar. It has become the cultural collar that expresses ordained ministry in many (but not all) parts of the world. And so, as the Orthodox have immigrated to the “New World” they have adopted appropriate “public” clerical gear.

If using the substance-accident distinction is “committing oneself to a particular human philosophy”, then so was using homoousious, and hypostasis, and physis in the first four ecumenical councils. In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, wrote the following: “‘The view of ourselves as ‘persons’ is just as erroneous as the view that the Sun goes around the Earth … this sort of language will disappear in a few hundred years.” And the philosophical acceptance of natures is already on the wane. So, when the philosophical notions of nature and personhood disappear, would you then say that Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon shouldn’t have wedded themselves to those philosophical concepts? Or, does the Church’s infallible determination of such things show us the truth of the philosophy, at least as it applies to the particular theological doctrine in which it is used? If the latter, then this can likewise apply to the objection you raise about transubstantiation. You also said that the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation “overly defines” how Christ is objectively present in the Eucharist. But this claim begs the question, because for Catholics, these ecumenical councils (which you don’t hold to be ecumenical) *are* the standard for how defined a doctrine should be, and in them the Eucharist is defined in terms of transubstantiation. So your objections to transubstantiation ultimately come down to the schism.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

This is actually more than simply throwing up hands in the air.

“And, so, the Orthodox critique of the West is that they tried to describe in “positive” words what is only describable in “negative” words.”

It seems to me that you are not sufficienty critical of the West. Looking at your image, I could not tell if you are Western or Eastern looking like “Roman” (that thing around your neck is called the Roman Collar).