Fr. Alexander Schmemann on the Body of Christ

Fr. Alexander Schmemann

In the present context, however, it is important for us to note that this “clericalization” of the Church, the reduction of “ministry” to the clergy alone and the consequent atrophy in the consciousness of the laity, led to the gradual demise of the sacrificial perception of the Church herself and of the sacrament of the Church-the Eucharist. The conviction that the priest serves on behalf of the laity and, so to speak, in their place led to the conviction that he serves for them, for the satisfaction of their “religious needs,” subordinate to their religious “demand.” We have already seen this in the example of the proskimide, where the extraction of particles during the commemoration came to be perceived not as the transformation by ourselves of ourselves and each other into a “sacrifice, living and well pleasing to God,” but as a method of satisfying certain personal needs-”for the health of…,” “for the repose of…” But this example could be extended to the entire life of church society, to all its psychology. The overwhelming majority of the laity (supported in this, alas, all too often by the clergy and the hierarchy) sense of Church as existing for themselves but do not sense themselves as the Church transformed and eternally being transformed into a sacrifice and offering to God, into participants in the sacrificial ministry of Christ.

*Taken from the Eucharist, pg. 116.