The Problem of Liturgical Time between αἰών, καιρός and χρόνος

Authors:

Pages: 99-107
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/XAOW9212

Abstract:

This article is focused on the problem of time in the Liturgy, interpreted as a relation between three categories – αἰών, καιρός and χρόνος. Its major keystone is the problem of transubstantiation in the Orthodox tradition, as opposed to the medieval idea of transsubstatiatio of the Holy Gifts, which takes place at a certain moment of the Mass. Here we try to analyze the two approaches as an opposition between st. John Damascene’s concept of metabole (μεταβολή) and Aquinas’ theory of transsubstantiatio of gifts, defined through Aristotelian categeories of substantia and accidentia. The transsubstantiatio, the change of substances, invoked by the words of the priest, who is acting in persona Christi, proposes some liturgical immanentism that could not avoid the idea, that the substantial change is done in a certain moment of our historical age, the chronological aeon. St. John’s idea of metabole, defended as well by st. Mark of Ephesus at the Council ofFerrara-Florence, suggests a quite different interpretation of the Eucharistic miracle, connected with the vision of Christ as the New Pascha, as it is in the Damascene’s Canon of Pascha. The communion with the New Pascha is an interchange of gifts, made possible by a synthesis and perichoresis of two non-convergent realities, two aeons. The main thesis is that these two aeons could actually cross each other in the kairos of the Divine Liturgy as a personal meeting with the Resurrected Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit. The kairos is seen as a hypostatic presence, catholic time and chronotope of the Kingdom come, time of synergy and meeting, that makes the interchange and participation of one aeon (the historical) into the other (eschatological). The Body of Christ, then, is defined as a border of these two aeons. In the created world there is a kairos, which is the place and the time for meeting Christ in the liturgical synaxis. It is the Divine Liturgy that could be seen as a conjunction or a convergence of two worlds in a new transition, new Pascha – a metamorphosis of the time itself and foretaste of eternity, a relation between the liturgical now and the Eschaton, between this aeon and future one, where the future age is present and the Eight Day without Dawn is foretasted.

Keywords:

time, Liturgy, aeon, transsubstantiatio, metabole, New Pascha.

Download

Portugal / United Kingdom / United States / Germany / NA / Russian Federation / China / Sweden / Bulgaria / Ukraine