The Urban Wilderness: The Taste of Cardboard: Part II

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Oct
 

21

 
   

   

 

      The Taste of Cardboard: Part II   

 
Prosphora sealed and ready for baking

As you know, I experimented with making my first prosphora a couple of nights ago. Hopefully thanks to the GIMP you can see some of the finer details on the surface of the bread. The recipe I was using had me put all the dough in a 9" cake pan and stamp it with the seal, but while the bread was rising the second time, the seal began to warp. I thought it would be easier then, to use the traditional method of placing two layers of dough on top of each other with the seal on top. Unfortunately as you saw in my last post this resulted in a very awkward and tall piece of bread.

Saturday I made my second batch of prosphora, this time dividing the dough in two loaves which were much easier to bake and work with. As you' can see they turned out much better and more uniform.

Prosphora baking in the oven

Small prosphora loaf right out of the oven

As promised, I want to go into a bit more on the subtle symbolism and tradition of prosphora. You're probably wondering what the point of stamping bread with weird symbols is. Even if the Last Supper wasn't a Passover Seder, the bread was still pretty basic, so why go through all the trouble of making an elaborate bread seal?

In the Orthodox Churches (and actually in the Roman Catholic Church too), the Eucharist (Lord's Supper, Communion, etc) is seen as a fulfilment of the Old Testament Sacrifices. All Christians believe that Jesus' death on the Cross was the atoning sacrifice for sin, but Catholics and Orthodox believe that we somehow relive this sacrifice during the Sunday Service. For this reason, the sharing of bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Christ during the liturgy is called the "bloodless sacrifice" or "unbloody sacrifice" in Orthodox writings.

Sacrifices are always made for something or someone. To this day, in parts of Greece, villagers will bring an actual goat or sheep and kill it before the service. The congregation will share the meat as they fellowship. Communion is less gruesome than that. After all, it's "bloodless." But Orthodox/Catholic Christians still believe that we can offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist on behalf of someone else, and that is in fact what is done every Sunday.

Before anyone gets to church, the priest and deacon have a special service called the Prothesis or Proskimidia ("prothesis" means "spreading out" or "laying forth" and proskimidia means "preparation"). I mentioned before that Orthodox do communion differently. One way this is different is that Orthodox take communion "on the spoon." In other words, the priest actually puts the bread into the chalice with the wine. Then, during communion, he uses a spoon to give the communicant a small piece of wine-soaked bread. Yes, he reuses the spoon. That's one way to get really real with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Share cooties.

Obviously a loaf of bread the size above can't fit in a chalice. So how much bread goes in? That's were the prosphora seal comes in. Since the Eucharist is a sacrifice on behalf of the whole Church, the priest takes out special pieces of bread from the prosphora (you guessed it! the parts that are marked out by the seal) in honor of different saints and people.

Detail of the prosphora when sealed

Below is a diagram showing what portions of the prosphora get cut out of the bread (literally with a liturgical knife called a "spear" to remind us of Jesus' crucifixion) and put into the chalice with the wine.

It's small, but we will explain what it all means. First of all, the center of the prsophora is called "the Lamb" because that is the main portion that is used for the sacrifice and will be put in the chalice. After that, to the left (the Lamb's right) is a large triangular piece called the Theotokian named after the Theotokos ("Mother of God") Mary. To the right of the Lamb are nine smaller triangles. There are nine "ranks" of saints which are commonly commemorated. For those interested they nine ranks which are remembered are:
  1. John the Baptist (a category all to himself)
  2. The Prophets. The prophets, even though they lived before Christ, are venerated as saints in Orthodoxy. Especially venerated are Moses and Aaron, Elijah and Elisha, David and Jesse, Daniel, Daniel's three companions ("the three holy youths") Hannaniah, Azariah, and Mishael.
  3. The Apostles, Peter, Paul, and all the rest
  4. Bishops, who are thought to be the successors of the Apostles. Especially mentioned are the three greatest bishops of the Church, called the "three holy hierarchs" Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and Gregory the Theologian. Also mentioned are St. Nicholas (yes, the original Santa Clause), Athanasius (who wrote the Life of Antony), and his successor as bishop of Alexandria, St. Cyril.
  5. The Martyrs, including Stephen, St. George, St. Theodore the Soldier, St. Theodore the General, St. Demetrios, and female martyrs like St. Katherine of Alexandria.
  6. Monastics and Ascetics, especially St. Anthony.
  7. Another category or "rank" of saint that is interesting is the next one, the holy "Unmercenaries." Mercenaries (from the Latin word for merchants) are people who do things for money. Usually we think of soldiers who fight for money. But in this case, the holy unmercenaries were men and women who had the gift of healing and offered healing to others free of charge. This was a big deal in the ancient world because there was no health insurance and, much like today, doctors were extortionists who overcharged for their services. The most important unmercenary healers were St. Pantaleimon and St. Cosmas and Damian.
  8. The next category of Saint is call the "ancestors of God" meaning Jesus. These are St. Joachim and St. Anna, the parents of the Virgin Mary, according to Christian tradition, and therefore the grandparents or "ancestors" of Jesus.
  9. Finally, the ninth triangle is taken out in honor of the saint whose liturgy we are celebrating in church. In Orthodoxy, the liturgy (the words of the service) were written by one of three saints: St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom (who are already mentioned above), or St. Gregory the Dialogist (known in the West as Pope St. Gregory the Great).
Next, miscellaneous pieces of bread or "particles" are taken out from the loaf as a sacrifice for the leaders of the Church (bishops, the "synod", the patriarch, etc) and for the government leaders. In the Byzantine Empire or Tzarist Russia, the emperors were Orthodox, so this wasn't a problem. In modern times, the sacrifice is made for those "in civil authority" in countries where there is democracy. This ends the list of saints and people who are always commemorated and prayed for by the priest as he and the deacon perform the prothesis ceremony. Finally, other particles are taken and sacrificed for the living and the dead. This is where the prosphora tradition gets real.

It is traditional for families to take turns home baking the prosphora for Communion. In ancient times, this would have been a real sacrifice for some people because "pure" white refined flour was expensive. Even today though, when flour is very inexpensive, it is still an effort to bake the bread and offer enough (usually five loaves) so that everyone in your congregation can commune. Whoever is offering the prosphora or "the sacrifice" can also choose who they want to offer it for. When a family bakes prosphora, they give a list of names to the priest before the service with the names of all their family and others they want the sacrifice to be offered for. There are both the names of the living and passed loved ones. It's common for lots of families to offer prosphora for a member of the congregation who has died. I'll speak more on this tradition a little later. For now I hope that explains most of why the prosphora seal is important and helps the priest during the service.


 
   

      Posted 21st October 2014 by    

           

      Labels: communion

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