In fact, when this attitude first made its appearance in the Church—and this happened soon after the conversion to Christianity of the Roman Empire, resulting in the subsequent massive Christianization of its population and the corresponding lowering of moral and spiritual life among Christians—the Fathers saw in it the result not of fear and humility but of neglect and spiritual relaxation. And just as they denounced as sinful the postponement of Baptism for reasons of "unpreparedness" and "unworthiness," they fought any neglect of the Sacraments. It is simply impossible to find one patristic text in support of the idea that since one cannot partake of the Mysteries worthily, it is better to abstain from them. St. John Cassian writes:
We must not avoid communion because we deem ourselves to be sinful. We must approach it more often for the healing of the soul and the purification of the spirit, but with such humility and faith that considering ourselves unworthy... we would desire even more the medicine for our wounds. Otherwise it is impossible to receive communion once a year, as certain people do . . . considering the sanctification of heavenly Mysteries as available only to saints. It is better to think that by giving us grace, the sacrament makes us pure and holy. Such people manifest more pride than humility... for when they receive, they think themselves as worthy. It is much better if, in humility of heart, knowing that we are never worthy of the Holy Mysteries we would receive them every Sunday for the healing of our diseases, rather than, blinded by pride, think that after one year we become worthy of receiving them...
"Blinded by pride"! St. Cassian here truly put his finger on the strange ability in all spiritual error to find for itself a spiritual "alibi," to dress itself in that pseudo-humility which constitutes the most subtle and therefore the most dangerous form of pride. Thus, what according to the unanimous testimony of the Fathers originated as neglect soon became justified by pseudo-spiritual arguments and was little by little accepted as the norm.
There appeared, for example, the idea—absolutely unknown and alien to the early Tradition—that in regard to Communion there exists a spiritual and even mystical difference between the clergy and the laity, so that the former not only can but must receive Communion often while for the latter it is not permitted. Here once more one should quote St. John Chrysostom who more than anyone else defended the holiness of the Sacraments and insisted on worthy preparation for Communion. The great pastor writes:
There are cases when a priest does not differ from a layman, notably when one approaches the Holy Mysteries. We are all equally given them, not as in the Old Testament when one food was for the priests and another for the people and when it was not permitted to the people to partake of that which was for the priest. Now it is not so: but to all is offered the same Body and the same Cup...
And a thousand years later, Nicholas Cabasilas, speaking of Communion in his Explanation of the Divine Liturgy, makes no distinction whatsoever between clergy and laity in regard to Communion. He writes:
...if anyone, having the possibility, refuses to accede to the eucharistic banquet, he will not obtain the sanctification procured by this banquet; not because of the fact itself of him not approaching, but because, having that possibility, he refuses to come.... How could one believe in the love of the one who, having the faculty to receive the sacrament, does not receive it?
And yet, in spite of such clear testimonies, this strange and indeed heretical idea remained and still remains a part, if not of the teaching, at least of the liturgical piety in our Church.
The real triumph of this attitude toward Communion came when, after the end of the patristic age and the collapse of the Byzantine commonwealth, Orthodox theology entered the long period of "Western captivity," of radical Westernization, and when, under the influence of the Western scholastic and legalistic sacramental theology, the Sacraments, while obviously remaining in the Church, ceased to be viewed and experienced as fulfilling, or in the words of Fr. Georges Florovsky, as "constituting the Church’; when, on the one hand, Communion was identified as a means of personal, individual piety and sanctification with an almost total exclusion of its ecclesial meaning; when, on the other hand, membership in the Church ceased to be rooted in and measured by the participation in the Sacrament of the Church's unity in faith, love and life.
It was then that the layman was not only "permitted" but indeed forced to envisage Communion within an entirely subjective perspective—that of his needs, his spirituality, his preparedness or unpreparedness, his possibilities, etc. He himself became the criterion and the judge of his own and other people's "spirituality." And he became all this within the framework of a theology and a piety which—in spite of the clear witness of the genuine Orthodox Tradition— endorsed this non-communicant status of the laity, made it into a norm, almost the "trade-mark" of Orthodoxy.
It is indeed a miracle that the combined pressure of this Westernized sacramental theology and this extra-ecclesial, individualistic, and subjective piety did not succeed in eradicating altogether the thirst and hunger for Communion, for a genuine, and not a nominal and formal, participation in the life of the Church. At all times but especially in our troubled and confused era, every Orthodox revival has had its source in the "rediscovery" of the Sacraments and sacramental life, and above all in a eucharistic revival. So it was in Russia when persecutions washed away the lukewarm, formal, and nominal attitudes toward the Church passionately denounced by Fr. John of Cronstadt. So it was with the emergence in Europe and the Middle East of the Orthodox youth movements with their renewed and deepened understanding of the Church. And that today this eucharistic and sacramental revival knocks at the doors of our Church should hearten us as the sign that the fateful crisis of "secularism" can be overcome.
"He who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body" (I Cor. 11:29). Now we can come to these words of St. Paul and ask ourselves their real meaning. For, as we have seen, neither the early Church nor the Fathers understood them to mean that the alternative to "eating and drinking unworthily" consists in abstaining from Communion, that reverence for the Sacrament and fear of its profanation ought to result in refusing the Divine Gifts. Such obviously was not the thought of St. Paul himself, for it is indeed in his Epistles, in his exhortations, that we find the first formulation of the apparent paradox which in reality constitutes the basis of Christian "ethics" and the source of Christian spirituality.
"Know you not," writes St. Paul to the Corinthians, "that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's" (I Cor. 6:19-20). These words are a real summary of St. Paul's constant appeal to Christians: we must live according to what has "happened" to us in Christ; yet we can live thus only because it has happened to us, because salvation, redemption, reconciliation, and "buying with a price" have already been given to us and we are "not our own." We can and must work at our salvation because we have been saved, yet it is only because we are saved that we can work at our salvation. We must always and at all times become and be that which—in Christ—we already are: "you are Christ's and Christ is God's" (I Cor. 3:22).
This teaching of St. Paul is of crucial importance for the Christian life in general and for the sacramental life in particular. It reveals the essential tension on which this life is based, from which it stems, and which cannot be removed, for this would mean the abandonment and a radical mutilation of the Christian faith itself: the tension in each one of us between the "old man, which is corrupt through the lusts of the flesh," and "the new man, renewed after the image of Him who created him" through baptismal death and resurrection;" between the gift of the new life, and the effort to appropriate it and truly make it one's own life; between the grace "given not by measure" (John 3:34), and the always deficient measure of my spiritual life.