This post is adapted from a recent talk I gave at an annual retreat for side-B folks.
I grew up in the Eastern Orthodox Church. We’re a highly liturgical tradition and our Sunday worship follows the same liturgy each week. The Orthodox like many other traditions, celebrate the Eucharist or communion at every Sunday service. The hymns and prayers we pray each Sunday can sometimes feel easily familiar and apathy can easily creep in. From time to time though a certain phrase or passage will jump out and resonate with me in a new way. I’ll chew on it throughout the day and a line or passage will pop into my consciousness randomly when I’m least expecting it. For the last few months it’s been oblation.
Each Sunday in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, immediately following the affirmation of the Nicene Creed, we begin a section that culminates with the consecration of the Eucharist. This section called The Anaphora, begins with the priest, or deacon, proclaiming:
Let us stand aright; let us stand with fear; let us attend, that we may offer the Holy Oblation in peace.
Other translations might use the word “offering” or “sacrifice” but I like the term oblation. In the context of the Anaphora prayers, the Holy Oblation is the offering of the Eucharistic elements. It is the work of the people centered in the Eucharist. The Anaphora ends with the consecration and changing of the elements into the body and blood of Christ.
Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory was a well known Orthodox theologian wrote about this offering in the Liturgy:
In addition to being the perfect peace offering, Jesus is also the only adequate sacrifice of praise which men can offer to God. There is nothing comparable in men to the graciousness of God. There is nothing with which men can worthily thank and praise the Creator. This is so even if men would not be sinners. Thus God himself provides men with their own most perfect sacrifice of praise. The Son of God becomes genuinely human so that human persons could have one of their own nature sufficiently adequate to the holiness and graciousness of God. Again this is Christ, the sacrifice of praise.
Thus, in Christ, all is fulfilled and accomplished. In Him the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament, which is itself the image of the universal striving of men to be worthy of God, is fulfilled. All possible offerings are embodied and perfected in the offering of Christ on the Cross. He is the offering for peace and reconciliation and forgiveness. He is the sacrifice for supplication, thanksgiving and praise. In Him all of men’s sins and impurities are forgiven. In Him all of men’s positive aspirations are fulfilled. In Him, and in him alone, are all of men’s ways to God, and God’s ways to men, brought into one Holy Communion. Through Him alone do men have access to the Father in one Holy Spirit (Eph 2.18; Also Jn 14, 2 Cor 5, Col 1).
This Holy Oblation offered in the Eucharist reminds me of my own meager sacrifice, my small oblation. My oblation or sacrifice is my life to God. Like all Christians we’re called to give our lives to Christ, but my personal oblation takes on a unique aspect as a gay Christian pursuing celibacy. For me, that oblation is that which my heart and flesh long for most deeply, a loving intimate relationship with another man.
After the priest or deacon says,
Let us stand aright; let us stand with fear; let us attend, that we may offer the Holy Oblation in peace.
The people then respond to the deacon by singing:
An oblation of peace, a sacrifice of praise.
I don’t know what this means.
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Eleison 