Spiritual Communion Among the Priestless Old Believers (Bezpopovtsy)

-By Nina Lukyanova.

“Shake off, ye unbelievers, your mental slumber, open the eyes of your mind and behold: the sun of the world is already setting, night will soon come, the fateful hour will strike suddenly, Christ will appear like lightning—for all is ready. And yet, instead of Christ, Whom we must await with fear day and night and every hour, you still expect the beast—the Antichrist with ten horns.”

L.F. Pichugin (1859–1912), an outstanding figure of the Pomorian Church, a learned reader (nachetchik), and author of apologetic works

The various branches of the priestless Old Believers (bezpopovtsy) are united by the conviction that, after the schism of the 17th century, the apostolic succession of the Orthodox clergy was broken, the grace of the priesthood ceased, the church hierarchy ended, and the spiritual Antichrist came to reign. The bezpopovtsy began to understand the spiritual Antichrist as the entirety of the diverse heresies that had penetrated the Church—that is, the Antichrist is not a specific person, but a spiritual heresy reigning in the world, which has eradicated true priesthood. The bezpopovtsy view the dominion of the Antichrist as the rule of heretics with their persecutions of true Christians. And since the Antichrist already reigns, Christians must remain in a universal state without priests or sacraments. This is precisely why the bezpopovtsy did not recognize the ordinations of the dominant church and declared it impossible to accept priests from there.

In 1654, Bishop Paul of Kolomna opposed the heretical changes that Patriarch Nikon was introducing into the Church and was exiled to the Paleostrovsky Monastery in the Olonets district, where in confinement he taught and strengthened people in the patristic traditions and piety. It was Bishop Paul of Kolomna who established that all those coming from the Nikonian church must be baptized with the true Baptism. He enjoined not to accept newly ordained priests, but to baptize them, and under no circumstances to accept their “sacraments” from the new, heretical “false priests.”

Christians besought Bishop Paul to appoint priests and a bishop:

“O reverend one, our holy sufferer for the faith, holy and great ascetic father, if your holiness departs from us orphans into the ages to come, the holy and bloodless sacrifice will be extinguished on earth. And if the priesthood perishes to the end, who will kindle for us the lamp of priesthood, the holy Divine Service? Only you, father, possess the granting grace in priests, and all the holy church mysteries are sanctified by you. If you, most holy father, do not kindle this lamp, then truly visible priesthood will be extinguished in us, and then there will be great need for the faithful in the present time and for our brethren coming after us.”

To which Bishop Paul replied:

“Among you there are simple pious men and monks who fear God and keep Christ’s commandments, who can baptize and hear confessions, for true priesthood has ceased with Nikon’s innovations.”

While priests of the old, ancient Orthodox ordination were still alive, they communed the “remnants of ancient piety” with the Divine Mysteries. After it became impossible to find an Orthodox priest, out of necessity the fathers commanded that even a layman could baptize and hear confessions according to the tradition of the Holy Church, and the verbal flock was entrusted to unordained pastors who can perform only two church mysteries—baptism and penance.

From the time of the Solovetsky Uprising of 1667–1676, the monks and laypeople of Solovki who did not submit to the liturgical reform attempted to break with priests who, in particular, opposed the rebels’ decision not to pray for the tsar and patriarch. Some of the Solovetsky monks and laypeople stopped attending church and confession with spiritual fathers, rejected the heretical communion, and confessed “among themselves to laypeople.”

The priestless Old Believers never denied the church hierarchy as such, and therefore, in the first half of the 18th century, they continued to search for true priesthood of the ancient ordination. Thus, in early 1730, a joint expedition with the priestly Old Believers (popovtsy) was undertaken to Palestine to find “Orthodox priesthood.” Unlike the “runaway priests” faction (beglopopovtsy), the bezpopovtsy accepted clergy defecting from the dominant church without preserving their rank—that is, as ordinary laypeople. In 1765, in Moscow, the idea of uniting bezpopovtsy and popovtsy under the authority of an Old Believer archbishop was considered. Proposals were made to ordain such an archbishop using the hand of the relics of Metropolitan Jonah or another saint; however, all these attempts were unsuccessful—the unification never occurred. The dying out of priests of “pre-Nikonian” ordination and the absence of bishops in Old Belief led to the fact that, by the end of the 17th century, a portion of the Old Believers became convinced that it was no longer possible to have priesthood.

The bezpopovtsy divide all the sacraments, according to their importance for salvation, into “absolutely necessary” (baptism, penance, communion) and “necessary” (marriage, unction, priesthood, chrismation), which, out of necessity, may not be performed at all.

The priestless state of the bezpopovtsy (due to the spiritual heresy reigning in the world and eradicating true priesthood), the dominion of the Antichrist, and the “abomination of desolation in the holy place” formed the basis for the doctrine of spiritual communion.

In the 18th century, among the Vyg community and the Fedoseevtsy, there was a practice of communing with ancient reserved Gifts; in the Vyg Hermitage, there also existed a rite of “communion” with the God-bearer’s bread (prosphora blessed in honor of the Virgin Mary).

Old Believer priestless thinkers in the 18th century explained in their works that, in the current historical situation, it is impossible—due to the absence of an ancient Orthodox church hierarchy—to preserve “the unchanging fullness of all external forms of the Church’s existence,” and therefore partial departures are inevitable, as evidenced by examples from the Old and New Testaments, the writings of the holy fathers, and church history:

Those who dare without necessity to do what is not commanded are condemned as transgressors of the law. But one who dares out of necessity is not only not condemned, but is deemed worthy of praise and honor and is justified by all teachers. However, it is necessary to discern carefully in this, so that we dare only in those things where extreme necessity commands, lest, by proposing these things pertaining to necessity, we begin in non-necessary times to perform mysteries that are not subject to necessity.

Throughout the 18th century, the bezpopovtsy justified the impossibility of following the example of the popovtsy and accepting priesthood transitioning from the Synodal Church, explaining that this would merely reproduce external forms of worship but not the lost grace. While the “Deacon’s Answers” directly state the readiness of representatives of the priestly direction to reunite with the Synodal Church if it returns to pre-reform rites, the bezpopovtsy held a different opinion on this matter.

In Sacred Scripture and church history, the bezpopovtsy found answers to the question of how to compensate for the forced renunciation of certain church sacraments. Thus, in the ancient Church during times of persecution of Christians and in confrontations between Orthodoxy and Arianism, iconoclasm, and other heresies, Christians repeatedly found themselves deprived of hierarchy and clergy. Descriptions of such religious-historical events are well known from the lives of saints and other literature.

The 16th–17th century conflict between Orthodox and Uniates in Rus’ demonstrated that, with the near-total defection of the clergy and severe persecutions of Orthodoxy, laypeople found a way for the Church to exist even when deprived of priesthood.

Archimandrite Zacharias Kopystensky of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra argued in his writings that, in the absence of a clergyman, a layman may perform the sacraments of baptism and confession, and the sacrament of communion is replaced by spiritual communion—as the most sincere and “warm from the heart desire” to receive the Body of Christ.

The works of Zacharias Kopystensky, as well as those of other Orthodox writers—polemicists and church preachers—Stephen Zizanii (1550–1634) and John Vyshensky (between 1545–1550 — after 1620), were republished in Moscow already in the mid-17th century.

The most famous Old Believer publications—“The Spiritual Sword,” “The Shield of Faith,” and other priestless literature—repeat the doctrine of spiritual communion that became generally accepted among the bezpopovtsy. This doctrine is also expounded in detail in the main apologetic book of the Old Believers, the “Pomorian Answers” (Answer 104). Here, with references to the book “On the Seven Sacraments” (Chernigov, 1716) and “Dialogismos” (Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, 1714), three types of communion are described. The first is the “ordinary,” when one receives the mystery with a pure heart and conscience and with the mouth; the second is spiritual, when “for blessed reasons those who have nowhere to commune, that is, to taste with the mouth the life-giving and most pure Mysteries, yet show warm faith and zealous desire for this, adorning their life with virtues: such people through faith and zeal spiritually commune of the Flesh and Blood of Christ”; and the third, when those who partake “with the mouth alone” receive communion unworthily, without cleansing themselves from sins, and for them it works not for salvation but for condemnation.

In response to unfair accusations of Protestantism, the bezpopovtsy replied thus:

It is not hierarchs we fear, but innovations; and it is not hand-made churches we flee, but the new traditions and statutes newly introduced into them.

The bezpopovtsy particularly emphasize that the state of a person’s spirit can determine the result of a sacrament’s effect and even compensate for the forced incompleteness of external forms, since it is precisely the “inner spiritual essence that predetermines the external forms and the character of their changes”—in other words, spiritual content takes priority over canonical external forms.

The priestless Old Belief has never rejected the idea of any church sacrament or rite, nor has it questioned the status of the priesthood as the bearer of God’s grace. The entire worldview of the bezpopovtsy is permeated with the awareness of loss, which is compensated by the spiritual power of faith.

In “The Shield of Faith” it is stated: “we, though we do not receive it because of the obstruction by heretics, yet complete it by our faith,” and this confirms the forced nature of their actions, rather than a desire to reform the Church in accordance with their own convictions.

In a Church without priesthood and hierarchy, the bezpopovtsy sought in everything to follow canonical rules and historical events, placing all their hope in the fact that God would complete what could not be performed due to compelled circumstances. At the same time, it is important to note that a layman baptized and heard confessions in place of a priest—and there are grounds and examples for this in church tradition—yet he never performed unauthorized spiritual actions, such as chrismation or the Liturgy, which laypeople could never perform. Unfortunately, the losses in the fullness of external forms occurred due to the loss of the priesthood, whose gracious power is not made by hands and cannot be recreated by any human efforts.

Many holy martyrs and ascetics went their entire lives without communing of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet were saved and are glorified by the Church. Such, for example, are the venerables: Paul of Thebes, Peter of Athos, Mark the Thracian, Theophan of Antioch, Mary of Egypt, Theoctista, and other martyrs: Eupsychius, Hesper and Zoe, Coprius and Alexander, Cyricus and Julitta, Drosida, Glyceria, and others.

Those who are now metropolitans, archbishops and bishops… priests and deacons, and other church clerics… Metropolitans are no longer worthy to be called metropolitans, nor archbishops, even down to the least; though they associate themselves with the rank and appear adorned with the beauties of sacred vestments as metropolitans and archbishops and others, according to the holy divine canons they are deposed; and whatever they bless is unblessed. For those baptized by them are unbaptized, and those ordained are not clerics… and for this reason all bishopric and priesthood has been abolished (Professor N. F. Kapterev, “Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich,” vol. 2, p. 200).

With the abolition of the priesthood, there is also no visible sacrament of holy communion, which can be administered only by truly Orthodox pastors.

In his commentary on the verse from the book of the holy prophet Zechariah, “And the Lord said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd” (Zech. 11:15), Blessed Jerome writes: “undoubtedly, the foolish or unwise shepherd is the Antichrist” (Works of Blessed Jerome of Stridon, part 15, p. 150, 1915 ed.).

Venerable Ephraim the Syrian writes about the same:

In the image of this shepherd is represented the Antichrist (Works of St. Ephraim the Syrian, part 6, p. 189, 1901 ed.).

Thus, unwise shepherds who deviate from the true faith and sin against it, according to the words of the holy fathers, already represent the Antichrist.

John Chrysostom explains:

Those who are in Christianity should resort to Scripture, for from the time when heresies began to disturb the Church, those who wish to know the righteousness of the faith can have no true Christian refuge except Divine Scripture (Book on Faith, ch. 23, fol. 215 ob.).

This means that true Christians must always turn to Holy Scripture, because from the time of the Church’s disturbance by heresies, nothing except Divine Scripture can any longer be a Christian refuge for knowing the true faith, according to the word of the holy father Hippolytus, Pope of Rome:

By hearing the Divine Scriptures and holding them in their hands and always meditating on them in their minds, many will escape his deception (Third Word, on Meatfare Sunday according to the collection, fol. 183 ob.).

In the Reading Menaion for August 29, on the reverse of folio 527, we read:

For to see, in place of the true shepherd of Christ, a wolf entering Christ’s flock in the sheep’s clothing of the archbishopric. The right-believing people, seeing that false shepherd to be a heretic and the abomination of desolation presiding in the holy place in the Church, unwilling to turn to him, went out of the city into the field and, gathering in an empty place, performed services to God.

From the cited passages of Holy Scripture it is clear that believing people considered the emerging heretical hierarchs to be the “abomination of desolation” and, striving to distance themselves from everything abominable, went out into the field to perform divine services.

The holy place denotes the throne on which the sacrifice to God should be offered—that is, the sacrament of holy communion—as the Book of Cyril states on folio 31:

The throne is a holy place, on which priests offer sacrifice to God, consecrating bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Consequently, the bezpopovtsy believe that heretical archpastors and pastors are servants of the Antichrist and constitute his body; they themselves are the abomination of desolation, performing service in the holy place—that is, at the throne.

Bishop Arseny of Uralsk (Shvetsov) of the Belokrinitsa hierarchy (Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church) agreed with the bezpopovtsy that the prophecy about the abomination of desolation had been fulfilled. In his conversation with M. E. Shustov, he says:

These Nikonian preachers do not believe the Gospel; they have only set up one thing: the eternity of the priesthood! And they want to hear nothing else. Thus they do not see what is said: when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand), then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains. The fathers called even heretical bishops the abomination of desolation. We saw that the bishops at the Moscow council rejected all that was ancient, and so we fled to the mountains from the tempting bishops. (Conversation of M. E. Shustov with Fr. Shvetsov in Moscow in May 1888, pp. 11–12).

The prophetic word about the Antichrist from the teacher of the 3rd century, St. Hippolytus, Pope of Rome:

The Churches of God will weep with great weeping, for neither oblation nor incense is offered, nor is there a service pleasing to God. The sacred Churches will be like a vegetable storehouse, and the precious body and blood of Christ will not appear in those days (Third Word, on Meatfare Sunday according to the collection, fol. 184 ob.).

Blessed Jerome (4. 2, col. 155, 1912 ed.) points out that heretics also imitate church meekness, but their offering is not a service to God but food for demons.

False sacraments of apostate pastors, according to the testimony of the holy fathers of the Church, bring perdition to Christian souls. The Lord, for the sins of the people, permits the defilement of holy temples, the holy sacrament, and the priesthood:

Thus God, for the sins of those in authority, delivers the subordinate to punishment, and for the impure deeds of those serving the altar, permits holy altars to be plundered by impious hands, and holy temples to fall into desolation.

Marvel, beloved, how God spares not His own houses when He permits wrath upon the earth. For if He spared not the holy Ark, but delivered it to foreigners, along with the lawless priests, the temple of sanctification, the Cherubim of glory, the vestments, the prophecy, the anointings, and the manifestations, to be trampled and defiled by pagans, neither will He spare the holy churches and the most pure mysteries (Book of Nikon of the Black Mountain, word 41, fol. 308 ob.).

If there is no true sacrament of holy communion, then the false one, pernicious to the soul, is not accepted. Cyprian of Carthage indicates (in letter 56, part 1, p. 316):

And thus the people obeying the divine commandments and fearing God must separate themselves from the sinful prelate and not participate in the sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest.

Theodore the Studite writes in the same volume 2:

As the divine bread of which the Orthodox partake makes all partakers one body, so exactly the heretical bread, bringing those who partake of it into communion with one another, makes them one body opposed to Christ (part 2, letter 153, p. 532).

Blessed Jerome, in part 6 of his works (p. 78, 1905 ed.), warns Christians about the church of heretics, “which entices the foolish in mind so that, deceived by it, he accepts stolen breads and stolen water—that is, a false sacrament.”

The sacrament of holy communion, even in its pure and inviolate form, cannot by itself save a person, as confirmed by the evidence presented:

It is true that in Judas it is evident that, having received the most holy bread from the most pure hand of the Lord Christ, Satan immediately entered into him because of his unworthiness (Prologue, March 22, fol. 117).

“Receive,” He said, “the bread of which thou hast partaken from Me…” Since the Lord gave bread to Judas, perhaps coming to his senses from the bread of the table, he would retreat from betrayal: but Judas did not resolve thus, and then became completely satanic (Explanatory Gospel, commentary of Theophylact on the 45th conception of the Gospel of John, fols. 222 and 223).

That is, communion from the hands of the Savior Himself, Who said to Judas Iscariot: “receive from Me the bread and partake,” and the performance of the sacrament of communion itself, whose purpose was to bring him to reason, did not restrain Judas from crime and his own perdition. Consequently, it is not communion that has the power to save a person or restrain him from crime—this depends first and foremost on the Christian himself, the manner of his life, the purity of his thoughts, his good deeds, and not on whether he partakes, as St. John Chrysostom teaches us:

For a faithful one should not be recognized by partaking of the holy mysteries, but by an excellent life and deeds pleasing to God (Explanatory Gospel in the preface to Matthew, moral teaching of John Chrysostom, fol. 24).

The main idea of spiritual communion lies in the Christian’s life in accordance with faith in Christ, in the assimilation by the whole human being of the Saving Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The robber crucified with Christ, considered a despairing sinner, throughout his greatly sinful life never partook of communion and was not even baptized, yet was led by the Savior into paradise, as Ephraim the Syrian says:

Since the Jews chose the robber and rejected Christ, God chose the robber and rejected them. But where is that (which was said): “If anyone does not eat My Flesh, he has no life”? When He accepted faith from the robber, in exchange for it He freely gave him immeasurable gifts, freely poured out His treasures before him, immediately transferred him to His paradise and there set the one introduced (into paradise) over His treasures: thou shalt be with Me in the paradise of delights! (Works of Ephraim the Syrian, part 8, p. 306).

In addition to the robber saved on the cross, one can read in the menaia or prologues about those holy martyrs who believed in Christ but had not yet been deemed worthy not only of the holy Eucharist but even of holy Baptism, like the robber, yet suffered for the faith and were granted the crown. Any literalism in interpreting Holy Scripture, the bezpopovtsy believe, can lead to dangerous heresies.

St. Gregory the Theologian writes:

They will not admit me to the altars, but I know another altar, of which the present visible altars are but images… which is entirely the work of the mind and to which one ascends by contemplation. Before it I will stand, on it I will offer a sacrifice pleasing to God and an offering and whole burnt offerings, as much better than those now offered as truth is better than shadow… from this altar no one will distract me; they may expel me from the city, but not from that city which is above (Works of Gregory the Theologian, part 1, cols. 382 and 3, Soykin ed.).

The holy father Athanasius of Alexandria teaches in his works: “They shall not be ashamed in the evil time” (Ps. 36:19). In times of persecution, when teachers are lacking, the Lord Himself will nourish with His Spirit those who believe in Him (part 4, p. 29, 1903 ed., in commentary on the psalms according to Permyakov’s extract, part 1, fol. 222 ob.).

According to the words of St. Athanasius of Alexandria and St. Gregory the Theologian, the bezpopovtsy, lacking now the visible sacrament of holy communion and true performers of it, nevertheless receive the possibility, through faith in Jesus Christ, to partake spiritually. This spiritual partaking of the Body and Blood of the Lord occurs also through the knowledge of the word of God, as Blessed Jerome writes about this:

Since the body of the Lord is true food and His blood is true drink, according to the mystical interpretation, in this present age we have only this one good: if we feed on His flesh and drink His blood not only in the mystery (of the Eucharist) but also in the reading of the Scriptures; for the true food and drink which is received from the word of God is the knowledge of the Scriptures (Blessed Jerome, part 6, p. 37).

Reasoning about spiritual communion, the bezpopovtsy say:

Just as the first coming of the Savior was in the diminution of the Old Priesthood, so the second coming will be. Let it be better that in our Church at least a bright and pure remembrance be preserved of the untrampled Throne of God, upon which the Lord will again come to step on the Day of His Second and Great Coming. Though we have no visible sacrifice of communion, yet according to the merit of faith and virtues, God nourishes His faithful with the Holy Spirit.

A superficial understanding of the words of Christ “he that drinketh My blood and eateth My body hath eternal life” as referring only to communion in the form of bread and wine—any literalism in interpreting Holy Scripture that leads to heresies—misleads many people, the bezpopovtsy believe; in other places the body of Christ is called the Church, and the blood is interpreted as the teaching of Christ.

The sacrament of communion is performed by the Holy Spirit, and not by the faith of the priest alone, yet the sacrifice of communion cannot be performed without a truly Orthodox priest.

In the life of the holy martyr Maria Golendukha we read:

The holy martyr Maria Golendukha prayed to God to reveal to her about the Severians—whether she should approach their communion or not—and she saw an angel holding two chalices: one full of darkness, the other filled with light, showing her that the chalice with darkness is heretical communion, and that with light is of the holy catholic Church. The saint abhorred heretical communion and quickly departed from there (Chet’i-Minei, July 12, fol. 433 ob.).

St. Theodore the Studite (part 2, letter 154, p. 385, 1867 ed.) writes:

Here too the light of the world shows that communion is fellowship: and no one of sound mind will say that communion is not fellowship. As the divine bread of which the Orthodox partake makes all partakers one body, so exactly the heretical bread, bringing those who partake of it into communion with one another, makes them one body opposed to Christ, and one who says otherwise vainly utters empty words.

To the question of how to acquire spiritual communion, the bezpopovtsy say:

Only through spiritual ascetic struggle.

Sometimes a person’s heart becomes a nest for various vices, while the mind skillfully finds justifications for them. Often the inner essence of a person is concealed by empty words and actions generated by a contentless mind that exists without any connection to the Creator.

It is fitting for a true Christian first of all to know the Lord his God, to believe in Him and confess Him, for all Christian wisdom consists in knowing the Lord God and oneself. Not every reasoning or teaching about God is truth; therefore, a Christian must be experienced in teachings—accepting the good and rejecting everything inconsistent with the Teaching of Christ.