In ancient Greece Thucydides wrote: “…the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.” God forbid, we are bound to the same results, due to hierarchal indifference…

An article “Holy Communion and the Coronavirus: Faith, Fear, and Fame in a Pandemic” is an exclusive on The Orthodox World website. A site which I have had the pleasure to be published (link) and enjoy reading often. Yet like many websites this anonymous editor, will not publish any counter points of view, not even for the sake of discourse. We are told a wonderful story about St Nicholas Planas, which by-the-way has nothing to do with a spoon and I probably would not have responded at all, if not for this sentence: “millions of people with lived-experience of the communal spoon for the remission of sins and for life eternal.” Yikes.

Where does this theology exist! Some have raised “a spoon” to the same level as “Divine Communion?” Are we not reconciled via the spoons? And not by the spoons.
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Recognizing the spoon’s symbolism (as Panaghia, the Theotokos) we must remember it is Christ who “renews man’s corrupted and subverted nature.” Orthodoxy clearly speaks of the Virgin interceding for us. We do not elevate the All Holy Panaghia too “for the remission of sins and for life eternal.” I honor the chalices and spoons are the “dispenser and distributor of all uncreated gifts, amply distributing and sharing with others.”  Like an Odegitria icon, we owe reverence and honor to the Theotokos who guides us “to Him with holiness, gentleness, love, firmness and inner convictions.”  Something mono-spoon champions neglect in oration while fanatically attempting to defend a spoon as dogmatic.

"I have not yet seen a perfect Christian man, one completely free (from the devil and sin)."
-Saint Makarios 

Most of you are familiar with my blog ArchonElias.com. My most recent post “A Spiritual and Ecclesiastic Crisis? A spoon, really?” (link) has garnered more attention than I expected and was picked up by several popular websites which sent it into a viral (no pun) spin.

​Conversations about the Coronavirus and Divine Communion have become too academic. With good intentioned websites posting articles entitled “The Eucharist, its physical Elements and Molecular Biology” (link) is there any wonder? “Biological and epidemiological terminology  - necessary as it is - remains ineffective in giving sense to our experience of this pandemic and that’s because the language of science is abstract but my experience of the dismantling of the world as I knew it remains concrete.”[i]


[i] John Panteleimon Manoussakis

Have we lost our minds or simply succumb to the idolatry of sentimentalism?

“I’m an old woman; all I had was going to the church,” said Dimitra, a 79-year-old in Greece, “But I’m afraid.”[i] Have we lost our compassion? Do we dismiss her and those with the slightest doubt or fear? When the WHO is seemingly incoherent and the CDC one week to the other changes the contamination potential of the virus. Mask, no mask; hard surface, soft surfaces; 6 feet contamination zone one week, 13 feet air particles the next… Is there any wonder “… during the COVID-19 pandemic, certain unseemly points of view have been heard on how to approach the immaculate mysteries.”[ii]
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Our spiritual leader His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros posed the innocuous question:

[i] https://balkaninsight.com/ April 27

[ii] His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew