After the Reformation, and probably during and following the reign of Elizabeth I, did the Church of England forbid or discourage the observance of the Eucharistic fast or did it simply wane as a result of all the other changes wrought by the Reformation?
I would say there are a few things here. 1. Regular Eucharistic fasting was not a standard medieval practice. If for no other reason than that taking the sacrament itself was extremely infrequent in medieval Europe, sometimes at once per year (the minimum required by canon law). After the Reformation, the Church of England raised the minimum to 3 times a year. 2. In Anglican eucharistic and sacramental manuals the connection between taking the sacrament and fasting was taught repeatedly. You were enjoined to meditate the day before, fast, pray the night before, pray the morning of, and finally receive the precious body and blood. 3. The practice likely waned after the general dissolution of Church of England piety and practice during the 20th century. I note that the same trajectory has been travelled by the Church of Rome, with regards to the Eucharistic fast. The practice of Eucharistic fasting (and the intense piety around the Reception I describe above) was likely harmed by the introduction of weekly communion. As I mention there was no weekly, or even monthly communion in the middle ages. After the Reformation, some parishes across the CofE could've had communion around once a month, some more frequently. Rome was around once every 3 months. All this changed when Pius X mandated weekly communion in 1910 (?). This was seen as "one-upping" Anglican piety, and so all Anglican churches rushed to imitate this example. And if you do it weekly, you can hardly spend so much time preparing and meditating every time. Frequently results in a lack of respect. Thus the ultra-conservative Pius X through sloppy policies ended up producing a disrespect for the Sacrament, both in Church of Rome, and indirectly in the Church of England, including a lack for the preparation thereof.
Talk about "one-upping", I'm pretty sure RCs nowadays can receive communion daily if they choose to attend mass every day. Decent sized RC parishes which have a regular priest (not shared with some other parish) do have daily masses; before my dad passed away from cancer in the early '90s he started attending mass every day. On the other end of the spectrum, I am aware of at least one Protestant church in our metro area (Church of God 7th Day) that makes a point of having communion exactly once per year (accompanied with foot washing) at Passover time, their reasoning being that Jesus was celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples and Passover only comes once a year.
I admit to not having taken into account the fact there was only infrequent Communion at the time. If such preparations for Communion took place after the Reformation was it a continuation of people's practice from earlier times? If not, why was such careful preparation made when the Church of England taught at the time that the elements remain bread and wine with no Real Presence?
I am not aware of any medieval manuals on the preparation for the Sacrament. But even finding such books would be unlikely, as before the invention of the printing press, books were practically nonexistent in people's lives. The Church of England said (from its immemorial doctrine, taught even under the Saxons) that although we can't say that the bread is the sacred Body, yet we take the bread WITH the Body. And we drink wine WITH the Blood. The sacrament is a visible sign of the inward and invisible grace we receive when we receive the sacrament. Think of it like the wedding ring: the wedding ring is not the literal eternal bond between man and wife ordained by God, is it? And yet the ring indicates that such a bond exists. We take the ring, to make visible to us that invisible and unbreakable bond which once didn't exist, and now exists between man and wife. This is how the Church Fathers (St. Augustine, etc) explained the doctrine of the Eucharist: the visible Sacrament indicates the invisible grace. The Church of Rome in the middle ages messed it up. First of all they started saying they could declare sacraments, make new sacraments out of thin air. They also started corrupting the understanding of what a Sacrament is, confusing the visible and the invisible. It's as if the wedding ring on your finger is physically THE bond of man and wife; if you lose your ring, or break it, then the martial bond is broken. That's essentially how they started treating the Sacrament, carrying it around, worshipping it, all the doctrines which were completely alien to St. Cyril, St. Basil, Jerome, everyone of the old Fathers. In the Reformation, this obvious abuse was so revolting that some (many) Reformers took the heresy on the opposite side, that if the Sacrament shouldn't be called the physical Body of the Lord, then all we have is the physical token. There's nothing behind it, no invisible grace or reality. All we have is just the memorial. Thus the Zwinglians and the Romans produced two equal and opposite errors. Only the Church of England had recovered the authentic and patristic doctrine of the Sacraments.
I don't think there is an Eastern Orthodox view of the Eucharist. That's kind of the problem. They have chosen to dispense with propositional logic and objective referents in lieu of mysticism, in their approach to theology. But what did you have in mind in particular? I'm sure you do have a specific definition, being a part of Western Christianity, like me.
I have read that Anglicans and Orthodox used to be near intercommunion with each other so I thought perhaps they had the same understanding as each other on the Eucharist. I know very little about the Orthodox
I know there is a lot of ecumenical dialogue happening (between the ACNA, the Continuing Anglicans, and the Eastern Orthodox). I don't think that intercommunion is on the horizon. In general it is very unlikely because some Eastern Orthodox churches don't even have intercommunion among themselves. Things like a difference in Easter dates can set off an apocalyptic feud which will last a thousand years, in that part of the world. But I'm not privy to any further details. I know the Continuing Anglicans have been at far closer communication with the Polish Catholic Church in terms of intercommunion, so perhaps @Shane R can shed more light here.
When I was in the RCC, I wasn't really taught anything about grace. No definition of the term or anything. So "grace" was just some nebulous concept to me. When I got into a Protestant, non-liturgical church, I was taught a little bit more: grace was the unmerited favor God bestows upon the believer, by which we are saved through faith; but that's about where it stopped. So I still struggle quite often to remind myself (what I learned much later) that grace is not just for salvation and eternal life, but grace is also for living. God's grace 'keeps us' and enables us in our daily walk with Him. The RCC has managed to convey, perhaps more subliminally than otherwise, an idea that their adherents need to receive specifically their baptism and Eucharist and Confession (Penance) as a source of and a means of maintaining saving grace, without all of which the person is doomed. This is probably why I tend to think negatively concerning the concept of 'receiving grace' at Eucharist. It's almost like an allergic reaction. But I am trying to re-learn and to desensitize. I need to remember that God's grace does more than save us; by grace He enables us to stand steadfastly in faith and to serve Him in love. If the Eucharist is a means by which He imparts more of His ability to us, then it is good to receive Eucharist as often as possible. This sparks a question in my mind: who were the earliest church fathers to state that Eucharist is a source of (or means of receiving) grace? Can anyone share some quotations?
Yes. The ACNA was in the habit of inviting whoever the Metropolitan of the OCA and Abp. Haverland of the ACC to their events for a while. The message from both luminaries was always the same: we really can't have any fellowship with you until you act on the women's ordination question. Well, ACNA didn't act on that question and they haven't had the Metropolitan or Abp. Haverland speak to them in a few years now. It was Bp. Hewitt's goal to first achieve unity among the Continuing churches (which now call themselves the G4- excepting the UECNA and APCK which have not come on board). This is supposed to happen at the next Joint Synod but I know more than a few who are skeptical of that. +Hewitt's second goal was to apply for membership in the PNCC when unity was achieved. There are a lot of clergy who are wondering just what the PNCC believes and if that is compatible with Anglicanism. I think +Hewitt is overly optimistic.
The Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox, and for the most part, the Assyrians, believe that the holy spirit actually descends into the altar in the Epiklesis (this is particularly explicit in the Syriac Orthodox anaphoras, which describe in elaborate language the Holy Spirit taking flight and hovering over the gifts), and during the epiklesis (rather than the Words of Institution) transforms the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of our Lord. Thus a liturgical fast from midnight is standard, waved only in the case of illness and only by some priests in some jurisdictions (I have encountered Romanian and Coptic priests unwilling to wave fasting requirements in the case of illness, whereas the Syriac, OCA and Antiochian churches tend to be more relaxed on this point; there is also in the US a priest with hypoglycemia who has a dispensation from his bishop to eat a full breakfast before serving the liturgy, but I can’t recall which jurisdiction he is with). As far as I can tell, the Anglican Province of Christ the King and Anglo Catholic jurisdictions of a traditional variety tend to share the Orthodox interpretation of the Eucharist, which I had, by the way, before I was Orthodox (I converted from Methodism, but developed a great love for Anglicanism on the side during this process).
Some Orthodox, and indeed some important Orthodox documents like the Acts of the Synod of Dositheus, explicitly embrace the Thomistic idea of transubstantiation, and I’ve never met anyone who thought it was wrong, per se; rather there exists a certain resistance to it because the Aristotelian categories it defines are viewed as unnecessary, since the liturgy itself very explicitly defines what happens in the Eucharist, and also realistically, probably because Thomas Aquinas was a Roman Catholic. If St. Gregory Palamas, who did very much rely on Aristotelian logic, had said that, it would be much more widely accepted. But as it stands, transubstantiation appears in a number of official documents and even, if memory serves, in the Shorter Catechism of the Syriac Orthodox Church. It is much more popular than the organically Eastern description of the Eucharistic process given by Theodore of Mopsuestia in his catechetical homilies on the Eucharist (but this view, which has the advantage of defining the entire liturgy, from the prothesis through the reception of the Eucharist as consecratory, is gaining ground). I would not agree with the sentiment that we have chosen to dispense with propositional logic in favor of mysticism as that is rather a sweeping generalization and something one could not say about some of our leading scholars and theologians, for example, Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky (memory eternal; he wrote Orthodox Dogmatic Theology), or Fr. John Behr, the current dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary. There is however a preference for apophatic theology when discussing things not explicitly revealed, and indeed, for apophatic theology in general, since our view is that God is in his divine essence uncircumscribed and unbounded and therefore incomprehensible; ergo it is easier to say what God is not than to say what God is. And I find this approach also works very well with the study of the ancient and modern heretical sects; when we see what Orthodoxy isn’t, it becomes clearer what it is, and when such a via negativa also seems to include a large chunk of traditional Anglicanism, I personally tend to break a bit with the Orthodox mainstream and reject a doctrinaire ecclesiology which would deny the Catholicity of these traditional Anglicans; my first instinct when I see something like the Anglican Province of Christ the King is to say “that’s Orthodox.” But others are much more stringent than I on this point alas, and I understand why, even though I disagree with it.
This is true, around the turn of the century in the US, unity nearly happened. Coincidentally, John Wesley was more likely than not ordained a bishop by the Greek Orthodox bishop Erasmus of Arcadia, in 1763 (something he refused to confirm or deny when asked about it in the following decade, citing the Praemunire Act). As it stands, the changes of the Episcopal Church produced a large number of converts, but I would rather the Episcopal Church had stayed the way it was. It is extremely distressing to me to think about the huge departure from traditional Christian orthodoxy that has become de rigeur at some of the largest and most famous churches in the US, such as the National Cathedral or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.