The Communion Fast: Eating and Drinking Before Communion

What you'll notice

Orthodox Christians on a Sunday morning are a little quieter than usual and noticeably hungrier. There's no coffee in the hall before Liturgy, or if there is, a lot of people walk past it. A child is told, "after Communion." Then the service ends, and the speed with which the line forms at the coffee hour table tells you everything.

What it's called

The Communion fast, sometimes called the Eucharistic fast. It's separate from the weekly and seasonal fasts in Fasting. Those are about what you eat; this one is about whether you eat, and when. The old Russian week of fasting and services before Communion is govenie (a week of preparation for Communion).

What's actually happening

The usual practice is that someone receiving Communion at a morning Liturgy takes nothing to eat or drink from midnight, or from waking, until they receive. "Nothing" usually means no coffee, no water, no gum, no candy, and no cigarette on the way in. Brushing your teeth is fine; just don't swallow. Some parishes allow water. For an evening Liturgy, like the Presanctified Liturgy in Lent, many parishes keep the fast from noon.

The rule. The canon behind it comes from Carthage (canon 41/50) and was received by the Council in Trullo in 692, which repeats that "the holy mysteries of the altar are not to be performed but by men who are fasting." Carthage had excused Holy Thursday; Trullo cancelled the exception, "since nothing leads us to abandon exact observance."¹ Read on its face, the canon is about the clergy celebrating; applying it to everyone who receives is the Church's standard reading of it, not its literal wording. Saint Paul's warning about receiving "in an unworthy manner" (1 Corinthians 11:27–29) is about examining yourself. It sets no fast.

How it's kept. The Russian Church's 2015 document "On the Participation of the Faithful in the Eucharist," approved at its Hierarchal Consultation of February 2–3, 2015, describes the Eucharistic fast as complete abstinence from food and drink from midnight and says it is "mandated by the canons."² An OCA answer warns against reading "nothing should be taken by mouth from midnight" too strictly: "if one simply shared a normal Saturday evening meal, this should be no obstacle."³

The evening before matters too. Most Orthodox who plan to receive go to Vespers or the Vigil on Saturday if they can, say the prayers before Communion from the prayer book, make peace with anyone they're at odds with, and keep the week's fast days. The Communion fast is the last step of a longer approach, not a hurdle on its own. How often to go to confession before receiving is its own question, and the answers differ across the Orthodox world; Confession lays out the range.

Custom, honestly labeled. Much of that longer approach is custom, and the documents say so. The Russian document dates the pattern to Byzantine monasteries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, where monks received only after a discipline of preparation: fasting, an examination of conscience before the monastery's spiritual father, and a special prayer rule that grew up in that period. It says a three-day fast before Communion, for those who receive several times a year, "fully corresponds to the tradition of the Church," and lets those who receive weekly or several times a month come without additional fasting, with their spiritual father's blessing.⁴ The OCA calls the three-day fast "not a universal custom among all Orthodox Christians."⁵ The Russian document also asks married couples to abstain on the eve of Communion, citing canon 5 of Timothy of Alexandria.⁶ Govenie has no Greek counterpart.

The exceptions

The Church's rule here is firm, and its mercy is firmer. The Communion fast is never meant to endanger anyone's health. People who need medication should take it, with water if needed. The Russian document is the clearest official statement of the exceptions: the fast "is not applied to infants," to people with grave illnesses that need regular medicine or food (it names diabetes), or to the dying, and it "may be facilitated for women who are pregnant or nursing a child." Children take it on gradually: the document doesn't require it before age three, and expects a child of seven to be used to receiving on an empty stomach.⁷ In every one of these cases the rule bends to the person, and medicine comes first.

Why it matters

You come to the chalice hungry, on purpose. The first food that touches your mouth that day is the Body and Blood of Christ. The body understands it before the mind does. It's the same reason you don't eat a bag of chips before Thanksgiving dinner.

Where it came from

Christians were receiving the Eucharist before any other food by the end of the fourth century. Saint Augustine, writing around 400, says it "pleased the Holy Spirit to appoint, for the honour of so great a sacrament, that the body of the Lord should take the precedence of all other food entering the mouth of a Christian."⁸ A council at Carthage wrote the clergy's fast into a canon, with the Holy Thursday exception, and Trullo made it binding without the exception in 692.

The longer preparation came later. The prayers before Communion and the examination before a spiritual father took shape in the Byzantine monasteries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, by the Russian Church's own account. The Orthodox have simply kept the custom, and argued ever since about how much of the monks' preparation the rest of us should carry.

Field Note: the coffee problem. Every convert has the same first Sunday: you wake up, walk into the kitchen on autopilot, and you're halfway through pouring the coffee before you remember. Pour it out, or put it in a thermos for after. If you've already had a sip, tell the priest before Liturgy; he'll tell you whether to come forward today. It's a common question, and nobody will be shocked.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: keep the fast from midnight or waking, by the rule you've been given; take your medicine; say your prayers the night before; and if you ate by accident, tell the priest before the service rather than deciding for yourself. Then eat at coffee hour with a clear conscience. You've earned the donut.

If you're visiting: none of this applies to you yet, since Communion is for Orthodox Christians who have prepared for it (Can I Take Communion? explains why). Have your breakfast. But notice what you're seeing: a room full of people who went without coffee on a Sunday morning because they think what's in that cup is worth being hungry for. Whatever you make of that, it's a serious way to take a meal.

Go deeper

• John 6:48–58; 1 Corinthians 11:23–29.
• The prayers before Communion: Hapgood, Service Book, pp. 570–575, or any Orthodox prayer book.
• The Russian Orthodox Church, "On the Participation of the Faithful in the Eucharist" (2015).
• Communion and Confession.

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