"Holy Things Are for the Holy"

What you'll notice

The heads come back up after the bow. In many parishes the doors close and a curtain is drawn here; Hapgood's rubrics put it right at this moment.¹ Then comes "Let us attend," and the priest calls out, "Holy things unto the Holy," and the choir answers, "One only is holy, one only is the Lord, Jesus Christ, in the glory of God the Father. Amen."²

The choir starts a psalm. Behind the screen, something is happening that you may not be able to see.

What it's called

"Holy things are for the holy" is the old translation of Ta hagia tois hagiois. What's happening behind the screen is the fraction (breaking the Lamb), the commingling (putting a piece in the cup), and the zeon (the hot water poured into the chalice). The psalm is the Communion hymn; on Sunday it's "Praise the Lord from the heavens" (Psalm 148).

What's actually happening

Just before the call, the priest prays quietly for Christ to come: "Give heed from thy holy dwelling-place, and from the throne of glory of thy kingdom, and come and sanctify us, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, who sittest on high with the Father, and art invisibly here with us."³

Then the warning. The priest lifts the Lamb and says the holy things are for the holy. The choir's answer is the only honest one: nobody here is holy except Jesus Christ. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem says we are holy too, not by nature but by sharing in Him.⁴ That's who the warning is for: the people who heard it and didn't leave.

Behind the screen the priest breaks the Lamb in four, saying that the Lamb of God is "broken, yet not disunited," "ever eaten, yet never consumed."⁵ He puts one piece in the chalice, and the deacon pours in hot water (the priest does it if there's no deacon), "the warmth of faith, full of the Holy Spirit."⁶ Then the clergy receive, first.

Why it matters

The Didache ends its Eucharistic prayer with this: if anyone is holy, let him come; if anyone is not, let him repent.⁷ That's "holy things for the holy" in its first-century form, and it's both halves of the Gospel: come, and turn around. Saint Paul's version is "examine yourselves" (2 Corinthians 13:5).

The fraction is the breaking of bread in Acts 2:42, the thing the first Christians were known for. One loaf, one body (1 Corinthians 10:17). The hot water is the Byzantine Church's way of insisting that the Christ we receive is living and risen.⁸ And the water mixed with wine, Saint Cyprian said in the third century, is the people mixed with Christ, fused so they can't be separated.⁹

Saint John Chrysostom's Paschal sermon, read aloud every Easter night, says the table is full, so let no one go away hungry. The warning and the welcome are the same voice.

Where it came from

"Holy things for the holy" is in Cyril of Jerusalem's lecture to the newly baptized in the fourth century,¹⁰ and in the old rite it was the call to come up and receive.¹¹ The hot water came later: it isn't in the oldest surviving service text, and its rite enters the service books around the twelfth century.¹² The zeon is a Byzantine custom the Latin West never took up.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: at "Holy things unto the Holy," cross yourself and say the response. Then, if you're receiving, start moving toward the front during the Communion hymn; don't wait for the chalice to come out and then shove. If you're not receiving today, stay where you are and pray with the people who are.

If you're visiting: nothing is required while the clergy receive behind the screen. Stay where you are, and pray if you'd like to. The next stop explains what happens when the chalice comes out.

Field Note: the zeon. A small ladle of hot water, blessed and poured into the chalice right before Communion. It's there so that what you receive is warm, the way blood is. Hapgood's notes give the old reading: the water recalls the water that came from Christ's side with the blood, and shows that even in death His body was not without the warmth and life of the Holy Spirit.¹³

Field Note: the warning is an invitation. "Holy things are for the holy" sounds like a bouncer. It was the invitation. In the old rite that line was the call to Communion, the moment the people came forward,¹⁴ and Cyril told his newly baptized they qualified.¹⁵ Hear it as the host standing up from the table, not checking names at the door.

Go deeper

• 1 Corinthians 10:16 to 17.
• The Didache 9 to 10 (ANF 7).
• Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 5.19 (NPNF2 7).
• The Paschal Liturgy, for Saint John Chrysostom's Paschal Homily read aloud.

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