Page 180 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
meaning only because the people are gathered. The people are
not an addition to the Church’s structure; they are its living
substance. Without the gathering of the faithful there is no
Eucharistic community, and without the Eucharistic commu-
nity there is no Church. The bishop cannot be conceived apart
from the community, for his place is within the assembly as
the image of Christ presiding over the one Body in which all
are united.
For this reason, the layperson cannot be defined simply as
one who is not ordained. Such a definition becomes possible
only when the bond between Church and Eucharist has been
lost. In the ancient Church, the layperson had his own form
of ordination: the anointing with chrism. After Baptism and
Chrismation, the faithful took their proper place in the Eucha-
ristic assembly, and this is what made them laity in the eccle-
sial sense. Only those who actively participate in the Eucha-
ristic gathering are laypeople in the true meaning of the
Church.
The laity, therefore, are not spectators before a sacred act
performed apart from them. They bring the whole creation
into the Eucharistic offering: the fruits of labor, the realities of
daily life, the gifts of the world. Through the gathered faithful,
creation itself enters into thanksgiving and is offered back to
God. In this way the whole world is gathered into the life of
the Church and offered in Christ to the Father.
Every ministry and every charism exists only within this
communion. No office can be understood outside the gath-
ered community, for every gift of the Spirit is given for the
building up of the one Body. The Holy Spirit unites by diver-
sifying and diversifies by uniting: each member receives a gift
not for private possession, but for communion. Thus the peo-
ple of God are not an anonymous mass, but a living body of
180