Page 185 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

A P O S T O L I C S U C C E S S I O N A N D C O N T I N U I T Y
bishop came to be the only one who performs ordination. This
fact cannot be explained simply by appealing to the idea of
apostolic succession as a chain. For if that were sufficient, a
bishop could perform an ordination in isolation, even in a
private setting. Yet the impossibility of such an act reveals
something deeper: it is precisely by virtue of his being the
head of the eucharistic assembly that the bishop ordains.
Indeed, there is no other place in the Church’s life where
the synthesis of the historical and the eschatological is realized
more fully than in the Eucharist. Here the Church remembers
and receives, transmits and anticipates; here the many become
one, and the dispersed are gathered into the communion of
the Kingdom.
In this event, apostolic continuity is not merely preserved
but enacted as a living reality.
The Eucharist, therefore, is the proper context of all order
in the Church.
Thus the Church relates to the apostles not only by looking
back to them, but by standing with them—gathered around
Christ in the one communion of the Kingdom, which is al-
ready present in her midst and yet still to come.
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