The Church and the offering
A person who comes into a church notices at once the counter where candles, icons, blessed oil, prosphoras and crosses are laid out — all this is sold at the very entrance of the church. If a person has read the Gospel even once, they will at once remember that Jesus Christ drove the traders out of the temple. And if they have not read it themselves, then sooner or later some “well-wisher” from one sect or another will certainly turn up who will point out with concern the seemingly obvious discrepancy between the life of the Orthodox Church and the Gospel… But do not Orthodox clergy read the Gospel too? Then why is it that buying and selling goes on in our churches?
The thing is that we live in conditions very different from the cultural and everyday setting in which the foundation of Orthodox life took shape. We have to live in a non-traditional society, in a non-peasant community. And our cities are very different from the cities of Palestine or Greece. Let us imagine the time when the so-called “natural economy” prevailed. What was needed for the daily life of a church? Bread and wine for the mystery of Communion, wax for the candles, oil for the lamps and incense for the censer. All this was not at all an exotic or expensive pleasure for a Georgian, Greek, Serbian or Bulgarian peasant. The peasant grew his bread with his own hands. He made wine from his own vineyard. The olive tree grew in his own yard. For incense he used resin, which he gathered from the trees (mostly from fir and cedar). People brought to the church a part of what they had themselves grown or made. They did not buy candles at the church, since they brought from home candles made with their own hands. Nor did they buy oil, for they had their own. Nor did they buy a prosphora for the offering — they brought bread baked at home, or flour. Nor did they buy incense, which today is often brought from abroad, but themselves shared with the church what they had gathered with their own hands. That is, what we take out of the church today, people (the peasants at any rate) were still bringing into the church themselves 100 years ago.
The peasant understood well that he was not the creator of his own harvest. True, he laboured greatly, but would the earth ploughed with his sweat have brought forth fruit without rain and sun? All year long he looked to the sky in hope. And when he gathered the harvest, his sense of justice told him to be grateful to heaven. A part of his harvest, of his labour, he carried to the sanctuary: “Lord, Thou hast granted me all this, and I thank Thee for it and bring a gift in return, even if only a symbolic one.”
It is precisely in this sense that the fruits are blessed in August. The fruit does not become tastier from being brought to the church; simply, a person learns gratitude. As the English writer Chesterton noted, “the religious upbringing of a child begins not when the father tells him about God, but when the mother teaches him to say thank you for a tasty pie.”
So people brought to the church a part of their labour. Even today, at the memorial service for the repose of their relatives, people bring fruit, sugar and pie from home. When the prayers are finished, part of the offering is given to those who serve in the church, part is offered to those who are in the church at the time, and the rest is given out to the poor outside the church. It was in just this way that things were done in former times at the most important church service, the Liturgy: people brought wine and bread from home, gave them to the priest and asked him to pray for those who had brought the gifts, and for those whose names were sent into the sanctuary. The Greeks call the bread of the offering “prosphora,” which in Georgian means “gift.” “Prosphora” is what is brought, what is offered to the church, and not what is carried out of the church.
But today people no longer bake bread at home, and often do not make wine either, especially in the city. They earn their living by other work. And conscience tells a person: “In your work you use the talents, the gifts, the abilities that the Creator gave you. Offer at least a part of your labour with gratitude.” But how is an engineer or a tractor driver, a journalist or a teacher to bring a part of their labour into the church? But is there not payment for work, which in modern political economy is called “the universal equivalent,” that is, money?
That is why a believer brings a certain part of their labour into the church in the form of money and exchanges it for the things the church needs: for candles, for bread (the prosphora), for wine, for incense… To an outside eye an obvious trading operation takes place here: money is exchanged for goods. In reality everything is otherwise. The person has brought their offering. But you cannot light a banknote instead of a candle, nor put a coin into the censer instead of incense. So the church sees to it beforehand that the things needed for the service are ready. There is no longer any need to make a candle with one's own hands: the parishioner can carry their offering as far as the threshold of the church in the form of a coin, and enter the church itself already with a candle in hand.
In this act there is no process of buying and selling. The “candle counter” simply helps people of modern civilisation to pass painlessly into the world of an ancient tradition.
In some churches the candles lie freely by the counter, and beside them stands a box for offerings. Whoever has not the means takes a candle free of charge, but often people give the church even more than the making of a candle costs, because they understand well that what happens here is not an exchange of a money equivalent, but the offering to the Lord of a part of one's own labour…
Now it becomes clear why those who buy candles from street sellers or at markets, and not in the church, are sinning. If the candle is the symbol of our burning before the Lord and of the sacrifice we offer to Him, then what comes of it if this candle has been bought from an ordinary trader? The candle does not pray in our stead. It only reminds us of that burning of prayer which should be taking place in our heart. The candle is not a means of blessing a church or a flat. It is the embodiment of that small sacrifice which we offered to the church. And this small sacrifice is itself a symbol of the greatest sacrifice which a Christian must offer to the Lord. But when we light a candle bought in the street, our sacrifice has been offered outside the church. Such a candle burns not before the Lord but before our selfishness and our petty “economy.”
Whatever the street sellers of candles may assure us, that their candles are “blessed,” “church” candles, we should not believe them. Besides, there are cases when their candles have been charmed by sorcerers and magicians.
As we have said, in former times people brought their own candles to the church, but besides this they paid the church “tithe” too (though not in money, but with a part of the harvest). Today the Orthodox Church (unlike many Protestant communities) does not call its parishioners to so noticeable a sacrifice as ten per cent. But so that even that small sacrifice which we offer by lighting a candle should not be an act of buying and selling, and should take on a spiritual character, the candle must be obtained in the church and not from street resellers.
In our days the words “sacrifice” and “offering” are not popular. Advertising and mass culture insistently call on people to live as much as possible “as they please” and “not to deny themselves any pleasure.” The Church, however, tries to stand against this inhuman fashion and calls people to sacrifice.
What takes place in the church is not trade but the bringing up of the soul. If you realise that the act performed at the candle counter is not an ordinary trading operation but a small offering, much will change in your soul. It is not with the awareness of a duty performed by a buyer that you should set a candle on the candlestand, but with the awareness that by the fire of sacrifice you are cleansing your whole path in life. This is indeed very little. But even this will help a person to realise that in the world, besides work for pay, there is also service. Besides what is bought, there is also what is offered up.
The question arises: where does the church put the money gathered from the sale of candles?
Candles were once necessary for the lighting of the church; today it is lit by electricity, which, as you well know, is a fairly expensive pleasure. How will a church pay for electricity if people buy even their candles from street traders?
In a church there is always something for which money is needed: the building and restoration of churches, the payment of the clergy and the singers, of watchmen and cleaners, the cost of maintaining the seminary, the Sunday schools, the church schools and hospitals, the central administration, the missions and representations abroad. Where is the church to get such great sums?
In past centuries this sum was allotted from the state budget. After the separation of the Church from the state this is no longer so. In a number of countries (above all in Germany and the Scandinavian countries) a special church tax is collected. Every citizen of the country is obliged to transfer a certain percentage of their income for church needs (freedom of conscience there consists in the fact that a person may decide for themselves to which confession they entrust their money).
In our Church, however, no one imposes a church tax on anyone, and no one forces anyone to buy candles. The most important mysteries of our church life — confession and communion — are celebrated without any payment at all. If a person has not the means to make the corresponding offering for a baptism, a wedding or a funeral, then, by the church canons, the priest must perform them free of charge. And into a special box in the church a person may at any time offer money for the priest, for the singers, for the restoration and renewal of the church. A person who begins a Christian life before the eyes of a spiritual father, who confesses often, attends the services and receives Communion, becomes close to him. It would not even occur to such a person to pay their spiritual father any money — they will drop their offering to the Lord into the special box. And to those who ask in simplicity what a priest needs money for, we would remind them that a spiritual father is a person just as we are, and that he too has to cope with the cares of daily life.
If a person has not the means to add a prosphora to the commemoration sent into the sanctuary, this too is no great misfortune. The Lord knows our heart well, and our family's budget too. If no greed is hidden behind it, a person's fervent prayer will be accepted by the Lord.
If you cannot bring a monetary offering to the church, this does not at all mean that you are unable to bring the Lord a sacrifice of prayer, a sacrifice of the heart. Confess, receive Communion, pray for your relatives — and such a prayer will have no less significance than an offering and a lighted candle.
Prepared from internet materials by Natia Tarashvili
