Menstruation and Sacramental Reality

It seems to me that reading some online Orthodox forums is a lot like reading the old tabloid Weekly World News (see inset image) which regularly featured reports of “Batboy”, Elvis sightings, and alien abduction.  It is hard to take some of the expressed theological opinions seriously— which is why I hardly ever dip my toes in that dubious pool.

       Recently I read an exchange in which someone suggested that one of the reasons that women may not receive the Eucharist while menstruating is that anyone with active bleeding, male or female, should refrain from communing because that would result in them bleeding out the Body and Blood of Christ.  The prohibition against communing while menstruating had, they declared, nothing to do with ritual impurity but solely with bleeding so that if a man had a cut that bled he also should not commune.

       Batboy indeed.  Though I appreciate the attempt at gender equality in the prohibitions, in fact, historically speaking, the prohibition against menstruating women communing, where it existed (it was not universal) had everything to do with ritual impurity and nothing else.  That was why men who had emitted semen the night before the Liturgy were also prohibited from communing.   

According to the understanding of ritual impurity current in that day, any such secretions, blood or otherwise, rendered one ritually impure.  (It should go without saying that ritual impurity had nothing to do with moral impurity but I repeat it anyway.)

       Here I will only clarify the nature of the sacramental transformation in the Eucharist and stress that the transformation is spiritual, not chemical.  That is, chemically speaking and on the level of physical molecules, there is no physical molecular change in the bread and wine.  After consecration we truly receive the objective and saving Body and Blood of the Lord but this transformation occurs quite apart from any chemical change in the bread and wine.

       This explains several things.  It explains, for example, why one can become intoxicated if one drinks too much of the consecrated wine.  It is not that the Blood of Christ affects the bloodstream and intoxicates, but the alcoholic wine which remains.  That is why when one neglects to allow sufficient airflow in the box storing the intincted Presanctified Lamb after the Liturgy that the Lamb grows mould in a day or two.  The Body of Christ, of course, cannot grow mouldy but bread can and the mould on the consecrated Lamb shows that the Eucharistic transformation from bread to Christ’s Body does not affect the chemical composition of the bread. 

       This is pretty basic stuff, a kind of “Introductory Theology 101”.  The distinction between the spiritual reality and physical reality in the Eucharist was expressed as long ago as St. Irenaeus (d. ca. 200).  In his Against Heresies (book 4, chapter 18) he wrote that the Eucharist “consists of two realities, earthly and heavenly”.  Since the transformation of the bread and wine occurs on a spiritual level and not a chemical or biological one, there is no danger that the Blood of Christ will somehow combine with one’s menstrual blood and bleed out of the woman’s body.  To imagine that this could occur is to totally misunderstand the nature of the Eucharistic transformation.

       We do indeed have people that declare that any deficit in bodily wholeness such as occurs in menstruation, seminal ejaculation, and bleeding cuts disqualifies one from communing.  But that is because those things were thought to make one ritually impure.  We note that, for example (and forgive the graphic reference), it is thought that seminal emission the night before the Eucharist makes one ritually impure but this impurity does not lead to the Blood of Christ being secreted from the body after communing.  For those who declare that such things disqualify one from receiving the Eucharist, the rationale is always ritual impurity.  In other words, if ritual impurity is no longer a valid category governing the behaviour of Christians (and I affirm that it is not) there is no reason why a woman could not commune during her menstrual period. 

This last point cannot be fully argued here. Those interested in the history and theology of the whole issue are referred to a blog piece I wrote here and as well to a chapter in my book Feminism and Tradition.  But whatever decision one comes to regarding the legitimacy of women communing at such times, let us at least be clear regarding the reason for their exclusion and not resort to spurious arguments that misunderstand the nature of sacramental transformation.  Such things may be left to the pages of World Weekly News.  Real theology should be better served.