Proskomedia (Prothesis)

Most worshippers never see the Proskomedia. While the Hours are being read in the church, the priest stands at the table of oblation, a small table to the side of the altar, and performs the Liturgy's first movement alone and almost inaudibly. The two names describe the same act from two sides: proskomide means the bringing or offering of the gifts, and prothesis means the "setting forth" — the very word the Greek Bible uses for the loaves of the Presence set before God in the temple, the "shewbread" of which David ate (Matthew 12:4).

The rite grew slowly. Its core — setting apart bread and wine for the Eucharist — is as old as the Liturgy itself, but the detailed order used today, with its sequence of commemorative particles, took shape over the Byzantine centuries and reached roughly its present form by around the fourteenth century. Practice still varies in detail: when a bishop celebrates, the commemorations are commonly completed by him just before the Great Entrance, and the number of loaves used differs between traditions — Slavic use commonly takes five smaller loaves, Greek use commonly one larger one.

The bread is prosphora — leavened loaves baked by the faithful (often at home) and stamped with a seal reading IC XC NI-KA, "Jesus Christ conquers." From the first loaf the priest cuts out the sealed center as a single cube: the Lamb, the portion that will become the Body of Christ. He cuts it with a small knife shaped like a spearhead, the spear, while reciting Isaiah's prophecy of the lamb led to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7-8) — the same passage the Ethiopian eunuch was reading when Philip preached Christ to him.

Then, echoing the Gospel account of the Crucifixion, he pierces the Lamb's side with the spear, speaking the words of John 19:34, and pours wine mixed with water into the chalice. Nothing here is play-acting; it is prophecy and Gospel laid physically onto bread and wine, so that before the Liturgy even begins, the gifts already carry the whole story they will fulfill.

The Lamb is set on the diskos, the liturgical plate — and then the plate fills with the Church. A particle is placed for the Theotokos at the Lamb's side; nine particles follow for the ranks of the saints — the Baptist and Forerunner, the prophets, apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, monastic saints, unmercenary healers, and the rest, with the saints of the day; then particles for the living and for the departed, taken out one by one as the priest reads the names the faithful have handed in (commemoration lists). Anyone may submit names; a scrap of paper given before Liturgy places your grandmother, your godson, your friend on the diskos beside the saints.

The completed diskos is an icon in bread: Christ at the center, His Mother beside Him, the whole company of heaven and earth around Him — the Church in miniature, living and departed together. At the end of the Liturgy these particles are placed into the chalice, with a prayer that Christ would wash away the sins of all who were commemorated, by His precious Blood.

The priest sets over the diskos a small folding metal frame, the asterisk or star — the tradition sees in it the star that stood over Bethlehem — then veils the diskos and chalice (the covers and the aer), censes the gifts, and says the concluding Prayer of Offering, asking God to "bless this offering, and accept it upon Thy heavenly altar," and to remember both those who brought the gifts and those for whom they are brought. Then the curtain of quiet ends: the deacon opens the public service, and the prepared gifts wait on the table of oblation until the Great Entrance carries them, and every name arranged around the Lamb, to the altar of the Divine Liturgy.