The Holy Table (Altar)

At the center of the sanctuary stands a square table, usually about a metre high, standing free so that the clergy can pass around it. Greek tradition calls it the Hagia Trapeza, the Holy Table; Slavonic calls it the prestol, the throne. Both names are theology. It is a throne, because the King of glory rests upon it in the Holy Gifts and in the Gospel book. It is a tomb, because on it Christ's death is proclaimed and His burial imaged. And it is a table, because the Eucharist is a meal — the marriage supper of the Kingdom served in advance. "We have an altar," says the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:10), and the Church has meant it literally from the beginning.

Everything about its treatment says set apart. By universal custom only the clergy, and those specifically blessed, touch the Holy Table or what rests on it; the clergy kiss it on entering the sanctuary and before every service. It is the one object in the building that exists for nothing except the worship of God.

When a church is consecrated, the bishop treats the Holy Table remarkably like a person being received into the Church. It is washed with water, anointed with holy chrism — the same chrism with which the newly baptized are sealed — and then clothed in two garments: an inner white linen cover, bound to it with cord, recalling both a baptismal robe and a burial shroud, and over it an outer vestment of rich fabric, the robe of a throne. The parallel is deliberate: the table is, so to speak, baptized, chrismated, and vested, because it is about to become the heart of the Church's life.

Into it, or beneath it, the bishop also places relics of the martyrs. This is among the oldest instincts in Christian worship: in the age of persecution the Church celebrated the Eucharist at the tombs of the martyrs, as in the catacombs of Rome, and the Book of Revelation shows "under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God" (Revelation 6:9). Every consecrated Holy Table keeps that connection between the altar and the martyrs: the Liturgy is always offered over the bones of those who held nothing back.

Spread on the Holy Table, folded inside a protective cloth, is the antimension — a rectangle of cloth printed with the icon of Christ's burial, containing relics sewn into it and bearing the signature of the ruling bishop. The Liturgy is always served on the antimension, opened out during the service with the chalice and paten set upon it; without one, no Liturgy may be celebrated at all. It is both a portable altar — in origin it made the Eucharist possible where no consecrated table stood — and a standing sign that every parish Eucharist is offered with the bishop's blessing and within the one Church.

On the Holy Table also rest the Gospel book — laid over the folded antimension, Christ's word enthroned at the church's center — the blessing cross with which the priest blesses the people, and the tabernacle, a small ark containing the reserved Gifts for the Communion of the sick. Candles or a seven-branched candlestick commonly stand on or just behind it, and a vigil lamp burns before it. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on almsgiving, pointed his congregation from this altar to another: the stone altar is holy because it receives Christ's Body, he said, but the poor believer is Christ's Body — an altar you pass in every lane and marketplace. The Holy Table, rightly venerated, trains the eye to see that one too.