Antidoron

The Greek name says what the bread is for. Anti means in place of and doron means the gift, and the gift in question is the sacrament. Antidoron is the remainder of the offering loaves after the Lamb and the commemorative particles have been cut from them at the preparation. It has been blessed and it has been part of the offering, and it is emphatically not the body of Christ, a distinction that Orthodox writers are careful to keep because the whole usefulness of the practice depends on it.

At the end of the liturgy the people come forward a second time, in the same order they would come for communion. The bread is received in both palms, the right hand crossed over the left, from the priest, and in most parishes the communicant kisses his hand as he gives it. It is eaten in the church before leaving rather than carried off casually, though taking pieces home for members of the household who could not come, and especially for the sick, is an old and encouraged custom. In many parishes the antidoron is eaten with a little wine and hot water at a table at the back, which turns the end of the service into the beginning of the parish meal.

The etiquette varies by local church and none of it is canonically fixed. What is fixed is the sequence: the sacrament first, to those prepared for it, and then bread to everybody in the building.

Antidoron does a particular piece of work, and it is easiest to see by asking what an Orthodox parish does with a visitor. Communion is restricted to Orthodox Christians who have prepared by fasting and confession, so at any given liturgy a large part of the congregation may not be receiving: those who have not prepared, those under a penance, catechumens, and anyone present from another church or from none. Sending all of them away with nothing would make the closure feel like an expulsion. The blessed bread is what is given instead, to everyone in the building, with no questions asked at the point of giving. The table stays closed and the hospitality stays real, and neither is asked to pretend about the other.

The spread of the custom is usually connected with the long decline of frequent communion in the Byzantine world, which left most of a congregation at most liturgies with nothing to receive; the antidoron filled a gap that infrequent communion had opened. The West had an equivalent for the same reason. Blessed bread, the eulogia, was distributed after Mass to those who had not communicated, was widespread through medieval Europe, and survived in French parishes as the pain benit well into modern times before falling out of ordinary use.

The two customs have had different fates. The western one faded as frequent communion returned in the twentieth century; the eastern one did not, and instead acquired a second job as the ordinary way an Orthodox parish can receive a guest of another confession without either church implying that a division has been settled.