Tekstissä on pitkä pätkä lainausta isä Pavlos Koumarianoksen näkemyksistä asiasta. Artikkeli on loistava ja se kannattaa lukea kokonaan jos liturginen teologia vähänkään kiinnostaa.
"Voimme tässä kohdassa pysähtyä tarkastelemaan lyhyesti erästä seikkaa, joka on aikojen saatossa muuttunut. Nimittäin diakonien roolia liturgiassa. Aiemmin diakonit toivat itsenäisesti ehtoollislahjat piispalle. Samoin he itsenäisesti valmistelivat lahjat ja muistelivat proskomidissa. Aikojen saatossa diakonien rooli muuttui yhä enemmän alisteiseksi, jonka seurauksena esimerkiksi liturgisten esineiden siirtämiset liturgiassa, esim. evankeliumikirja ja ehtoollisastiat kulkivat papin/ piispan käsien kautta diakonille. Tällaista hierarkista alisteisuutta ei kuitenkaan voida pitää alkuperäisen liturgisen hengen mukaisena. Isä Pavlos Koumarianos on artikkelissaan ”Symbol and reality in the Divine Liturgy” ilmaissut asian seuraavasti:
”Generally speaking, we have forgotten the idea of interdependence and complementarity between the orders of clergy, or between the clergy and people. This loss has resulted in a kind of perversion of the relations between the orders. The role of each order degenerates into either a matter of protecting self-sufficiency, or else a contest for power and authority, a matter of who is higher and who is lower. (Someone did once say, of course, ‘Let the leader be as one who serves.’) In the manuscript tradition of the Euchologion, however, we find a way of thinking totally opposite to that of power and authority, one that can be understood only on the principle of communion: even though the bishop occupies the highest rank of priesthood, he asks the blessing and spiritual support of the presbyters when he is about to perform the highest of the ministries entrusted to him by the Church. Thus he recalls that the Church makes him bishop and president of the Eucharistic Assembly. He is the bishop and president of the Eucharistic Assembly in the Holy Spirit, which means that his episcopacy is a matter of communion and not a right secured for him as an individual. The bishop of each local Church is one, but he is not alone! -- This complementarity and interdependence -and also the distinction between the various clerical ministries - have been lost or forgotten, and their loss has resulted in a variety of distortions at other points of the Liturgy as well. The relationship between the various degrees of priesthood has come to be restricted to how much the lower order can do relative to the higher- the fact that the lower cleric does less than the higher, while the highest of the clergy can do everything. In the understanding of the Early Church, the relationship between the various degrees of priesthood is not purely a matter of how many rights or powers the clergy of each degree have. There is rather a distinction of gifts, not a hierarchy. The responsibility of each ‘order of clergy’ is irreplaceable, and each ministry needs the other.”
LÄHDE: (http://jacwell.org/Liturgical%20Music/symbol_and_reality_in_the_divine.htm)
