Beards and Catholicism

Eastern Catholic bearddage.

That’s Major-Archbishop Swiatoslav Schevchuk, the Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. On the Eucharist, he has this to say:

Without the Eucharist, the Church would not exist. The holy Eucharist was the central point of our life. I remember once a priest I met. He never talked at great length about the sufferings, persecutions and tortures, but he mentioned that even in prison, all the priests would celebrate the liturgy. We were amazed; how could this be possible? Where did you get a Chalice and a Paten? He took off his glasses and said: “This is what we used; one lens served as the chalice with a drop of wine and on the other a piece of bread was placed, which served as the paten.” This is how they celebrated the liturgy in the prison or around the premises of the concentration camps.

(Source: zenit.org, via badwolfcomplex)