Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

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The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, informally Presanctified Liturgy, is an Eastern Orthodox liturgical service for the distribution of communion on the weekdays of Great Lent. Great Lent is a season of repentance, fasting, and intensified prayer, and so the Orthodox Church regards more frequent reception of communion as especially desirable at that time. However, the Divine Liturgy has a festal character not in keeping with the season. The Presanctified Liturgy is therefore celebrated instead. Although it is possible to celebrate this service on any weekday of Great Lent, common parish practice is to celebrate it only on Wednesdays and Fridays.

It consists of vespers combined with additional prayers and communion. The communion bread is consecrated and reserved at the previous Sunday's Divine Liturgy. It may or may not be intincted with consecrated wine depending on local practice, but in any event unconsecrated wine is placed in the chalice. Local practice also varies as to whether or not this wine must be thought of as the Blood of Christ even if the bread was intincted. The only practical effect of this variety is that the celebrant who must consume all the undistrubuted communion at the end of the service might or might not partake of the chalice when he communes himself.

The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts was first documented by Gregory Dialogos, who was the papal legate to Constantinople.^{[citation needed]} At one time it was supposed that he had come up with the idea himself, but now it is generally supposed that he simply recorded what was otherwise being practiced at Constantinople. In the Presanctified Liturgy itself, he is still commemorated as its traditional author.

This Liturgy is also mentioned in the Canons of the seventh century Quinisext Council:

On all days of the holy fast of Lent, except on the Sabbath, the Lord's Day, and the holy day of the Annunciation, the Liturgy of the Presanctified is to be served (Canon 52,692).

Although the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is associated primarily with the Orthodox Churches and the Byzantine Rite Catholics, the concept has spread to other Churches.

Thus, for instance, there is a similar penitential rite used by the Roman Catholic Church on Good Friday, officially called the rite of Comemoration of the Lord's Passion, but informally known, especially among Catholics who celebrate the Liturgy in accordance with the Tridentine discipline, as Mass of the Pre-Sanctified. It should be noted, however, that, because there is no consecration of the gifts in that Liturgy, it is not technically a Mass.