We use leavened bread because it shows us something true about Christ and His Kingdom. The leaven itself matters.
Walk into any Orthodox church on Sunday morning and you’ll see round loaves stamped with a seal, baked by someone in the parish the day before. That’s prosphora. It’s risen bread, made with yeast, and it’s what becomes the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. Catholics use unleavened wafers. We don’t. And the difference isn’t arbitrary.
Leaven Means Life
Christ compared the Kingdom of God to leaven. A woman takes it and hides it in flour until the whole batch rises. That’s what happens in the Eucharist too. Christ is the leaven hidden in the Church, transforming us from the inside. The bread we offer has to show that transformation already at work.
Unleavened bread is flat. Dead. It’s Passover bread, bread of haste and exodus. But the Eucharist isn’t about fleeing Egypt anymore. It’s about the Kingdom that’s already here, rising in our midst like dough in a warm kitchen. The Last Supper wasn’t just a Passover meal. It was the first Eucharist, the beginning of something new.
Two Natures in One Loaf
Here’s where it gets interesting. Leavened bread is a picture of the Incarnation itself. You’ve got flour and water, which is the dough, the basic substance. Then you’ve got yeast working through it, making it rise, giving it life. Two things become one loaf. Christ’s human nature and divine nature work the same way. Fully human, fully God, one Person. The bread we use should reflect that.
St. Mark of Ephesus argued this point at the Council of Florence back in 1439. The Latins wanted everyone to use unleavened bread. Mark said no. Leavened bread shows the fullness of life, the union of two natures. It’s resurrection bread, not just Passover bread.
First Fruits
There’s an Old Testament connection too. When Israel brought first-fruit offerings to the Temple, they used leavened bread. Those offerings pointed forward to Christ, the true first fruits of the resurrection. St. Irenaeus picked up on this in the second century. The Eucharist is our first-fruits offering now. We bring bread that’s already been transformed by leaven, and Christ transforms it again into His Body.
You can’t separate the offering from the Offerer. We bring ourselves to the altar, but we’re already leavened by Christ’s presence in us through baptism. The bread shows that. It’s the whole Church gathered around the Lamb of God, and we’re part of what’s being offered.
What Happens in Beaumont
Every Saturday night or Sunday morning, someone in this parish bakes prosphora. Maybe it’s Mary in the kitchen after her shift at the plant. Maybe it’s one of the catechumens learning the prayers that go with it. They’re not just making bread. They’re preparing what will become Christ’s Body, and their own hands are part of that mystery.
During Liturgy, the priest cuts the Lamb from the center of the loaf. He arranges particles for the Theotokos, the saints, the living, the dead. The whole Church, visible and invisible, is there on the paten. Then the Holy Spirit descends and everything changes. The leavened bread that showed us Christ’s two natures becomes His actual Body. We commune. We’re transformed like the dough was transformed, like the bread was transformed.
It’s not symbolic. When you come forward and the priest says “The servant of God receives the Body and Blood of Christ,” you’re receiving the Risen Lord. Leavened bread, because He’s alive. Not a memorial of someone dead and gone, but communion with someone more present than the person standing next to you.
If you’re still in the inquirer stage, you can’t commune yet. But watch what happens. Watch how the priest handles the prosphora, how carefully he cuts it, how the whole congregation waits for that moment. You’ll see that we believe something is really happening here. The Kingdom is rising among us like leaven in flour, and one day soon you’ll taste it yourself.
