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Presanctified Gifts

Lent’s evening communion — a liturgy that consecrates nothing

“Let my prayer be set forth before You as incense; the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”
Psalm 141:2 — the great hymn of the rite
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The Liturgy

The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is, strictly speaking, not a Divine Liturgy at all. It is Lenten vespers crowned with communion from gifts consecrated at the previous Sunday’s full Liturgy; it contains no anaphora and consecrates nothing — and that is exactly its point. The full Eucharist is festal, a resurrection banquet, and the weekdays of Great Lent are fasting days on which the church declines to feast. Yet she refuses to go unfed: the fast is not allowed to starve the faithful of the Bread of Life.

So the Lamb is reserved on Sunday, and on Wednesday and Friday evenings the faithful come — having fasted the day — to the most austere and beloved rite of the year. In the candle-lit church, “Let my prayer be set forth” is sung kneeling as the incense rises; the celebrant lifts the light with “The Light of Christ illumines all”; and the Great Entrance is made in total silence and full prostration — the ordinary Cherubic Hymn falls away, for the gifts carried through the church are not bread awaiting consecration but already the Body and Blood. Then the Lord’s Prayer, and communion.

It is served on the Wednesdays and Fridays of Great Lent, with a few days beyond — the Thursday of the Great Canon in the fifth week, and the first three days of Holy Week, the last Presanctified liturgies of the year. By nature it is an evening service, the communion that ends a day’s complete fast, though parish practice sometimes anticipates it in the morning.

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The History

The rite grew from a simple instinct of the early church — that the Eucharist may be kept, and the fast need not be foodless — into Lent’s fixed evening office.

Early centuries
Christians reserve the Eucharist and commune themselves at home on days when no liturgy is offered — a custom St. Basil attests without embarrassment (Letter 93), naming the hermits of the desert and the faithful of Alexandria and Egypt.
c. 500s
The weekdays of Lent are settled in the East as aliturgical — no festal Eucharist on fast days — a discipline with old roots: the council of Laodicea (canon 49, 4th century) had already forbidden the offering of the Eucharist on Lenten weekdays.
615
First firm attestation: the Chronicon Paschale records the Presanctified rite in use in the Great Church of Constantinople, noting the new hymn sung as the presanctified gifts are brought to the altar.
692
The Council in Trullo, canon 52, makes it law: “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.”
Middle Ages
The Slavic service books attach to the rite the name of St. Gregory the Dialogist — Pope St. Gregory the Great (†604), beloved in the East for his Dialogues. Scholarship regards the attribution as late and legendary; the rite itself is Constantinopolitan. The name remains on the books, a courtesy of love between East and West.
Since
Served through every Lent unchanged. The West once knew a close parallel — its Mass of the Presanctified — but kept it for Good Friday alone, while the East retained the full Lenten rhythm: one more divergence of rites the comparison table gestures toward.