Why Are Grapes Blessed on the Feast of the Transfiguration?
In the early Church, when the faithful brought bread and wine for the divine Sacrifice, they also brought other produce such as wheat, oil, honey, grapes and other fruit, as well as milk and dairy products, flowers and even animals.
This custom was set aside by Canon 3 of the Apostolic Canons, which stressed the need to keep the apostolic and evangelical tradition of offering only bread and wine for the divine Sacrifice, since the other offerings belong to the traditions and sacrifices of the Old Testament. These offerings were meant as thanksgiving to God “who gave them to us for our nourishment and healing”.
The Council of Carthage (419) laid down that these offerings should be made apart from the divine Sacrifice. In its canons 37 and 44 it decided that the first fruits of bread and wine should not be brought together with honey, milk and the rest, but that the other fruits should be blessed separately, “since this is contrary to the sanctification of the Body and Blood of Christ”.
So the faithful were allowed to offer grapes and wheat as first fruits, not as a sacrifice. Still, this ancient custom lasted in some Churches until the seventh century: they would mix the juice of the first grapes into the holy chalice and distribute it to the faithful at the same time.
The Council in Trullo (692), held to complete the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, laid down in its Canon 28 “that the priest should bless the grapes separately and distribute them to the faithful, in thanksgiving to God who gives fruit for the nourishment and strength of the body, according to his divine plan”.
This tradition continued until the thirteenth century. In liturgical manuscripts we find a “prayer for the offering of first fruits” such as grapes, figs, apples, pomegranates, peaches and so on. These texts give thanks to God “who gives every fruit for the joy and nourishment of mankind”.
Likewise, between the eighth and ninth centuries it was customary to hold celebrations, in the presence of the Byzantine emperor and the patriarch, to bless the first of the harvest. It was the emperor himself who did this. The blessing took place after the Divine Liturgy with a prayer proper to the occasion; pieces composed for the event were sung, and bunches of grapes were exchanged.
It is clear, then, that the Church, following ancient custom, has always blessed the harvest and the grapes as first fruits and first produce; there is even a canon requiring the faithful to have wheat and grapes blessed before using them.
The blessing of grapes on 6 August, the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, continues this tradition, and is attested by a special prayer found in manuscripts dating from the tenth century. The prayer is short and simple; the priest says it in thanksgiving to God “who, by the mildness of the air, the falling of the rain and the fair weather of the seasons, has been pleased to bring them to this state of ripeness, so that this fruit of the vine may be for us who partake of it a source of gladness, and for those who offer it an offering for the forgiveness of sins, through the most pure Body and Blood of Christ”.
There is no precise date at which the blessing of grapes, an ancient tradition, became linked to the feast of the Transfiguration. The feast was first known in Jerusalem in the seventh century and entered the Byzantine calendar in the ninth century, which is when the offering and blessing of grapes had become separate from the divine Sacrifice.
Most of the ancient sources link the blessing of grapes with the Transfiguration, such as the Typikon of Saint Nilus and the Typikon of the Monastery of Saint Sabbas. The reason may be that the blessing depends on the weather and on when the fruit ripens. Some sources mention it on 15 August, and others on 14 September, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
Finally, the blessing of grapes points to the harvest of the world; it is a liturgical act that stresses constant thanksgiving and the eucharistic offering of matter and of the fruits of the earth to the Creator and God of the universe.
Fr. Gerard Abi Saab
