Getting to the Point: Eucharist

Showing posts with label Eucharist. Show all posts

Friday, June 3, 2016

Freedom, With Consequences

I want to follow up on yesterday’s post with the next part of the Mass commentary. There is a unity between what I wrote about yesterday—the impossibility of receiving the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin—and what comes next in the Mass.

After the Lord’s Prayer, the praying of which signifies the fundamental union with God made possible by Jesus Christ which will be brought to perfection in the rite of communion, comes the ritual Sign of Peace in which we express to those immediately around us some gesture of peace and good will.

This has rich scriptural significance. We can think of the Gospel passage where the Lord tells us to be reconciled with our neighbor before we can offer our gifts on the altar.

The Eucharist not only brings to perfection our union with God, but also brings to perfection our union with one another in the communion of Christ’s Body, the Church. And as we cannot receive communion if we are in a state of mortal sin (and hence not in union with God to start with), so we cannot receive communion if we are not in union with the Catholic Church, either.

This is a painful subject—disunity always is, isn’t it? But we cannot wish painful subjects away. Now there is a difference between these two types of union. The question of being in a state of sin is something only the person can answer—conscience is inviolable, and only God and the soul can make that discernment.

Union with the Church, on the other hand, is a matter of the outer forum, visible to anyone who knows the facts of a situation. If a person has made choices in their life that remove them from communion with the Catholic Church, not only should they themselves not receive the Eucharist, but the pastors of the Church have a duty to inform them of this fact.

So, someone who is simply not Catholic, but belongs to some other religion, or who has left the Church for some other system of belief and way of life. People who have made moral decisions that publicly declare that they are not bound by or under the authority of the Catholic Church in any regard. Couples co-habitating without any form of marriage, or people doing intrinsically evil things in their work lives (the Mafia, for example, or the owner of a strip club). People who not only struggle with a homosexual orientation but who are publicly living as gay men or women in a same-sex relationship. People who have taken a public stand opposing the Church in its moral or dogmatic teachings—politicians, say, advocating laws that directly oppose the moral teachings of the Church.

And yes, (since this is the controversy of the day) people who have not only been divorced but have entered into a second marriage without having gone through the annulment process for their original one. Any one of these people in any of these categories may or may not be in a state of subjective sin—I would never dream of flatly stating that—but they have indeed objectively removed themselves from the communion the Church.

This is painful, yes. We are all free to choose what we will believe and what we will do in our lives. But our choices bear consequences. If I freely choose to, say, write a blog post where I flatly deny some basic matter of Christian doctrine, I am indeed free to do so. But I am not free to do so and then continue to exercise my ministry as a Roman Catholic priest. Freedom yes, but freedom without consequences? No.

So if someone has chosen to reject Catholicism, they may do so. But they really must not present themselves in the communion line, then. Reception of the Eucharist is not only about our union with God; it is also about our union with Christ’s Body on earth, the Church.

It is not a question of having to be some perfect Catholic who gets every answer right on a catechism test and never asks a question or struggles with a doctrine. Of course not. It is a matter of the public and manifest stands we have taken in our words and in our actions.

For example, you can really struggle with the Church’s flat statement that sex outside of marriage is wrong. You can not be at all sure that’s quite correct, and still choose not to move in with your girlfriend because you nonetheless want to live your life as a Catholic. But if you and your girlfriend do move in together, you have made a choice to publicly reject the Catholic faith. See the difference?

And so in the Mass before we go to receive communion we ritually express all this, first in our praying to God as our Father and then turning to one another to express our unity as a body of believers. And only then, in a spirit of deep humility and knowledge of our unworthiness, do we come forward to receive the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, at which point the Mass and all it has signified becomes our own mystery, our own life, and we are drawn into it in fullness and in truth.

Let us pray to receive the Eucharist knowing what we are doing and being vigilant to receive it worthily and well, so that it’s fruits may be shown forth in our lives.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

If It's a Symbol, To Hell With It!

This is an old post of mine from a few years ago, that I stumbled across today. It's from my era of 'post a quote, discuss the quote' blogging. It seems to bear some relevance to recent conversations about the Eucharist and Who May Receive It and How. Anyhow, I re-post it for your enjoyment (?):

I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. (She just wrote that book, A Charmed Life). She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual.

We went at eight and at one, I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. The people who took me were Robert Lowell and his now wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.

Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one.

I then said, in a very shaky voice, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.

Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being

Reflection – Another famous and beloved quote from Flannery O’Connor here – if it’s a symbol, to hell with it! The ‘story’ in question is the early gem “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” in which a little girl grapples with the question of purity of heart and sanctity, beginning with reckoning that she could probably make it as a martyr if they ‘killed her quick’, but coming to a deeper understanding of these matters through encounters with her two stupid Catholic schoolgirl cousins, a mischievous nun, and a hermaphrodite employed as a circus freak (it is an O’Connor short story, and it will get weird).

The climax of the story occurs at Benediction, as the girl’s fumbling, distracted and rather grumpy efforts to pray give way to the words spoken by the circus freak, “I am what He made me to be. I don’t question His ways. Praise Him.” Leaving the convent school, she is embraced by the nun who she had earlier fended off from hugging her, and the nun’s crucifix is mashed into her face, leaving a mark. On the drive home, the sun sets over the horizon, ‘blood red, like a Host.’

The story is immensely comic (unlike many of O’Connor’s stories, nobody dies a violent death!), but in it the very mystery of this gift of God is expressed in the deep symbolism of narrative fiction. The Eucharist, the very presence of God, the body and blood of Christ, is given to us: silly, grumpy, distracted, uncharitable, broken circus freaks. It is given to addicts and sexual deviants, misers and gossips, to the angry and the lazy and the gluttonous and the prideful. It’s even given to the few saints among us, who perhaps understand these things better than you and I.

All are made the temple of the Holy Ghost. All are called to be fit temples, suitable temples, which means the constant battle against sin in our lives. But the field of this battle lies deeply in the way of acceptance, of abandonment to divine providence, of realizing that it is into my face and your face, as they are, the real reality of what you and I really really are, that the Cross of Christ has been ‘mashed’. The mark of the Crucified One has been imprinted on your soul and on mine… not the way we would have it, but according to the precise configuration of your life and mine, the battle we have been given to fight, the burdens and wounds we have been given to carry.

If it’s just a symbol, to Hell with it, really. This is why the Eucharist must be the true body and true blood of Jesus. He has to really come to us, not in some vague notional way, but physically and utterly. Because the reality of our life is lived there: in our physical concrete circumstance. We don’t live our lives notionally, but in our bodies, in time and space and history. If Jesus does not come to us bodily, in time and space and history, He’s not very real, then, is He?

But He does. He is not a symbol. He is the Lord, and is given to us that we may praise Him and bear witness to His provident love. How crucial it is for us to believe this, live it, and find some way to proclaim it to all the freaks and failures, the sinners and stumblers, the addicts and deviants and all the poor struggling people, who are all of us, who are all of us.

It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is the hope of the world.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

'What Will Bring Us Happiness?', Many Say

The past eight Wednesdays I have gone through my book Idol Thoughts, laying out the traditional doctrine of the eight thoughts that take us away from God, from the happiness He promises us. The eight ‘idols’ that promise us happiness on their terms, but which of course are false in their promises.

Having established in the book that happiness is not found in the satisfaction of the body (gluttony), in the body of another (lust), in material security (avarice), or in revenge (anger), in getting one’s way (despondency), in oblivion (acedia), in human respect (vainglory) or in mastery (pride), an obvious question arises.

Namely, so what is it, then? If all of these thoughts are the idol thoughts, the lying thoughts that tell us false things about happiness, what is the true happiness? As the blog title says, ‘Get To The Point’, Lemieux. What will bring us happiness, many say? (Psalm 4).

OK, it’s the Eucharist, then. Satisfied? Well, you should be.

That is, it is God and the possession of God which is the happiness of the human person. Everything the thoughts seem to promise us, all the drives and desires of our natural humanity that they distort due to our fallen condition, all of this is fulfilled in a perfect and everlasting way by our communion with God.

Ultimately, heaven. But here on earth, Holy Communion. He gives Himself to us as food and drink, and so heals our gluttony. His Body is given to us in an intimacy of communion beside which sexual intercourse pales in comparison, and so heals lust.

His gift of Himself to us assures our life in the most profound security—goodbye, avarice! He is the Divine Justice, and comes to heal all the evil and injustice of the world, and so meets our anger with the power of mercy. He does not give us our own way, or oblivion, but rather shows us that what we really want is really real, and is found in Him and in the path of love and communion in this world—take a bow, despondency and acedia. You both had a good run.

In His gift of Himself to us in this way He ‘validates’ our existence in the most radical sense possible, pays us direct personal and intimate attention and lavishes us with Himself—no need for vainglory. And in all of this we become true sharers of His Divine Life, truly ascend through, with, and in Him to the heights of heaven itself—so, pride – what were you offering us again?

All that the lying thoughts promised us, He gives to us, all in that little Host that is the whole of Himself, the whole of His life. It is not a symbol. It is not some strained metaphor. It is not some vague abstraction. It is Jesus, really and truly Jesus, and because of that, ‘It’ is God Himself, giving Himself to us here and now in the most profound way possible.

In all the discussions of who can receive communion and who cannot, I am sometimes grieved that there is little sense that the gift of the Eucharist is what it actually is, what we all say we believe it to be. And so it is worth making great sacrifices to receive it. Worth making radical changes in one’s life. Worth losing everything, if need be. Worth ‘selling all you possess and following [Him]’, as I read somewhere or other. There seems to be little sense of that in the conversations going on in the Church now—at least I haven’t heard anyone put it so baldly.

People may object at this point (it’s OK – I don’t mind!) that when they receive the Eucharist they don’t ‘feel’ all of the above. Don’t feel entirely happy, shall we say. That they tried all of that Catholic stuff, and IT DIDN”T WORK. So then what?

The question of ‘feelings’ in the spiritual life is a tricky one. We know that we cannot gauge life in general simply by how we feel about it at any given moment (and of course ‘feelings’ are always of the moment). At least, people who are not entirely foolish know this.

But at the same time, a happiness that has no reference to any kind of experience is a bit unreal, to say the least. The Eucharist will make you happy! But I don’t feel any better or different. Well, it’s not that kind of happiness! Uhhh…. OK? Not terribly satisfying.

While there are complexities in all this, some of which go into physical, chemical, and psychological depths I am neither prepared nor qualified to discuss, there is one aspect I am qualified to discuss. Namely, that some of our dissatisfaction with Jesus lies in the fact that we approach the Eucharist still in the grips of the thoughts. In other words, that we come to Jesus in hopes that He will gratify us in our selfish pursuit of self-directed, self-defined, self-ordered happiness. ‘Prosperity Christianity’ – the idea that we should have faith in God and in Christ so that He can make us rich and successful… according to our lights, our desires, our hopes and dreams.

When really, we should have faith in God and in Christ so that He can make our lives successful and yes, rich… but according to His ideas under those headings, which may be a bit different from the world’s.

At any rate, I see from my word count that I have written quite enough for one day, so I had better wrap this up. And that’s it for my little tour of Idol Thoughts. I do encourage you to buy it – American readers may prefer to use this link. Next week in this space we will begin to look at the Year of Mercy – you may be surprised to know that I have some thoughts about that subject. Until then!

Thursday, June 4, 2015

The Vocation of the Laity

“The vocation of the laity is to extend the action of the liturgy into the world.” This quote from a Russian theologian was cited at our recent directors’ meetings. I was happy to hear it, as in fact I have an entire parish mission I offer that is based on that idea.

The liturgy is not only a source of grace, a place of encounter with Christ in which we receive the food of our souls; the liturgy is also the very pattern of Christian life and discipleship in the world. Everything we need to know about how to live the Gospel can be found through a careful study of the rites of the Mass and their application to daily life.

And so I am inaugurating on the blog a new series, a commentary on the Mass, appearing on Thursdays (appropriately!), with a special care to show how each little bit of the Mass is to lived out in our lives. I will use the full Sunday Mass, which is the most complete expression of the liturgical movement. And so, without further ado:

The Entrance Procession. Before a word is spoken, there is movement. Prior to language and articulation, there is action. This is significant. I am a man of words (you may have noticed this), and so I myself need to be reminded of this continually—actions are prior, what we do has a priority over what we say.

The entrance procession is not simply a utilitarian thing – the priest and the servers are in the sacristy or at the back of the church, and need to get to the front of the church, and so they gotta walk there. If it were just that, they could position themselves in the sanctuary before the liturgy starts or simply move up in no particular order and without any ceremony.

No, it is a solemn procession, a motion from the body of the church to the sanctuary of the church. In its fullest expression there is a cross bearer, candle bearers, maybe even an incense bearer going at the front. The celebrant priest comes at the end. All of this is symbolic.

The basic symbolism here is that the body of the church, the nave, is earth; the sanctuary is heaven. Liturgy is entirely a matter of our earthly selves taken up into heaven; the heavenly realm come down to earth. All movements from nave to sanctuary and back again are signifying this heaven-earth, earth-heaven dance.

And so incense goes first—the prayers of God’s holy people crying out for heaven to be opened to us. The cross follows—it is Jesus’ self-offering there that opens heaven. Candle light follows that—it is the glorious light of the Risen Christ that is our guiding light to heaven in this world. The priest comes at the end, symbolizing Christ the head of the body entering heaven to draw in all his mystical body (the assembled people) into the heavenly mystery.

All of this is accompanied by music, hopefully joyous and beautiful, hopefully solemn and dignified in its joy, to signify that this is true Christian happiness—that our lives are perpetually borne upwards, to the realm of light and love where God dwells with the angels and saints.

Upon entering heaven, I mean the sanctuary, with solemn bows and genuflections, the priest venerates the altar and goes to his chair. The veneration of the altar signifies an act of reverent love for the mystery to be celebrated at this sacred table. The man who is the priest venerates the Christ who is symbolized by the altar, the Christ who is the place of the sacrifice that is pleasing to God. Christ in the priest embraces the Father’s will which is to lay down his life for His people.

How do we extend this into our lives? By cultivating in ourselves an awareness that our whole life is but a journey from earth to heaven. In the past fifty years in our church culture, there has been a deliberate effort to weaken this awareness. I find it incomprehensible and just plain wrong that this is so.

No matter how you look at it, with the best medical care and the best of luck and healthy living, you and I are going to live to be at best 100 years old, give or take a few years. Most of us, considerably less. I am more than half way through the journey, personally. Life is short, very short. Eternity is very, very long. Forever long. The whole of our life and everything in it is nothing more and nothing less than the entrance procession of the Mass, if we are doing it right (life, that is).

The constant cry of our heart to God to lead us to a successful ending—incense going up. The Cross of the Lord going at the head—laying down the path of sacrificial love and obedience to God in this world. The light of the Resurrection coming behind it, our sure hope and encouragement that this is the way to walk—don’t lose heart. And Christ Himself in the procession with us, the God who does not just stay up in heaven waiting for us, but who comes Himself to walk before us and bring us there.

And the veneration of the altar—to not just ‘do’ God’s will grudgingly with a poor spirit, but to love God’s will, to embrace it, to know that our joining Him on that altar, our entry into His Mystery, is not just a life of suffering and sorrow, but a life of love and communion. Our whole life is encapsulated in this movement, and we can see how even this simplest and wordless rite of the Mass holds the entire pattern of Christian life. All of which will become even more clear as we proceed with the Mass… next Thursday.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

In Defense of 'Closed Communion'

It’s Sunday, and that means it’s time for the Sunday Catechesis. Last week’s instalment on rich and poor, and on the relationship of social justice to the deepest matters of Christian theology and doctrine proved to be a popular one. This week, in the interest of variety, I want to talk about a completely different topic altogether.

When people are angry at the Catholic Church, there are many different subjects that exercise them, get them going. Among them, and perhaps one of the most aggravating to some, is the Church’s position on the reception of Holy Communion, the so-called ‘closed communion’ rule of the Catholic Church.

How mean we are! How exclusive! How judgmental! Who do we think we are? How dare we adjudicate who may or may not receive communion? What a bunch of hypocrites! You people stink!

There – that saves my usual hate mail people from having to bother this time. Got it covered, y’all! OK, let’s talk about what this is, this awfulhorriblenogoodlousy rule of the Church’s. Why do we insist that (with certain exceptions that are a bit too nuanced to go into here) only Catholics who are practicing their faith and are free from the stain of grave sin may present themselves to receive the Eucharist in our liturgies?

I do realize that, for those who disagree, and perhaps disagree vehemently with this teaching, what I am about to say will be most likely unconvincing. So be it – I would simply ask that you at least understand that what I am about to present is in fact the Church’s mind on the matter, even if you believe that mind should change. At least understand why we teach what we do.

The whole thing hinges on what (or rather, Who) the Eucharist is, and what we believe happens to us when we receive it (er, Him). The Eucharist is, of course, Jesus substantially present in the appearance of bread and wine, the true Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Himself, who is both God and man.

The reception of communion is not, then, a ritual ceremony symbolizing our aspiration towards unity, nor is it an expression of the unity we already enjoy (whatever that may be), nor is it a ritual that heals the breaches of unity among us or between us and God. The reception of communion IS UNITY itself. It is the highest, fullest, deepest, richest, purest and most complete experience of the union of God and the human person, and in that, of the human person with all other persons partaking in that Communion, that we will have, can possibly have, this side of heaven.

The Eucharist, and our reception of it, is the consummation, the summit, the absolute peak experience of unity with Jesus (and hence, God) and with one another possible in this world. That is what it IS, simply and utterly.

Because of this, we cannot approach the Eucharist if our existing state of union with God or with neighbour is gravely deficient. You cannot attain the peak of the mountain if you are not on the mountain. You cannot be perfected in a unity that does not exist.

And so this is why the Church holds forth two possible situations that result in her asking those in those situations to not come forth for Holy Communion. First, those whose unity with God has been broken by the committing of a grave, or mortal, sin that has not been absolved in the sacrament of confession. Mortal sin destroys our communion with God, and until that union is restored (please note that Christ through the Church readily provides the means by which that can be done), the person cannot—must not, for their own good—receive the sacrament of Eucharist. Don’t lie to yourself: if you are not in union with God, you cannot enter the consummation of that union.

Now, only you can know if you are in such a state—nobody else can possibly tell you this. The Church can only tell you what sorts of actions might deliver us to such a state if we have performed them with full freedom and knowledge. But really, only you and God know if you are approaching the sacrament unworthily due to mortal sin.

Second, our interior union with God perfected by Communion is also an exterior act that perfects our union with the community of faith, and this community of faith is the Catholic Church. And so the Church asks that those who have exteriorly separated themselves from unity with the Church should not receive communion.

A person may not be in a state of sin, but may well be separated from the Church, and the reception of communion is a perfection of that union as well as the first union with God. Again – don’t lie to yourself. If you are estranged from the Catholic Church, how can you be in communion with the Catholic Church? And if you are not in communion with the Catholic Church, why are you receiving communion in the Catholic Church?

There are many ways in which a person can exteriorly (that is, publicly and visibly) separate themselves from the Church. Belonging to another church, for one. Publicly entering into a conjugal living situation that is not sanctioned by the Church, (e.g. cohabitation, ‘remarriage’ after a civil divorce, being in a same-sex relationship), belonging to a group that has publicly expressed its opposition to the Church, belonging to the Mafia, publicly advocating for social policies and laws that contravene the moral law as the Church teaches it (politicians, take note!).

None of these are necessarily matters of personal sin (although they certainly might be), but of public dissent and schism from the Catholic Church. And so these two situations—interior division from God due to grave sin, exterior division from God’s Church due to public dissent—are the two reasons that exclude us from receiving the Eucharist.

And that is the reason why the Church has a policy of ‘closed communion’. It is a painful teaching—nobody likes not being in union—but it comes from a deep apprehension of what the Eucharist is and what our reception of it achieves, of the painful reality of human division and alienation, and not from any hostility or judgment of any human being.

And that’s quite enough for one day’s blog post. Sorry for writing a bit longer than normal—it’s not a subject well-served by brevity. May God bless us all, and bring us at last into the unity He desires for us.