THE MASS – RECEIVING THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRISTAs you receive the Eucharist, when you hear the words “Body of Christ,” look at the bread, look around and within and see the Body of Christ, and do likewise if you are distributing the bread. The presider should hold up the bread and look around and say: “This is, and together we are the Body of Christ, happy are we who are called to this supper.” If that does not happen in your church, why not? It is a core ultimate truth. It is a core biblical truth. For all our lives our Christ has been too small. Look around and behold the Cosmic Christ described by Paul. He and those who wrote in his name shout from the rafters the radical union that each person has with Christ. “We, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.”
Can you imagine that? Is it too mind-boggling? You and I are part of each other, and part of Christ! The Body of Christ is a fundamental reality that connects us all with Christ, and in Christ with each other. Imagine that, as the First Letter of John proclaimed – loving God means loving one another! In doing so we love the God we cannot see by loving the person we can see.Don PachutaCommunity of Saint Luke, Framingham,MAJune 10, 2012 - Feast of Corpus Christi
This suggests to me a better conclusion
of the communion rite than we usually experience.
As I have written before, we need to
improve our performance of the communion rite.
The communion minister needs to allow
time for the communicant to respond “Amen.” before beginning any
movement of offering the bread or cup. The sharing is not about
efficiency but about faith and communion.
Similarly, we need to emphasize
participation of all in the same bread and the same cup as members of
the same commun-ion/-ity. All should be standing for the entirety of
the communion procession. All should be singing a processional song
for the entirety of the rite. We are affirming that we are all
members of one body, one communion. This is not the time for
individualism.
What if all continued standing and
singing until all had shared the one bread and cup, then the presider
turned to the assembly and said.
“We are the Body of Christ.”
Then all respond.
“Amen”
Following that the congregation members
could sit or kneel in private prayer while the vessels are cleared
and the ministers return to their places.
This seems to me to be a better
conclusion than any Communion or Post-communion oration.
What do you think?
I live in the United States. Apparently our founders found it necessary to legislate that "Congress shall make no law respecting ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Our prior Britannic masters must have tried to restrict the right of the colonists to assemble and to seek redress. With the many who see the Roman Curia as a distant, repressive, latter-day Parliament, I suspect the Revanchists there don't want the people to assemble in a way that makes us conscious of our oneness. Their vision of the church will be safer if we focus individually on Jesus at the right hand of the Father.
ReplyDeleteSome of my priest friends say: "Be what you see, the Body of Christ; receive what you are, the Body of Christ, the Church."
ReplyDeleteWarren
I would suggest making a point of this line with the presider doing this before people receive
ReplyDeleteIt also poses a question for bloggers to answer
The presider should hold up the bread and look around and say: “This is, and together we are the Body of Christ, happy are we who are called to this supper.” If that does not happen in your church, why not?
Don Pachuta