ORDINARY TIME, WEEK 20
August 16, 2009
Jn 6, 51-58
COMMUNION IN MANY WAYS mini-series on Eucharist, n.5
This week we come nearer to the end of Jn 6, and it is a good moment to look at the later rituals of our Eucharist, especially those linked with ‘holy communion’. The whole liturgy of the Mass has been moving towards it. Most people feel that ‘going to communion’ is why they came to Mass, anyway.
Before we leave the preceding part of the Mass, a word is needed about what is called ‘The Great Doxology’. It is the last sentence of the Eucharistic Prayer. It is an expression of praise (doxa). It is ‘great’ because it sums up the whole spirit of the Eucharistic Prayer. It offers praise, glory, and thanks to the Father through the Spirit in the name of Jesus. It becomes the greatest thing we can say when we try to express our thanks. It looms larger, in fact, than the whole communion rite that follows. Communion is simply an acting out of the implications of The Great Doxology.
Many people don’t appreciate that Doxology enough. They don’t appreciate the Eucharistic Prayer enough. This is largely because they were educated, in the WesternChurch tradition, to emphasize the ‘words of consecration’ so much. They think that the ‘real presence of Jesus’ begins with the saying of those words, and once they are said, Jesus is there, simply waiting to come to us in holy communion. In the Eastern Church tradition, there has been a different understanding of these things. The people there have been educated to think that it is the whole Eucharistic Prayer that brings Jesus into the ‘real presence’, not just what we call in the West the ‘words of consecration’. They value the whole prayer more than we have been taught to do. So when they get to the end of the whole prayer, to the Great Doxology, they feel much as we do at the end of the words of consecration. They respond to it all with a Great Amen, from the whole assembly. Liturgists are now trying to get us Westerners to appreciate the Prayer and its Climax more than before.
Again, before we look at the communion rituals, could we stop for a moment and reflect that ‘Communion’ is a larger idea than ‘holy communion’, or receiving the body and blood of Jesus. Communion is literally ‘communing’ – with the divine persons, with the risen Jesus, with his prayer of thanksgiving, with our whole Assembly, with all the voices that are gathered to say thanks. Holy communion in the ordinary sense is surely a big part of this, but not all of it. Communion in the big sense doesn’t cease, as a ritual does. It is meant to go home with us, to go to work and play with us, to stay with us as we do and enter into resurrection. Communion is forever, rituals are for a time only. Even if they are great sacraments.
In the Mass, there are a number of ‘rituals of communion’.
First, there is Communion in Prayer together: we stand and say the Our Father. The words of the Lord’s Prayer seem to take on new meaning when they are said then, as an extension of the Great Amen. The Lord’s Prayer asks that God’s Name (Person) be ‘hallowed’ (praised and thanked); that God’s Kingdom (the way it would be if God ran it) come (soon, like now); that God’s Will (for universal love and communion) happen unimpeded here on earth, as it is in God’s heaven. It prays for ‘bread for today’, not just the bread of the Eucharist, but the bread needed to live on, and it prayers for that bread not just for us in this Assembly, but for all people, especially those most in need of it. It prays for the gift of pardon, mutually given and received, in this Assembly and everywhere, and prays that God might be part of this process. It prays that no one be put ‘on trial’, or drawn into situations beyond what they can handle, and so live in peace, and that there be universal freedom from all evil dynamics that would stand in the way of open communional relationship.
Secondly, this larger Communion is meant to extend into real life: this is shown by giving a Sign of Peace to one another (the Pax). To continue, in real life, to do this, to extend the mystery of Communion into the secular scene. For it to survive and thrive there, gestures like the Sign of Peace, in real life, are very much needed. They begin right here.
Thirdly, our Communional involvement with one another is expressed symbolically, in a ritual called the ‘breaking of the bread’. It is called the Fractio (breaking) and Immixtio (mingling). The one bread (host) is broken into small pieces, for the distribution of holy communion, and a piece of the broken bread is put into the precious blood in the chalice. From one, many. The many go back into the one. Communion.
Some writers have said that having two consecrations, one of bread into the body of Christ, the other of wine into the blood of Christ, symbolizes the death of Christ – body and blood separated. They go on to suggest that re-uniting the consecrated bread with the consecrated wine is like a symbol of resurrection. The idea is clear, but it is not an ancient interpretation: it is relatively modern. Nowadays there is a preference for seeing all the rituals in terms of Communion with the Risen One.
Fourthly, there is Communion in Song. The whole Assembly sings the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God). This is not just a fill-in during the time the priest takes to get ready to give out holy communion. It is a Communion of many Voices. In one of the prefaces of the Eucharistic Prayer, there is a beautiful statement that it is God’s right ‘to receive the obedience of all creation, the praise of the Church on earth, the thanksgiving of the saints in heaven’. All creation honors God through observing the laws of the cosmos, but it does so unconsciously. We, the church on earth, with full awareness, name and praise the One to whom all the universe owes its existence. Then, in heaven, those who are in the eternal presence of this God do nothing but spell out their thanksgiving. In our Eucharistic Song, we sing for the universe our hymn of praise, in anticipation of our eventual hymn that is pure thanksgiving. We are almost able to listen to the Risen Christ thanking the Father for us all in his song of resurrection.
The communional character of it all is intrinsic to it. It is specially connected with the Holy Spirit, given to us. The Spirit is doing the communing. So is the church, with and through the Spirit. So is each one of us, with and through this church Assembly and with and through the Spirit. The communion is communitarian by its nature: as seen in the procession to receive communion, and the procession back to the Assembly afterwards.
It is not the church that summons Jesus to be present. Jesus summons the church, and sub-poenas it to testify and to comply with the ethical demands of being a Eucharisting people.
Once upon a time there was only one lifescript for everyone, based on the paschal mystery. It was publicly available and agreed on. Now there are multiple lifescripts, and we have to choose among them. If we don’t, we are fated to select temporary and random roles and relationships and to live with incoherence. We who come to Eucharistic communion are those who continue to believe in the paschal mystery in a skeptical world. We are drawn into its mystery at levels beyond what we initially intended or understood to be possible, every time we receive communion.
We can come back to Jn 6, 53-57, our gospel passage today.