Almost My Last Service…

Once RNW, my friend at Postscripts From the Catholic Spitfire Grill, shared her thoughts on being an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion in a post called Channels of Grace: We Become What We Do.  Her thoughts really resonated with me as my experience has been very similar. A few quotes to illustrate what I’m referring to specifically…

…I have the privilege of being an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. I assist the priests and the deacons in distributing Holy Communion at Mass and to those who are unable to attend Mass during the week. I have noticed that Our Lord has taken this thing that I do and used it to change what I am…

Just as Our Lord has allowed me to distribute His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, He has blessed that ministry and multiplied it like the loaves and the fishes to every part of my life. I bring Jesus in the Eucharist with me in other ways all of the time as I talk to people about the joy of being Catholic. The physical actions of what I do as a Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion has somehow been imprinted on my soul and I have become what I do.  

 I have shared before on this blog a few of my experiences in being an Extraordinary Minister and the profound effect they have had on me.  What I have not shared, perhaps because I did not realize fully the source or the completeness of the gift, was the depth of love I have been given for this parish family, these parishioners individually.

 

 Tonight was, unless I am assigned next week and don’t know it, my last time to serve as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at my parish before we move.  I knew that before I went to Mass but somehow it slipped my mind until I had taken my place with the Cup in hand and as the first person, an older gentleman in our parish who I know well, came to receive it hit me again. It hit me more fully, and I began to cry. (Despite the mention of such times on this blog, this is not normal for me. I’m not a ‘crier’.  It is the very irregularity of it that makes it blog worthy in the first place.)

 

Each face was familiar. I knew each one, some by name, some only by sight. That first one, the older gentleman, is Italian like my husband.  He too married a woman substantially younger than himself. Their family was similar to ours in some ways.  He never thought he would end up outliving her. Devout, he attends daily Mass and often has another widowed older gentleman friend with him. He has always seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for us, and we for him. 

 

That one would pause briefly with clasped hands before the raised Cup and proclaim brusquely, “My Lord and My God” before moving on.  Her devotion none the less for her short manner; her eyes never leave the Precious Blood.

The next a sweet woman with such a love for her husband who had an accident and severed a few of his fingers last year. Also regulars at daily Mass. He battles malaria contracted during military service… a man with such a gentle heart.

 

One after another, on and on they came, and with them the tears welling and causing the entire nave to sparkle at the edges of my vision. Each person so precious, some of them friends to whom I speak often and some I know only from previous moments just like this one, yet the love I have for them is indescribable and it is all the same intensity.  To think that I am to leave this parish family, these people for whom God has shared His love with me… to think that this was the last time I would be able to serve them by offering them the Body and Blood of our Lord… brought great pain and mourning.  How I long to continue to be His Hands to them.  Not only in this Extraordinary service, but also in other less visible ways… cooking, serving in the church kitchen, working the bazaar, teaching children and grandchildren in various capacities, visiting them when sick or injured, praying with them… just loving them and being with them.

 

As I stood in the Sanctuary waiting with the other EM’s for Father to replace the extra Hosts in the Tabernacle, Charmaine, our pastoral associate, having finished as well took her place beside me and took my hand. I held on for all I was worth and loved her for being there. She was there with me in the beginning when I first received, knowing what it meant to me. She taught me how to serve and was there when I served the first time and knew what it meant to me. Now she was with me again at the end, and again, knew. I fought the emotion all the way back to my seat beside my husband, but from his reaction - and that of my youngest daughter, I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it.

 

The tears continue as I type. The sorrow of leaving this parish family so dear to all of us remains and I’d imagine we will all mourn the loss for some time to come.  With the perspective blogging provides, I am reminded that there is a way I may serve them, regardless of where or how far away this road takes us… I can still pray.  They are on my permanent prayer list and will remain there. It seems so little to give in return for all they’ve given me, all they’ve taught me, the example of godliness and faith they’ve been. It seems so inadequate compared to actually living among them, serving God side by side in a temporal way… and yet, when we drive away for the last time, this will not be good-bye but only Vaya Con Dios and Until We Meet Again… in the High Country.

Lembas… Food for the Journey

Reading The Lord of the Rings series as a Catholic is a totally different ballgame than when I was a Protestant.  While Tolkien didn’t care for allegory, his faith is readily apparent in the books.  Lembas, for example, as waybread… food for the journey….and its ‘relationship’ to the Eucharist, which is food for our journey as well. 

On this trip, it was my intent to visit the parish in each town to get a feel for the faith community we would be participating in should we accept a job in that area.   Each Mass was precious time of Worship and gave me an important feel for the community… and yet, that was not the most important thing I walked away from it with.  Truly, the concept of the Eucharist as food for the journey became incredibly real to me in a sort of ‘mini journey crash course’.  As our stress over the interview process grew in direct proportion to our exhaustion, I found the Eucharist providing rest and peace, a quiet center in the storm, and strength to face what lay ahead.  Mass became so much more than ‘what would our parish here be like’ (not that it was ever ‘just’ that), it became a necessary port in the storm.

 Regardless of where we go, I know where my Church will be… it wasn’t anything like ‘Church shopping’… rather it seemed foolish to check out homeschool groups, swim teams, etc et al and not check out the parish when our faith is so much more central to our lives than any of the normal things one checks out.  Yet in the process, I learned so much more… or perhaps learned a simple lesson I knew so well, even better yet.  Once again, that assurance, the blessed assurance, that regardless of where He may call us, I do not journey alone… and even when we arrive and all around me is unknown, He will be waiting there…

Blessed be God, Forever.

Lent, the Season of Joy…

The children and I attended the 7 pm Mass for Ash Wednesday as I was scheduled to serve as Eucharistic Minister.  (Husband stayed home as he isn’t well.) After I received my ashes I returned to my seat in time to see my youngest, Sunshine (dd 8 yrs) turn and apply ashes to her sister Cricket (dd 9 yrs). As I meditated on the Lenten journey we are beginning, the knowledge suddenly broke over me that the journey ended with Easter and the penitential mood of my heart exploded suddenly into a sunny joy. 

I can just hear you now… duh?!?!?! (of course Lent ends in Easter)

So why did this knowledge break with a special joy over and beyond the usual appreciation of Easter?  This Easter I will be spending far from home as my best friend and I go to see a mutual dear friend and her family received into the Church.  The thought of these precious ones and others who will also be reconciling to the Church this Easter brings such a deep joy… It is the nature of this Treasure that one doesn’t feel the urge to hoard.  There is enough for all to feast at the Table for the rest of our lives and never see the grain of the wood.  The nature of this Treasure is quite the different sort to the greedy, selfish competitive pushing and shoving inspired by any earthly wealth. The nature of this Treasure rejoices in sharing, rejoices in the discovery by another of the same Pearl of Great Price. 

So as I enter the desert of Lent, striving to imitate my Lord… It is with a new understanding of how He must have entered the desert as well… for as surely as I look forward to the joy of the Easter Resurrection and new unity with Him, so must He have done…  What a thought!  What a LOVE! What a JOY! It is this that we are invited to join and in this is embedded the understanding that suffering is JOY because of what it brings!  When suffering is become joy, it has no more sting, it has no more power… because it is suffused and consumed with something greater… and we are set free by joining Him there.

She Understands…

Precious (dd 11 yrs) served at Mass tonight.  We celebrated the Initiation of a man who had been in RCIA since shortly after our Initiation. She had a few problems as the other server kept saying it wasn’t time to do certain things, but it was… and Precious didn’t have enough confidence to do it anyway.  As we discussed the problem, and necessary solutions, this evening, Precious confided that for the first time tonight, she realized that she was receiving the Body and Blood in the Eucharist… she knew it in her mind, believed it… but this was heart knowledge, soul knowledge, that broke over her and she felt like crying.  Her meditation on this made complete concentration on the tail end of the Mass difficult… but we can not control when understanding dawns, and such a gift is ever welcome… regardless of timing… and despite the distraction to serving, the timing was perfect.  Blessed be God forever.

The Blood…

I have a friend who is on a journey very similar to mine.  She is still learning and has not made it ‘home’ yet, and so it has been a great blessing and honor to talk to her about various issues as she reads and studies…  Her husband is also learning but she generally gets to the books first.  As she has been sharing with her family what she is learning her teenage son is really struggling with some things, one of which is the Blood portion of transubstantiation. His rebuttal of that was based in the teaching against consumption of blood in the Old Testament.  So the other evening as I was going to sleep I was meditating on the problem… and got something interesting…

What are the characteristics of a sin offering? It was done as atonement for sin. It was an animal, which was killed. Also, this wasn’t just done once, it had to be repeated… both for individual sins and for the sins of the community at large. It was an atonement, but not a ‘perfect’ atonement in that it would have to be repeated again as necessary. Also, the sin offering was eaten… we see that with the lamb in the institution of Passover during the Exodus and in Leviticus 6:19-20.  (Even more interesting is that in vs 20 anyone who “touches” it’s flesh shall become sacred” – italic emphasis mine.  Imagine then if merely touching the flesh of the sin offering makes the person sacred, what consuming it might do?) Furthermore, what did the sin offering accomplish? It was offered for the atonement of sin, right?  What does blood signify in Sacred Scripture? Leviticus 17:11 tells us that “Since the life of a living body is in its blood, I have made you put it on the altar, so that atonement may thereby be made for your own lives, because it is the blood as the seat of life, that makes atonement.”  Blood shed has of course, always been necessary for the atonement of sin, but it was not allowed to be consumed. Why could the meat be eaten, but not the blood if both were offered in atonement? (I’m sure there were a variety of reasons but am thinking of something specific as a possibility here…) So why did Jesus institute consumption of the wine as Blood (via transubstantiation) when previously that had been forbidden?

One of the things I’ve learned through all of this study and change in the last few years, which was really an extension of all the Judaic study and understanding, has been a new element to what I already understood about covenants.  Looking back through Sacred Scripture we see repeatedly how God came to man and made covenants, and sometimes He revisited covenants and added new things to them… like addendums of a sort. However, when you look at all the covenants of the Old Testament, you see that over time God is adding successive layers in each new covenant.  New details, new practice, which gives added depth and understanding. What you still have throughout it all however, is the understanding that there is no permanent solution for our sinful nature.  We needed repeated cleansing for our sins, many sin offerings.  They did not give us a new life, they cleaned the mess we made in the old and then we went forth and tried not to make new messes… but there was no ‘new life’ offered in that atonement. Then you hit the life of Christ, and you  hear Christ say that He has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law and by His very life He is fulfilling prophecy. Then by His DEATH He becomes the perfect sacrifice for the atonement for sin (and this time it IS a perfectly perfect sacrifice… no need for a repeat performance), fulfilling not only prophecy but covenant as well and placing the final layer and seal on all the covenants that came before in preparation for this moment. In the night before He places that seal, He does something very important and very interesting in celebrating the Passover.  He holds up the bread,tells them to take and eat saying this is my body which will be broken for you. THEN, He takes the cup and says take and drink, this is my blood which will be shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins. WHOA… that’s new! Eating the body is something they are familiar with, drinking the blood is NOT. WHY, in this sacrifice Christ makes for us, this perfectly perfect sacrifice that is in atonement for sin that will never have to be repeated, does He tell us to drink wine which is His Blood?

Remember what else blood is in Leviticus 17:11 besides just atonement for sin? It was LIFE! Unlike all the previous sin offerings, in Christ’s death as our perfect sacrifice He gives us something MORE than just atonement, something new! He gives us LIFE! Not the same old life, but NEW life, with the law written on our hearts! (Jeremiah 31:33-34) Could THAT be (part of the reason) why it was forbidden before? Because the other sin offerings did NOT give life? As for contradictions, there are none. The ban against consumption is not violated in the Eucharist because while we are consuming the Blood of Christ, the accidentals of the ‘bread’ remain, while its SUBSTANCE was changed. Also, like those who touched/ate the sin offering, when we partake of the Eucharist, we too are changed! We too become sacred, taking on more of the likeness of Christ.  We are being obedient to God and remembering His Son in the MANNER we are told to do so with no conflict whatsoever… and the riches and blessing that comes from all the completeness of the fullfilled covenant is ours as His children and join heirs!

I serve…

Last night at Mass, I served as Eucharistic Minister for the first time. I have trained for it, am on the schedule to serve, but last night they were short a person and Charmaine motioned at me to go and serve… so it was with NO mental preparation that I approached the altar and took my place for the first time. The place I took was that of the last to arrive, and often a coveted place as the one who takes it assists Father in serving the Body. That means you serve MORE people as many who take the Body pass the Cup by, but it is easier in a way in that you do not have to cleanse anything between Communicants. It was an experience unlike almost anything I have ever had before.In order to understand what I am going to say, a little background needs to be given. I was once hurt by a stepbrother in a way that has affected my life for many years and will continue to do so for as long as I live. I never saw him again after that, and a ‘dance’ of sorts began as we tried to remain a part of the family while avoiding someone in it who could not be trusted. Some time passed, and my stepbrother married. His stepdaughter became a grandchild to my father, just like my own children were, and while we never were there at the same time as families… there WAS a time when only the grandchildren came to spend a week with the grandparents, and my children were going to be there with his stepdaughter. Ironically enough, I was there when another stepbrother dropped this young girl, around seven years old- the same age as my eldest daughter, off at my father’s house one night, very late after everyone else was in bed. I was the only one awake and I had been lying in bed praying about her. I was concerned that my experience with my stepbrother (her stepfather now) not color my reaction to her and was praying about that, telling God how unfair it would be if she suffered at my hands because of something of which she was not guilty, telling God how afraid I was that I just didn’t have it in me to see HER and not her stepfather, and how badly I wanted to treat her with loving kindness. I asked Him to help me, to pour HIS love for her through me because I wasn’t sure I could love her of myself. So when I heard the door open, I got up and went to greet them with some trepidation. My stepbrother asked if I could take her and help get her to bed. Of course I said yes, and as I reached out to her (literally, bodily reached out to put my arm around her and guide her) God opened up the floodgates of His love for that child and it poured down into me… I felt it… like torrential flash floods thundering down like a waterfall and then crashing against the ground of my heart and being redirected down through my arms to that little girl. I was filled with love for her that I could never have imagined… and it wasn’t mine, it was HIS… so completely suffusing every fiber of my being that I cry even as I type this from the great love for her that is still residual in my heart. I took care of that little girl, helped her change into jammies, tucked her in, kissing her head just as I always do my own… and when the week was over and I came back to pick up my daughter, the love was still there and what’s more, she FELT it… it was almost as if I had another daughter. In the short time I spent with them at the end of that week before we all returned to our respective homes, she would call to me to watch her or to tell me about something, just like my own children. She responded to God’s love for her that dwelt within me. I have never forgotten that experience, and I have often prayed that God would infuse me with the love He has for various people in my life that I interact with, that He would continue to channel His love for others through me as He did for that child. Yet despite my desire to be a channel for His love like that, it never happened again… until last night.

Last night, as I held up the Body for each of those people, it happened again. I didn’t know most of them, half of them didn’t even look at me or the Host, part of them didn’t respond with the Amen, and half of those who did didn’t sound like they meant it… but God once again, in a slightly less overwhelming fashion, poured out His love for EACH of those people through me… I felt it… I could FEEL the love He had for them as though He were moving through me and that it was HE who was holding up the Host instead of me, it was HE who was inviting them to partake instead of me, that I was truly His Body, reaching out to His people and their reaction didn’t change that at ALL. It was incredible. Almost indescribable. What LOVE He has for us, and I know that in NO way have I experienced the height and depth and breadth of it, and yet I am so AWED by the drop He has shared with me.

Being a Eucharistic Minister was nothing like I thought it would be, and I am even more aware than ever of the great honor it is to be able to serve God’s people in that way.

As for that little girl, I never saw her again… but I have never forgotten her name, I love her still, and I pray for her even now, after all these years.

My Place at the Table…

Since our first reception of the Eucharist last month, I have spent a lot of time rereading some passages on the Eucharist in books that particularly spoke to me and thinking about what it means to come to the table.

One book in particular is On Being Catholic by Thomas Howard. Consider these quotes (bold emphasis mine)…

“When Catholics go to church they are doing something they did yesterday, or last week, and doing it “again”. But the “again” applies only to them, not to the mystery that is always taking place in the heavenly Mysteries, where our Great High Priest offers himself at the heavenly altar (the whole epistle of Hebrews is about this). The Mass unites us with this offering. It is we who go and come. It is we who experience it as “again and again”. The mystery is present. It is “always” present (we have to reach for an adverb of time), and to go to Mass is to return to the center. It is to corral the clutter of ourselves and our time and our distractions and perplexities and joys and sufferings and to bring them to the still point of the turning world.”

“To all intents and purposes, it is 8:00 am on Tuesday, June 13, A.D. 304, or A.D. 1995, in Lyons or Peoria. But we have stepped, the way the shepherds did, into the precincts of the eternal.”

“When a Roman Catholic ” goes to church”, he sees himself as joining himself to something that is already going on. He sets aside both the hurly-burly of his domestic or professional situation and any preoccupation he may have with such patently excellent concerns as fellowship or chat or even a certain vitality in the air. He has been summoned to the unum necessarium. He here takes his place- literally, he believes- with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, who incessabili laud and magnify the Holy Name of the Most High, as the Te Deum puts it.”

“To be Catholic, then, is to have the Mass at the center of one’s whole existence and consciousness. It is to be a “eucharistic” man or woman. It is to see the liturgy as one’s greatest “work”. It is to have taken one’s place at the Lord’s Table.”

Think about that…God is outside of time. This is a continual offering, it is WE, bound by time, who come and go… joining ourselves to what is perpetual in His presence.

As I ‘pondered these things in my heart’ (and not for the first time), new understanding dawned. Something so simple, and yet so exquisitely wonderful that it defied imagination. When one takes one’s place at the Lord’s Table, one doesn’t just take A place… One takes THEIR place. It wasn’t just an extra seat, it wasn’t a folding chair pulled out of some obscure closet. It wasn’t someone else’s place who didn’t show up and so it could be used for us. It was OUR place, prepared just like all the others from before the dawn of time. It has YOUR name on it, and not just an embossed folded paper placard to show to whom it belongs… instead, the chairs at this table are made of wood… the wood of the cross, ornately carved with great love by the One who hung upon it, and the pinacle of that ornate carving across the top of both front and back, are the names of those to whom they belong. One of those chairs is mine, it has MY name on it. Etched into the wood as surely as the David was carved from the marble. To remove the name would be to deface the chair entirely. When I come to the Table, for the first time and all the times after, it is to this chair that I come, to MY place at the Table.

Likewise, one can not think of being at their place at that Table without ’seeing’ the faces of those who also come to the Table with them, those loved ones, friends, strangers even, who have taken their places at the Table alongside you… and one can not help but ’see’ all those empty chairs with carven names proclaiming the identity of their missing occupant who has yet to come to the Table and who may never choose to claim their seat.

The More That Is Given…

Given the recent events, my recent posts, and my struggles with self-expression therein, the “Meditation of the Day” in my Magnificat (January 2006)was providential.

The More That is Given

While I was about to go to Holy Communion, it seemed that I was being thrown wide open like a door being flung open to welcome the arrival of a dear friend; but after his entry it is shut tight. So my heart was alone with him alone, with God. It seems impossible to relate all the effects, feelings, leaping delight, and festivity it experienced. If I were to speak for example of all the times of happiness and pleasure shared with dear friends in the world, I would be saying nothing (comparable to this joy); and if I were to add up all the occasions of rejoicing in the universe, I would be saying that all this amounts to little or nothing beside what, in an instant, my heart experiences in the presence of God- or rather, what God does to my heart, because all these other things flow from him and are his works. Love makes the heart leap and dance; love makes it exult and be festive; love makes it sing and remain silent as it pleases; love grants it rest and enables it to act (which are nothing other than new activities done for God); love possesses it and gives it everything; love takes it over completely and dwells in it. But I am unable to say more because if I wished to relate all the effects that the heart experiences in the act of going to Holy Communion, and also at other times, I would never finish saying everything. It is sufficient to say that Communion is a room and mansion of love itself.

Saint Veronica Giuliani (1727)
a Capuchin nun at Citta di Castello, Italy

Sharing the Meaning of the Eucharist…

Last night at the Eucharistic Minister training, I was asked to share what receiving the Eucharist meant to me on Saturday. I tried, I really did… but I don’t think I managed it. It is so hard to put how much it means to me in words… and as I searched for a way to express it, I realized that even in my rather LONG (stop laughing) post yesterday, I hadn’t really managed it either.

How do you describe that which defies description? How do you express verbally that for which no word, or combination of words, carries enough meaning? Perhaps it is in the inability to describe that which I feel that best begins to describe it.