“Faithful God, in the wonder of your wisdom and love, you fed your people in the wilderness with the bread of angels and you sent Jesus to be the bread of life. Though we cannot consume these gifts of bread and wine together, we thank you that we have received Christ’s presence, the forgiveness of sins, and all other benefits of Christ’s passion and resurrection. By the power of the Holy Spirit, may we embody your love, be renewed for your service, and be reflections of the awakened and risen Lord. Amen.”
A Prayer for Spiritual Communion During the Time of the Pandemic
Dear Friends,
Worship during this unprecedented time is hard! We, as the corporate Body of Christ in the world, treasure each opportunity to gather together. The pain of and our lament over the fact that we may not gather physically together in our sanctuary each Sunday is real and looms large over the Episcopal Church, and other denominations. Most of us have by now accepted that Christ’s love, which we aim to imitate in the world, demands of us that we take every precaution possible to defend the most vulnerable among us. It is for that reason that we do not gather in corporate worship in large numbers nowadays. It is also in keeping with these epidemiological safeguards that many of us are forced into a “sacramental fast” of sorts from both the Body and Blood of Christ that the Church normally enjoins us to partake of each Sunday.
I am painfully reminded of the early days, sometime in April, when both my husband and I would gather in front of our TV set each Sunday morning to join thousands of other Christians in worship live-streamed from Washington National Cathedral. No matter how exquisitely orchestrated the liturgy would be, the pain of not being able to gather together and be in community was truly heart wrenching. Even more painful for us was the time of the Communion for we realized how deprived of the sacrament we suddenly became. No matter how much we would discuss the theological ins and outs of the practice of Spiritual Communion, my husband Bryan had a very hard time with not being able to actually partake of the sacrament. Based on my discussions with some of my friends and parishioners, I know he was not alone feeling that way. This reality of the enforced-upon-us Eucharistic abstinence is painful.
The experience of the pandemic seems to have divided our Episcopal congregations into a variety of different camps, whereby some churches continue to celebrate the Holy Eucharist – albeit online or in ways consistent with physical distancing and other epidemiological guidelines; some opted for the treasured-among-Anglicans liturgy of Morning Prayer each Sunday; some reclaimed the ante-communion – a form of worship allowed by the rubrics of our 1979 Book of Common Prayer but hardly used pre-Covid; whilst others went even further still and offer some extra-canonical services of Agape meals shared together online. These decisions often speak to both the local piety and the characteristics of each congregation. The Episcopal Church thus far has embraced most of these expressions of worship with one notable exception – the House of Bishops has explicitly forbidden any form of virtual Eucharists.
In congregations that decided to continue offering weekly services of the Holy Eucharists, the clergy was soon faced with a very hard decision. Do I, as a priest and presider, consume the consecrated bread and wine, or do I abstain from their consumption in solidarity with my congregation that is unable to partake of the Communion table? This decision is notoriously difficult for us priests, even more so because our bishops chose to be silent on the issue. I must confess that my own opinion on the matter has changed over the past eight months too.
I remember well attending a staff meeting with two of my priest colleagues and arguing with each other over this issue. I advocated then against us physically consuming the sacrament. It seemed clear to me at the time that just as we the priests cannot consecrate the bread and wine on our own because we all, as priests and laity, play our own distinctive and necessary roles in the Eucharistic worship, so also we the priests should not be the only ones to consume it. I was mindful of the fact that some of our parishioners might understand our consuming of the sacrament as a form of Covid-clericalism. Therefore, I thought that given the mere temporary nature of this reality, such intentional “fast” might be called for.
As weeks turned into months with no clear end in sight, many of us started to interrogate the issue further. Although my previous position seemed to make sense pastorally, I was very surprised when some of my parishioners would approach me asking that I consume the sacrament for and on behalf of the congregation. As much as they suffered the consequences of suddenly being stripped of the sacrament, it seemed important to them that at least their priest receives sacramentally Christ’s Body and Blood. This speaks to “the traditional catholic (not to be confused with Roman Catholic) notion of the role of priest … whereby the priest is functioning on behalf of the people of God,” as noted by the Rt Rev’d Jo Bailey Wells, theologian and the Church of England Bishop of Guildford. I must admit I did not consider this at first. With time passing by, I started also to wonder if there were other sacramental theological considerations that I failed to grasp at first.
The Articles of Religion (BCP pp. 867-875) – first issued in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and established by the Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1801, are rarely discussed within our Church these days. Nevertheless, they point us to some of the fundamental precepts of classical Anglican theology. In Article XXV, we read that “The Sacraments are not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them. And in such only as worthily receive the same, they have a wholesome effect or operation.” This apparently utilitarian nature of our sacramental rite seems to be further supported by the actual Verba (Words of Institution): “Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Although the faith-orientated aspect of our sacraments is clear to us, and as such we can speak with conviction of the appropriateness of the practice of Spiritual Communion in times when we are unable to receive physically, it is hard to avoid paying attention to the incarnate, bodily, physical aspect of the sacrament that are called to partake of. It would appear to me that, as Anglicans, we should not celebrate the Holy Eucharist if we are unable to physically partake of the sacrament. Valid questions may though be asked whether it is enough for only the priest to receive and for that reason many parishes do indeed opt for other forms of worship.
These decisions are hard to formulate! Never in the history of Christianity did we have a time like this, when the vast majority of the Church is unable to gather together in worship. No choice of worship seems to be able to fill that gap that each one of us experiences. Nevertheless, God continues to call us into community in ways we hardly thought feasible only a few months ago. Who at Epiphany would have thought that drive-in prayers would be one of your Sunday worship options?! Another truly encouraging realization comes from the fact that no matter how imperfect our worship choices may be, God in Christ still chooses to be there with us in all places where two or three of us have gathered in His name. I believe that the Rev’d Dr Ruth Meyers of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, an Episcopalian Seminary in California, sums up this discussion well:
“In the celebration of the eucharist, we experience the real presence of Christ, not only in the bread and wine that are blessed and shared but also in the Word proclaimed and broken open in homily, in the community gathered as the body of Christ, in song and prayer. This real presence is always in tension with real absence. We glimpse Christ’s presence, getting a taste of the heavenly banquet, yet on this side of the grave we never experience the fullness of that presence. Real absence draws us forward to the time when we shall see God face to face. Real absence makes room for the mystery of God whose presence we can neither compel nor control.”
Blessings to all,
The Rev’d Matthew Dumont-Machowski
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* Come online to our Stronger Together Reconnection Chat tomorrow night(Thursday, Oct 29) anytime between 8:30 – 9:30 PM. ALL are welcome!
* Join us online or in person this Sunday at 10 AM for worship! If you would like to attend in-person worship, please make your reservation here. Again welcome Rev. Matthew Dumont-Machowski as he presides over worship for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost.
* As always, Epiphany’s vestry and staff are here to support you in any way we can. Please contact Susan Buckner, Senior Warden at: srwarden@epiphanyec.org