Ordinary 16

The Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34

The third and final in a series.

As we complete our reflection on the role of Catholics, elected Catholic officials and our bishops in the public forum, let us finally turn to the Eucharist.

Before we deal with whether it is permissible or prudent to deny a person Holy Communion, we need to reflect on what is this event in which we participate that Jesus passed on to us to do in his memory.

What we call The Last Supper, what came to be the Christian Eucharist, was a Passover Seder.

The Passover to this day is not a recollection nor a memorial of the Exodus event in the life of the Jewish People. Through the sacred meal of Passover every Jewish person leaves the slavery of Egypt, crosses through the Red Sea, enters the freedom and cleansing of the desert experience, and enters into the Covenant of Sinai looking forward to a future of hope. Every Jewish person must leave Egypt, thus a Passover Seder breaks time and space. The past is present. The present becomes future hope.

By Jesus changing the words of blessing over the matzoh, the bread of freedom, and over the cup, the wine of blessing, he changed and deepened the meaning of this Jewish sacred meal. The meal was still about leaving slavery, but now, the slavery of sin. It was still about going through waters, but now, the waters of Baptism. It was still about freedom, but the freedom of God’s justice.

When Jesus says, “do this [sacred meal] in memory of me”, our English word, “memory” falls short of the Hebrew and Greek understandings which reflect an active present moment. Our word “memory” rather looks to the past.

Like the Jewish Passover, the sacred meal of the Eucharist breaks time and space and looks to the future in hope. The passion, death, resurrection, ascension, descent of the Holy Spirit and our longing for the completion of the Reign of God is made present in our midst. The Eucharist is not a past but ongoing event of the redemption of God for his people.

In Baptism every person in becoming a follower of Jesus must, like the Exodus event for

Jewish people, experience the primal event of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In the Letter to the Romans Paul writes, ”When we were baptized in Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death…we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life” [Romans 6:3-5]. In the Letter to the Colossians, he is very blunt, “You have died[!]… and your life is hidden with Christ in God” [Colossians 3:3].

The font therefore always leads to the holy table from which we experience and recommit ourselves in and to that primal event of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We eat the bread of freedom from sin, Jesus’ Body and drink the cup of blessing and thanksgiving, Jesus’ Blood.

The Holy Eucharist than is “the most sacred and intimate act in which Christians engage” [Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College, RI]. It is equivalent to the marriage act between a wife and husband, sacred and intimate.

Thus Paul in writing to the Corinthian community which was having internal issues in regard to the Eucharist, warns and counsels, 

“Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord [that is, the community]. A person should examine themselves…For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body [the community], eats and drinks judgment on themselves”.

And Paul continues to say, “That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying” [1 Corinthians 11: 27- 32].

Paul’s response would seem to answer our quandary in regard to elected Catholic officials in a pluralistic society and the reception of Holy Communion, does it not?

But does it? Paul is writing to a small Christian community with the presumption that Jesus’ return is very soon. Our situation is quite different.

Christians have reflected over the centuries upon the Eucharist, interpreting and reinterpreting, what Jesus did and meant. We have come to see in every meal recorded in the Gospels at which Jesus is present some revealed aspect of the mystery of the Eucharist. At one of those meals Jesus expressed an essential aspect of all our gatherings.

“Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does your Master eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus heard this and said to them, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” [Mark 2:16-17]

Throughout the Gospels Jesus eats with sinners, traitors, the disenfranchised, the ritually unclean, friends, disciples, and the sick. If we are honest with ourselves, Jesus continues to this day to eat with sinners, traitors and the disenfranchised, does he not?

Pope Francis’ image of the church as a ‘field hospital’ merges with the medical image of Jesus as a physician seeking to heal sick people. This is reinforced by Francis’ teaching that the Eucharist, “is not a prize for the perfect, but a generous medicine and food for the weak”.

In this light, the question of “who is worthy” becomes murky, moot.

Is the food and drink of the Eucharist for saints or for sinners; for the spiritually sick or spiritually healthy? It is not, as the hymn “Panis angelicus…” states, “The bread of angels…”.

What does it mean to be in a ‘state of grace’? Is that even measurable?

Who is to judge the state of a Catholic’s soul?

Who is going to make the decision to refuse Holy Communion?

Up to sixty years ago no Catholic received Holy Communion without first going to the Sacrament of Confession. Now everyone receives Holy Communion with few approaching the Sacrament of Confession.

Why have we, I mean you and me, changed our sacramental practice?

If we are all spiritually sick and Jesus the Eternal Physician has given us a medicine for healing, why would anyone deny this medicine to another spiritually ill sister or brother? Should the Eucharist be turned into a disciplinary matter? More so, a political weapon?

Is there not a fundamental hypocrisy at work when the only reasons a person is denied Holy Communion is over the issue of their marriage or their views on the legality of abortion, even though many Catholics, politicians and in general, hold views antithetical to Catholic Christian teaching on a number of other moral and life issues. If you deny the Sacrament to those who support abortion or at least will not work to bring the voice of the Gospel to the public forum then does it not follow that you must also deny Holy Communion to those who support the death penalty, euthanasia, and war? These are all moral situations where the sanctity of human life is deliberately destroyed.

Might our discussion on the denial of Communion to a Catholic suggest a failure on the part of the Church to adequately convey our truth about the sanctity of all life? Consider. Are we willing to walk with women so that they do not feel alone and have to choose abortion; walk with the elderly so that they do not feel like a burden and desire to be euthanized; walk with women and men on death row while working toward restorative justice rather than societal revenge? Our example would speak clearer than any official teaching document, would it not?

The Eucharist makes claims on our political actions because the Eucharist is “intrinsically political”. The Eucharist is a public act committing every Catholic to transforming the world in love.

So for those among us who are convinced that a stricter discipline will only lead to more division within the Christian community, might those members be willing to admit that prudent restraint has not changed any minds and hearts of people about abortion?

For those among us who are more willing to have a stricter discipline and turn people away from the reception of Holy Communion, particularly for elected Catholic officials, perhaps they need to address the ways that our sole focus on abortion has become an excuse for Catholics, in general, to ignore the Church’s teaching on a broad range of other life and moral issues.

Only dialogue and debate in charity can be open to the Holy Spirit.

Pray for our bishops. May the Holy Spirit make then discerning teachers, pastoral shepherds and challenging prophets.

In the meantime, in prayer you and I need to discern, are we worthy to receive Holy Communion, not the bread of angels but the bread of healing for the sick?