(The Nationalist, 18 August 2006)
Holy Communion is a call to communion, that is, to community. Jesus came to gather into one the scattered children of God, to bring people together into one human family, of which God is the Father. Yet we sometimes feel alienated from God, afraid, angry or even resentful.
We are called to communion, yet we struggle to make it real among us, for instance, in families or localities. We are constantly pulled between the ideal Jesus sets before us of a single human family united under God, and the reality of our divisions and hatreds, our narrow, tribal loyalties that keep us apart. What’s happening between Lebanon and Israel at the moment provides an illustration of that, if we need one.
The Eucharist is a sacrament of forgiveness and reconciliation. That applies to relationships with other people, no less than to relationships with God. If we pray from our hearts in the moment of Communion for the grace to forgive our offender, and also to be forgiven anger, unforgiveness, or resentment, it will make a difference for the better. (Resentment is like taking poison, and then expecting the other person to die.)
We are called to unity in ourselves. Yet we are often fractured, divided, and at war with ourselves. Communion is a sacrament of healing, which helps us to become integrated people who have a good conscience, and enjoy the unity of life and peace of mind that comes with it.
The Eucharist has been called “the breaking of the bread”. Jesus was broken on the cross; sometimes we are broken by life. The self-sufficient, the self-satisfied, the self-centred, or the simply selfish, may feel no need of the Eucharist. The hurt, wounded, broken people of this world feel an affinity with the suffering Jesus of Calvary. People who are struggling, not sure whether they aren’t stupid to believe, naïve to hope, or gullible to love, people who are afraid to trust, to care – it is they who need to come to Communion, and to say from their hearts, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed’.
This broken world of ours, this planet that we human beings have raped and mutilated through greed, stupidity, and short-sightedness calls out to us for healing. In the Eucharist we present bread, which earth has given and human hands have made, that is, the work of nature and human effort. By healing a wounded world we could offer a gift to God who continues to give himself to us through it. Every act of healing the wounds of nature can be an act of communion.
We become what we receive in the Eucharist. A Communion received in faith draws us closer into the life of God, into a holy union with Him.
For those in a hurry: ‘Little minds are interested in the extraordinary, great minds in the commonplace’. (Elbert Hubbard)