We’ve moved now into the Third week of Easter. It is easy sometimes to forget that the Easter season is actually longer than Lent. In the Scripture stories, we transition from the Easter events at the empty tomb, the Upper room and on the seashore, to the Gospel of John’s accounts of Jesus as the Bread of Life that will nourish and sustain us in our lives. But again, the importance of it seems to be a matter of recognition and acceptance of this Bread of Life.
Due to the COVID19 restrictions, church parishes that would normally be teeming with children receiving their First Communion will be empty. The children will have to wait to receive their first communion until the social distancing is relaxed. This is yet another disruption to the patterns of life in community that we have grown so accustomed. At the same time, it is also a chance to look at how we receive and experience communion itself.
Communion in distinction from community seems to hint to more of an action or an event rather than a thing. For me, It draws up the image of a living intimate relationship that I find myself in with God and others, rather than some-thing that I enter into from the outside. Sometimes we look at community as something that we seek apart from our everyday lives.
Communion, on the other hand, is an experience, sometimes just a moment, wherein we allow – and are aware of – the grace and presence of Christ that is happening NOW! This communion is participation in the great Easter mystery that is always going on around us. So, the only entrance that one must make, is the recognition of this and a response to the invitation all around us. It’s a doorway to and through communion that is always around us.
In the Gospel (JN 6: 35-40), after proclaiming that He is the Bread of Life that will satisfy our hunger and thirsts, we hear Jesus say, “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me.” So, it is not only that we are invited, but there is a real desire to receive this Bread of Life – to enter into communion. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we have this attraction. It gets covered over. Sadly, our culture sometimes has a negative impact on our ability to appreciate the wholesome attraction that we have toward one another – real need to be connected. The struggle is how to rescue this desire for communion from the distortions that it has gained in some aspects of our culture, and then also begin to discover how to engage in communion in new ways, which can address our current situation.
In our present situation, we can all be seen as children awaiting a new communion that we cannot yet grasp – a world changing – transformed ways of living that disrupt but also invite us through another doorway that is yet unknown, but not without promise. The promise is to never be really lost! In real communion, nothing is lost. In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus saying this quite clearly.
“…this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me.” The implication here is that we are already given, already safe with each other in Christ, but we just don’t realize and participate in that. We also try to specify too rigidly at times what being given to Christ in each other – communion – means. We are called to RECEIVE, over and over again – receive each other, everyone, everywhere, every moment, everything. This reception is not a passivity but an activity that requires sometimes giving up something in order to grow. This means that we are called to receive changes in and through life. Christ doesn’t come in only one form!
The Communion Line that has previously formed in church aisles, is being transformed or maybe expanding is a better word. The great task is to recognize Christ wherever Christ is, and enter communion through whatever doorways open us before us – even those that we cannot yet see what’s on the other side. This is communion – that smile of connection, the wordless expression of solidarity in suffering, the infinite ways of showing compassion, the silence of wonder and mystery in the face of creation and destruction, the tears of confusion and pain, and yes, even the laughter of pure silliness. When we don’t receive Christ in each other and in our circumstances, we feel lost. And we are not meant to be lost.
As we look in the faces of those around us, even those we do not know, we can wonder about their life and what they are carrying inside. We can hold that in our hearts, not even knowing the specifics, but engaging in the communion that we all share. This is a way of going through the Communion door which opens up into life, all of life, including it’s deaths. Then we can really be fed and feed each other.
We receive the Bread of Life when we receive and give to each other. And our responsibility for this great gift includes the acceptance of the invitation to redirect the communion line so that it flows outward through the expansive communion doorway stretching out in all directions, catching up everyone in the great wave of connection – the Bread of Life!
Peace,
Thomas
(original published April 22, 2015)