I'm sitting here weeping openly. I have been denied many times, so many times that I no longer consider myself a Christian person. And yet, as a person of faith in a Source that loves us with Grace we cannot measure, I 'commune' regularly with friends, family, students, clients. What they see is that I take my shoes off. That I offer them a beverage made with care, and a meal of some size or another. That our table may be formal, it may be our laps. And that we take a moment to acknowledge that we are together. They think I 'fuss' over them. I know that I commune with them. I know the Source is with us in those moments, in all of our moments. I wonder what my faith life would have been like without being denied the table. Thank you for this post, for your care of an inclusive table. May we include...
More than 20 years ago we took our Lutheran youth group to Seattle’s St. Therese Catholic Church to attend their brilliant jazz mass (you haven’t heard ‘This little light of mine’ until you’ve heard their choir sing it). Before the service we asked the priest, a young Jesuit from Seattle University, if we could be admitted to communion. He said ‘we are all invited to the same table.’ Not only that, when we went up for the wafer we noticed there was a self-serve wine bar set up on the altar table, with cups and a decanter. The priest did not serve it, but he did not stand in anyone’s way. Doctrine can have loopholes.
I met my husband at a Catholic encounter support group for divorced, separated, and widowed people 30 years ago. We were two divorced Lutheran's attending this Catholic group. At the end of the weekend, the priest asked me to assist with the passing of the bread. He didn't ask if I was Catholic. I served bread to this guy I just met who would eventually become my husband. This moment of grace has framed our marriage and how we are living our lives. I am so grateful. All are welcome at the table. Thanks for this meditation.
It is not our table. All should be welcome. And if we get it wrong somehow, I would rather err to the side of grace and welcome—and a bigger table than I have sent someone away who belonged. I see the communion table the same as depictions of 1) Christ welcoming all the children and 2) the shepherd tenderly welcoming, rescuing the lamb. My God has open arms.
There are blessings as well as hardships that have come with the pandemic. At many online services I have been invited to make this prayer:
"In union, O Dear Lord, with the faithful at every Altar of Thy Church, where Thy blessed Body and Blood are being offered to the Father, I desire to offer Thee praise and thanksgiving. I present to Thee my soul and body, with the earnest wish that I may ever be united to Thee. And since I cannot now receive Thee sacramentally, I beseech Thee to come spiritually into my heart. I unite myself to Thee, and embrace Thee with all the affections of my soul. O let nothing ever separate me from Thee. Let me live and die in Thy love. Amen."
That prayer, or one like it, has been offered in many online eucharists and masses, even from congregations where I might not have been permitted to take communion in person. I do not apologize for participating in any way that I can.
As you say, It is not our table; it is God's and Jesus welcomes us all to it just as He did when He sat down with other sinners and ate and drank with them.
The prayer or a modern wording of it is in widespread use in Anglican and Episcopal churches and by military chaplains. Some people may be surprised that an almost verbatim version is used in the Roman Catholilc liturgy. During the early part of the pandemic I watched masses celebrated by Pope Francis in the small chapel of Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican and heard him use this prayer. Although there may be differences in the practice of physical consumption of the Host, there may be a common recognition of the spiritual act of communion. I have hope that all may be as welcomed to God's table as Jesus made sinners like us with whom he ate and drank.
This post resonated so much with me. Throughout my adolescence and young adult years I remember hearing the warning from the priest from the altar at communion time “only the worthy can take the communion”. It was painful to hear and it made no sense to me. When I was at my lowest it is then that I need the communion. We would get scared away from the table for having had sex before marriage and in my case for being pregnant and having a child before getting married. It made no sense to me then, it makes no sense now. Thank you thank you for these loving words
As a former Catholic I found such comfort and grace (and hope) in your words, I left (the final time) the church in 2008 but my heart can continue to be broken by the church leadership. Rachel's story, especially Stuart's response, helped fill some of those gaps.
My non-Catholic husband and I were married in my Catholic church. At the rehearsal, our priest asked the members of the wedding party who planned to receive communion. My non-Catholic brother-in-law replied that he wasn't baptized in the Catholic church. The priest responded that he hadn't asked who was baptized; he had asked who was receiving communion. And he invited all the guests at the wedding to receive. He no longer is a priest and my husband and I are Episcopalians.
This is beautiful. And right. How dare any of us claim to be able to bestow or withhold grace through rules made up and enforced by deeply flawed humans? At the Lord’s table, there is enough for all. Trust that. I trust, and I don’t even identify as Christian.
Today is the 27th Anniversary of our 19 year old son's death as the drunk driver. I rarely attend church on this day (in 1994, Father's Day wad on the 19th). I cry. I wasn't his birth mother, I married his widowed father and adopted his two children. David and his younger sister were too young to be left to grieve alone and dad is the child of alcoholics so he pushes emotions down. At the time of his death, David hated my guts and I didn't always like his behavior but I was waiting and praying for him to grow. His sister still acts as if she, at best, tolerates me. Being fed amoung family, especially with bread does marvelous things. But it's just too much every year on this date, the 19th and Father's Day.
My Episcopal church has reverted to a mission so we have Eucharist 2X month, my next "meal" will be the 5th of July.
I love this message. I grew up in a church with male voices and closed communion. I am so sad that the church at large is ruled by so much fear. I was taught if a pastor gave communion to a person whose heart wasn’t right that the pastor would be judged and the person might end up worse off. Really??!?!!? How can depriving people of connection and mercy and love ever be wrong?
Are we so faithless that we don’t trust the God who found us to go and find the rest?
I feel sad to think that if Jesus had attended the church of my youth, he would have been denied communion too.
Thank you. Being a cradle-Episcopalian, this is something that I hadn't thought of until last six or seven years. As a segue from the morning announcements into Eucharistic invitation, our rector would announce with a vary distinct vocal cadence, "that all baptized Christians, of whatever denomination, are welcome at the table of Our Lord." It began to rub me the wrong way that only baptized Christians (and I agree with what you have said regarding the catechumenal path to communion), when the first people to actually receive the bread and wine weren't even Christians, or at least labeled as such. And I believe I have begun to mature spiritually, I believe that God is available to all - at anytime, in any place ... but then if not at God's table then where? Thank again.
Well said. As Pope Francis said “the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”
I'm sitting here weeping openly. I have been denied many times, so many times that I no longer consider myself a Christian person. And yet, as a person of faith in a Source that loves us with Grace we cannot measure, I 'commune' regularly with friends, family, students, clients. What they see is that I take my shoes off. That I offer them a beverage made with care, and a meal of some size or another. That our table may be formal, it may be our laps. And that we take a moment to acknowledge that we are together. They think I 'fuss' over them. I know that I commune with them. I know the Source is with us in those moments, in all of our moments. I wonder what my faith life would have been like without being denied the table. Thank you for this post, for your care of an inclusive table. May we include...
More than 20 years ago we took our Lutheran youth group to Seattle’s St. Therese Catholic Church to attend their brilliant jazz mass (you haven’t heard ‘This little light of mine’ until you’ve heard their choir sing it). Before the service we asked the priest, a young Jesuit from Seattle University, if we could be admitted to communion. He said ‘we are all invited to the same table.’ Not only that, when we went up for the wafer we noticed there was a self-serve wine bar set up on the altar table, with cups and a decanter. The priest did not serve it, but he did not stand in anyone’s way. Doctrine can have loopholes.
I met my husband at a Catholic encounter support group for divorced, separated, and widowed people 30 years ago. We were two divorced Lutheran's attending this Catholic group. At the end of the weekend, the priest asked me to assist with the passing of the bread. He didn't ask if I was Catholic. I served bread to this guy I just met who would eventually become my husband. This moment of grace has framed our marriage and how we are living our lives. I am so grateful. All are welcome at the table. Thanks for this meditation.
It is not our table. All should be welcome. And if we get it wrong somehow, I would rather err to the side of grace and welcome—and a bigger table than I have sent someone away who belonged. I see the communion table the same as depictions of 1) Christ welcoming all the children and 2) the shepherd tenderly welcoming, rescuing the lamb. My God has open arms.
I mean look at Rachel in the airport pic, no more words needed....
There are blessings as well as hardships that have come with the pandemic. At many online services I have been invited to make this prayer:
"In union, O Dear Lord, with the faithful at every Altar of Thy Church, where Thy blessed Body and Blood are being offered to the Father, I desire to offer Thee praise and thanksgiving. I present to Thee my soul and body, with the earnest wish that I may ever be united to Thee. And since I cannot now receive Thee sacramentally, I beseech Thee to come spiritually into my heart. I unite myself to Thee, and embrace Thee with all the affections of my soul. O let nothing ever separate me from Thee. Let me live and die in Thy love. Amen."
That prayer, or one like it, has been offered in many online eucharists and masses, even from congregations where I might not have been permitted to take communion in person. I do not apologize for participating in any way that I can.
As you say, It is not our table; it is God's and Jesus welcomes us all to it just as He did when He sat down with other sinners and ate and drank with them.
Donald, that is such a beautiful prayer. Thank you for sharing it. <3
The prayer or a modern wording of it is in widespread use in Anglican and Episcopal churches and by military chaplains. Some people may be surprised that an almost verbatim version is used in the Roman Catholilc liturgy. During the early part of the pandemic I watched masses celebrated by Pope Francis in the small chapel of Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican and heard him use this prayer. Although there may be differences in the practice of physical consumption of the Host, there may be a common recognition of the spiritual act of communion. I have hope that all may be as welcomed to God's table as Jesus made sinners like us with whom he ate and drank.
I've heard the story here in Memphis of a priest whose invitation to Communion is, "NOW WHO HERE WANTS SUMMORE JESUS?!?"
This post resonated so much with me. Throughout my adolescence and young adult years I remember hearing the warning from the priest from the altar at communion time “only the worthy can take the communion”. It was painful to hear and it made no sense to me. When I was at my lowest it is then that I need the communion. We would get scared away from the table for having had sex before marriage and in my case for being pregnant and having a child before getting married. It made no sense to me then, it makes no sense now. Thank you thank you for these loving words
As a former Catholic I found such comfort and grace (and hope) in your words, I left (the final time) the church in 2008 but my heart can continue to be broken by the church leadership. Rachel's story, especially Stuart's response, helped fill some of those gaps.
My non-Catholic husband and I were married in my Catholic church. At the rehearsal, our priest asked the members of the wedding party who planned to receive communion. My non-Catholic brother-in-law replied that he wasn't baptized in the Catholic church. The priest responded that he hadn't asked who was baptized; he had asked who was receiving communion. And he invited all the guests at the wedding to receive. He no longer is a priest and my husband and I are Episcopalians.
This is beautiful. And right. How dare any of us claim to be able to bestow or withhold grace through rules made up and enforced by deeply flawed humans? At the Lord’s table, there is enough for all. Trust that. I trust, and I don’t even identify as Christian.
Today is the 27th Anniversary of our 19 year old son's death as the drunk driver. I rarely attend church on this day (in 1994, Father's Day wad on the 19th). I cry. I wasn't his birth mother, I married his widowed father and adopted his two children. David and his younger sister were too young to be left to grieve alone and dad is the child of alcoholics so he pushes emotions down. At the time of his death, David hated my guts and I didn't always like his behavior but I was waiting and praying for him to grow. His sister still acts as if she, at best, tolerates me. Being fed amoung family, especially with bread does marvelous things. But it's just too much every year on this date, the 19th and Father's Day.
My Episcopal church has reverted to a mission so we have Eucharist 2X month, my next "meal" will be the 5th of July.
Thank you all for "being at the airport. 💗
I love the heart of Stuart.
I love this message. I grew up in a church with male voices and closed communion. I am so sad that the church at large is ruled by so much fear. I was taught if a pastor gave communion to a person whose heart wasn’t right that the pastor would be judged and the person might end up worse off. Really??!?!!? How can depriving people of connection and mercy and love ever be wrong?
Are we so faithless that we don’t trust the God who found us to go and find the rest?
I feel sad to think that if Jesus had attended the church of my youth, he would have been denied communion too.
Thank you. Being a cradle-Episcopalian, this is something that I hadn't thought of until last six or seven years. As a segue from the morning announcements into Eucharistic invitation, our rector would announce with a vary distinct vocal cadence, "that all baptized Christians, of whatever denomination, are welcome at the table of Our Lord." It began to rub me the wrong way that only baptized Christians (and I agree with what you have said regarding the catechumenal path to communion), when the first people to actually receive the bread and wine weren't even Christians, or at least labeled as such. And I believe I have begun to mature spiritually, I believe that God is available to all - at anytime, in any place ... but then if not at God's table then where? Thank again.