CLOSED COMMUNION IS NOT HOLY COMMUNION
August 16, 2015
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Rev. Dcn. David Justin Lynch
Proverbs 9:1-6 Psalm 34:2-7 Ephesians
5:15-20 John 6:51-58
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, AMEN.
Receiving communion has always been the most important thing I do.
Throughout my life, I have almost never missed Mass. I have often gone to
great lengths to get to Mass. When I was a boy, I often stayed home from family
outings and rode the bus to church. I’ve always organized my vacation plans to
be sure I was near an appropriate church after scoping them out on the Internet
before leaving, and of course, I’ve always arranged for communion to be brought
to me when I’m ill. Why do I take the Eucharist so seriously? It is bread from
heaven, the deepest kind of sustenance humans can receive,
the food that nourishes God's life within me.
Last week, we talked about incredible
statements, the kind of stuff that sounds too good to be true. Within the past
two weeks, Pope Francis uttered a truly incredible statement: that divorced
and remarried persons are not excommunicated from the Roman Church, and that
they should be welcomed into their communities. That statement is
incredible, because it’s too good to be true. What Francis did not say, is that divorced and remarried
people are welcome to receive Holy Communion. The fact is, they are not, at least officially. Nor
is anyone who is not either Roman or Orthodox Catholic. Now, this prohibition
is widely disregarded. I am divorced and remarried as is my wife, Beeper. We
have gone to Mass in Roman Churches for weddings and funerals, and we march up
to the Altar and receive with everyone else. While for it’s enough for us to know that the Altar belongs to
Jesus, and not to any church organization,
nonetheless, we are in a situation where the leadership of that community does
not honestly and fully welcome us as fellow Christians, something I find
profoundly disturbing, so we therefore refuse to go along with that exclusionary
program. And, Rome does its best to prevent its people from receiving communion
in churches of other denominations. According to an encyclical called “Ecclesia
de Eucharistia”, written by Pope John Paul the second in 2003, Roman Catholics
should not receive communion in churches Rome believes do not have valid Holy
Orders. Again, this idea is widely disregarded. My maternal grandparents were
devout Polish Roman Catholics, attending weekday as well as Sunday Mass, but
they were also the model of ecumenism. My mother left
the Roman church over its intolerant attitudes towards other churches, and
raised myself, my brother and my sister in the high Anglo-Catholic end of the
Episcopal Church. In those days, that was the only option for those of us who are
catholic but not Roman. My mother taught us that God loved everyone, and we put
that into practice. When we visited my grandparents’ Roman church, we walked up
to receive communion with them, and when my grandparents visited the Episcopal
Church, they received communion with us.
And there’s more. Rome also practices
selective communion refusals, which have included individuals married to
same-sex spouses ,and politicians who publicly disagree with Roman Church
policies on subjects like abortion. Imagine yourself if you were gay, and your
same-sex spouse accompanied you to your mother’s funeral Mass, and the priest
refused communion to both of you. It’s happened, believe me. Although there may
later have been some apologies, the emotional trauma inflicted at the time of
the act was substantial. Is that a good way to run a church? I think not.
Today’s Gospel explains why the closed
communion policies of Rome and others is simply wrong in just a few words.
Jesus gave Himself for the life of the World. “The bread that I will give is
my flesh for the life of the
world,” He said. Not the
Roman Church world, the world. The whole world, no exceptions. And Jesus said, “whoever eats this bread will live
forever.” Again, no no exceptions. Just “whoever eats this bread.” This is one of those
cases where ecclesiastical laws and traditions directly confront the commands
of Jesus Himself. In those cases, Jesus must win. Jesus is our King. Jesus is our Lord and Savior. Jesus rules our lives, not some collection
of old celibate men who’ve never lived in the real world. Rome has
demonstrated a decided lack of wisdom as shown by the millions of people who’ve
departed from it, often to churches who do not even attempt to be catholic, and
more and more often, to no church at all. Today’s reading from Proverbs
reinforces the message of how wrong Rome is on access to communion: “Let whoever
is simple turn in here; to the one who lacks understanding, she says, Come, eat
of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed!” Those are words of welcome,
not exclusion! Is this not an Old Testament prefigurement of the open table
that Jesus wants? Of course it is! Jesus dined with tax collectors and other
sinners, and in fact, some of them were His disciples. Whether or not someone
is “worthy” to receive communion is not something for any person to judge. I’ll
leave judgment up to God, thank you.
Fortunately, the Roman brand of
Catholicism is not the only game in town. In much of the independent
catholic movement, which for the most part has Holy Orders that even Rome will
admit are valid, open communion is the rule. The independent catholic movement
emphasizes taking care of people, not enforcing institutional norms, which is
really the bottom line on all ministry everywhere. One of the
hallmarks of the Independent Catholic Movement is its inclusivity. Following
the example of Jesus, we welcome outcasts and sinners of all kinds. We bring
them into the church and attempt to provide an environment in which God’s grace
can touch them, heal them, and save them. Part of our "inclusivity"
is generosity with the sacraments. But this can be misinterpreted as condoning
sin. It is not. Jesus never condoned sin; yet He never turned away a sinner.
In 2013, my wife and I began
attending St. Matthews Ecumenical Catholic Church in Orange, California.
What I recall most about my first visit, was the invitation to communion,
when the presider announced explicitly that everyone, absolutely everyone, were
welcome to receive communion, regardless of denominational affiliation. I can
recall the presider saying that Jesus is the host of the Eucharist, and that
Holy Communion is not a reward for good behavior. My reaction was, of course,
why should it ever be otherwise?
Unfortunately, the Body of Jesus in the
Eucharist has always been a subject of controversy, not only about who can or
should receive communion. Here in today’s Gospel, we have the Jews murmuring
and grumbling in rebellion against Christ's teaching, "The bread that I
shall give for the life of the world is my flesh". The Jews challenged
him, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” John 6, particularly
the verses for today, is the most powerful statement in the entire Bible of the
actual, physical and Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy
Sacrament of the Altar. Thomas Aquinas explained it like this: in the Prayer of
Consecration, the bread and wine offered undergoes a
change of substance. The bread and wine become the Body, Blood, Soul and
Divinity of Jesus Christ. The appearances of bread and wine remain, but
the substance is Christ, whole and entire. The words of Jesus are
unmistakably clear: Jesus is the Bread of Life; His flesh is true food and His blood is true drink; those who eat His flesh
and drink His blood will live forever. The incredibleness of
that notion was, and is, a mystery, then and now. “How can that be,” the people
who were listening to Jesus quarreled among themselves. They could not understand
how a human person could be food. Jesus did not respond superficially. He
reiterated that his mission was to nourish them, to give his entire life to
them, so that they, too, could share in life from God.
Regrettably, the Eucharist remains a source
of quarrels and divisions, a tool for manipulation, and an excuse to exclude.
What should be a gathering of loving persons filled with hymns and spiritual
songs, has become a source of contention. In all of this, Holy Communion has
become most unholy.
Holy Communion is not a tool for one group
of humans to judge other people. Rather, Holy Communion is just that: Holy. It
is a gift, freely given by Jesus to humanity, to nourish and sanctify us and
make us one with Jesus. The liturgy we use recognizes this by providing for a
Prayer Over the Gifts before they are consecrated, and refers to the setting of
the table at the Offertory as “the preparation of the gifts.” Some
liturgies invite the congregation to the table with the phrase, “The Gifts of
God for the People of God.” Nothing could be more true than that. The Bread of
Heaven incarnate in the person of Jesus is the gift of finest wheat that gives
us life itself to eat. Everything we possess ultimately comes
from God: our material possessions, our bodies, our health and our skills. We
offer them back to God in recognition that they come from God. The spirituality
of the Eucharist challenges us to ‘gift’ ourselves to God. In the
Eucharist, Jesus gives us an everlasting gift: life as the people of God, which
we become by growing in holiness and faith. Vatican two rightly called the
Eucharist, “the source and summit of Christian life.” The Eucharist contains
the Church's entire spiritual wealth: Christ Himself, our Passover and living
bread, the Word made flesh, dwelling among us.
In reality, the entire Christian church
has always been one church, over which no one other than Jesus reigns as King
of Kings and Lord of Lords, forever and ever, hallelujah. The division of the
Christendom exists only on the human level. Jesus sees us as one church. In what’s called the High
Priestly Prayer in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “that they all may be one,
as I and the Father are one.” Denominations are a purely human invention. In its Decree on Ecumenism,
Vatican two proclaimed, ”Christ the Lord founded one Church and one
Church only.” Thus, the great divergence in the Christ’s Kingdom in the
sixteenth century was a deep wound, a wound to be healed by the message of
Jesus to love one another as He loved us, not by a legalistic, law enforcement
mentality. Christ instituted the Eucharist, not to express a perfect communion
or unity among Christians, but to lead to greater perfection of what already
exists: our bonding to one another through the one baptism that we acknowledge
in the Nicene Creed. The
Eucharist exists to deepen unity. It is not only legitimate to use the Eucharist as a means to
bring about the unity of a divided Christendom: It is imperative, it is the
will of Christ to do so.
Rome must change to
win our respect. Rome must forsake foolishness, and advance in the ways of
understanding. What do I mean by “understanding?” The Book of Job tells
us that the fear of the Lord is “understanding”. It’s not fear in the sense of
being afraid that God might harm us, but sensing the presence of God and acting
under the shadow of God’s glory and power. For Christians, that glory and power
is God’s love, freely offered to all of us, regardless of what our
denominational preferences are, or are not. Ultimately, denominations don’t
matter. What does matter is Jesus, given by God as life
to the world, broken and shared with everyone.
AMEN
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