Absence, Grief, and Hunger for Real Presence A lot of digital ink is being spilled over the question of virtual Holy Communion. I hold strong convictions about that, but that is not the concern I write about here. I write about grief; the anguish of our felt loss of sharing in the same physical space. My grief – dare I include you – is our loss of contact with others. Now we are nearly two months into not gathering to share one another’s real presence . I hunger for the real presence of those who make up the body of Christ. The “we” is the loss I feel. Ironically the global pandemic broke up the “we” just as the church was ready to observe Holy Week, Easter and the fifty days of recognizing Christ in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:13-35). That Christ is keeping his promise to go before us into the Galilee of this pandemic is not in question. Lament There is plenty of grief to go around. Owning it – speaking it out loud— is to share with Job, Lamentation and the l...
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The Absence in the Presence during Liturgical Distancing 2020
Caravaggio's "The Incredulity of Saint Thomas" In John 20, the story of Thomas, we do not have an explicit statement that he put his finger in the nail holes or in the lacerated side of Christ. Was the invitation enough? The invitation is to enter the mystery: “Put your finger here…only believe.” (20:27) The “hole” in Christ’s side is the mystery. The risen Christ calls Thomas and all of us to enter the mystery. In that we and Thomas are not different in time and space. In Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People* , Bob Hurd muses on the silence of the congregation after reception and before the post-communion prayer. “It signifies the beyond words character of union, corresponding to comtemplatio in the fourth stage of lection divina.” (p.230) Hurd goes on to call this “companionable silence” entry into the Mystery. The silence after reception of the Eucharist is (if it is observed in practice**) the moment of sti...
Bob Hurd on Eucharist, Lazarus and a Way of Dying
Bob Hurd on Eucharist, Lazarus and a Way of Dying My early morning reading in Bob Hurd's Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People: Liturgical Foundations of Christian Spirituality , serendipitously anticipated the gospel reading for the 5th Sunday in Lent, Year A--the raising of Lazarus and the anticipation of the death of Jesus. The subchapter heading, "A Way of Dying," (pp. 209-217) begins with: To understand the dying of Jesus as self-emptying love and our participation in it, we must have the courage to be truthful and vulnerable in the face of death, even while affirming our faith in the living God. A few lines later he says bluntly and presciently in the context of our current reality, "Though we are a little less than angels, we are also food for worms." We live in this world. In death we donate ourselves, willingly or not, to the Mystery, and we, in some real and physical sense, don't leave the planet. Whatever the transcendent hope...
Worship and Sacramental Faithfulness in the Age of Covid-19 By Daniel Benedict, OSL Pastor Joan sat down and called the lay leader, “The bishop gathered her pastors together on a ZOOM call this morning. The bottom line is no gathered worship for the next two months.” Her voice was a mix of shock and bewilderment. Jorge, the lay leader, paused before saying the first thing that came to his mind: “Aychimanini! How the heck are we going to do that?” Cancellations of worship, planning and study groups, and special events already on the calendar streamed through both their minds. What about Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter? We have baptisms scheduled. A sense of collective disappointment formed like a vapor between the cell towers. United Methodists and others in the Christian tradition are reeling with how to go about being the church in liturgy and life as the world changes hour by hour in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Suddenly, we are scrambling...
Holy Week and Easter in Jerusalem and Hippo[1] The 4th century Jerusalem church got ready for Easter by tracing the steps of Jesus from one traditional place to another in the course of Holy Week. Egeria, a Spanish pilgrim, narrates her Diary the movement of the Jerusalem faithful around the holy places available to them: the Mount of Olives, Golgotha, the anastasis (the place of resurrection) and other places. The Jerusalem Christians lived where these landmarks were and so could experience Jesus’ passion and resurrection as historical events “remembered.” It must have been impressive and powerful “to walk where Jesus walked.” In Jerusalem, if someone asked, “How do you know Christ lives,” the people could answer, “ There is where he was crucified and here is where he was raised.” In early 5th century Hippo, a city in North Africa where Augustine was bishop, Christians experienced the resurrection differently. They didn’t have the “props” of the historical places. What did they do?...
Apples and Advent: Doxology, Sin and Paradox by Daniel T. Benedict, Jr. Last night in Lessons and Carols for Advent Sunday at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Honolulu I was struck by the paradoxical nature of doxology in pre-Enlightenment texts. It seems t hat our ancient Christian siblings could not color within the lines the Enlightenment set out for us, their posterity, and so we borrow from those whose doxology knew no constraint in rejoicing in God’s saving work. Two examples come to mind: the medieval “Adam lay ybounden,” (the full text at bottom) often sung in services of Advent Lessons and Carols, and the “felix culpa” (“O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam”) text in the Easter Vigil’s ancient Exsultet. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_culpa for full text. Accessed November 30, 2009.) I will not explore here the scholarly apparatus and history of these examples, as that is amply done in other places. (Begin by searching wikipedia for both “felix culpa” and “Adam lay y...