Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ: We, though many, are one body
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We, though many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf¹
Corpus Christi.Body of Christ. Candles and Copes. Monstrance and Meditation. Procession and Pilgrims.
For those of a certain age, this feast is one steeped in pomp and pageant. Elaborate the choreography. The eucharistic Body of Christ solemnly carried through the local neighborhood announcing the depth of Catholic faith and practice in Holy Eucharist.
The Body of Christ. AMEN. The Blood of Christ. AMEN.
Alas, we are not yet in a healthy enough environment to enter into the eucharistic assembly for the celebration of Sunday mass. Given the uncertainties surrounding the transmission of this virus bedeviling us all, we must forgo our participation in the communion procession. Forestall our reception of the Body and Blood of Christ. Delay our AMEN of assent and belief.
Delay our AMEN. Not forsake it.
I suggest to you there is no more vital word in all our liturgical rites, all our elaborate public worship. With our AMEN, we assent to our common prayer and ratify its being offered to the living G-D in our name. During Eucharistic celebrations, we include the AMEN when we sign ourselves in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. With the AMEN, we ratify the prayers offered on our behalf by the presider. We complete – yes, complete, make whole, sanction – the Eucharistic prayer at its concluding Doxology with a full-throated, sung GREAT AMEN.
In the communion procession, we first approach and then receive the eucharistic bread and wine with an AMEN – expressing our faith in Christ’s real presence to us, as well as our assent to become the Body of Christ in the world, in service of the world of G-D’s own making. An AMEN addressing the twin realities at work in the Body of Christ: eucharistic and mystical. In eating and drinking as Jesus taught us, we become the mystical body of Christ as expressed by Paul, the Apostle in the quote at the head of this piece:
We, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
AMEN.
Deliberation on all of this has deep implications for our manner of ministry and worship as members of the body of Christ – the mystical body of Christ. Here, I would like to quote at length from someone who was something of a mentor to me. Robert Hovda, who spent many years at St. Joseph’s parish on 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village. While I did have the privelege of a few conversations with him, the real mentoring took place in the eucharistic assembly within which I often prayed, and Robert would frequently minister as presider and preacher.
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Who Celebrates Sacraments? The only possible answer to the “who?” is “the baptized and presently committed faith community, the Sunday assembly, the church.” Both worship (including sacraments) and mission are the whole church’s work, service, ministry in and for the world. As the body of Christ, the entire faith community (concrete in every Christian’s local church – that is, the Sunday assembly) is the basic minister. All individual and group particular services in that ministering community are specialized, auxiliary, and dependent on the ministry of the whole, because none of us individually is the whole Christ. The body needs many part-time and full-time servants, skills, talents, energies, voices, hands, feet, and so on, to do the body’s work with good grace and maximum effect. The point here is the whole church’s need and the whole church’s work.
Once we grasp that basic ministry of the whole church, both for worship and for work, then we can begin to understand and have a proper regard for all the specialized ministries the church needs. The trouble is that our clericalism has so distorted those roles that the understanding we seek keeps slipping out of our grasp. Our feelings about baptism and the initiation process are underdeveloped. Our feelings about ordination and vows are vastly overblown and inflated. Our language betrays the inversion. “They” are the church. “We” are “their clients, their patients, their consumers.” NO. The sacraments are liturgies which all the baptized celebrate as Christ’s body (in a particular place and time), and in that celebration as in the rest of our life as church we employ specialized ministries for the many tasks which require given talents, training, commissioning or ordaining. We are a community of differing gifts – none of us passive, none of us capable of doing everything that needs to be done.
So, the clergy do not “bring the sacraments to us.” Our celebration of the sacraments needs them and other specialized ministers for the sake of right order, relating this celebration to those of other local churches, appropriate leadership, embodying our solidarity in Christ. When we act in concert with the leadership of these specialized ministries, then, that is what we must see: ourselves, our embodiment – not an outsider, not a stranger, not an enemy. His or her voice is our common voice. His or her hands are our common hands. That is why they are the voice and hands of Christ . . . because we are Christ’s body.²
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For members of the body of Christ in Baptist traditions, it is common in the call and response pattern of their prayer for the minister to use some variation of: “Can I get an AMEN? Or, “the church of G-D says:” . . . “AMEN!” This is no mere technique, no cleverly designed artifice to keep congregants engaged or awake. It is resort to the holy word that ratifies our shared transformation into Christ’s chosen vehicle for the healing and salvation of the world.
Body of Christ. AMEN.
On this marvelous feast of Corpus Christi – the Body and Blood of Christ – those of us in the Roman Catholic tradition here in New York City await the return of the Sunday assembly celebration. This year we have no processions: neither through our local streets, nor up the center aisle to receive holy communion. Our AMEN is delayed. But never to be forsaken.
The Body of Christ. AMEN. The Blood of Christ. AMEN.
The Body of Christ living in the world by the grace poured out in Christ Jesus.
AMEN.
¹1 Corinthians 10:16-17. The second reading from the Liturgy of the Word for this feast.
² Robert Hovda, The Amen Corner, (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), 18-19.
