Spiritual Communion
Those of us around this TABLE are united in our belief that women should be ordained priests in the Roman Catholic Church. We probably have many different ideas about what that actually means, how and when that should happen, whether it already has happened.
I started thinking about fundamental issues when I heard the Rector of the Philadelphia Cathedral welcome the television viewers to “spiritual communion.” I grieved for those watching, having just experienced the Easter Sunday liturgy of my small faith community. Our communion had been as real as if we had been together. We all brought our baptismal water and our bread and drink. We renewed our promises and received our Eucharist together. Those beloved friends in twelve Zoom boxes were joined in a sacramental celebration. The presider, Judy Heffernan, was not the only person who received more than a “spiritual” communion.
I wanted to cry out to the thousands watching the Archbishop in the beautiful Cathedral with the wonderful singers and readers that they were as important to the celebration as those who were there. Their communion was real; they fulfilled their “Easter duty.” Everything and nothing “spiritual” about it.
Having to isolate ourselves in our family units has raised issues that the church does not want to face. In all I read about the Synod on the Amazon, the unaddressed question was whether the people are sufficient to be the Eucharist for each other by virtue of their baptism. Answers that seem so inadequate to our present situation were easily imposed on the indigenous others: women deacons, viri probati priests, circuit riders ordained after seminary. What is real are these communities already being church and serving God and each other.
Again this week, my ideas are my own but not confined to me. “Spiritual communion” can be so much. I only found one definition, which was ambiguous enough to make me wonder whether the Archbishop really had thought it through.
Archbishop John Bonaventure Kwofie of Accra in a pastoral letter quoted in NCR:
“I invite you to participate from the comfort of your homes and receive Spiritual Communion in order to 'renew, strengthen and deepen our incorporation into the Church received through baptism.'"
Rather, I gathered a consensus to suggest the fundamental issues in Eucharistic celebration:
“The hierarchical structure and many of its narrow, power-conserving, people-excluding ways will never be acceptable again, nor do they need to be. If these early days of the pandemic teach us anything, it is to look carefully and speak boldly about what really counts. In extremis, as in God, all things are possible now.”
Massimo Faggioli in La Croix International:
“The fact is that the question of women in the Church is central, but it is also the one on which personal experience of male clerical leaders weighs most. …There is no credible synodality without a new role for women in the Church; this issue cannot be solved by paternalistic language about women. To be clear, I am not promoting a female priesthood here. But not all requests of reform for what concerns the ministry of women in the Church can be answered with ‘they can go somewhere else’. The emancipation of women was once identified with the Catholic tradition. But now the Catholic tradition is largely identified with the exclusion of women."
Bill Grimm in La Croix International:
“This turns the activity of the people (which is what the word ‘liturgy’ means) into a non-participatory spectator event that is not dissimilar from now-cancelled televised sporting events. It is as if the restoration of the liturgy as a communal activity that has been going on since at least 1922 with the introduction of the ‘dialogue Mass’, and which found in Vatican II its firm footing in the ancient tradition of the Church, had never happened. It is time to break down our prejudice that the only real way to church is to be in a cross-crowned building for Mass. In the 21st century, we have many more options to gather. All we lack is creativity.”
“We remembered Jesus as we broke bread and raised our individual cups of wine in front of our webcams. There was no epiclesis so no one could accuse us of attempting to say Mass.
But there were many priests around our virtual table.
We were laity, mostly women, exercising our baptismal priesthood to break bread and share wine — as Jesus had asked us to do — in memory of him.”
4 Responses
http://pelicanweb.org/20.05.Page24.Image4.jpg
One Sacred Community ~ Art by Mary Southard, CSJ ~ Ministry of the Arts
I was with Regina as one of the 12 (how Biblical!) on Easter and our celebration of communion as more than “spectators” or “virtual” participants or as receivers of that vague “spiritual eucharist” (isn’t communion always spiritual?) was true “liturgy” – an activity of the people as Regina cited in her blog and we thank her for these insights and affirmations.
I had never heard of Spiritual Communion until a month ago, when Archbishop Listecki of Milwaukee, WI, included the following at the end of his Letter to the Faithful in his diocese, 3/16/2020, which I read on my parish website , Holy Family of Whitefish Bay.
“An Act of Spiritual Communion
My Jesus,
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You.
Amen.”
My husband and I have watched two of the videotaped Masses from our parish, and this Spiritual Communion explanation/prayer has been included after the celebrant takes Communion. I have found these masses rather unsatisfying, though better than a rather anonymous half-hour Mass on the local Catholic tv channel, and one broadcast from the cathedral. We appreciated seeing the familiar places and faces of our home parish on tv, but still feel distanced from the event–sitting on our couch, we assumed the passive gaze of tv viewers, even though we stood and knelt as we would in church, and tried to say the prayers and sing along on the hymns we knew. Speaking for myself, the Spiritual Communion didn’t really work to transform me from a viewer to a participant.
Joseph W. Ruane
Sat 4/18/2020 6:38 PM
J
From: Joseph W. Ruane
Subject: Re: New from WOC: Spiritual Communion
Regina,
I like your thinking on the participation in the Eucharist in the WOC article. I think that the comment that comes closest to agreement with you is that of Chris Schenk. In checking her concern and exclusion of epiclesis I checked out the word on Google and one of the definitions was from the USCCB on the Eucharistic Prayer, with the pertinent parts excerpted below, and the more relevant parts in bold (by me). The more I read over their explanation and gave it some thought I am led to agree with you. As I started to write the above another practice of ritual jumped into my thoughts, “actio in distans” in which priests attending a mass, say at a funeral where they may be several in the front pews, were said to be able to concelebrate from where they were by actio in distans. So when you saw the priests extending their hands at the words of consecration they were concelebrating. By extension, the “we” that signifies all the baptized present, if fulfilling a presence at Mass, would also be participating fully in the Eucharist, and uniting in communion.
I liked the way those present at home with their own bread and wine participated in the CCS Mass. With the bread and wine and the Epiclesis actio in distans, a fortiori (i.e. more than ever) would be in union and communion with those actually present fulfilling the command to perpetuate the memorial. The action in a distance was determined long before TV Masses were even thought of, so new theology should be written to include changes in cultural practices. One reason, of course, why we are not there rubric wise gets back to Faggioli and all male writers in addition to the power controlling statement that it’s never been done before.
And the male dominance obviously will always be present below to identify the Creator until culture and writing is changed.
Eucharistic Prayer
The Eucharistic Prayer is the heart of the Liturgy of the Eucharist. In this prayer, the celebrant acts in the person of Christ as head of his body, the Church. He gathers not only the bread and the wine, but the substance of our lives and joins them to Christ’s perfect sacrifice, offering them to the Father.
The introductory dialogue, establishes that this prayer is the prayer of the baptized and ordained, is offered in the presence of God, and has thanksgiving as its central focus. Following this dialogue, the celebrant begins the Preface.
The Eucharistic Prayers make clear that these prayers are offered, not to Christ, but to the Father. It is worship offered to the Father by Christ as it was at the moment of his passion, death and resurrection, but now it is offered through the priest acting in the person of Christ, and it is offered as well by all of the baptized, who are part of Christ’s Body, the Church. This is the action of Christ’s Body, the Church at Mass.
The priest offers the Eucharistic Prayer in the first person plural, for example, “Therefore, O Lord, we humbly implore you…” This “we” signifies that all the baptized present at the Eucharistic celebration make the sacrificial offering in union with Christ, and pray the Eucharistic Prayer in union with him. And what is most important, we do not offer Christ alone; we are called to offer ourselves, our lives, our individual efforts to grow more like Christ and our efforts as a community of believers to spread God’s Word and to serve God’s people, to the Father in union with Christ through the hands of the priest. Most wonderful of all, although our offering is in itself imperfect, joined with the offering of Christ it becomes perfect praise and thanksgiving to the Father.
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (no. 79) provides the following summary of the Eucharistic Prayer:
The main elements of which the Eucharistic Prayer consists may be distinguished from one another in this way:
a) The thanksgiving (expressed especially in the Preface), in which the Priest, in the name of the whole of the holy people, glorifies God the Father and gives thanks to him for the whole work of salvation or for some particular aspect of it, according to the varying day, festivity, or time of year.
b) The acclamation, by which the whole congregation, joining with the heavenly powers, sings the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy). This acclamation, which constitutes part of the Eucharistic Prayer itself, is pronounced by all the people with the Priest.
c) The epiclesis, in which, by means of particular invocations, the Church implores the power of the Holy Spirit that the gifts offered by human hands be consecrated, that is, become Christ’s Body and Blood, and that the unblemished sacrificial Victim to be consumed in Communion may be for the salvation of those who will partake of it.
d) The Institution narrative and Consecration, by which, by means of the words and actions of Christ, that Sacrifice is effected which Christ himself instituted during the Last Supper, when he offered his Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine, gave them to the Apostles to eat and drink, and leaving with the latter the command to perpetuate this same mystery.
e) The anamnesis, by which the Church, fulfilling the command that she received from Christ the Lord through the Apostles, celebrates the memorial of Christ, recalling especially his blessed Passion, glorious Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven.
f) The oblation, by which, in this very memorial, the Church, in particular that gathered here and now, offers the unblemished sacrificial Victim in the Holy Spirit to the Father. The Church’s intention, indeed, is that the faithful not only offer this unblemished sacrificial Victim but also learn to offer their very selves,and so day by day to be brought, through the mediation of Christ, into unity with God and with each other, so that God may at last be all in all.