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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: How does Communion help?
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Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
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Posted
Ahoy shipmates.
I have been thinking a lot about communion recently. It is something that is very important to me - but I struggle to quite articulate why. And, to be honest, sometimes I feel I approach it very perfunctorily and therefore don't connect with the 'meal' as I feel I should.
So my question is this: How does Holy Communion / The Eucharist / Mass / The Lord's Supper / The Breaking of Bread help you in your Christian experience (presupposing you partake obviously). What elements (if you'll pardon the pun) of how you celebrate this meal in your tradition do you find helpful, what personally do you feel you experience/gain/enjoy from taking part?
Thanks.
(Apologies if I posted this in the wrong place but I'm sure a kindly host will correct me if necessary).
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Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
Posts: 438 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2013
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I have no theological backing for this.
But when I take Communion it is an end run around all the head stuff. All theology, all cogitation, indeed all words are gone, and we get around to the other side of our contact with God. The visceral, purely flesh side: Eat, drink.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I have no theological backing for this.
But when I take Communion it is an end run around all the head stuff. All theology, all cogitation, indeed all words are gone, and we get around to the other side of our contact with God. The visceral, purely flesh side: Eat, drink.
Taste and see that the Lord is good, maybe?
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Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
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Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I strongly object to the work 'help' in the question. It seems to suggest that HC is some sort of devotional aid.
First and foremost, HC constitutes the church, not individual members thereof.
Hi Leo my apologies for a poorly articulated thread title but I wasn't meaning help necessarily as an individual devotional aid but how does it help us (plural) - how does it 'help' build that sense of identity, community and belonging. Totally agree that HC is a corporate act for the body it's not an individual thing per se. But it does have an impact on our own spirituality and our own experience of God and I'm interested in that too.
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Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
Posts: 438 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2013
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I don't have a problem with help. God is very kind and does help us, and Communion is one of those ways.
I love what Brenda said.
This is what I see.
Communion is where God meets us in a concrete, touchable, testable way. (Baptism would be the other, for now.) For those of us who are very oriented to touch, communion is a godsend--it is the one time a week when I can actually touch, taste, hold the God who loves me and saved me, Jesus Christ who suffered, died, and rose for me 2000 years ago. I have his promise on it: "THIS is my body... this is my blood." And so in a way I don't understand, the Lord himself is meeting me in a special way in that bread and wine. (And I had to be absent this week! ![[Frown]](frown.gif) )
Communion forces me into humility. I have no clue how "take, eat, this is my body, this is my blood" can possibly be true. But I have his promise on the subject. So it forces the intellectual, over-busy rational part of me to be quiet for a few minutes and just let God give to me, like a child. Which is peaceful, actually--to put down the burdens of always analyzing, figuring out what's happening now and what's happening next, etc. I'm not in control of what happens at the Lord's altar, he is, and for a moment my world is turned right side up.
And the fact that he chose ordinary bread and wine to attach this promise to means that I don't have to worry about committing mental idolatry (it doesn't LOOK very much like Christ!) or start thinking I made it all up in my head (who would make up something so bizarre?). It's an escape from the mental merry-go-round into reality. Not my own constructed reality, but God's reality, and that is freedom.
It is love. Jesus is giving himself in the most intimate way to the people who come to him. His own self, his own body and blood, through the ordinary act of eating and drinking. And that body and blood go on to become the foundation of my own body and blood in the way that all food does, through the ordinary processes of digestion, incorporation, etc. So I now have even a physical link to God, not simply a mental or possibly imaginary one. And if he cares this much about my physical body, then I have comfort to hang on to when I'm sick, going into surgery, etc. My whole nature matters to him, not just my "soul."
When I am receiving this gift, I know for a fact (based on his promise) that I am in his very presence--not imagining or making up stuff. And for the last few months I have been meditating on the what-if question, "What if you had five minutes with Christ, what would you say to him or ask him?" Well, in a sense I do. (not that I don't have real access to him all the time as a Christian believer all week long, but communion makes it more concrete to me.) And it gives me the chance to say or ask those things--or just to listen--and that every week.
It is also the only place and time in my life where for a brief moment I am among the church as she ought to be and as she will be in eternity. All of us are up there, kneeling or standing, on walkers, whatever. African immigrants, young children, old ladies, the poor, the schizophrenic, the "beautiful people," the fat and middle aged, the Asian university students, the PhD and the homeless guy kneeling side by side. We are the body of Christ receiving the body of Christ. And we cannot be divided, we must accept one another in love, because at this table there can be no grudges or hatred or prejudice, we have to drop all that. And that carries over into the time after we walk back down the aisles into our everyday lives. There is more and increasing concern between people who ordinarily would never come into contact with each other. But we are one in Christ at the communion rail and increasingly after we come back down from it. Slowly, with many setbacks, but step by step.
And of course there is the well-known gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation--"this is my blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins." I need that. And I have that gift confirmed to me in communion.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
All the sacraments are touted as similar windows into God. Most of them (baptism, marriage, ordination, last rites) are a one-shot deal. You're not going to get ordained more than once, and most of us won't ever. Communion is the only one that is open to all members, more or less continuously.
The only other analogous human act that comes to mind is sex. And we are clearly not one of those religions that does orgies.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
The final rites are clearly something that you only get once in life anyway!
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
We don't do 'last rights' any more.
Speak for yourself! My parish priest often administers the Last Rites to those close to death. The prayers used are different from those used at the anointing of the sick
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
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Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
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Posted
Thanks Lamb Chopped - really appreciated (as usual) your very full answer. I too like the aspect of taking part - it's something very physical that we do, that unites us as the body of Christ and that means something personal as once again, afresh, we receive forgiveness.
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Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
The final rites are clearly something that you only get once in life anyway!
Not necessarily. Remember them being said over my grandmother while the family stood around her hospital bedside.
The next morning, when the chaplain came round, he found her sat up and moaning about the quality of the scrambled eggs!
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
Anointing the sick can happen more than once, but the general guideline is for it to be done only once per illness. It's not for a weekly "healing service".
Last rites usually include anointing, the viaticum, and prayers for the dying. It's certainly possible for people to pull out of that state, but I've never administered them except when someone was really at the point of death.
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
For this little black duck communion helps in the way dancing with my beloved helps. Physiologically it may get a few juices running, or I may be past that, but it reconnects me with my Significant Other.
In the case of Communion it means momentarily I reconnect with the Creator of all, including the whole history of creation and redemption.
Which is reasonably significant.
Dancing with my beloved of course may have more carnal outcomes. According to Coelho, though, they only last eleven minutes.
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
Anointing the sick can happen more than once, but the general guideline is for it to be done only once per illness. It's not for a weekly "healing service".
Last rites usually include anointing, the viaticum, and prayers for the dying. It's certainly possible for people to pull out of that state, but I've never administered them except when someone was really at the point of death.
We probably [hosting momentarily] need to avoid the tangent, but [/crassly and hypocritically ending momentary hosting ] I once administered the last rites to someone when I was called in, only to discover that the coma into which she had lapsed was insulin related, and she recovered at least as fast as Sipech's Grandmother ... ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
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shameless self promotion - because I think it's worth it
and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Communion is the only one that is open to all members, more or less continuously.
In the Orthodox Church, confession-and-absolution is a sacrament also, and clearly not a one-shot deal.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
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Posted
Thanks for replies so far - anymore thoughts on communion specifically?
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Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
Posts: 438 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2013
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I don't mind the "help" idea in the thread's title.
I was recently pointed toward an article about Israeli women who found comfort in psalms as bombs fell and began to consider that I was finding comfort with the ritual and familiarity of the liturgy, and didn't need any reality outside of that: whether it exists as we imagine, i.e. Zappa's dancing, Brenda's ineffable end-run around the head, Lamb Chopped's erudite discussion. It's just something that makes me feel a wee bit better. That's how it helps.
Some of the discussion above makes me think perhaps I might be considered heretical with agreeing with the title. Is it worse that the woman who touched Jesus' garment hem? There's no live Jesus to have a conversation with, but I don't really experience a miracle either. So tit for tat.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
I think in communion I receive Christ - which isn't to say that I can't receive Christ outside having communion, but it is not the norm God intended me to live.
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
In catholic liturgy there are two rites that have been considered "Last Rites." The one is the anointing of the sick. This can be done more than once for a person. A number of years ago I was in ICU with a very bad case of pneumonia. I had the anointing done to me. That was eight years ago and I am still very much alive. If I ever get to the point where I want to be anointed again, I know I can request it.
But there is also the commendation of the dying which is a one time event as a person is dying the priest (or other officiant) will say these very last words:
Go in peace. May God the Father who created you; may God the Son who redeemed and saved you by his blood; may God the Holy Spirit who sanctified you in the water of Baptism receive you into the company of saints and angels to live in the light of his glory forever more.
This is usually followed by the Aaronic Benediction.
I have had to say the last rite--the commendation of the dying--a few times. I hope I hear these last words when it is my time.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Josiah Crawley
Apprentice
# 18481
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Posted
Hi
If a person is near death then anointing must have special meaning and care so I'm easy with the term last rites.
I think Communion is bigger than me receiving. There is a site I cam across for women who are sharing their views on Communion it makes interesting reading, not saying I agree but it made me think about how communion helps. This site.
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Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Josiah Crawley:
Hi
If a person is near death then anointing must have special meaning and care so I'm easy with the term last rites.
I think Communion is bigger than me receiving. There is a site I cam across for women who are sharing their views on Communion it makes interesting reading, not saying I agree but it made me think about how communion helps. This site.
Thanks Josiah - appreciate the link. Welcome aboard!
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Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
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