To One Entering the Church Who Longs to Receive Communion
Dear Heart,
Where I’ve been headed in my comments recently has been an effort to get “underneath” what is going on at a Catholic Eucharistic Liturgy…
This is the pattern the Risen Christ is up to as I see it:
The Divine pours itself out in creation through the Word in the power of the Spirit…
Then there is the self-emptying of the Word in the Incarnation, taking on human DNA in the womb of Mary…
Next the Incarnate Word pours himself out in the passion as he takes on all our abuse…
Finally he gives himself in his risen life to be our food in the Eucharist…
All this means only one thing: he wants to involve us in all the above.
The Eucharist is the opposite of ordinary food. Our food becomes us when we eat. Not so with the Eucharist. Here we become what we eat. We become “Christed.”
So…Dear Heart, you may want to reconsider all this before you join this community and begin to receive communion with all the Catholic folks…
Receiving communion means:
I accept my baptism which identifies me with you in your dying and rising…
I identify with you in your totality: yourself and your body, these people around me at this Eucharist, and around the world, including the pope, the bishops, and all kinds of Catholics and other folks with whom you are united in ways I don’t understand…
I want to be part of your family, for better or worse, because I can’t have you without them…and when I receive you I gradually become what I eat…you.
This is what Catholics are doing when we celebrate Eucharist…so I
urge you ponder this…I don’t want you to be faking it…to be receiving but meaning something else. If this is where Jesus is leading you…you need to decide if this is where you want to go – if this is what you want to say…This why receiving the Eucharist “makes” you Catholic in the deepest sense of the term.
Carla Mae Streeter, OP
Aquinas Institute of Theology
23 South Spring Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63108-3323
streeter@slu.edu
phone: 314-256-8882
fax: 314-256-8888