On the Eucharist During This Time of Pandemic

I invite you, under the conditions of quarantine, to think on these things. I certainly am  thinking on them myself. They are offered especially for Anglicans, Episcopalians in  particular, Episcopal clergy, and leaders of a church that has been  thirsty for the "innovative" of late, and are therefore ready to leap into all manner of  peculiar practices to get the Eucharistic elements to people, especially eager to do so  as COVID-19 puts a hold on gathering together in shared space.

 

1. I am a great proponent of the Eucharistic recovery of the 20th century liturgical  movement. No one is more supportive of the Eucharistic center of the Lord's Day than I  am. No one. My own spirituality, Incarnational to the core, is eucharistically centered. I  lean to the Catholic end of "Catholic and Reformed." That said... the Anglican  commitment to Christ's presence to us in Word and Sacrament is worth pondering in  this moment. The Eucharist is Word and Sacrament. Let me say that again. The  Eucharist is Word and Sacrament. WORD. And Sacrament. Beware the fetishization of  the Sacrament. Must we suddenly violate all principles of sacramental theology or  canonical and rubrical order to make the Sacrament available to everyone in peculiar  ways under quarantine? Are we wholly deprived because the Word alone is available to  us for a time? I think you know the answer. (For those of you who are really liturgical  nerds, imagine applying the doctrine of concomitance, in which we affirm the full  presence of Christ in either bread or wine, to the Eucharist itself, in which the full  presence of Christ is available in both Word and Sacrament....)

 

2. The sacrament is crucially a gathering of the social assembly, bodily, around material  things. We priests do not consecrate the Eucharist alone. Nor is Eucharist consecrated  or received virtually. The loss of the Eucharistic assembly for a time is a real loss to all  of us. Imagine the celebration when we can gather again! But... do we serve the  sacrament by gathering two or three people to fulfill the letter of the law as others watch  online? (Yes, "where two or three are gathered" but that's not the point here.) Or by  distributing that consecrated bread and wine to be consumed privately by an individual  or a family unit? (Remembering that the family constituted by the celebration of the  sacrament is not the biological family....) Might the Offices, not to mention many other devotional and meditative practices, suffice for a time? Are we suddenly not ourselves,  the Body of Christ, because we cannot receive the Body of Christ in the sacrament? (I  do believe we are still baptized, still the Body of Christ....)

 

3. Related to the foregoing. God's converting work in us, as Augustine and Gregory  Nyssen and many others knew, is the conversion and reorientation of our desires. Might  we embrace our Eucharistic desire, during this period under quarantine when we cannot  gather, as a motivation for our prayer, an incitement of our longing for God? Might this  opportunity to cultivate our longing for God be a gain that emerges from the loss of the  Sacrament for a time? Might we sit with that longing, meet God in that longing? (In the  ancient wisdom: that which we are seeking is causing us to seek...) Sounds  suspiciously like the work of a God who's always in the business of bringing resurrection  out of death.... But maybe I'm wrong.

4. The eminent Robert Taft, S.J., Byzantine Rite Roman Catholic Archimandrite, of  blessed memory, one of my mentors, I paraphrase as follows. Because I am on an  airplane and don't have the book in front of me. (All is not lost: I have a delicious  beverage - speculate as you will - and a bottle of hand sanitizer.) Taft: The point of the  Eucharist is not the changing of bread and wine but the changing of you and me. Is God  unable to change us WITHOUT the bread and wine? Might God be able to work in us  through a period of sacramental deprivation? Even through it? (See #3.)

 

5. For years I have tried to teach students that you do not understand the sacraments if  you cannot think BOTH/AND. The Eucharistic table is a table like no other table. AND  the Eucharistic table is like every other table. The Eucharistic elements are special and  singular in that there above all other places and times, we see what God is doing in ALL  places and times. Here's the question, then: do you think if we do not gather at the  Eucharistic table like no other table that God is no longer at present at all other tables,  i.e., at all other places and times? Is it not the case that God's presence to all places  and times is the non-binary anchor of this non-binary relationship between the  Eucharistic table and every other table, actual and metaphorical?  (Hint. Revelation 21:21-23 [ 21 And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates  is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass. 22 I saw no  temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23  And the  city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its  lamp is the Lamb.] . Another hint: Meister Eckhart's prayer, "Oh God, deliver me from  God....")

 

Think on these things. May we gather again around the Holy Table very soon. In the  meantime, look for the Tables around you and among you. God is still at the Table that  is spread among us in our hearts, in our prayers, in our service. Welcome to the Feast  that does not end, the love of God from which and from whom we are never separated,  even without the Sacrament.

Since 2012, the Reverend James W. Farwell, Ph.D. is Professor of Theology and Liturgy at Virginia Theological Seminary.