Br. Maximillian Esmus, n/OHC
Corpus Christi - June 11, 2020
I remember my mom asking me that. It would be evening, an hour or so after supper, and I would wander into the living room saying “Mom, I’m hungry.”
And she’d say, “Okay, let’s go to the kitchen and find you a snack. What are you hungry for?” We’d open one cupboard, then another, the fridge, then the freezer. “Do you want a banana?” No. “How about some crackers?” No. “A glass of milk?” No.
I’d stand there staring at all this food feeling hungry, but nothing on offer seemed like just the right thing. Finally, Mom would say, “Max, get one of your sisters and go play. You’re not hungry for a snack, you’re just bored.”
I hated when she said that! Because she was always right. I felt something missing, and I always assumed it was food. Actually, I was hungry for entertainment, for companionship, or maybe just for some attention from my mother.
What are you truly hungry for? For what do you thirst?
Corpus Christi [The Body of Christ] is the feast on which we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion, the Eucharist. I find myself in a curious place regarding Eucharist these last few months. After normal life shut down due to the pandemic, people of faith suffered the sudden loss of Sunday communion. While experiments and debates have gone on around practices such as virtual communion and drive-through communion, communion in its ordinary corporate form has ceased for the vast majority of Christians since mid-March.
We monks have an immeasurable gift in the fact that our corporate daily worship goes on basically intact, though we miss our guests terribly. I confess that I am at serious risk of taking it for granted day by day, and receiving it casually, absent-mindedly, even reluctantly. I sometimes feel ashamed of my boredom and resistance to daily communion, knowing that so much of the Church aches to receive once again the Bread of Life in its sacramental form.
This has led to me to ask myself, what do I come to this Table for? What am I really hungry for? What do we seek, as a community, in receiving Christ’s self in the sacrament? And what do our fellow members of Christ’s Body seek as they look forward once again to sharing Eucharist in their own communities?
I think this time of disruption and change offers an opportunity to reconnect with the core of what we desire at this Table, and to discover new, deeper desires by which God draws us to himself. The sacrament is wonderfully multi-faceted, yet we seem prone to focus too much on one aspect or another and distort the mystery. We get comfortable experiencing it on a particular level and fail to notice what lies deeper.
Br. Randy said a couple of years ago on this feast, “The nourishment of God brings peace and a restless longing for more.” Jesus comes to abide in us and satisfies our longing, “only to send us at the same moment onward to new searching and hollows our spiritual bellies to create anew the very appetite he himself feeds.” (Randy Greve, Sermon May 31, 2018)
What is our appetite today? Do we hunger for forgiveness and remission of sin? That is available at this Table. But we should be careful to recognize that, while reconciliation is effected here as a prerequisite for the consummation of the feast, it is not the ultimate goal of the Eucharist. Bonnell Spencer, OHC, the great liturgical scholar of our community, lamented the almost singular focus upon redemption from sin that had come to distort the Church’s understanding of the Eucharist prior to the renewals of the 20th century. That distortion still influences us today. Fr. Spencer describes a Christian fellowship that remains stuck on sin, unconvinced of its worthiness to stand before God. He writes that for many, church had become merely “a group of seekers after God who gather to give each other encouragement and advice. God was remote…” He goes on: “As long as the members expect no more than that, the group cannot manifest the power of the risen Christ.” (Bonnell Spencer, OHC, The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving, p.67) Beneath our hunger to be forgiven and reconciled to God, we may find a deeper hunger for that abundant, Risen life.
Do we long to worship and adore Christ? He makes himself available to be adored here in a beautifully concrete way. But true adoration will make us open to his active and inspiring life. Fr. Spencer goes on to lament the common perception at our altars of a Real, but basically inert Presence: “Christ’s presence was asserted, but it was a static presence. [Christ] did not do anything in the Eucharist; he was simply there, to be offered, adored, and received.” Fr. Spencer urges us instead to embrace a doctrine of the Real Presence “which [knows] nothing of a passive Christ…he [is] fully active through his body the Church, with all its members sharing in his activity.” (Bonnell Spencer, OHC, The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving, p. 105) This sacrament may inspire a deeper hunger in us which welcomes that overflowing activity.
Do we hunger for intimacy with Christ, for the comfort of his presence? The presence Jesus offers us is personal and deeply intimate, but it is not private. The life in you that is being fed at Eucharist is not your own, for your own private enjoyment. It is the life of the whole Body of which you and I are members. Do we hunger for an awareness of our oneness in that Body? We will feel it around this altar. But the moment passes, and the feelings fade. God gives us that experience not for our enjoyment of a spiritual high, but because God needs us to know, in the core of our being, that we truly belong to each other, so that we will have the strength and courage to do the work he has given us to do, manifesting the Reign of God in the world. We may find deeper appetites. Do you hunger for God’s Reign of perfect justice and perfect mercy?
Christ is here to satisfy all these hungers and more! And for that, brothers and sisters, it is indeed right, and good, and a joyful thing, always and everywhere, to give thanks to almighty God. We give thanks in this sacrifice of praise because we are alive; or rather, Christ is alive in us. God created the universe and calls it very good, and the Word, through whom all things were made, lives a Risen and abundant life in you and me!
It is a joyful thing to give thanks always and everywhere. Even now! I find this difficult. How are we to give thanks, when we are still so hungry? When our fellow members of Christ’s body are starving for this Sacrament of Unity and the consolation of corporate worship? When people around the world suffering Covid-19 are starving for breath? How are we to give thanks, when people of color are starving for justice in a society that wants to pretend that racism and white privilege is a thing of the past?
Let us give thanks because in this great mystery we are nourished and confirmed in Christ’s life. And through our surrender to that life in us, Christ will bring together his scattered flock, Christ will heal and comfort his sick ones, and Christ will proclaim justice to the oppressed.
St. Augustine said about the Eucharist: “If you, therefore, are Christ's body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord's table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying "Amen" to what you are. …When you hear "The body of Christ", you reply "Amen." Be a member of Christ's body, then, so that your "Amen" may ring true!” (Augustine, Sermon 272, trans. NPNF Series)
Almighty God, deliver us from the presumption of coming to your Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name. (BCP, p.372)
Amen.
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