Love (III)
by George Herbert
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert was born in 1593 and died in 1633. He was a Welsh poet, an orator, and a priest. This beautiful poem about the Eucharist forms part of a larger work, entitled The Temple, written in the year he died.
I read you this poem because last Thursday was the Feast of Corpus Christi, otherwise known as Thanksgiving for Holy Communion. This feast always falls on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, two months after Maundy Thursday when we celebrate Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. In the contemporary church, the feast is celebrated in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Western Orthodox traditions, although most protestant traditions do not recognise it. In celebrating God’s gift to us of Holy Communion, we give thanks for the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist.
It has been over a year now since we have been able to share the cup and there is no sign that that important symbol of unity is likely to be allowed any time soon. And it is a great sadness that today we are not able to share the Eucharist together at all. However, as we miss what we cannot have, it is a good opportunity to consider why the Feast of Corpus Christi matters and to give thanks for this precious gift.
The eucharist is essentially the sacrament of the gift which God makes to us in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Every Christian receives this gift of salvation through communion in the body and blood of Christ. In the eucharistic meal, in the eating and drinking of the bread and wine, Christ grants communion with himself. God himself acts, giving life to the body of Christ and renewing each member. In accordance with Christ’s promise, each baptized member of the body of Christ receives in the eucharist the assurance of the forgiveness of sins (Matt. 26:28) and the pledge of eternal life (John 6:51- 58).1
The word, Eucharist, means thanksgiving. In the Eucharist we pray through the memory of the story of God’s extraordinary freedom and generosity that we know through the life of Jesus the Christ, and we give thanks for the gift of the One who, has died, is risen and will come again.
In the Bible, to remember is not just to think about something that happened in the past. It is to live it into reality in the here and now, bringing the past into the present so that through those who remember, it becomes real in that moment. Re-membering is literally bringing together the parts, to re-create a whole and living story. This is the kind of memory that is at work in the Eucharist. We do not simply think about Jesus, through the prayer and the action of God’s Holy Spirit, the presence of Jesus is made real to us.
The Great Thanksgiving prayer is profoundly hopeful. In a world of climate change, global pandemic, violence, corruption and fear we affirm that heaven and earth are full of God’s glory. Hosanna in the highest!
We find hope in these prayers and in the sacrament of the Eucharist; hope for now, in the midst of brokenness, and hope for the future fulfilment of God’s realm. We experience both these hopes through the transformation, in this moment, of the ordinary and the everyday into the sacred and the eternal. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God is really present among us, transforming the bread and the wine, our lives and our communities.
The belief in the transformation that God brings about is the source of our hope and peace. So, our Eucharistic celebration is of great importance for the way we live. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. As we pray, so we believe and so we live.
In the sacrament of the Eucharist, we discover God with us here and now in the ordinary stuff of life; bread and wine, human beings. The principle of sacramentality means that things matter, and that matter is not just a thing.2
And so, we present to God everyday ordinary gifts of matter, remembering that they come from God and that, through God’s grace, they are gifts that sustain our life now, gifts that are transformed to sustain us in eternal life, and gifts that teach us to yearn for the heavenly banquet of which this sacrament is a tiny foretaste.
People often speak of the importance to them of making their communion. Receiving this sacrament is an important way in which we nurture our individual spiritual lives. However, this is not all that is happening. Through the Eucharist we enter into God’s presence and experience God’s realm in a partial way, and we are called to take that experience out of the church into the rest of life. In a life that can far too easily be filled with things that are transitory and unimportant, the Eucharist gives us a taste of eternity.
In the wonderful words of St Augustine, we are called to behold what we are, and become what we receive; the Body of Christ. As we take into ourselves the real presence of Christ, we are to become what we eat, the real presence of Christ in the world.
The word, Mass, means sent. The final words we say in each celebration are, go in peace to love and serve the Lord, in the name of Christ. Amen. The Eucharist is profoundly missional. As we pray it, we are transformed, a bit at a time, over and over again, as we invite God to work through the mystery of the sacrament to change the way we live; to transform, not just the ordinary stuff of bread and wine, but the ordinary stuff of us, of our relationships with God, with each other, with God’s world. We are offered holy and broken things to nourish and heal our holy and broken lives and to make us a Eucharistic people.
It is the privilege of the priest to pray the Eucharistic prayer, the Great Thanksgiving. But it is not the prayer of the priest alone. Priests pray with their hands in orans. The hands are held in this way to signify that the priest is praying on behalf of the Church, the Body of Christ. These words should be prayed in the heart of everyone present in preparation for going into the world to pray them with our lives.
Let me finish with the words of Bishop Stephen Bayne, the former Ecumenical Officer for the Anglican Communion.
Eucharistic people take their lives and break them, and give them, in daily fulfilment of what Our Lord did and does. He took his life in his own hands – this is freedom. He broke it – this is obedience. He gave it – this is love. And he still does these simple acts at every altar and in every heart that will have it so; and time and eternity meet.3
The Lord be with you.