Why Take Communion?

Tomorrow is World Communion Sunday, and Christians from across the globe will be coming to the table in celebration.    In response to this day of observance, the Patheos Website has asked a number of its contributors to share why they take communion.  One of the contributors is Bruce Epperly, who is a regular contributor to this blog as well as to Patheos.  I thought I'd include his response and then offer some comments of my own.

Communion is about connection and embodiment. I take communion to join with my brothers and sisters in Christ across the globe, and then to embrace strangers and persons of other faiths. Communion reminds me that God is present in the ordinary media of bread and wine, but communion also inspires me to experience God in sharing meals with friends and family. Communion is, as the Celts say, a "thin place," which helps us discover what is: God's everlasting life in our ever-changing world. So, when I share communion, I affirm "the bread of life" and "the cup of healing."

Like me, Bruce is Disciple, but he and his pastor-spouse Kate, are also UCC, and they pastor a joint UCC-Disciples congregation, so I don't know what their pattern is. 

For me, and most Disciples, the Lord's Supper is a weekly observance (at the very minimum).  It defines who were are as a community of faith.  Our denominational symbol, after all, is a chalice.  And we come to the table because Jesus called us to remember him at the table -- As Paul puts it in recounting the Last Supper: 

"For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor. 11:26). 

We come to the Lord's Table because that's what the early Christians did:

"They devoted themselves to the apostle's teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:42)

So, there is a sense here that I take communion because it is a central, even essential practice of my tradition.  But, I also come to the table because it is, as Bruce puts it, a "thin place," a place to encounter the living Christ.  It's a place to remember that God has come into our midst and revealed God's self to humanity, and in doing so has participated in human life experience, even experiencing rejection leading to death.  It is a place to remember that Jesus sat with people at table, and in doing so offered a welcome presence.  It is a place to remember that however we define the future, there is a table waiting for us, where we will sit down as children of God to share in the messianic banquet.  And yes, it is a place to come and be fed with the living bread of God.   And yes, I come because by participating in the meal, I become part of the greater community that makes up the body of Christ -- for as Paul writes:  "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17).   

If I may be so bold, let me ask:  why do you take communion?

The Lord’s Table: A Place of Community

On Saturday our Elders will gather for a retreat and I'll be leading a conversation about the Eucharist or Lord's Table -- as a Christian communion, the Disciples are fairly unique in that lay elders offer the prayer(s) of consecration for the Supper. As I'm preparing for this, I'm putting together a few pieces or reflections.  Since the Table can easily become a very "private" affair between me and Jesus, it's important to remember the communal context.

There is, of course, a place for meditation and reflection at the Table, but the Table was instituted in a communal setting. Until the middle ages, when Transubstantiation fully took hold in the Western Church, the Lord’s Supper was always taken in the context of a community. If we are to truly understand the meaning and value of the Supper, we must remember this context.

Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall provides good insight into this communal element:

The community enacts its unity with its head its members with one another. Partaking of the one cup and the one loaf, the members, “though man,” as Paul says, affirm and are confirmed in their oneness.”

This interpretation of the Eucharist calls in question all privatistic practices of the sacrament. The communion is a corporate act, and even when it must be administered apart from the worshiping community, the latter as in the case of baptism, ought certainly to be represented. This corporateness seems to me more important than whether one regards th Eucharist from the vantage point o of the tradition of transubstantiation, the mediating position of consubstantiation, or the Zwinglian symbolic or memorial conception. The critical question is not the substantialistic one (whether the bread becomes body, where the wine becomes blood); it is, rather, the relational question: How does the Sacramental function sustain the community? (Douglas John Hall, Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context, Fortress Press, 1996, pp. 114-115).

Thus, the point of the Eucharist isn’t creating pieces of Jesus in the form of bread (forgive the crudity of my statement), but creating community, which reflects and embodies the person of Jesus in the world.

If the Table is a communal act, it requires the presence of community. Even when we take the Supper to the shut-in, we do so understanding that in taking the bread and cup in the home or the hospital, we gather as an extension of the larger body.

This concern for the community is reflected in Paul’s discussion of the celebration of the Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. It is in this chapter that Paul lays out the words of institution – for the first time.  Paul writes:

This is why those who eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord inappropriately will be guilty of the Lord’s body and blood. Each individual should test himself or herself, and eat from the bread and drink from the cup in that way. Those who eat and drink without correctly understanding the body are eating and drinking their own judgment. Because of this, many of you are weak and sick, and quite a few have died. . . . If some of you are hungry, they should eat at home so that getting together doesn’t lead to judgment. (1 Corinthians 11:27-34a Common English Bible).

Paul has been, traditionally, interpreted here as referring to the mystical body of Christ in the elements – thus giving rise to the doctrine of real presence and then transubstantiation. But, I think that the Common English Bible makes it as clear as possible, that the point is understanding the body of Christ as the congregation. By acting in a way that dishonors the community, leading to drunkenness and hunger, the community had dishonored the one who called them to the table. There is little of the mystical here, but much that is concerned about the behavior of those who gather at the table.

Progressive Christian Worship -- The Starting Point

Keith Watkins is in the midst of an ongoing discussion of what an alternative worship for progressive churches might look like.  Keith is a theologically liberal/progressive Disciple with strong commitments to the historic liturgical tradition.  In setting out a starting point for our discussion, he asks whether we will start with a "music/message" position, which has been common among Protestants since the Reformation -- that is, we sing and then we finish with a sermon -- or will we choose the "Word/Table" position that has ancient roots.  Being that he is Disciple, a tradition that places great emphasis on weekly communion, it's not surprising (at least to me), that Keith chooses the Word/Table position.

In this week's post he suggests three bases for this choice.

• He notes the early Christian dependence on both the synagogue  worship practices using Torah and Prayers, which were then combined with Jesus' Table fellowship practices.
• Noting dependence on Margaret Mead, he points out that bathing and eating are basic to human life, and can become important bearers of meanings that are distinct from the actual functions of these acts.  He writes:    

It is easy to understand why the ritual bath of regeneration (baptism) and the “bread of heaven” (eucharist) are the basic sacramental forms of the church’s life. Meal ceremonies generate are used to remember the past (anniversaries and birthdays), anticipate the future (weddings), celebrate important events, delimit and manifest family and associational connections. It is no surprise that some of the most complex theological and sociological discussions in the Pauline epistles are stimulated by meal imagery in 1 Corinthians (especially chapter 11). Similar challenges face progressive Christians today.

• Finally, intertwined with this pattern of Word and Table one can find the basic theological affirmations of the Christian faith -- the nature of God, the person of Christ, sin, salvation, atonement.

Keith goes on to say:

What these three points imply is that developing an alternative way of worship for progressive churches is a specific form of the task that faces every generation, which is to inculturate Christian worship. The work has to progress at several levels: theological (how we define and explain our faith), artistic (how we embody faith and theology in rites, ceremonies, song, dance, and drama), practical (how we form and maintain communities) and missiological (how we live our faith in the world “groaning in travail waiting for its redemption).

As I read this, Keith is saying that there has been a historic pattern that provides us with the key elements by which worship can be formed, but these patterns must be re-inculturated in each new day.  Starting with this perspective one can look at what is happening today.  Much "contemporary worship" is of the music/message variety, while many mainline churches have the Word/Table pattern but remain stuck in the 1950s as far as the culture part of the equation.  By placing the focus on Word/Table, however, the emphasis is not placed on music, which is not to say that music isn't important.  I believe that music is critical to vital worship, but music supports the pattern, while not forming the pattern itself. 

You can read the entire piece at Keith's blog by clicking here.  While there you will find a link to a lengthy paper dealing with the question of inculturation that Keith wrote several years ago.  As you read this post I invite you to engage in conversation at Keith's blog and here as well. 

 

Elders and the Table -- the uniqueness of Disciple experience

I asked the question -- who may preside at the Table --and noted the Disciple experience.  Unlike most other traditions, the Disciples have been known for having lay elders pray at the table and that these prayers are normally of their own composition.  Disciples have worship aids, but no official book of worship.  Due to a shortage of clergy in other traditions, questions are being asked there about how to provide the Eucharist in congregations without regular clergy -- and some of them are trying things that look a lot like what Disciples are doing.   So who are these Elders that share leadership a the Table?  They are not, as in the Presbyterian Church, a board of oversight with no place at the table nor are they clergy like the Methodists.  No they are quite different. 

As a way of helping us understand this situation I'm offering a quotation from Keith Watkins' book Celebrate with Thanksgiving (Chalice Press, 1991).

The typical patter of leadership in Disciples congregations today resembles this ancient system.   Ordinarily congregations are led by one or more ministers, who are theologically educated. occupationally full-time and salaried by the church.  Serving with the minister or ministers are the elders of the congregation, who are men and women from the congregation.  The elders serve on a volunteer basis, giving limited amounts of time, and ordinarily do not have special theological training for their work.  Disciples came to this pattern in three stages.  The early ecclesiology of Alexander Campbell called for the election of ministers from the membership of the congregation.  He used biblical terms -- elder or bishop.  One of these persons would be elected president of the eldership on the basis of superior gifts for the work.  This person would serve full time and be compensated while the other elders would serve part-time without compensation.  (p. 45).

In the next generation, congregations began to call upon young college graduates, presumably from outside the church, to serve with these congregational elders, and in the midst of this questions began to arise about the nature of this ministry -- was "he" an elder or an employee of the church under the supervision of the elders.  Over time, it became established that congregations would be served by pastors who were employed by the church and a board of elders.  The role of these elders was generally limited to praying at the table and gathering to discuss the congregation's spiritual well being.  Early on elders were ordained, for they were considered the ministers of the church, but by the mid-20th century the practice had generally disappeared.  Keith writes:  "Since elders were no longer regarded as ministers, there seemed to be little reason for them to be ordained" (p. 46).

Keith offers an alternative understanding, one that reaches back to the early days of the Disciples movement, but with revisions, that may make better sense as elders take their place at the table.  He writes:

Pastors and elders together are them ministry of the congregation.  The pastor and assistant pastors work to see that the gospel is proclaimed and the people equipped to do the work of Jesus Christ.  The justification for a praying eldership is that these men and women are united with the pastors to be the corporate spiritual leadership of the congregation.  A well-ordered congregation has one ministry -- elders and pastors acting as one body with varied responsibilities assigned to the several members.  (p. 46).

We need to break this down more, but such an understanding makes sense ecumenically, but it would assume that elders ought to be ordained and that they take very seriously their calling. 

The Lord's Table -- Who Shall Preside?

By far, most Christian traditions assume that the Lord's Supper/Eucharist/Holy Communion will be celebrated by ordained clergy.  The Disciples of Christ stand apart from this tradition, for historically it has been Elders who have served at the table.  Now this tradition dates from a period in which Disciples anti-clericalism sought to separate out the table from the preaching.  Additionally there was the matter of the scarcity of preachers.  Since every congregation had elders, at the very least they could come to the Table.  Thus, the tradition of elders presiding at the table began.  More recently -- in the last 40 years as the Disciples became more involved both in the ecumenical movement and in liturgical renewal, ordained clergy began to move to the table.  The normal pattern today is for the ordained minister to offer the Words of Institution while the Elder(s) offers a prayer or prayers for the elements.  However, most Disciple churches have no qualms about having an Elder offer the Words of Institution.  It is argued that this represents our belief in the priesthood of all believers.

By and large I affirm this principle, but I wonder if we've thought this out very well.  If all of our ecumenical partners have ordained clergy celebrating the Eucharist, why are we so different?  What is the theological rationale for this?  Rather than offer an answer to the question, I'll raise it for discussion.

Eucharistic Hospitality -- Oneness at an Open Table

In light of the conversation that is beginning to emerge here about worship, liturgy, and sacraments, I'm going to put up a series of posts that hopefully will continue the conversation.  As you consider these posts, I'd like to remind you to keep in mind the series of essays that Keith Watkins is beginning to post on worship for progressive churches.

I have already offered posts on "liturgical order and the nature of the church" and "becoming Christ's Body at the Table," both of which make use of material from Keith Watkins' Celebrate with Thanksgiving.   Now I'd like to take the discussion in a bit different direction and take a look at the idea of open table fellowship.  Many traditions hold that the eucharist is a sacred meal reserved for members, those who are baptized, or those who share their theology.  I do believe that the eucharistic meal is sacred and I do believe that we encounter the living Christ in the context of the meal, but I also believe that we should follow Jesus' precedent, and not close off our dining partners.  Jesus was known for eating with "sinners and tax collectors."  So, while the call for an open table is at odds with a lot of historical precedent, I believe that it is in line with the biblical testimony, especially with Jesus' own experience at the table.

Bonnie Thurston who is both a biblical scholar and a Disciple writes that "Jesus' willingness to share table fellowship with a variety of people was a way of demonstrating his love." Such actions had much more symbolic value and meaning than today, but I think it still has importance.

She writes further:

The table fellowship of the Lord's Supper was a visible manifestation of what the church, as preface to the kingdom, was to be. Here was enacted the original intention of the covenant as spelled out by the Torah, that Israel would be a community of equals under God. In the early church's thinking, the conventional barriers between people had been broken down by Jesus. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). To sit down together at their Lord's Table was to live out that fellowship, to express koinonia in spite of economic, social, and cultural differences. To partake in the Lord's Supper was to be at one with Christ in his sacrifice and to share by anticipation the fruits of his passion in the messianic meal in the kingdom. But it was also to be brought into wholeness with those who would come to share that final, eschatological banquet. At his table, the Lord's people were "remembered," brought together in a visible symbol of equality and oneness. [Bonnie Thurston, Spiritual Life in the Early Church, Fortress Press, 1993, pp. 49-50]

If there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but we are all one in Christ, then surely we can say the same today -- so that when we come to the table there is no longer Disciple or Catholic, Presbyterian or Baptist, Methodist or Episcopalian, Pentecostal or Lutheran.  Surely the table of Jesus can and should be a table of unity, a table where hospitality is shown to all. 

Liturgical Order and the nature of the church

I posted a rather long piece the other day from Keith Watkins' book Celebrate with Thanksgiving (Chalice, 1991) on becoming the body of Christ in the eucharist.  Continuing that discussion, I'd like to raise the question of whether the way we order worship, especially in regards to where we place the Word and the Table, says something about how we view the nature of the church.  In essence Keith asks fellow Disciples whether they are a "bible-centered church, colored by eucharistic piety?" or are we a "sacramental church, braced by the Word of God?"  How we structure worship speaks to which of these two options we have chosen.

He notes that two patterns have emerged among Disciples congregations, with each implying a "distinct understanding of worship and doctrine of the church."  Beginning with those congregations that place the communion early, prior to the reading of the Scriptures and the preaching of the sermon, with what he refers to as an "intensified communion interlude," Disciples churches expressed a view of worship that is "consistent with non-sacramental Protestantism,"  where the church is seen primarily as a "community shaped by revelation in the form of doctrine and ethics."

This word-centered revelation presents the gospel of salvation through Christ, and it leads to the transformation of life.  Nevertheless, the main focus is what Christians are to believe and what they are to do about that belief.  (p. 20).

This version of worship, is often rooted in revivalism -- we gather at the Table, because that's what Disciples do, but the most important thing is making the pitch so that people can get saved.  It is a popular style of worship among congregations heavily influenced by church growth teachings.

On the other hand there is the version that places the communion at the end of the service.  In this view, "worship is understood as the Lord's Supper interpreted by the Word of God" (p. 20).  Keith goes on to write:

This idea is consistent with the sacramental approach to worship that marks the catholic impulse in Christianity.  It emphasizes God's self-disclosure in nature and history, asserting that salvation comes from participation in a community that embodies the divine Spirit.  This participation is by means of sacramental eating and drinking with God.  (pp. 20-21). 

Perhaps it's a remnant of my Episcopalian background, but I find myself -- as is true for Keith -- on the side of a sacramental understanding of worship.  I believe that Word and Sacrament belong together.  Although you don't need a sermon, necessarily, you do need the Word, even if it is the text of Scripture read, to give substance to what happens at the Table.  Although Disciples aren't a creedal people and thus there is room for differing views of what happens at the Table and who Jesus is for us, the Word read and proclaimed provides the starting point for what happens in the encounter that we have with the Living Christ at the Table, an encounter that is embodied in the elements of bread and wine and the gathered community. 

In the churches that I have pastored, we have always placed communion at the end of the service.  Thus, if I must choose, I see us being a sacramental church not a bible church.  The Bible provides the interpretation and the guidance, but we come to church not to encounter the Bible, but to encounter Christ our Lord, who meets us at the Table and then sends forth to minister in the world in which we live.  I simply don't know how this happens if communion comes early on, and then the sermon and invitation. 

Becoming Christ's Body in the Eucharist

There are Christian traditions that believe that when consecrated the elements of bread and wine/juice become the body and blood of Christ.  There are other traditions that believe that the bread and wine are merely memorials of Christ's death and burial.  For those of us who are Disciples of Christ, there is a tendency to take a memorialistic perspective, one that emerged largely in reaction to the more literalist understandings of the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements.

There is another way of looking at the eucharist, one that holds on to the idea of presence without locating that presence in the elements themselves.  The idea here is that the presence of Christ is found in the body -- that is the congregation.  And the congregation isn't simply the institution of the church, but the gathering of the body of Christ around the Table. 

In a book published nearly 20 years ago, Keith Watkins explored in some detail the patterns of prayer at the Table.  He did this so as to challenge Disciples to examine their practice so that the meaning of the meal can be understood and lived out.  Too often our time at the table is sloppy and irreverent, but more importantly our practice often has little theological grounding. 

Among the implications that Keith notes in his connection of the eucharist to the doctrine of the church as body of Christ is that "in the celebration of the eucharist, the congregation becomes what it already is:  Christ's body."

He goes on to define what this means (I'm including a rather extended quotation from Keith's book Celebrate with Thanksgiving):

The way that the Sunday service is structured and the contents of its several parts are the means by which this realization takes place.  Congregants assemble from their separated lives in the world.  The order of worship focuses their attention upon God and upon God's love and justice.  Despite the distractions and sins that have accumulated during the week, worshipers are drawn once again into the orbit of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ.  They listen to readings from scripture that tell the stories of God's work long ago.  They hear a sermon showing how God continues to work in these same ways in life today.  By now, the people have been welded together again into a strong and unified assembly.  They are now ready to bring their life in the world more directly into God's presence.  In the prayers of thanksgiving, confession, and intercession the people remember what has taken place as they have tried to live faithfully through the week.  All is offered God with the entreaty that God's will for creation and all it's creatures will be fulfilled.

The intentions of these prayers are also expressed in the the physical elements that now become the focus of the service.  Offerings of money and the bread and communion-wine for the eucharist are brought to the table.  Together these emblems depict the natural world of "blood, sweat, and tears," and of wheat and grapes, now converted into new forms.  The labors of natural life become the substance of purposeful life in families and communities.  The foods of the earth are converted into bread and wine, manufactured products that increase their nourishing properties and our joy in using them.  All of these meanings are compressed into the procession that brings these elements to their place upon the holy table.

At this point, the congregation and its leaders approach God in prayer.  They tell the story of God's creative and redeeming work, the story that reaches its climax in Jesus' death upon the cross and everlasting life wit God.  They express in words their sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that the entire service seeks to present to God.  They ask that Christ's life in them be renewed and that they be strengthened to be the body of Christ in the world.  They they receive back the bread and communion-wine as sure signs that God has heard their prayer and will answer it.  At this point, the eucharist is complete and the church has once again become what it already is:  the body of Christ.  (Keith Watkins, Celebrate with Thanksgiving, Chalice Press, 1991, pp. 38-39). 

As you can see it's not just the prayers or the elements, but the way that the service itself is formed that helps provide the context for the congregation to become the body of Christ at the table.  As I read this, I realize that our practice at CWCC doesn't mirror everything that is present in Keith's discussion.  We don't have the procession of the elements nor do we have prayers of confession or of the people.  After the sermon I offer a Pastoral Prayer, something that has emerged over time and has largely replaced the other forms of prayer.  We have a prayer at the offering and we have a prayer for the elements.  But the basic order is present, as we move toward a climax at the Table, for it is there that community gathers to receive a sign that Christ is present in their midst.  I'd like to invite a conversation about ways in which we can strengthen our practice at the Table so that we might become more fully the body of Christ on earth.

Eucharistic Presence -- Bringing the Future into the Present

Many Protestants, including my own tradition, tend to understand the Lord's Supper or Eucharist in terms of remembrance.  We take quite literally, Jesus' statement, as Paul recounts it, at the institution of the Lord's supper:  "This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:24).  We treat it as a meal of memorial, with reverence often turning into sober solemnity, as if the one we remember is long dead and buried.  This position emerged in response to overblown doctrines of "real presence" that dominated medieval Catholicism. 

But what if we understood Eucharistic presence differently?  In wrestling with N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, I've made the discovery that Wright is very focused on the resurrection -- and an embodied physical resurrection at that.  Although I wouldn't follow Wright in all of his positions on the resurrection, I do think he's on to something.  And, if he is correct that we should see heaven and earth as overlapping, so that future overlaps with the present, then this might have some implications for how we experience the Lord's Supper/Eucharist.

Wright points out that if we stop with remembrance, simply emulating the gathering of the Disciples as they shared in a last with meal, then we miss out on much of the meaning of the supper.  He writes:

To make any headway in understanding the Eucharist, we must see it as the arrival of God's future in the present, not just the extension of God's past (or of Jesus's past) into our present.  We do not simply remember a long-since dead Jesus; we celebrate the presence of the living Lord.  And he lives, through the resurrection, precisely as the one who has gone on ahead into the new creation, the transformed new world, as the one who is himself its prototype.  The Jesus who gives himself to us as food and drink is himself the beginning of God's new world.  At communion we are like the children of Israel in the the wilderness, tasting fruit plucked from the promised land.  It is the future coming to meet us in the present.  (p. 274).

I find this idea of tasting the future promise in the present intriguing.  As one who embraces the idea of presence at the table, this is quite helpful.  When we gather at the table, sharing in bread and cup, we do so in the hope of the new creation.  The question then is this:  how does this happen in our celebrations.  Can we create the experience, or do we simply allow God to make this presence known to us?  Indeed, how do we know when we have tasted the fruit of the promised land of the new creation?  And finally, what should this lead to in our lives? 

A Good Catholic Boy

During the course of our lives most of us are going to have any number of labels placed upon us by others. Some we will wear with pride: hard worker, strong willed, high energy. Others will cause us to reevaluate ourselves: lacks effort, undisciplined, tardy.

Recently, someone hung on me the moniker of being a "good Catholic boy" based on limited knowledge gathered by my writings and commentary at this blog. I believe that it was meant to be somewhat complimentary, but it also has caused me to evaluate whether or not it is actually true.

The only way to figure out if I am indeed a 'good Catholic boy', in fact if anyone can be described in such a manner, is to determine what exactly that phrase means. To do that, I think we need to break it down, word by word. What does it mean to be good, to be Catholic, to be a boy? And then we need to figure out if, taken together, those words would constitute a compliment. Would they be something of which to be proud?

Let's start off with being 'good', a virtue the meaning of which most of us could probably agree. Webster's primary definition of 'good' states "of a favorable character or tendency", and secondarily as "virtuous, right, commendable". Sounds 'good' to me. But do I personally fit the bill?

Examining the totality of any American citizen's life is going to reveal specific incidents of what most of us would consider 'good' actions and 'bad' actions. It is not only possible, but it happens in fact that people who are good the majority of the time, good in their nature, do sometimes commit bad acts. Conversely, people who many would consider as bad or even 'evil' can sometimes do a good act.

I would like to consider myself as falling into the former category, where I feel that most of us fall. An honest evaluation of the person that I know myself to be inside, and the reactions that people generally have towards me, lead me to believe that I am indeed a generally 'good' person. That I know also for a fact that I have committed some 'bad' actions in my life does not detract from that basic goodness, it simply keeps me striving to improve as a human being.

While being 'good' or 'bad' as a part of your basic character as a person is really not that hard to determine in most instances, even easier to determine is the idea of being a boy. It starts with the premise that you are sexually a male, so that part is easy. The real difficult point is to draw a line between boyhood and becoming a 'man', an adult male.

Putting an exact age on this shift is troublesome. Just because someone reaches the age of 18 for instance, where in America you can do such things as vote, is not enough. Even reaching the age of 21, where again in America you can legally consume alcohol and by which point many people have or are about to graduate from college is not enough.

Moving from 'boy' to 'man' is not about some numerical, chronological age. It is about combining a certain minimum age with reaching a maturity level at which you begin to think outside of yourself on an egotistical level. Some can reach this point at age 16, others at 18, others at 21. Some males take decades to reach the point where they can legitimately call themselves a 'man' in real terms.

Being a man means taking care of your responsibilities to home, family, and career. It means placing the needs of your family ahead of your own personal needs and desires. It means setting a good example, working hard, and taking important issues such as faith, politics, and morality seriously. During my own life, moving from boyhood to manhood came in fits and starts.

I had some tremendous responsibilities put on my shoulders at a time when many would still have considered me a boy in chronological age. Parenthood, marriage, and taking care of a sick parent all came to me at very young ages. Over the years I handled most of those responsibilities, but in retrospect I know that I didn't always handle them the way I now believe that a true man would. I absolutely can be accused of being selfish, ignorant, and unreliable at times, especially when I was younger.

But I certainly feel that the totality of my life experiences has left me as a 'man' today. I know that I have grown as a father and grandfather, as a husband in my second marriage, as a homeowner, as a professional in the law enforcement field. So at this stage of my life I feel pretty comfortable in accepting someone calling me a 'good man', even if I still may act a bit childish from time to time.

The final term to look at here is that 'Catholic' label. That one might indeed be the hardest, even though for some it might seem the easiest to determine. Let's face it, anyone can call themselves whatever they want and justify it in some way. People who consider themselves 'Catholic' as a matter of faith do that frequently. You grew up Catholic, or you go to a Catholic church at times, or you send your kids to a Catholic school.

Does any of that make you 'Catholic' truly? If not, what does make one a Catholic in deed, not just as a label. The roots of the word go back to Greek origin, and basically are going to lead you to 'universal' as a definition. In the early Church, if you were a Christian you were catholic. Of course as we all know there were many doctrinal splits in the Church over the millenia.

Today being a Catholic with capital 'C' signifies to most that you belong religiously to the Roman Catholic Church. You can call yourself a member if you are baptized into the Church, and then more fully as you progress through receiving the Sacraments, particularly Confirmation. Stronger commitments are reached with regularly attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist at Holy Communion, and in cleansing yourself of sin in Penance and Reconciliation.

But these are acts of physical or emotional commitment on ones part. What is truly needed to really be able to call oneself 'Catholic' is an understanding and living out of the basic creed of the Church to be 'one, holy, and apostolic' in nature. You follow the 'one Church' established by Christ whole-heartedly, you always attempt to live your life in a holy manner even if you fall short most times, and you try to spread Christ's word in apostolic fashion by your own words and deeds.

In this sense, I feel comfortable calling myself a Catholic. I do believe in the Church and it's creed, in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and I do feel inspired by the Holy Spirit as a direct presence in my life. I read the Bible. I go to Mass and receive Communion. I go to Confession and perform Penance (though not as often as I probably should), and I have been both baptized and confirmed in the Church.

As I have gotten older I have begun to express my Christianity and Catholic beliefs much more frequently, particularly here at my blog. I have volunteered as a lector in my own church. I have supported my wife as she herself converted to Catholicism some years ago now. I have subtly tried to pass along my faith to my children, something that I failed to do strongly enough when they were young. I pray every single day that they come to a full faith in Christ during their lifetime. I believe that I still have much more to do, but that 'Catholic' is certainly a term you can use to describe me at this point.

So in the end, the term that was hung on me of being a "good Catholic boy" is a bit misleading. I am only 'good' most of the time. I still have much room to grow in my 'Catholic' faith. I have mostly shed the habits of a 'boy' and take my responsibilities as a man far more seriously. But I know inside that I am a 'good' person, I am happy to practice and express my 'Catholic' faith, and am confident enough in my manhood to still allow the 'boy' in me to come out at times.

"A good Catholic boy." I have some work to do still, but I think that I can happily live with that. I hope to be able to live up to that label going forward in experiencing this gift of life that God has given to me. I would invite anyone reading this to also try living up to the challenge one day, one action, one moment at a time.

Forgive Yourself

Apparently there are many Christians out there who, even after participating in the Catholic sacramental process of confession and reconciliation, find that they continue to worry about past sins for years after they have confessed them. The fact for many people is that the Lord forgives more easily than we can forgive ourselves. In the New Testament, John 3:17 says it most completely: "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." Let's start by dealing with the forgiveness of sins as the Church deals with it. God gave us two ways to be forgiven of our sin. First is the sacrament of Baptism, which I spoke more fully about last weekend at this blog. Baptism was given by God to take away the 'Original Sin' committed by Adam in the Garden of Eden, as well as to cleanse our souls of any sins committed by us prior to our baptism. At Pentecost, Peter, who Christ had left as the first steward of his Church, said: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins..." Of course, man is an imperfect creature, and he will sin even after being cleansed and forgiven at baptism. To help man with sins committed after baptism, another process was needed, which has been called by the names confession, penance, and reconciliation after the three main parts of this process. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins and to forgive them as well. After His resurrection, He said to the apostles: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you...If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." Knowing that He would not always be among men physically, Christ passed the power to forgive sins on to His followers, and instructed them to pass this along to their successors. Thus we have the formal forgiveness of sins today in the confessional. Some people are afraid to go into the confessional and face a priest to ask for forgiveness. Maybe they have been away from the Church for a time, perhaps a long time, and are embarrassed both by their sins and by their estrangement. Others are simply resentful, feeling that they should just be able to deal with God directly, and not have to use a 'middle man' like a priest. Some have especially taken this attitude with the emergence in recent years of sexual abuse scandals within the priesthood itself. "Why should I ask those pedophiles to forgive me of my sins?" is an attitude that has been expressed. The fact is, these are only excuses, not reasons, for missing out on the sin-forgiveness process. Fear needs to simply be overcome, and there is only one way: just do it. Find out when your local church holds confessions, go there during that time, sit in a pew for a few minutes praying for strength and reminding yourself of some of your more egregious sins, and then get into that confessional and lay it all out with the priest, even telling him of your fears. Pride needs to be overcome, the feeling that maybe you know better how to have your sins forgiven, and give the process a chance. Once you give up the pride, overcome the fear, and get into the confessional and begin talking to the priest, I guarantee you that the feeling you have on leaving that confessional will be uplifting and freeing. I hope and pray that more of you actually take the opportunity to get back into the formal penance process, and back into Church itself, sharing in Christ's body in the Eucharist. That said, even should you do so, you have only won half the battle. God has fully forgiven you, but you still will need to let go and forgive yourself. First, know this: Jesus loves sinners. Again in the New Testament, Mark 2:15-17 quotes Jesus Himself as saying: "People who are healthy do not need a doctor; sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not the self-righteous." In most surveys on the subject, the reason that people have left and stayed away from the Church go back to pain: the pain from sin, abuse, divorce, addiction, abandonment, betrayal, failure, poverty, loneliness, etc. One of the biggest sources of pain has always been described by respondents as guilt over past sins. This guilt has spoiled relationships, caused sleeplessness and depression, and caused many to say things to themselves such as: "God doesn't want to have anything to do with me." Fact is, nothing could be further from the truth. Sin causes these worries for a reason. Sin is evil, committed intentionally. We have taken some action, said some words, thought some idea that we absolutely know full well is wrong. It is a violation of one of God's commandments, particularly Jesus' command for us to love one another as He has loved us. William McKee has written of three ways to stop worrying about past sins. First, don't be a 'connector'. Stop thinking that bad things happen to you now because of your past sins. God doesn't work that way. Second, don't make 'comparisons'. Just because you perceive someone else to be holier or more perfect than you doesn't make it so. You have no idea what goes on in someone else mind, or behind their closed doors. You can only worry about yourself and your thoughts, words, and deeds. Finally, and perhaps most difficult, develop a 'positive self image'. It is not vanity to think well of yourself. It has often been said that you need to love yourself before you can love others, and this is very true. The roots of your past go deep, but the fact of the matter is that you are likely a much better person at heart than you give yourself credit for. One thing that is important to remember here is that self-love does not really come from ourselves 'looking in the mirror'. It comes from the reflection that we see of ourselves in others. How does our family view us? Our friends? Our peers? No matter what you currently think of yourself, start acting differently. Start treating others really well on purpose. Start talking to people in a positive tone, not using profanity, comforting and encouraging them. Do this regularly, and you will be amazed at the response that you receive from them over time, and at the improvement you will feel in your own self image. You are a child of God, and He sent his Son so that your sins might be forgiven. Don't be afraid, and don't be vain. Give the Church another chance. Go to confession, be forgiven, and then most importantly, forgive yourself. Removing the weight of your sins from your life, your thoughts, your relationships will free you to experience God's love more fully, and will indeed free you to both love yourself and others more completely. God bless you.

Sunday or Sabbath?

A couple of years back, I tried to make each Sunday a chance to post on some topic of Faith, and with this posting I will be going back to that effort. It's appropriate to start here on a summer Sunday with a two-part theme: 1) When should you go to Church in the first place?; and 2) Why do many drift away as summer comes? Let's start with an effort to answer that first question. These days, many churches celebrate their weekly obligation services of the Mass on Saturday evening, then have a full compliment of Sunday morning services, and some even offer a Sunday evening service. There are some religious organizations, including Seventh-Day Adventists, who claim that Christians must worship on Saturdays, not on Sundays, because Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, and they believe that at some point through the years the Church arbitrarily changed things to Sundays. The fact is that Sundays were the day of worship for Christian believers as far back as New Testament times. Many passages of scripture indicate this practice as more desirable, worshiping on 'The Lord's Day', as Sunday was known to them. As just one of many examples, St. Ignatius of Antioch describes in a letter to the Magnesians written in 110 A.D. that: "Those who were brought up in the ancient order of things [the Jews] have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s day, on which also our life has sprung up again by him and by his death." During the first three centuries, the practice and tradition of consecrating Sunday to the worship of God by the hearing of the Mass and by resting from work first took root, and has remained established ever since, with slight modifications over the years. Of course, as all know, the obligation to retain a day to honor the Lord comes directly from God's very Commandments. In the book of Exodus, we see the terms "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy...the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God...in six days the Lord made Heaven and earth...and rested the seventh day." The tradition of the Church developed this as the 3rd Commandment, or "Remember to keep holy the Lord's day." The Church itself began the tradition of a Saturday evening 'Vigil Mass' in order for those who simply could not, due to work or other constraints, make a genuine effort to attend Sunday services. These Saturday evening services are not intended for everyday convenience, or to 'get it out of the way'. People should still be going to Church on Sundays, and setting that day aside as a day of rest as much as is possible. However, again the Vigil on Saturday evenings is there as an outlet for those who simply cannot make the Sunday services. In any event, it is clear that we should all be setting aside a time during our busy week to worship the Lord together as a community, and that includes the summer time. Many people become more spiritual and involved in the Church as Christmas approaches, and then vow to continue this into the new year. They seem to do well in the early months, and are reinspired by the coming of Easter in the spring. But as spring rolls into summer, and the joys of living outside and enjoying more recreational activities takes over, many drift away from regular attendance at Church. This is exactly the time to not drift away. It is when we are most distracted, when we are lured by worldly things away from the Lord and his house, away from one another as a Church community, that we should fight back against this urge. Summer time is a great time indeed, but it is nothing more than an excuse to say that because the weather is nicer you cannot find one hour to give specifically to the Lord each week. All year, through all seasons, attending Mass is a wonderfully refreshing chance to spend an hour in God's house with others directly worshiping Him, receiving Jesus' body and blood in the Eucharist, hearing the Word of God preached, and letting God know that He has a place of importance in our long list of activities in our busy lives. It's summer time right now, and it's also Sunday. Get to Church today.