On
Being a Special Minister of Communion
I’m Helen
and I’m a minister of Communion here at St. Mary’s. The reason I am
talking to you this evening is to extend an invitation to anyone who might be
interested in taking up this particular ministry and to explain what is
involved in doing so. So, I will
attempt to explain, as briefly as I can, the liturgical role that ministers of
Communion participate in, starting with a short history lesson, followed by
some practical considerations, and, then, a few reflections on what it might
mean to be a minister of communion.
a)
A short history
Some of us
may remember a time when the laity were not permitted to handle the
consecrated bread and wine, including when we received the consecrated bread
(and only the bread) at communion itself.
So, it may appear that the involvement of lay people in ministering
communion is a new development in the life of the Church.
But this is not so. In the
early Church, members of the community were accustomed to taking home
communion from the Sunday eucharist to give to relatives or friends who were
too ill to be present at the eucharist, as well as for their own consumption
on the other days of the week. So,
the eucharist was regularly ministered by lay people to one another and to
family and friends. Communion was
also received in the hand and under the forms of both consecrated bread and
wine. This practice continued for
800 years of the Church’s early life until a shift in eucharistic theology
led to the exclusion of the laity from the handling of the eucharist. However, in the 20th Century, further changes in
eucharistic theology combined with the broader movement of liturgical renewal,
and culminated in the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1063), with its call to ‘full,
conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations’ by all the
faithful. By 1973 (and along with
other reforms) lay people were once again allowed to minister communion in
recognition of their baptismal rights and duties. And so, the role of the laity in ministering communion is
hardly a new development. It is,
rather, a renewal of an earlier tradition.
b) Some practical considerations
Primarily,
the ministers of Communion make it possible for the communion rite to take
place in an appropriate length of time in proportion to the whole liturgy, not
for reasons of efficiency, but to ensure that ‘going to communion’ is a
genuine experience of eating and drinking together.
This much requires an orderly way of sharing Communion, the details of
which you can observe during the communion rite, and which those of us who are
ministers of communion would be happy to explain in greater detail to anyone
who would like to know more. Apart from the several practicalities of sharing the chalice
of consecrated wine with others, the role of minister of Communion requires
that the minister be present, in a whole-hearted way to the liturgy of the
Mass by arriving a little earlier to prepare the gifts, to pray, and by being
particularly attentive to the word of God and to the consecration.
Understandably,
most people feel hesitant about handling the consecrated bread and wine; that
is, about handling the body and blood (or whole person) of the resurrected
Christ. We all think that we may
not be worthy of assuming a special role in this most sacred event.
For what we do as ministers of communion is to bring to our ministry
the risen Christ for people to nourish their souls and bodies.
The eucharist is about intimacy with the divine in the midst of the
human. It is the ultimate union
of the holy with the ordinary. The
eucharist is, most certainly, an event of awesome dimensions.
However, as ministers of communion we are, after all, ordinary people. And it is our ordinariness (together with a desire to serve others in this special way) which we bring to the role of eucharistic minister. We only have to remember the ordinariness of the apostles to know that God chooses and loves us in our ordinariness. And so, while our feelings of unworthiness are quite normal in response to what it is that we are doing here, we must also remember the love and mercy which God has for each and everyone of us. After all, God invites us to serve others in all our ordinariness and human frailty.
c) Some reflections
I will
finish now with some brief reflections on what it means to me to be a minister
of Communion. The gift of
the eucharist is, for me, a constant source of peace and hope. It is a gift that can be shared, equally, with others, the
sharing of which is also a source of joy.
As well, and having been with many hundreds of people who are very
sick, or dying, I have always noticed how peaceful people are after receiving
communion. In the face of
suffering, the power of the eucharist reveals itself, most clearly, as the
ultimate source of nourishment for the body and soul.
In fact, the eucharist nourishes people through such ordeals in ways
that cannot be achieved by any other means: no amount of strong pain relief,
counselling, or other comfort measures can console people in times of
suffering in the way that the eucharist can. This much I have had the
privilege of witnessing many times over many years.
We all
bring our crosses and joys to the celebration of the eucharist; and I know
that whenever I can serve others by sharing (in a practical sense) this
ultimate source of nourishment, I am sharing the most precious of gifts. It is also, in my mind, the most humbling of privileges.