VIRAL THOUGHTS 1 - IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC: Living the Eucharist

AT A TIME when public celebrations of Mass have been prohibited due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are expressing real hunger for the Eucharist.   As I read some of their posts, I recalled words I wrote in my book, Enfolded in Christ: the inner life of a priest.  Although they were written with clergy in mind, I hope they might speak to a wider audience:

‘THE EUCHARIST cannot be contained within the church for it is greater than the liturgy we celebrate.  Teilhard de Chardin SJ, the early 20th c. palaeontologist, geologist, philosopher and priest, expressed this most profoundly in his Hymn of the Universe probably written on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1923 when he was living in the Ordos desert of Inner Mongolia. Lacking the necessities for Mass he was led to compose his majestic Mass on the World which opens with one of the most remarkable statements ever made about the Eucharist as he realises the need to raise himself beyond any symbols to offer all that lay before him ‘up to the pure majesty of the real itself.’

He acknowledges that the words of Christ, spoken by the priest over bread and wine, flow beyond those forms to the whole Body of Christ. In fact they reach into the cosmos itself so that all matter is affected by them. His Eucharist may lack bread and wine but before him lie the elements of creation that will provide the substance for celebration. His ‘prayer of consecration’ contains a wonderful invocation that the ‘radiant word’ would embrace and breathe life into the depths of creation so that Christ’s hands might ‘direct and transfigure’ all that is brought into this Eucharistic act to remould, rectify: ‘recast it down to the depths from which it springs.’  Over what greater celebration could a priest preside? 

Teilhard reminds us that all are invited to ‘live eucharistically’, to live out of that great ‘sacrifice of prayer and praise’ and look at the world with wonder and awe, recognising all things as a sacrament of the Divine. He realised that Eucharistic spirituality overflows the Liturgy to embrace life itself and is made real as we seek to discern everyday holiness. The way we walk down the street with thankfulness in our hearts offering to God all that we might encounter – the joys and sorrows, brokenness and wonder; the conversations we engage in, the sights that greet our eye whether that be in a green and pleasant place or amongst the houses, shops and factories of a neglected inner-city streetscape – all are the matter for our ongoing celebration. Our calling is to incline the heart to the real presence of Christ in all things.

(Eucharistic) spirituality, then, involves living with the intention of making of each moment an offering to God. The Eucharist is central to how our spirituality evolves because it is the nexus linking that which lies at the heart of our relationship with God and God’s creation, the place where Divine Love is most fully revealed. To be lovers of God-in-all-things must be the focus of our lives, not parishes, schools, cathedrals or whatever. They are the context. But we are called to love God and to live out of his compassionate Heart realising that the life which we celebrate is one that emerges from his sacrifice to which we are conjoined.  Sacrifice is at the heart of priestly life, an ‘Act of Communion’ with God in love. It is the means whereby we attain and rejoice in our true, Godly, life.  At the altar we join all our small sacrifices to his one saving sacrifice and beyond the altar we seek to live sacrificially that we may share in the life of our great High Priest. For in Jesus we see how one person can belong utterly to God.

Gerard Manley Hopkins also recognised this and shared his exuberance in the poem God’s Grandeur:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil….

But it’s not easy in the hum-drum of daily life.  What often happens as we walk down the street or sit on the train is that we notice life, shrug our metaphorical shoulders or cross our metaphorical arms and get into a conversation with that ‘evil spirit’ who happily waits just out of sight, ready to cast a critical glare.  He plays some old tapes about how awful things are and gently leads us down the spiral into the place of darkness. It’s then we need to wake up and realise that the sursum corda is not only necessary in the Liturgy: we are not to look on the world with a critical glare but a contemplative gaze. And when we catch ourselves going down that spiral we need to return to the simple spiritual practices which can re-awaken us to the wonder of creation – even though the glory may be smeared with dirt:

May you be well; May you be happy; May you know the compassion of Christ.'

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When it’s possible to re-open churches, or where it’s possible to look into churches, I hope that the Blessed Sacrament will be exposed for people to see, for such Exposition is a continuation of the Eucharist and a powerful means of encounter with Christ.

Fr. John-Francis Friendship, March 2020,
extract from Enfolded in Christ: the inner life of a priest, p.110