The origins of this Protestant observance reveal the
best of intentions. But for at least three reasons, continuing to set aside the first Sunday in October to highlight the Church's signature rite is not a good idea.
One: Observing something called “World Communion Sunday” one day of the year communicates the idea that the Eucharist is special. But if Holy Communion really is the Church's signature rite, if it is indeed that which
makes the Church what it is, then "special" is exactly what it is not. We don't think of the air we breathe as "special," the breakfast we eat as "special." These things are gifts, of course--breath and food--but it is in their givenness, their ordinariness that they are the means for life and health.
In Clyde, Missouri, the Benedictine Sisters
of Perpetual Adoration cut unleavened bread
into communion wafers and gather them
in plastic bags folded, stapled, and later packed
in boxes.Two: Observing something called “World Communion Sunday” one day of the year suggests that the Eucharist is our achievement. To the contrary: Ordinary food--grain and grape--become the extraordinary gifts of God--body and blood--through a power not our own. Our only task is to receive these gifts: to take, bless, break, and share them. And when we do this, we learn what it means to be a people for whom the whole of our life together is
"one colossal unearned gift." At the Exxon next door, Walter Miller
lifts his pickup's hood, then turns to stare
at the acreage he used to own across the road.
Was his
wheat, he wonders, even the smallest grain
in its long ascent to final form, ever changed into
the body of our Lord?Three: Observing something called “World Communion Sunday” one day of the year ignores, quite unintentionally, the world--the world, quite specifically, of injustice and oppression, of
domination and exploitation. In
Pope John Paul II's memorable phrase, the Eucharist is always celebrated "on the altar of the world." Jesus' suffering body links us to a suffering world. All of creation is caught up in the moment of εὐχαριστία, and with thanksgiving, our task, then, our joy, is to love
this world, not any other world. And to love the suffering world is to be one with it in the charity of Christ.
Doris Miller spreads ketchup on her Big Mac
and salts her fries, time and wages swallowed
like a sacrament, eternity the dregs
that throng and cluster in the shallows
of her complimentary Styrofoam cup.* * * * *
Wheatby
B.H. FairchildFor in the night in which he was betrayed,
he took bread.In Clyde, Missouri, the Benedictine Sisters
of Perpetual Adoration cut unleavened bread
into communion wafers and gather them
in plastic bags folded, stapled, and later packed
in boxes. After Compline the sisters rise again
from prayers, lie down upon their narrow beds,
and wait for sleep's wide wings to fold around them.
Their hands still give the light sweet smell of bread,
and loaves like little clouds drift through their dreams,
wafers raining down to make a blizzard
of the Word made flesh,
Corpus Christi, of God's own Son. On evening break at Wal-Mart
Doris Miller spreads ketchup on her Big Mac
and salts her fries, time and wages swallowed
like a sacrament, eternity the dregs
that throng and cluster in the shallows
of her complimentary Styrofoam cup.
At the Exxon next door, Walter Miller
lifts his pickup's hood, then turns to stare
at the acreage he used to own across the road.
Was
his wheat, he wonders, even the smallest grain
in its long ascent to final form, ever changed into
the body of our Lord? The Benedictine Sisters
of Perpetual Adoration wake to Matins, prayers
that rise like crane migrations over feedlots,
packing houses, hog farms, the abandoned small
stores of Leeton, the Dixon Community Center,
the Good Samaritan Thrift Shop in Tarkio.
A gravel road veers toward the Open Door Cafe,
windows boarded up and painted powder blue
and lemon Day-Glow, perpetual sunrise on
a town silent as the absent cry of starlings
or idle irrigation pumps rusting in the dust
of August, where the plundered, corporate earth
yields the bread placed in outstretched palms,
take and eat, of the citizens of Clyde, Missouri.