Corpus Christi
On the night before Jesus died, he gathered his closest friends and shared a meal. We know that they shared scripture readings and that they sang hymns, and at two different points during the meal, Jesus shared himself with them under the form of blessed bread and, sometime later, as blessed wine. And, then he said, "Now, you do this in memory of me." And then we know that the earliest Christians followed that order. They did it in memory of him.
Now, the earliest Christians were Jewish. So, they went to the synagogue every Sabbath (Saturday) where there was a service that included scripture and a homily "prayers of the faithful." And then, after the sun went down they went to their homes for a sacred meal in memory of Jesus. That didn't last too long. They authorities became suspicious and those who celebrated this 'unofficial meal' were expelled from the synagogue entirely. So they took both services: the Service of the Word from the synagogue, and the Sacred 'secret' meal, and rolled them into one. That more or less is the format of the Mass as we have had it for 20 centuries. And it has basically been the same for two thousand years since The Lord's Last Supper. But the styles and approaches have been radically different.
Two models or approaches were dominant in Christian tradition: "Stand back.... Stand way back!" was one model; then there was the model that would resemble more the Last Supper itself: "Come together and join in."
"Stand back. Stand way back...." That model would cover the period from the early Middle Ages up to the early 1960s. First of all, in those days, unlike the Last Supper, people did not go to Communion. The focus was not on their participation and but rather on watching, watching from the distance, looking at, rather than joining in the celebration. We even had records in England, of people paying the priest to hold the host and chalice up longer. And people yelling from the congregation, "Bear higher, Father John, bear higher." And, in popular devotions, ways of celebrating were focusing on how to view the host. And popular devotions such as Forty Hours Devotion and Benediction actually became far more popular than the Mass itself, or certainly, than going to Communion. Stand back. Stand way back! I remember this growing up. The Mass was in complete silence. The priest had his back to us. It was in Latin where we could not understand the words, but we could watch, where very few ever went to Communion.
My memory, growing up, as an altar boy, Communion wasn't given out at the later Masses. And remember the bells. The bells were rung thirteen times during the Mass. And the priest had his back to us so we couldn't see it, but during what we call "The Eucharistic Prayer" he made sixteen signs of the cross over the bread and wine. And when people did decide to go to communion, Communion was given out before Mass started and given out again after Mass. So people could drop in and receive a host and get on their way.
Pius XII in the 1950s advocated more frequent communion, and the people responded, but not in the way he anticipated. Priests gave out Communion before Mass. They gave out Communion again during the Offertory of the Mass. They gave out Communion at Communion time, lo and behold, during the Mass, and they gave out Communion again at the end of Mass. While the priest was saying Mass, this was going on at the side and there was a steady line of most people just going to Communion, getting a host, and getting out! Stand back.... Stand way back!
Another model, which I would date from the middle of the twentieth century, or, if you like, from early Christianity, could be summed up with the slogan, "Come together and join in." Here going to Communion has become the norm. After all, it is a sacred meal. Receiving communion is not a separate magic moment.
And Jesus is truly present to us in the Word of Scripture, especially the words of the gospel and then in the most unique, marvellous way we have, in the consecrated bread and wine of Communion. "Come together and join in."
When we come to Eucharist it is to give praise and thanks to God and to be changed by the Eucharist and challenged by it. We give praise and thanks to God in Eucharist and hopefully we become different, and we become more a people and more a community, and we become more faithful witnesses to Christ in our world. I love the outline of Mass that the poet priest, Father John Shea, gave. Four things: gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread, and change the world. We gather the folks when we come together in the name of Jesus. We tell the story. We listen to our stories in Scripture. We break the bread and receive Communion and then we go out to change the world, or at least, little by little, to change ourselves.