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Happy Sunday morning and back again online with more thoughts.
This has been a fun week. I was at a drive-by 90th birthday for H.E. the Reverend Canon Sir Ron Matthewman on Monday and today my 5-year-old great-granddaughter is having one. You stay in your car, which you decorate with signs or balloons, and drive by with a “Happy Birthday” wish and card, delivered along with the signs and balloons to a masked and gloved volunteer who then passes them on to decorate the yard where birthday honouree is enthroned! It is great fun and terribly safe! I hope your days are finding joy in the new and unusual as well.
But addressing a not-so-fun issue: clergy has been doing a lot of talking about parishioners who are worrying about being unable to receive communion for such a long period of time. But that is our reality and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
So I want to share my perspective on this with you. Weekly Communion is a relatively new practice. And different denominations have had different practices. It used to be (when I was younger) that the Presbyterians took communion twice a year; the United Church four times, the Anglicans, once a month and the Romans weekly.
Until we are all able to communicate together, I will not be consecrating the host and drinking the wine. But I am not forgetting WHY we do it. We do it because Christ commanded, “Do this in remembrance of me!”
So when I am saying grace before I eat, I add, “ . . . when I drink wine I remember that you died for me . . . ” and, “ . . . when I eat bread I remember that your body was sacrificed to save me . . . ”. Bread also reminds me how God has provided us with all the necessities of life and wine reminds me of all the riches, far beyond our needs that have been given to us. And I thank God for all these blessings with each meal
Now, don’t let this confuse you. Such prayers do not consecrate our meal into the Eucharist: but they do remind us of our debt of remembrance for Jesus’ sacrifice. Let your sacrifice be in remembering and knowing that staying away from Church, your friends and the celebration of communion is one way in which you are respecting the health and lives of those around you . . . and be thankful.
Don’t forget to go online and find a service that touches your heart and brings you closer to our loving God who is with us through all times, adventures and sorrows.
Until we are together again, keep the world, health and peace in your prayers. I hope to find you here again next week. If you want me or have questions or comments, send them along through You Tube or to DameTemplar@gmail.com I love to hear from you (particularly when you don’t agree with me!)
God Bless
nnDnn
Nola
Rector – St Monica’s Anglican Church
Grand Prior – Canada - OSMTH