On Maunday Thursday

Because our pastor would like to celebrate the sacrament every Sunday, there are some questions about why. In our church, the tradition has been that the elements appear once a month or so, and then also on a holy day like Maunday Thursday. That's it.

No one is waging war; no one is even angry that I know of, but there is some resistance because, well, "we've never done it that way." Messing with rituals--and there may be no ritual quite as sacrosanct as how we do holy communion--is risky because, well, the holy supper is important, very important. You might even say it's holy.

In the Protestant tradition, more or less everything is holy--the nubbins trying to grow out back in today's frosty morning, the blurr of scarlet the cardinal makes when he flutters through the bushes just outside my window, the crisp morning air, the promise of summer. Everything is holy. 

But the human problem of a righteousness so broadly-based is a perfectly understandable paradox: when everything is holy, it's altogether too easy to look out at a world where nothing seems to be. 

I've been to St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. Loved it. We were there early enough to beat the crowds, and were met at the door by Michaelangelo's Pieta. 

For  years now, I've pursued the dawn, but only just now, when I pulled up the pictures of St. Peters, did I realize how blessed we were to get there exactly when we did, to be there at sunrise.

I envy Roman Catholics who can and do point clearly at what is and what isn't sacred. I'm not about to join the mother church, but I know what kind of blessing lies in store if I just walk up the street and into Alton's St. Mary's, up at the top of highest hill in the county, and sit for a moment in blessed peace.

It's sad, but humanly possible, I know, to be given blessings in such abundance that the abundance no longer seems a blessing. Up the street, how many will take mass this morning? If there is an argument for a not-every-Sunday celebration of Holy Communion, that seems to be that's it, a twist on "absence makes the heart grow fonder." It will become commonplace.

I know--it's weak.

In the church where I grew up (a dangerous introductory phrase when wielded by a man my age), we celebrated communion four times a year. That's it. Today, our pastor would shake his head, not at our foolishness, but at how much holiness we've missed by way of all those empty Sundays.

Maybe he's right. I'm not willing to fight, but what I remember as a boy was my dad, at evening devotions, telling all of us--even the kids who couldn't partake--that on Sunday-next the church would be celebrating the Lord's Supper. What that meant, he'd say, is that we needed to prepare by evaluating ourselves, remembering our sin and guilt so that we'd better appreciate the blessed cleansing we've received from Jesus' blood and righteousness.

For me, that little homily at supper devotions, a week before the sacrament, did much to make the practice of communion holy, even when it was offered only four times a year.

Maunday Thursday is all about remembering--manna in the wilderness, the exodus itself, the passover meal, and, of course, the suffering and death of our Lord. Maunday Thursday celebrates the blessed gift of memory by pushing us to use it, not to forget, not to forget but remember, thoughtfully, reverently.

This Maunday Thursday, I also remember my dad's living faith as he told us around the family table that this week especially each of us needed to consider the blessed gifts we've been given, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, who died for all of our sins.