Intriguing Questions from a Chance Meeting (part 3)

Here is my airplane companion's final question, and my response. Many thanks to Sherry, since much of this research is hers.

In your opinion how do we elevate communion back to the highest form of worship and make it a personal and meaningful act of worship

? I think the answer to this great question goes to the heart of what it means to be a Christian. One of the struggles in Christianity goes back a long, long way, and I see it as a lack of faith. The U.S. Catholic Catechism describes faith in this way: "Faith is first of all a personal adherence to God. At the same time, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed." Faith means more than just agreeing with doctrine or concepts, because since God's ways are not our ways, I won't be able to agree with all that has been revealed unless I know and trust and love the Revealer! The early Church was filled with people with this kind of deep faith. It is this kind of faith that could enable one to lay down his or her life literally for their friend and Savior, Jesus Christ. Why were people drawn to a faith that could lead to their torture and death? And what has changed?

Recent historians have pointed to the growth of the early Church (in the first three centuries) in spite of sometimes vicious persecution to several factors:

• The moral exclusivity of Christians, who demanded deep commitment and conversion (unheard of in ancient world - normally you just added gods to your pantheon),

•Definite and absolute character of Christian belief in an age of uncertainty,

•Power of Jesus as Lord over blind and often tragic personal “fate,”

•Social dimensions of Christianity, which made it attractive to women, the poor, and the oppressed,

•Activity of God through contemporary Christians to heal and deliver those under demonic influence.

And, of course, I'd add the power of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of not only the apostles and those upon whom they laid their hands, but ordinary Christian disciples, who had experienced God's saving power for themselves.

During this time, spiritual gifts (what St. Paul called "charisms") were recognized as being given to all the baptized at baptism, and the power of God worked through those gifts to make preaching more effective, to give supernatural (not always miraculous) results to acts of mercy, encouragement, leadership, teaching - as well as empowering wisdom, knowledge, discernment of spirits, etc. This activity on the part of ordinary Christians, including women and slaves, had a powerful effect of convincing pagans and Jews of the truth in the words the Christians said about Jesus.

But in 313 AD, Christianity became legal and in 337 the emperor became Christian, and the Church was swamped with converts over the next century. The Church grew 500% in that century, with the numbers swelling from about 5 million to 25 million! Many of these were nominal Christians who saw the writing on the wall. If you were going to advance in society, you'd better be a Christian.

Because spiritual gifts manifest much more when our faith in Jesus is personal, the gifts were no longer as evident. There's a very poignant passage in one of the writings of St. John Chrysostom, a bishop in the late 4th century states that in the earliest church, Christian initiation included a prayer for the coming of the Spirit with the laying on of the hand, and finally, the manifestation of the charisms, including the prophetic charisms of prophecy, tongues, wisdom, healing, raising the dead. These were regularly manifested at initiation in apostolic times. Because of this regular occurrence, Chrysostom knows that the prophetic charisms of the apostolic age must have been expected. For him they were divine gifts, not human talents upgraded and embellished. The church of his day, he says, is like a woman who wants to display her jewels, but when she opens the coffer it is empty. (This is from an excellent book, "Christian initiation and baptism in the Holy Spirit: the First Eight Centuries" by Killian McDonnell and George T. Mantague)

Several things happened when Christianity became the state religion, more or less:
•The lay office (i.e., the role of the laity in the secular world given to them by Christ at baptism, along with the authority, power and jurisdiction to stand in the place of Jesus) disappeared from view altogether because the Church was understood to include all of society.

•The hierarchical office (i.e., the pope, bishops, priests and deacons), which directed the Church, became overwhelmingly prominent.

•True discipleship was widely held to be ascetic and monastic. After martyrdom was not likely to happen, folks who took faith seriously and wanted to be disciples tended to "flee the world" and thus the earliest monastic communities were formed.

•The lay office was perceived as heavily compromised by life in the world. That is, if you really wanted to be holy, living in the world just wasn't going to cut it!

•All mission/evangelism belonged to the hierarchy and/or to religious (monks, friars, nuns, sisters - i.e., people who have joined a community and taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience that are meant to bind them to one another and to Christ in a common mission of service and/or prayer on behalf of the world)

•Charisms were seen as signs of extraordinary sanctity given only to saints.

You can begin to see what happened. Genuine discipleship - the giving of one's life over to Jesus as Lord was no longer the norm. In fact, after Constantine, following Christ was no longer literally a matter of life and death.

In spite of this, there would still be people who would be touched by the power of the Gospel and nourished by the sacramental life of the church, but they were not looked upon, necessarily, as "normal Christianity." This is a profoundly simplified version of a very complex set of events. Of course, the overrunning of Europe by barbarian invaders and the ensuing Dark Ages didn't help matters.

All of this is to say that the real crux of the problem of communion becoming rote is two-fold and inter-related: 1) a lack of personal conversion and discipleship to Jesus and 2) a failure to see the connection between worship and the living of one's faith in society in which everything we do becomes a "spiritual sacrifice acceptable to the Father." Part of the Catholic understanding of communion is that not only is the one sacrifice of Calvary sacramentally re-presented, but that all those involved in the act of worship are to offer with Jesus their own lives: their work, their family life, their community involvement - even their leisure. Then, strengthened by receiving him, (St. Augustine said, "Become what you have received!") we are sent by him to be his presence in the world in a more powerful way.

You see the problem, I'm sure. If I'm not a disciple, if I'm not aware that I have been redeemed by his blood, if I am not grateful that salvation is made possible because of him - and not because of my good works (which themselves are only possible because I acted in response to God's grace), if I have not realized that a living faith is one which permeates my thoughts and actions...then it is very easy for the act of communion to become rote. I don't think ritual itself is the problem - lack of discipleship is!

We can change worship every week if we want and make it very entertaining, or have great music, clouds of incense and sumptuous vestments (or no incense and no vestments) or beautiful churches, or simple house churches, or simply meet by the river; but if we aren't preaching Christ crucified and calling each person to conversion, and praying like mad that it happen (because the Evil One will surely oppose any step towards God), worship will almost certainly become rote.

If we do not treat discipleship as normative and do not support those who do become disciples; if we do not help them deepen their relationship by drawing on the wisdom of the saints who've gone before us, well, discipleship will continue to be treated as unusual (at least in some Catholic circles). If we don't remember that the church exists to evangelize (Pope Paul VI reminded Catholics of this in his letter, Evangelization in the Modern World) and that the laity are pre-eminently suited to evangelize because they live in society; if we don't help Christians discern their spiritual gifts and the call from God that those gifts indicate, and don't support them in the task of changing society from inside corporations, the entertainment industry, health care, etc., then we will have failed to take the risen Christ seriously when he commissioned all of us to "go and make disciples of all nations." (Mt 28:19)

Finally, Steve - and this is not a part of your question - I think we have to admit that the ecumenical movement is seriously crippled by a lack of discipleship. You see, in spite of our misunderstandings (which are more significant and detrimental than our differences, I believe), when I see the power of the Holy Spirit working through a disciples of Jesus who are part of another denomination, how can I deny the genuineness of their faith? Unless, of course, I want to be like the Pharisees who said of Jesus, "He casts out demons by the prince of demons." (Mt 9:34)

Well, this is probably much more than you bargained for, but your questions generated a lot of energy in me, and got me thinking and praying. Thank you!

(published by Sherry W for Fr. Mike who wrote the post)