A scene mothers can relate to: your teenager comes home from school and announces. “Hi Mom, I’m STARVING.” “Don’t eat too much. Supper is in an hour.” Several PBJ sandwiches, some chips and a soda later the teen listens to some music until called for supper … and proceeds to eat a full meal! You have to envy their metabolism. The experience of STARVING for much of the world is not an exaggeration but a very true reality. It is a matter of life and death. How does that translate to the spiritual realm? For the past more than a year the Church as a whole has been deprived of receiving Holy Communion. Are we STARVING for the Eucharist? What makes a Catholic a Catholic is the ability to participate every week (every day!) in the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. Not being able to do so during the pandemic has robbed us of something essential to our spirituality. Have we lost of our identity as a Church without the ability to consume the Eucharist as we gather as a community around the altar? We won’t know the answers to these sort of questions until we can fully reopen the churches and invite everyone to return. One thing seems clear — it will not be a return to normal but the creating of a new normal. We must recover the true meaning of being a Eucharistic people who not only receive the Body of Christ but become the Body of Christ in our spirit of hospitality, welcome, charity, forgiveness, compassion, outreach. As an ancient hymn puts it:
You who all things can and know,
Who on earth such food bestow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav’nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia
