I taught Spanish in a Catholic school a decade and a half before I entered the Church. It was my first significant exposure to the Mass. During those two years at Beckman High School in Dyersville, Iowa, I frequently attended the school-wide Masses and sat with my students. I picked up little pieces of the back-and-forth liturgy that transpired between the priest, the student body and God, but I always remained seated as the students went forward to receive Holy Communion. I didn’t quite understand why I wasn’t permitted to receive. I felt the sting of this separation most acutely when the Communion song was ’”One Bread, One Body.” I longed to be with my students as they went forward.
When we returned to the classroom, students would sometimes ask me why I didn’t go forward to receive the Eucharist, and I would simply say, “I’m not Catholic.” That seemed to be reason enough for them.
Years later, I finally entered the Church. Today, my favorite Communion song is “One Bread, One Body.” I pause and listen to the voices around me. Then I stand to my feet and make my way to the aisle, joyfully letting the words soak in. Memories from those school-wide Masses fill my mind as I make my way forward to receive Our Eucharistic Lord, and I am amazed that, some fifteen years later, I am more in unity with the students I met all those years ago than I was as their teacher.
When the priest says, “Happy are those who are called to this table,” my spirit always says, “Indeed.”
When the priest holds the Eucharist before me and proclaims, “The Body of Christ,” I blink back tears and choke out my “Amen.”
It isn’t just sentimentalism because I no longer feel like an outsider. It is so much more than an emotional attachment to past memories. Today, I receive Holy Communion in the Catholic Church because I really am in union with Christ. My “Amen” is a yes to what the Church teaches and who the Church is. My Amen is a yes to the truth of the Real Presence. My Amen is a commitment to accept my place in the Body of Christ and a yes to whatever that reality might demand of me.
There is more.
Sometimes, I get a glimpse of just how deep the mystery of our unity really goes, and I realize it is doctrinal unity, physical unity, and it is also a mystical, spiritual unity.
Recently, my husband took a business trip to Seattle. He came home and pulled out a couple of little presents for our daughter, and then he said he had something for me. A co-worker had given him a gift bag and told him to give it to his wife. I do not know this woman. She wouldn’t know me if we met on the street.
The woman’s note to me explained that I had come to her mind while she was in prayer and again while reading her own copy of the book she was giving to me.
Inside, I found an inspirational book of daily readings. Immediately, I turned to the entry for the date mentioned in the note. With divine precision, the reading went directly to a problem I was facing.
How can someone in Seattle know what someone in St. Louis needs to hear? What makes a Catholic woman on the other side of the country act on the quiet voice of the Spirit rather than dismiss it as a silly thought of her own making?
There is no other explanation except to say we really are one in this One Body. During the month of January, we pray for unity. It is a tradition that began in 1908 as an octave created to begin on January 18 (the Protestant Feast of the Confession of Peter – similar to the Catholic Feast of the Chair of St. Peter) and to end on January 25 (the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul).
In this Year of St. Paul, let us be particularly faithful in praying for unity in the Body of Christ, “That the world may know that the Father has sent the Son” (the words of Our Lord in the Gospel of John 17).
Lord, hear our prayer.
