The Body and the Bride

Through these sacraments, drawn from the side of the New Adam while He slept, God the Father is forming a Bride for His Son. So for Catholics the Eucharist is the sacramental means Christ established by which we participate in His holy and perfect sacrifice, and by which we receive His divine life, i.e. grace, and by which we are knitted together in charity into His one Mystical Body.
(Taken from part 5 of the interview between the iMonk, Michael Spencer, and Catholic blogger, Bryan Cross, on Nov 4.)

Here is an interesting reflection on the Eucharist, Lord's Supper, Communion, the Service of the Table or whatever you want to call it. The context of the discussion is an explanation on the part of a Catholic convert (from Protestantism) of the meaning of the Catholic doctrine of the true sacrifice in the Eucharist.

Now, my Protestant side instinctively recoils at the idea that the sacrament of the Eucharist is the means by which grace is imparted to us sinners. There is, however, a part of me that is longing for greater meaning in the practice of the Eucharist, especially in regards to the ways in which communion--notice the root word there--draws us together as believers and partakers. The Catholics get that in a way that Protestants often don't. We have drained as much "hocus pocus" out of the Eucharist as we can, and have lost a great deal of the divine mysterium in the process. But whether we believe that the Host actually becomes a literal stand-in for the bodily sacrifice of Christ or not, I think we can agree on the idea that the bread is the symbolic representation of the Body (i.e. "this is My body, given for you") that makes us all one body together (1 Cor 10:17).

To extrapolate from that further: the body of Christ is the Church (Col 1:24). The Church is the Bride of Christ (2 Cor 11:2, Rev 21:2, 21:9). Through the Lord's Supper, we partake of a part of the Body and are made into the Body, just as a fundamental part of Adam (his rib) was taken to make Eve. I don't know...maybe I'm not equipped to draw the deep theological meaning out of this idea, but what I do know is that it really scratches that itch I have to find depth and meaning in communion beyond the whole "let's remember what Christ did for us" angle.

All of this stems from the thoughts I had at the last communion service I attended (this past Sunday, to be exact). I had already been reading iMonk's discussion of how to make the Eucharist significant in Evangelical contexts, so some of these ideas were floating around in my head. The church I attend (a Baptist church of the Canadian Baptists of Western Canada variety), usually celebrates the Lord's Supper once a month, which I think is not nearly often enough. I prefer the practice of weekly communion since I think it is an intrinsic part of Christian worship...but maybe that's another discussion. Now, this first Sunday of the month was very special (I thought) given that it was All Saints' Day according to the traditional Church calendar. But there was no mention of that fact AT ALL during the service, despite the fact that we were having communion. The service of the Table was instead very focused on individual repentance of sin and a reminder of Christ's sacrifice. Don't get me wrong: those are important parts of the Christian service as well, but so much of the idea of being One Body is lost in the individual emphasis. Maybe it was just where I was at and the significance of the day that had me disappointed at the individual emphasis this time around, I don't know. But I think that generally speaking, as Evangelicals, we miss out on the community element of communion all the time. We forget that we, as the saints, as the Body, are joined together as the bride (and the bride-to-come) of Christ. We are saved, not only as individuals who do need a "personal relationship with Jesus," but also as a community, a family, a unity. We are blessed together as the body so that we might be a blessing to the world. Communion, the act of, yes, remembering Christ's sacrifice is also an act of bodily (literally physical, somatic, corporeal) worship as we enact with our own flesh a memorial of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

So, I might not be ready to make the leap to Catholicism any time soon (ever), but I have to give honour to the wisdom and beauty in this thought about communion. May it be for His glory!