Corpus Christi - Reflection by Canon Bob

I have to admit that one of the consequences of our present situation that has caused me great sadness is not just that we are prevented from meeting together to worship God, but specifically that we are not able to gather for the Eucharist. For over 40 years my central act of worship on a Sunday has been sharing Holy Communion with the community of Christians amongst whom I was living at the time. Last week the Church marked the day when those from my tradition give thanks for the gift of the Eucharist and is traditionally known as Corpus Christi. This year, of course, that day passed by almost unnoticed but that fact only sharpened for me the feeling of loss.

I was reminded of some truly inspiring words written by Gregory Dix, a monk and priest of Nashdom Abbey, an Anglican Benedictine Community:

Do this in Remembrance of me

‘Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth this action has been done in every conceivable human circumstance. There has been found no better thing to do than this for kings at their crowning, and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph, or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country Church; for the wisdom of a Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; because the Turk was at the gate of Vienna; for the settlement of a strike; for captain so and so, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; tremulously, by an old monk on the 50th. Anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the Canonisation of St Joan of Arc –

One could fill many pages with the reasons why this has been done, but not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week, month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays faithfully, unfailingly, across the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to MAKE the holy common people of God.’

Well of course we are having a temporary change from all that. However my prayer is that whatever the new ‘normal’ is we will not lose sight of the centrality of the Eucharist in the future.

Canon Bob

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