Right now are the waning days of pregnancy. Contractions come and go. Intense, then subsiding. I can't walk without waddling. Sleep is fitful, restless. Comfort is elusive. I wake a hundred times. Every morning the kids ask if the baby will be born today. No one knows. These are my last days to carry. To be a vessel. Soon I will become the passage. . . . Each time the priest lifts high the cup and plate, intoning the thundering prayer I've heard for decades, I try to understand. What does it mean for God to be held in human hands? To offer us a way to become holy? Eucharist is vessel and passage. Jesus said I am the Cup of Life and I am the Way, and people were so startled by his strange words that they remembered them, recited them under breath a thousand times, wrote them down and passed them on, pressed them into the hands of others saying, see? It is all here. If you can try to understand. If you can believe. What I believe is this. We gather … [Read more...] about to be vessel and passage
Eucharist
7 reasons I love the Eucharist {the feast of corpus christi}
Bodies. Blood. Bread. Brokenness. My children bring all of this into my life. Care for their bodies takes up hours of my day: washing faces, changing diapers, giving baths. Boyhood brings bloodied knees, scraped elbows, tears and band aids and doctor's visits. Feeding our family is nearly a full-time job in itself: planning meals, buying groceries, cooking dinner, baking bread. And brokenness? Well, families don't have to go far to find proof of faults and flaws and failings. We rub up against each other all day long. The Eucharist has never felt more real than it has since I became a mother. This is my body; take and eat; blessed and broken - almost everything I have learned about the love and sacrifice of parenting is wrapped up this sacrament at the center of my faith. So in celebration of this Sunday's Feast of Corpus Christi (the Body and Blood of Christ), here are 7 reasons I love the Eucharist - and 7 favorite posts to explain why... It re-members me back … [Read more...] about 7 reasons I love the Eucharist {the feast of corpus christi}
the holy sacrifice of the mess
In French, the word for the Catholic Mass is "la messe." First as a student and then as a resident of France, this translation always struck me as slightly irreverent. I understood its Latin roots (Ite, missa est - "Go forth, the Mass is ended" - gives the same root of the word for both French and English). But every time my roommates asked if I was going to "la messe," the word always landed awkwardly on my Anglo ears. Because Mass was anything but messy! Quiet and calm, peaceful and prayerful: these were the mot juste to describe Sunday mornings. Way back then - in cool stone churches full of holy hush, pews lined with the reverent faithful, prayers intoned with perfect pitch, solemn and sacred - the whole point of Mass was that it was a foretaste of heaven. And I soaked up its beauty like the bright-eyed girl that I was. Now? Mass is a mess. With two squirming kids in the pew and a bored baby in our arms, we are living a different definition of that French … [Read more...] about the holy sacrifice of the mess
we care about the crumbs
In our family's parish, we eat bread. (This is not a theological discourse on the real presence; this is a simple recipe.) Each Sunday, instead of the thin white wafers traditional to Catholic communion, our priest breaks brown bread. It is held high in his hands for all of us to see and heaped high on silver plates for all of us to eat. It wasn't what I was used to as a cradle Catholic. But I have come to love everything about this practice. I love that the simple bread is baked each week by members of our parish. It tastes like loving service. I love how our priests have to take time to break the wide flat circles into hundred of tiny squares. It tastes like holy transformation. I love that the Eucharistic ministers need the help of altar servers to hold the plates while they offer the Body of Christ. It tastes like living community. Most of all, I love what real bread requires of those of us who eat it. You have to hold it carefully in your hands so you don't drop whatever … [Read more...] about we care about the crumbs
