So, there I was at my brother's house for a big indoor and outdoor party. All kinds of people. Relatives, shirt-tail relatives, neighbors, and friends of every stripe and some people I didn't know. I had just come from celebrating 2 Sunday Masses and baptizing a little toddler whose (huge) family is from Cameroon. On the way to the party I stopped at a hospice to give Last Rites and Viaticum to a dying 55 year old man. So, my mind was filled with the beauty of people of faith.
Then, at the party I was standing at a counter noshing on carrots and a woman I did not know came to the carrots and said, "So, you're the Catholic priest?" Uh oh, I thought, here it comes! "Well," she said, " I left the Catholic Church and I'm glad I did!" I asked, why? "You really want to hear?" Sure, I said. Then she took aim and fired away. After blaming the Catholic Church for one thing after another, she went on praising this her 3rd church she's been in since she left the Catholic Church. "We have a great band and we don't hear the same thing all the time."
After her tirade I asked her, But don't you miss Holy Communion? "Oh, we have communion." Really? How often? "Every week." Oh, I said, it's not the same, is it? "Of course it is!" Oh, no, I said; your church now doesn't believe that it is the True Body and True Blood of Christ, do they?
"You don't believe that you are eating Jesus at communion, do you!?" Of course I do! "No," she said; "communion only represents Jesus and His Last Supper. I never believed that communion was actually Jesus, even when I was Catholic!"
Then you never really were Catholic, were you?
How can it be that she spent 49 years in the Catholic Church not believing that the Eucharist is indeed the True Body and True Blood of Jesus? Maybe she did, but she mentioned that she went through a divorce at the time of her departure from the Catholic Church; and even though a divorce does not separate one from Holy Communion, some people feel that it does. That's because they misread their situation, as being unworthy, or somehow dis-graced, so they feel that they have to go elsewhere. That is truly sad. So, let's spread the word among our divorced Catholics that it's only a remarriage that so conflicts with the Gospel mandate, "Let no man put asunder what God has joined together," that reception of Holy Communion becomes an issue.
Meanwhile, my brother was sending one after another of his adult kids to rescue me. Thank God for my family.
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