The Undeserved Gift

Spiritual Communion . . . I had no idea what it was as I doggedly attended Mass with Rich each Sunday, all the while wrestling with my frustration and attempting to cope with all the differences in our lives since Rich converted to Catholicism.

In addition, I found myself yearning to love, and be loved, by Jesus each time I was excluded from the table of the Lord at Mass. I believed Jesus was there, he is always in the midst of those who trust and call upon His name. St. Matthew writes, “For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.” Matthew 18:20 (New Jerusalem Bible) Jesus was in our midst, but I was blinded by my preconceived ideas of how I could meet Him. I expected to meet him through the moving of the Holy Spirit in song, prayer and during the reading and preaching of the word. And I longed to again meet Him at His table – a longing that all Christians receive at birth in Him.

But, at our Catholic church (I wrongly concluded) I was a bystander at His table and He was not there for me. As far as I could tell, before that Sunday in July, God had heard my heart’s cry, but He had chosen to keep silent. He did not change my situation so as to meet my wants as I had hoped He would.

He had another plan.

I knew from my reading of the Psalms that at times God is silent toward His children . . . but He is never out of touch with us. While God had been silent in my life at other times, His silence had never been this long nor this deep – nor had my longing to hear Him been so intense.

On the Saturday evening before the Sunday Mass I mentioned in the last post, Rich experienced for the first time an hour of prayer devoted to waiting before Christ in the Eucharist (know as Adoration). I remember patronizing Rich as he rambled on in glowing terms about his experience that evening at a local youth rally with our church. I listened with skepticism to his buoyant excitement about praying before the Blessed Sacrament (a consecrated host placed in a special holder called a Monstrance). Rich was sure Jesus would answer the prayer he poured out before Christ’s beloved Presence – his prayer that somehow I would find peace and comfort in the Catholic Church.

I sensed his deep disappointment when I told him I was glad to support him in our new church, but that I was quite comfortable with my Protestant beliefs and mind-set.

To say I was interested in understanding Roman Catholic thought would have been false. I was happy with what little knowledge I had already gained. I pined for my life as a Protestant. Moreover, I was hurt – and irked – that our new church’s rules denied my right as a child of the King to the Communion table.

I was doing my wifely, Christian duty following my husband, and I suppose I expected God to notice.

The Lord’s deafening silence hurt me all the more.

I must say, though, when the Lord’s answer came, it was not the welcome release I had hoped for. Rather, it was an invitation to an action of faith.

Although I’d been baptized in the Holy Spirit for years with the gift (Charism) of other tongues, and I’d known His overpowering peace through the moving of the Holy Spirit in my life, I was surprised that the Lord’s first clear instruction to me in many months was that I receive communion by faith. It was one thing to see His answers to prayer like asking for my shoulder to be healed or the bills to be paid, but it was quite another to receive a direction to do something that seemed opposite to my understanding of how non-Catholics should act.

I might not like the rules – but I knew how to follow rules. And, angry though I was with the Catholic Church’s rule that I could not take Communion, I was willing to comply, because complying equaled obedience to the Lord, and that meant I accepted His direction whether I understood it or not.

Christ did not suspend the rule, but offered me a gift I had not expected nor asked for. All I had to do was receive it.

Long ago, I had learned God is not as interested in our pleasure – or in what we think He should do, as He is interested in our obedience. And the Father likes to take us at our word. When we say, “I will go anywhere for you,” – He will send us. When we say, “I will do anything for you,” – He will ask it of us.

I had made those promises of going and doing many times during my thirty years of attending Protestant worship services. It had never entered my mind that His “sending” and “asking” would involve kneeling in a Catholic church. More to the point, I never imagined Jesus would ask me to receive Communion by faith during the consecration of the bread and wine. I accepted Jesus’ gift not because I deserved it, but because of God’s grace given to me to accept it.

I am a proud, arrogant, peevish woman who could never be good enough nor worthy of such a magnificent gift. I’d smirked at Rich’s belief in Christ’s presence in the consecrated host the evening before – and with razor-like precision, Jesus challenged my Protestant know-it-all attitude by offering me Himself as supernatural food at Mass the next morning.

His mercy is overwhelming.