Spiritual Communion in the Easter Season

It is Easter week! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

I promised you an article about spiritual communion, written with the help and expertise of Fr. Paul Scalia of the Diocese of Arlington - wait no longer:

Spiritual Communion During the Easter Season

Waiting for the Resurrection

The Star of the Immaculate, World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanów, on Good Friday.

I have shared before my favorite online adoration, which, naturally, is in Poland. It is called The Star of the Immaculate, World Center of Prayer for Peace, and you can see it here. I took the screenshot above yesterday evening, during Good Friday, when all the lights and candles were out. Normally the room is blindingly sunny, with alternating soft blue and yellow light throughout the day, candles gently flickering, and pilgrims coming and going. Today, the room is illuminated only by sunlight, and I suspect around 8 pm Poland time tonight, everything will be turned back on, and Mary will be illuminated (as she should be).

This has been a tough Holy Week. I do not love liturgies streamed online (who does?) and do them faithfully because it genuinely is better than nothing, and I can feel a part of something - of the communion of saints also watching. It’s okay for a Sunday. For Holy Week, it doesn’t quite cut it. I was surprised to find I felt that way this week, that hope was harder to muster. Well, it is week four of quarantine, after all.

I talked with Fr. Paul Scalia, Pastor of St. James Church in Falls Church, VA, about spiritual communion and have an article about it coming out Monday. We discussed the human need for the physical: Thomas needing to touch Christ’s wounds; our need to receive the Eucharist. He assured me that spiritual communion is not the same as the real thing, and should serve only as a stopgap. I am looking forward to sharing the article with you.

The most interesting part of the conversation for me, though, was when I asked my very honest question - one that I think is on a lot of people’s minds - that I am having trouble feeling anything is different because of Easter this year. I have this delusion that it’ll act like a magic wand to wipe away the virus and the catastrophic emotional and economic effects, because Easter itself is a miracle, and God loves us and can do that, so why not?

Thankfully, he was understanding and patient of my absurd question. So I share with you his response, which I have been thinking a lot about:

Fr. Scalia says…that even in the darkest hours Christ is still risen.

“The externals for the disciples did not change after the resurrection, but in the deeper sense everything changed. That is the situation now – the truth that Christ is risen. Externally, things are still bad. However, in another sense we are reminded that even in the darkest hours he is still risen. In a sense, it’s something to appreciate even more.”

He says our current lack of things does not change the fact of Jesus’s resurrection. In a sense, it puts it into perspective.

“The resurrection did not make everything perfect, but offers a renewal of life.”

So - yes. Being a Christian does not equate to an easy life, ever. And that’s not the point of being a Christian. It is to live in Truth. And, no matter what our external circumstances - including, God forbid, pandemic and economic collapse - the Truth still exists. This Easter, we are given the opportunity to really see it and believe it with our own eyes, and to live it in our actions.

Palm Sunday: The Master Has Need of You

Last year Bishop Robert Barron’s Palm Sunday homily was called “The Master Has Need of You.” It is arguably the best homily I have ever heard him preach, and I have thought about it often over the past year. I highly recommend a listen.

What I love about it is the emphasis on your life is not your own. In the homily Bishop Barron asks us to review the special gift or talents God has provided for each of us, and what would happen if we turned those gifts into His service: a passion for the poor, an outgoing personality, a desire for justice. The title of the sermon comes from the scripture passage wherein Jesus asks the disciples to untether a donkey so that he may ride into Jerusalem (Mark 11:3):

When they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately on entering it, you will find a colt tethered on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone should say to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ reply, ‘The Master has need of it and will send it back here at once.’”

We are the “it.” We are the being of which the Master has need, to bring Him into the world. Barron emphasizes the fact of it being a donkey, too - not a marvelous, majestic creature, but an ordinary one.

How did you spend your Palm Sunday? I got dressed up and #BYOB (“bring your own branch”) for CIC’s noon Mass. That meant I ran outside and plucked a couple berry-laden branches off a tree (thank you, tree). I though it fitting that the leaves themselves are thorny: red berries and spiky leaves - blood and a crown of thorns. I have some palms left over from last year’s Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew, which I keep in front of my images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. So, I took them from their altar and held them with the branch. I didn’t feel silly. It felt like exactly what one should do at this time: adapt and persevere.

A note from Fr. Charles’s homily: he reminded us that people threw their cloaks on the ground in front of Jesus as he passed. The donkey walked across them. Fr. Charles said we ought to have the same attitude: to give generously to God without fear of losing whatever we’re giving.