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Drive-Through Communion
by Philip Metres
We pulled up on our bicycles, my 18-year-old daughter Adele and I, and took our place in a line of cars on the blazing asphalt parking lot behind St. Dominic. It was summer 2020, and we’d been cooped up for too much of spring and early summer, waiting for the lockdown to end. Though Mass stayed online, St. Dominic began to explore ways to offer communion. So outside, under two party tents in the parking lot, eucharistic ministers stood in two separate lanes, as if they were a pair of toll booth operators ushering you from your lonely state to the Body of Christ.
What is this Eucharist? In the Roman Catholic churches of my youth, the wafer that was called bread was a thin, dry, tasteless thing, which we were counseled not to bite, as it was the flesh of Christ. The word comes from the Greek eukharistia, meaning “thanksgiving,” itself from the Greek words eu (well) and kharizesthai (offered graciously, of a grace).
Growing up Catholic, we’d get in line for the Eucharist each Sunday at Mass. One day I noticed, however, that someone would stay back in the pew as the rest of us went up to the altar. “Before Vatican II,” my mom explained to me then, “we wouldn’t take communion if we had not gone to confession, or felt we were in state of sin.” That was the vibe I got—that they felt a sorrow that held them back. Those who came forward would receive the bread directly on the tongue—the hands could be dirty, after all—and while kneeling at the altar railing, following quickly like the wine-turned-to-blood. After Vatican II, the railings came down and the hands came out—the right hand crossed and cupped beneath the cradled and open left hand.
In suburban Cleveland, at St. Dominic, the eucharistic ministers stood in the shade of the tent wearing surgical masks, shields, and gloves—their shields growing humid from their breathing. We walked our bikes forward, said hello to Jodie, the ever-friendly staff member passing out Sunday bulletins. At last, we were next, donning our cloth masks before reaching the minister. She raised the wafer, I bowed my helmeted head, and I received it in my right hand, still hot from the handlebars. Then Adele walked forward, bike still beneath her, her hands raised and open to receive this bit of thanksgiving.
She raised the wafer, I bowed my helmeted head, and I received it in my right hand, still hot from the handlebars.
Eucharist, Communion, Real Presence—so many names for this simple thing. The Catholic insistence on transubstantiation—the transformation of bread into God—means that this is not a mere symbol of Christ, but the Real Presence. It sounds absurd even to this lifelong, struggling Catholic, that such a cracker that no store would be able to give away for free could be sacramental. Could be the flesh of God.
Who knew how long we’d be biking up for outdoor Eucharist? Time had slowed, and imagining the future felt impossible. Still, I took a photo of Adele, taking Communion, to commemorate the ritual—something I had not done since she had taken her first Communion, in a white dress that seemed bridal, with veil hanging down her back.
Adele and I biked a lot that summer. Ever since she was a baby, she had endless energy, a high-powered alertness that alarmed strangers. When she found a love for running cross-country, it fed her like no other activity. Yet in the fall of 2020, her freshman cross-country season at college would be canceled, though they did off-season runs six feet apart in the Maine woods near Bowdoin.
We could not even imagine that within a couple of years, she’d experience the first symptoms of Long Covid, putting her running career on hiatus for the foreseeable future—racing heartrate at minimal exertion, brain fog, and total physical exhaustion. We could not imagine the agony of her young body—with no signs of external disability—broken invisibly, deep on the cellular level. We could not imagine the callous incapacity of doctor after doctor to believe her, and so many others—that she wasn’t out of shape, but in the fight of her life.
Her healing is what I pray for first when I wake up. My wife is now a lay expert in Long Covid, and we still wear masks indoors over four years into this nightmare. I want to believe what St. Paul says, that “although our outer self is wasting away, our inner nature is renewed day by day,” but it’s easier for me, in midlife, to accept the transience of bodily strength. I do not accept it for my daughter.
But I also see her tremendous inner strength, her hope against hope, as she faces the challenge of each day. She has always been radiant, even in her occasional and well-earned despair. At the core of the mystery of Eucharist is that Jesus’s love is greater than his suffering, and ours. That he gives himself utterly to his friends. To us. I don’t know what I believe most days. I don’t know what’s ahead for Adele. In the long run, I know where all life leads. I pray that when we are broken—and we will be broken—we may be broken open, not merely into insensate fragments. Broken open, flooded with light, shot through with grace, shared with the love of the one body we are.
At the core of the mystery of Eucharist is that Jesus’s love is greater than his suffering, and ours.
Back in the sun-drenched parking lot at St. Dominic, in the summer of 2020, before we knew anything of the personal trials ahead, we lingered a moment with some older parishioners who’d set up lawn chairs to savor some community with their communion. They know that their days are short, so they slow down time, give thanks, hold onto the good moments longer.
I keep going back, for that longing together for a word that will heal, for the bread that brings us into one body. We waved to our elders then wheeled out of the parking lot, taking the long way home, the odd taste of God still lingering in our mouths.
