Eucharist

‘Love bade me welcome’, George Herbert wrote in the early 17th century, ‘but my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin.’ In the early 21st century that poem still resonates in the soul. But from even further back I hear another invitation, indeed several invitations: “Come and see”, Jesus called out to two young men loitering on the shores of Lake Galilee: “come and see”. And they did, and became apostles of the Christ. Some years later the Christ broke bread and called to his disciples, “come and eat”; he took wine and said, “come and drink”. And the disciples of the Christ, did. And they do. In spite of a sense of guilt and sin, in spite of the consciousness of human weakness and decay, the Christ invites, and says there is no guilt, there is only forgiveness, only welcome. Herbert’s miniature dramatic masterpiece, “Love”, ends with the hesitant soul being so fondly embraced there can be no more resistance. “So I did sit, and eat”. And so do we.

On the rocky outpost of the Skelligs in the Atlantic Ocean off the west of Ireland, the hermits celebrated Eucharist, as they raddled their souls to find the source and sustenance: the word “love” being translated then, as “Christ”. They, too, knew, as we do, how our flesh is earth-flesh but is being suffused with the blood of Jesus. So we can dream the Eucharist of old saints, of anchorite, eremite, and be in tune with them, over the centuries, over impossible distances.

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So we can dream the Eucharist of old saints, of anchorite, eremite, and be in tune with them, over the centuries, over impossible distances.

Once, on Achill Island, I served as acolyte at Mass celebrated by quite an elderly priest. When he raised the Host it looked like a sunrise out of liver-spotted hands and I tinkled the bell with a tiny gladness. That morning the congregation was just one old woman; when I held the paten under her chin I noticed a growth of hairs; her tongue was ripped, her breath fetid and the Host balanced a moment, and fell. Although I should not have, I gathered up the Deity, the perfect white of the bread tinged where her tongue had tipped it; I swallowed it, and now I know I was taking within myself, a mere boy, Godhead and congregation, the long obedience of the earth’s bones and the hopeless urge to lay my hands in solace on the world.

Today I share, when I participate in the Eucharist, the presence of a people’s God, cajoling, inviting, bidding us welcome. I take the strange moon-bread they feed me and turn half a century back, down the side aisle to where I still attend, waiting among a frail seniority of old Ireland, and the blood of the welcoming God has the savour of vintage sherry and His flesh is a melting of ashes across the tongue; and I know myself shriven, embraced without complaint, smothered in love, a love that was manifest on the cross over two millennia ago and that has bade welcome to countless billions of people from all ages and from all lands. That is why I cherished the sudden gift of a poem, once when I turned back from the marble rail, having yielded once again to the great call: Come and see, come and eat, come, come, come. . .

I Am

I left the pew, slowly, following
men and women old as I, and older;
we are cautious now, we – communion

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of the living – holding on. I took
in my palm the white, the cosmic bread
and placed it on my tongue, took a sip
 
of the earth-sweet and bitter wine;
amen, I said, amen. So am I guest
at the crude table of the Upper Room,
 
am Jewish-Christian, Hellenist, I am
Greco-Roman, Byzantine, bear on my tongue
full two millennia of a difficult history,
 
the proving – down a long bleak tunnel
scarce candle-lit – of the original mandate
of the Alpha, the Omega, the Christ.