"I have called you by name, you are mine...

... when you pass through the waters I will be with you; 

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; 

when you walk through fire you  will not be burned

and the flame will not consume you"

So says the Lord in Isaiah 43: in many ways it is a simple but profound  message and one which brings much comfort. However, along with many others I think, I can find it difficult to take in this immense faithfulness of  God's love, especially when life feels hard even when those hardships are relatively minor. One of the things which helps me to remember God's love and faithfulness is being communicated by name as happened at both celebrations of the eucharist during the weekend I mentioned in my previous post On the Importance of the Eucharist . 

This, and a fabulous blog post by Claire, one of the priests who administered communion, started me thinking about how important being reminded personally of God's love in this way can be.  Communicating people by name can be a tricky business; it could feel exclusive in many situations such as in a 'normal' parish where visitors, or even those with less easily remembered names, could feel excluded if not given communion by name. They could be given the impression that God's love is only for the favoured few who are given communion by name and are 'first class Christians' so to speak. However, I think that in particular situations giving and receiving communion by name can be an important expression of God's particular love for and relationship with each person. 

This can be a particularly powerful experience for those of us who find it difficult to accept and believe at the deepest levels that 'God loves me' and 'God is calling me'.  It can be much easier to believe that God loves everyone else, but feel unworthy of God's love oneself: something I frequently feel.  Therefore to be given the gift of someone, through whom God is working, telling me that God loves me through God's sacramental incarnation in the Eucharist is the most amazing and powerful thing.  This is a love which has no edges, where none are unworthy and all are special to God individually as well as generally. Wow!  This is too large and wonderful to fully contemplate.  The only possible response I have is wordless worship, and being moved to tears of joy.

The Chapel at Compton Durville

This experience first happened at the Anglican Franciscan house at Compton Durville, in Somerset (which has now sadly closed) where I used to go on retreat.  Receiving the eucharist daily is awesome enough as it is, but on Saturdays and sometimes at other times, a retired priest called Arthur, who is a close friend of the Community, would celebrate the eucharist.  He must have celebrated the eucharist hundreds if not thousands of times, but each time he celebrated it was as if he was celebrating for the first time: a really fresh, alive sense of the presence of God.  This seemed to be felt by everyone present and was a great blessing to all.

I used to retreat at Compton Durville several times per year and so eventually got to know Arthur a little.  One day he gave us all communion by name, including me.   This was a significant turning point or me: when I realised that God turned to me, loves me and calls me as me, however imperfect.  Sometimes that knowledge of God's love and faithfulness is hard to hold on to, but the memory of God's powerful call and love through Arthur 's, and now other priests including Claire's and Kathryn's mediation is helpful at these times.

God is truly an incarnate God, incarnate through the bread and wine at the eucharist and flowing through others who open up a channel for God's love on Earth. 

On the Importance of the Eucharist

At the end of May, I went to Coventry for the installation of one of my friends as Canon of the Cathedral. It was a beautiful weekend in many ways: meeting lots of lovely tweeps, conversation, laughter, food and last but definitely not least: the eucharist.  I was once again overwhelmed by the presence of God in the Eucharist, so I thought I would like to draw together some of my thoughts in this area.

It all started at my confirmation.  I was baptised and confirmed into the Church of England as an adult and unusually had a gap of six months between baptism and confirmations.  Although it is common for those baptised as an adult to take communion before their confirmation, I did not do so.  I didn't know what to expect at my first communion but having come from a background which was memorialist in outlook and did not place a great deal of emphasis on the eucharist, or the Lord's Supper as they would call it, I certainly did not expect the overwhelming sense of the real presence of God which I experienced on receiving communion at my confirmation.  It was one of the most amazing, enlightening and transforming experiences of my life to date.  It is difficult to describe the sense of the love and presence of God which I felt: there are no words which are adequate to describe it.  ever since that day, the mystery of the eucharist has been a key place of encounter with the presence of God and a place of being fed and strengthened.

This might seem strange, especially from the outside, as God is everywhere at all times and the eucharist 'only' a ritual when looked at from a literal point of view.  Certainly, God's presence is also felt elsewehre in nature, in others, often in surprising places and situations.   However, for me, and for many others in my experience, the eucharist is not just a ritual.  It is a mystery where the presence of God and God's awesome love are made manifest through the humble medium of bread and wine. This awesome sense of God's love  has been conveyed through these humble symbols throughout the centuries since Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples and are a continual expression of Christ's incarnation and passion.

This is the amazing mystery of which St. Francis of Assisi writes so movingly in his Letter to the Entire Order:

O sublime humility! 

O humble sublimity!

The Lord of the universe,

God and the Son of God,

so humbles himself

that for our salvation

he hides himself

under an ordinary piece of bread!

From 'A Letter to the Entire Order' by St Francis, reproduced in A Sense of the Divine: A Franciscan Reader for the Christian Year, European Province of the Society of St Francis 2001.