Just when I thought I was smart...

So I was at a training session for Lay Eucharistic Ministers (LEM) at church this past weekend, and I had a bit of an epiphany, or maybe even more than one. I should start by clarifying what a LEM is. At our church, they are the people who take the consecrated host and wine to people who can’t make it to church on Sunday. At other churches LEMs are the people who help at the altar. So in case anyone needed to know, that’s what that is at Trinity, and that’s what I was being trained for.

Anyway, part of our training included going over what happens at the Eucharist so we understand the magnitude of the work LEMs do. While we were going over the service in the prayer book, Fr. Charlie asked us what we believe happens during the sacrament. So I jumped in and said something about how I was raised Catholic and thus was raised to believe in transubstantiation. We had been joking about some church words being more expensive than others, like “liturgical” being a $5 word, so I threw in that transubstantiation is a $10 word. It’s a biggie. And Fr. Charlie asked me to explain what it meant to make sure I wasn’t just opening my vocabulary wallet and showing a bunch of Monopoly money as the real thing. If you are Catholic and went to Catholic school, you can define this word while you balance cups on your head and at the same time work a hula hoop while standing on a balance ball. I spouted out that it means that the bread and the wine become the actual body and blood of Christ, that they are changed (trans) into the flesh and blood (substance). This led to a short side conversation about ritual cannibalism and what other issues people have with this belief. Fr. Charlie got us back on track by joking that I’d get the gold star for knowing my terms if we gave out gold stars, and asked us what else the Eucharist can mean.

Another member of our group spoke up next. This woman is a wonderful help in church, from volunteering at our soup kitchen to helping in the office every week to singing in the choir. And this woman is one of the most humble people, and caring, you could ever meet. She has been bringing the consecrated bread to a woman who can not come to church due to the cold and ice and snow for fear she’ll fall and be hurt. She said something like this:

I don’t know about the expensive words and I’m not educated like Kristin, but when I bring the bread to this woman, after I’ve given it to her, she just gets a look of peace on her face. It’s as if she takes a deep breath and relaxes after she’s been given the bread. It’s magical and holy and wonderful.

This was my first epiphany. I may know the $10 words, but that isn’t what the Eucharist is about. It’s about the mystical quality and holiness of being “fed with the spiritual food” of this sacrament. Fr. Charlie went on to explain the spectrum of beliefs surrounding this sacrament, and pointing out that both of us who responded were right, but that we were touching on different aspects of the spectrum. I’ll add that one of us did it much more eloquently and with feeling. That person wasn’t me.

But this wasn’t the end of the epiphanies. The next day, Sunday, I was serving on the altar. I had given Fr. Charlie the chalice and helped him wash his hands. He had handed me the water pitcher and the other items he didn’t need, and I had gone back to my post beside the altar. I listened as he said the prayers over the hosts and wine, lifting each up at the right time, and I heard the Sanctus bells ring at the right moment. But at some point when he was going through the prayers, a voice in my head said very loudly, “You don’t believe in transubstantiation. You’ve just been parroting that because it was what you’ve been taught.” Wow. Just like that. I don’t believe that. I don’t. After the priest and the congregation have prayed for the world, said the words from the Last Supper, and said the Great Amen, I think the bread and wine are special and blessed and holy, like holy water in Baptism, but they’re not flesh and blood. At least not to me. Who knew? Not me, evidently, and not my friends who sat with me the training the day before.

It doesn’t mean that the sacrament is less special to me now; in fact, I thought about my revelation a lot that day, and it’s been on my mind throughout the week now. It is special. It’s so special that I am prayerful in giving the wine to people at the altar. It’s not passing out drinks at a party. It’s so special that I understand why we don’t toss out the bread after we’re done, but we eat it all or make sure the birds do. It doesn’t go to the garbage disposal or the waste bin. And the wine gets finished off or poured onto the ground, the earth God created. It doesn’t get put back with the wine that hasn’t been prayed over. And it means that taking the host and wine to someone who cannot be at church, someone who needs them so much that he or she asks for them to be carried to the nursing home or apartment, is a very special and humbling task.

Just when I thought I was secure in my beliefs, that I could put them down on paper, as I’ll have to shortly as an assignment for my discernment committee, I was wrong. I do need to think carefully about the difference between what I’ve been taught to believe and what I really do. There is a difference. And the true beliefs are what I need to cull out and ponder. I guess I’ve got some work to do.