One More on Spiritual Communion

HPR: Epidemic and the Liturgical Reform by Dr. Joseph Shaw

It is not surprising to find that when medieval-style pestilence stalks the streets, the Church has to reach back into the past, before that brief gilded historical moment, for responses. The most obvious example is “spiritual communion”: the practice of uniting oneself in prayer to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, since one is not able to receive sacramentally. Our predecessors in the Faith used to do this at the great majority of the Masses they attended, either formally or informally, since they received Holy Communion only once or a few times a year. When I mentioned the practice as a response to the epidemic in a letter to the UK’s liberal Catholic weekly, The Tablet, the first response of one priest was ridicule. We wouldn’t, he wrote, have a “spiritual collection,” would we?¹

The concern that the faithful receive Holy Communion reverently and fruitfully, and not mechanically is correct. It might even be claimed that a Christian should even consider abstaining from Communion if necessary, because he does not have the right spiritual disposition, or the "minimum" that is needed for Communion to bear fruit. A spiritual father would have more to say in this regard and appropriate advice that has been fitted to an individual.

As for the devotion or act of "spiritual communion"  -- I do question whether it is suitable or theologically defensible as being "efficacious" in itself. One must ask the Lord for His mercy and not slip into presupposition, but prayer that includes thanksgiving for gifts that have been received (assuming one has not fallen into serious or death-causing sin) should also include a petition that those gifts not be withdrawn or that they be continued to be given. One can express a desire to receive Holy Communion, which is how acts of spiritual communion are usually explained, but the faith/TRUST which is expressed (and the agape which follows) is more important than having some sort of belief that the act of spiritual communion has some sort of "quasi-sacramental" efficacy. Is it a legalist mindset that leads to the pursuit of certainties of spiritual realities?

Masses without the people are instinctively regarded as pointless by many Catholics today because they obviously have no social dimension: unless, in an attenuated way, through live-streaming. The idea that the celebration of Mass brings blessings on the whole Church, on the living and the living and dead, and is an act of worship for the glory of God, is one many Catholics today simply do not understand.

Holy Communion is re-focused, in this mentality, away from the reverence needed for the reception of the Living God under the sacramental signs, to an act of human communion: the social connection between members of the congregation. Instead of thinking about the need to be in a state of grace, or spiritual preparation and thanksgiving, those caught up in this way of thinking want to make it as much as possible like an ordinary meal: greeting people with a handshake, facing one’s host across a table, picking up bits of food with the fingers, sharing from the same batch of prepared food, and accompanying this with a drink. In theological reality, while the Mass is a meal, from the Last Supper onwards it has been a ritual meal: a meal focused on supernatural realities, not social or nutritional ones.

Is this a straw man? Are there Latin progressives out there saying that the Mass is just an act of communion between human beings? Reception of the gifts of a sacrifice is an integral part of the sacrifice, not an added benefit, and this is what all should recognize, unless one is tied to a Latin understanding of how the Eucharist is a sacrifice, and that is part of the problem.

The increasing emphasis on Mass as a meal began long before the Second Vatican Council. A major step in this direction was moving the reception of Holy Communion back into Mass, in the early decades of the twentieth century. For many centuries prior to this, Communion had been distributed outside Mass, and commonly (as the frequently of reception increased with the waning of the influence of Jansenism), between Masses. There is a parallel between this development, and the later encouragement of the distribution of Hosts consecrated at the same Mass, rather than those consecrated earlier and stored in the tabernacle. The meal symbolism is served by both changes. What may be lost is the sense of the eternity and singleness of the Mass and the Victim.

I have no strong personal objection to either historical development, but it is a fact that today the reception of Holy Communion outside Mass is once again going to become the norm, at least for a time. It seems that for many Catholics the very idea of reception outside Mass, except for the hospitalized and housebound, has become difficult to imagine, and much of the push-back against the banning of Mass with a congregation appears derive from the idea that if we cannot attend Mass, then we will not be able to receive Communion.

How far back does the language of "victim" go? Does it precede the language of sacrifice? (I doubt it.) But maybe it is found later in the liturgical tradition than one might assume.

Could it be that if the consecration of the gifts is removed from the praying of an Anaphora or Eucharistic Prayer, it would it still be a "Eucharistic" Prayer, a Prayer with the Son's Act of Thanksgiving? It seems to me that it might be possible for a liturgy of Presanctified Gifts in the Roman or Byzantine rite to be "Eucharistic" in so far as there is Thanksgiving, integral to both the Eucharist and the life of Christ.