Dear Church,
As you may know, on Sunday June 23 all of our clergy will be in Louisville for the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church, leaving The Table without a priest to celebrate Holy Communion for the first time since we started worshiping together weekly in 2017! Because of this, we will be doing a service of Morning Prayer (without Communion) on Sunday morning June 23, instead of the normal Holy Eucharist liturgy.
Many of you are new to the Anglican tradition, and may wonder: why are priests necessary for Holy Communion? I’ll try and sketch a quick answer, and would invite further questions, if you have them.
First of all, it’s important to remind ourselves what is happening at the Holy Eucharist. According to the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, “the Sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace” (p. 857). The “outward and visible sign” of the Eucharist is the bread and wine, while the “inward and spiritual grace” is the Body and Blood of Christ given to God’s people for “the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our union with Christ and one another, and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet which is our nourishment in eternal life” (BCP p. 859).
The Eucharist is not just a mnemonic device to help us to focus our thoughts on Jesus. Something is actually happening as we partake. The sacrament is efficacious; in it God is doing something. It has a very real spiritual effect on us. Holy Communion is more than a symbol. It is a very real means of very real grace.
The second thing to note, then, is that the Eucharist is, along with Baptism, one of the Dominical sacraments (from the Latin “dominus,” meaning “Lord”), which means it was directly commissioned by Jesus himself. In the case of Holy Communion, Jesus commissioned it on the night of his betrayal in the upper room, and he gave this command not to the crowds or the 72, but specifically to the apostles, who were charged with carrying on the commandment for the benefit of the community of faith that would grow up around them after his resurrection.
So priests are necessary for Holy Communion because the charge of administering the sacraments for the care of the church is an apostolic charge, and Priests are ordained by Bishops in apostolic succession specifically to carry on the ministry that began in the upper room, “ministering the Word of God and the sacraments of the New Covenant, that the reconciling love of Christ may be known and received,” as it says in the ordination service for priests (BCP p. 532).
This connection to the apostolic ministry of Jesus, combined with the authorized liturgical forms that help us avoid cultural fads and/or heresies, make the Eucharist a sacrament that truly connects us to Jesus and all God’s people around the world and throughout history in a common gospel and a common faith.
Again, feel free to reach out to me or Fr. Matt if you have any questions about this. In the meantime, you will be in very good hands on June 23 as our lay leaders lead you in Morning Prayer. I am sad I will miss it! I continue to be so thankful for all God is doing in our church, and I deeply appreciate your participation in our common life together.
Grace and peace,
Fr. Ben
