Before I first celebrated the Eucharist, I practised in my dining room with a plastic IKEA plate and two coffee mugs. It was jerky. I made marks in my prayer book to indicate when to raise the chalice, when to extend hands and when to clasp them. The solemnity weighed heavily.
Several times a month, I celebrate in a nursing home. It goes like this ...
A member of staff has thoughtfully put a frilly table cloth over a wheeled overbed table.
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| Generic image: Google didn't turn up many pics of bread and wine on an overbed table with Jeremy Kyle looking down |
I welcome the residents and say how nice it is to be with them. Many are asleep, some are mumbling to themselves. A few peer up.
I try my best to pronounce all the -ests and -eths of the traditional rite that these people were brought up with. I inwardly roll my eyes as I approach the words ':
who made there (by his one oblation of himself once
offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction,
for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel
command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death, until
his coming again:
A few members of our little congregation mumble along, the liturgy still within deep recesses of a failing memory, still retrievable when there's the strangely familiar sight of a man in a frilly white dress with a brocade scarf round his neck. When I'm their age, what will my generation know by heart? The canticle 'I'm just a Love Machine' to the setting of Girls Aloud?
My eucharistic assistant today is Pearl. Overworked and underpaid. I have a sneaky suspicion she has previously washed remaining consecrated wine down the sluice. But she's been here for 20 years, and she knows and loves every one of these people like her own grandparent. We make our way around the room together. She whispers in my ear 'just a wee dip for him' when intinction is needed to reduce a choke hazard. She tenderly takes the hand of a man with advanced Alzheimer's because last time he aimed his best right hook at me.
Someone has a mouthful of wet biscuit in her mouth when I administer. The winy bread sits there on a lip and goes nowhere. A gentle press of her lower lip sends the Body of Christ on its way. Or it comes back out onto a bib.
Might I inadvertently bring down this home's food hygiene rating?, I think.
One man serenely parts his lips, then spits it back out. 'You're trying to f%#*@ing poison me! Don't think I don't know who you are!'
Then we visit the bed-bound. In the corridor, a lady in a wheelchair holds out her hands. 'She's R.C.', says Pearl. 'It's up to you.' Well, really it's up to this lady. I'm happy for her to receive, but her parish priest mightn't be. Does she know I'm Anglican? Do I stand and explain to her that all Christian traditions are welcome at the Lord's table in the Church of Ireland, but her own tradition forbids her to receive from me?
Now is not the time to reflect on what constitutes informed consent. 'The body and blood of Christ keep you in eternal life', I say. 'Thank you, father', she says, and smiles.
Next stop, the hair dresser's, where three communicants are sitting under a
There are screams coming from some rooms. Smells emanating from others. Phil and Holly bellow from all corners about a phone-in competition to win a cruise round the Med.
And I think, I love my job.
Other days, I wonder what flipping difference it all makes. I groan at the sight of my in-box, the stack of paper to be filed that has just toppled onto the office floor, the excuses why a couple wanting a baby baptized still hasn't made it to church to meet me and give me details.
Today, I celebrated the Eucharist in a nursing home. Christ has come to us here. And he puts himself in our shaking hands, on our crusty bibs, lets us cough him up and wrap him in a paper tissue and dry out in a pocket until I can get him to hallowed ground.
And that's why they call it Holy Communion.
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