By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Many small businesses have closed as a result of extensive lockdowns. The situation for those who remain is desperate. Ingenuity has resulted in a host of new business practices as a result, many of which will probably carry over to a time in the future when things may return to what we recall as normal.
Now vendors fighting for their survival during the ongoing pandemic boast of “contactless” service. COVID is passed through various kinds of contact so, it makes sense, zero contact means zero chance of catching it.
That might be fine for protecting life and health while buying and selling. Humans, however, still need “contact” with one another for spiritually healthy and fulfilling lives. Life is more than getting and spending.
The most important aspect of the life of my parish family every week, after the prayer of the Holy Mass together, is social time spent in the context of a meal. The first Christians imitated Christ and the apostles with their agape meals prior to the Eucharist, according to the pattern set by the Lord on the first Holy Thursday.
The lines later became blurred between the two aspects of Sunday practice and thus, as Scripture attests, Christians were showing up drunk for the celebration of the Eucharist. Paul later called for moving the meal to follow the liturgy and thus, today, we have the customary fast prior to receiving the Eucharist.
From the beginning, then, the Lord’s Day itself was dedicated to these two aspects of the Commandments, the vertical and the horizontal, as it were. Loving God was put into practice in the liturgy for the vertical aspect and loving our neighbors was facilitated by time spent together visiting and conversing over a meal for the horizontal.
In many Catholic parishes today, that meal has withered down to a quick cup of coffee or juice and a donut. In the vast majority of parishes, some of them quite large, the burden of logistics necessary for putting on a meal mitigate against the idea. For many Catholics Sunday at the local parish unfortunately does not offer the opportunity for social time which builds community by fostering bonds of love for neighbor.
This does not mean such cannot be attempted on a smaller scale. Certainly, each family at home should share a meal together on Sundays as an extension of the Eucharist and for strengthening their natural bond by means of supernatural grace.
The more diminutive size of my parish affords us the luxury of a weekly potluck after the largest Mass, a Traditional Latin beginning at 11 a.m. If you come late to the feast, there might be small pickings but, for the most part, everyone goes away satisfied. We have had to adapt our practices to the new reality, after reopening following the severe lockdowns, but we are slowly and cautiously returning to normal as procedures allow.
On a recent Sunday in the context of a homily I let our parishioners know how proud I am of their hospitality, kindness, and witness and how blessed I consider myself to be among them. Strangers sincerely seeking community have found welcome and charity among us over the years. Some so for only a short time, but others have found a permanent home.
How do I know this about them? I spend time with them each week because I, too, acknowledge my own need for contact with them in community building beyond our worship together each week. I go to the hall for the Sunday meal as much for my own sake as theirs, for my own needs for friendship and “contact” with others.
The young children play with each other, the single men sit together in a kind of “mutual protection society” and wives and husbands find adult interaction sometimes lacking during a busy week with the little ones at home. Engaged and courting couples also join us.
All aspects of human life in the parish thus come together, each person feeling welcomed and affirmed while also satisfying the basic need for food. Hospitality is practical and spiritual. Social contact feeds more than one aspect of the human person.
Little wonder the Lord exalted “contact” into a commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We must draw near to and enter into conversation and friendship with one another in order to live out our faith and work out our salvation.
We can trace more than one convert in our parish to our Sunday repasts.
James, a local in our village, began eating with us for a time and then found himself attracted to the faith. He began to attend weekly Mass and took convert instruction. He entered the Church last spring and now happily continues in community life with us each week.
Another local recently found herself attracted to our little church and met some of our parishioners. She, too, has begun attending Mass and the Sunday meal. She has expressed an attraction to the faith and we hope she will begin instruction soon.
I must also mention a young husband and wife, she once a Mormon and he an evangelical Christian. They and their young baby also found our little parish after some time exploring Protestant alternatives. Their baby is now baptized and they are undergoing weekly instruction in preparation for entering the Church.
They have remarked, to my amazement, about the lack of hospitality and welcome at a number of non-Catholic faith communities. I have often heard that Catholics wandered away from the Church sometimes in search of the contact with community they have felt lacking at a local Catholic parish.
Through negative example, we thus have the testimony of the human person himself in regard to the desire for contact with others, in particular among brothers and sisters in faith.
Each year at Advent we prepare to celebrate once again the moment in history when God made definitive contact with all of humanity for the first time in the mystery of the Incarnation. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
We must catch grace, an “anti-virus” if you may, in order to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth if we would have life in Him. Nothing says this more eloquently than the Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament, where the Lord gives His own Body and Blood, with which we must come into contact by eating.
“If you do not eat my Body and drink my Blood you have no life in you.” The Lord excludes the possibility of eternal life for those who would remain aloof from contact thus with Him. For this reason pastors everywhere are working hard to ensure their flocks return soon to this fullest expression of contact with God and reception of His grace. Let us pray for and join with them in their efforts.
God is not “contactless.” And neither can we be if we would share His life now and forever.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Let’s continue the conversation on Parler, the new free speech social network where you’ll find me @FatherKevinMCusick.
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