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Exploring Participative Eucharistic Celebrations on Zoom…
Fr. Donal Dorr • 14 March 2021
Communion (Published on ACP website 14 March 2021)
Donal Dorr [Started 2 March ‘21]
I am an eight-five-year-old missionary priest living in Dublin as a member of a community of nine semi-retired elderly colleagues. We gather every morning to celebrate our community Eucharist, led in turn by the different members of our group. Our Mass together is the spiritual high-point of each day. We share on the scripture readings of the day, various members of the group contribute Prayers of the Faithful, and then we move on to the Eucharistic Prayer including the sections allocated to the concelebrants. When it comes to the time of the Communion everybody is able to receive under both species by dipping the Host in the chalice. The whole ceremony is for us an important experience of nourishing Communion with God, with each other, with the wider Christian and human community, and with all of creation. It provides us with a solid Christian grounding for our more light-hearted conversations and teasing of each other during the rest of the day.
I often contrast our situation with that of other Christian communities—religious Sisters or Brothers and people in parishes who used to be regular Mass-goers. During this time of pandemic many of them tune in to a live video of a Mass celebrated by a priest in an empty church building. In this situation they cannot see who else is tuned in and the priest is the only person who plays an active role. There is no opportunity for them to share with each other on the scriptural readings. They cannot receive the consecrated bread and wine. So there is very little of the usual symbolism of ‘communion’ which should be central in a Eucharistic celebration. They are effectively deprived of partaking in the central symbol which was used by Jesus at the Last Supper to express and nourish his disciples’ sense of communion with Him, with each other, with their past history and with all of creation. It is only the more creative of them who are able and willing to design their own ‘non-Eucharistic’ religious services to supplement or replace their very attenuated experience of taking part in a Eucharistic celebration.
In the previous sentence I have put the word ‘non-Eucharistic’ in inverted commas. This is because the pandemic situation challenges me to ask myself what is Eucharistic and what is ‘non-Eucharistic’. I am forced to go further and ask awkward questions about the appropriateness of the Church laws which govern the celebration of Eucharist and our present understanding of the nature of priesthood. I find myself forced to ask that dangerous question: ‘what would Jesus want us to do in this situation?’
I don’t think that our Church authorities are entitled to dismiss this question by saying that ‘we will soon get back to normal’. It is this very situation which invites us to look hard at what has emerged in our Church over the centuries as ‘normal’. This seems to me to be an appropriate time for our theologians and Church leadership to reappraise our whole theology of priesthood and of the Eucharist. Furthermore, my experience of working as a missionary priest in a remote part of Africa makes me very aware that for thousands, perhaps millions, of Catholics in many parts of the world the ‘normal’ situation is that they are deprived for most of the time of the opportunity to take part in a fully Eucharistic celebration.
Some Church leaders have told people who cannot ‘receive Communion’ that they should make an act of ‘spiritual communion’. But theologians have pointed out how misleading it is to make this kind of contrast between the ‘real’ communion and some kind of second-class ‘spiritual communion’. What then would be a more authentic response to the present situation where so many people cannot be physically present for the celebration of the Eucharist? Perhaps we need a quite radical re-think of the present canonical rules and of the theology which underpin them. I leave it to sacramental theologians, in dialogue with scripture scholars and with Christians ‘on the ground’ who are hungry for the Eucharist, to explore the possibilities.
But in the meantime, I suggest an approach which I think would not have the disadvantages of the kind of attenuated Mass-attendance which so many Catholics have to be satisfied with at present—and which might be a more authentic attempt to take seriously the words of Jesus to his followers: ‘Do this in memory of me’.
Why not set up a process where members of the congregation would take part in a Zoom event where there is maximum participation by the participants. This would be done first of all by enabling all the participants to see each other in the beginning in ‘gallery view’. Then some members of this virtual congregation would read the first reading and the psalm. The priest would then encourage some of the congregation to share their reflections on the scripture readings and to make spontaneous Prayers of the Faithful. Furthermore, some of the participants might choose to have a little bread and wine in front of them and to consume them at the same time as the priest consumes the Host and drinks from the chalice. They would do this to ensure that the priest is not left alone as he eats and drinks ‘in memory of Jesus’.
If the priest, in consultation with the parish council, chooses to celebrate the Eucharist in this latter way, theologians and liturgists may wonder whether the priest’s intention could ‘reach out’ to consecrate the bread and wine consumed by members of the congregation. This is not a question to which I would venture here to offer an answer. And I am not even sure whether it is a question that needs to be answered—or perhaps even to be asked. Maybe it is sufficient that the celebration offers deep spiritual nourishment to the priest and the members of the congregation as they strive together to celebrate the Eucharist ‘in memory of Jesus’.
Postscript.
I wrote the above piece two weeks ago, and left it aside for several days just to see if I needed to make any changes. But I left it substantially intact and was on the point of sending it off when I saw Soline Humbert’s very interesting piece of 5 March on this ACP website (reprinted from SEARCH a theological journal of the Church of Ireland). I have great admiration of Soline as a person, and as a theologian and liturgist; and above all for her courage over so many years, in BASIC and more recently in We Are Church Ireland. My piece will seem very tame compared with what she has written.
I like to find whatever space I can within the existing legal structures of our Catholic Church, while pleading and pushing for changes which I think are called for. So, in my piece I am suggesting an approach which offers an opening for what I think is a more creative and participative approach to Eucharist than just tuning in to a Mass celebrated by a priest on his own in an empty church—but one which does not involve infringing the current Catholic liturgical rules.
Comments:
One Response
Dairne McHenry
March 14th, 2021 at 12:23 pm
Donal, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I hope they will lead to conversations between sacramental theologians and scripture scholars, as you suggest. Meantime though, as an ordinary punter, my first thought on the comment in your Postscript re not infringing the current Catholic liturgical rules, was “But is that not exactly what Jesus did? He infringed the current religious liturgical rules of his time because of the hunger of his followers”. Food for thought! (Mark 2: v.23-27)
A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! That day I sensed very much the presence of Brigid the bishop and I was filled with joy and gratitude. In some ways we can say St Brigid has risen up and is leading the way for women to rise up. Although a woman in what was very much a man’s world and a man’s church, Brigid exudes a remarkable confidence in her being, in her words and in her actions. No doubt that confidence was rooted in a deeply contemplative life nurtured by prayer. “From the moment I first knew God, I have never let him out of my mind, and I never shall”. She embodies the authority which stems from being filled by the Spirit and a leadership at the service of peace, justice, hospitality to the strangers, charity to the poor and marginalised, reconciliation, healing and harmony with creation and care of the earth. The two Scripture readings we have just heard are very fitting for she was renowned for her practical care and generosity to those in need or suffering. Like Christ, she went around doing good. I must not be the only one who saw and heard in Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde’s recent words the spirit of St Brigid as she used her God- given authority to plead for mercy for the people in vulnerable situations in the face of unbounded cruelty. Brigid is a bold, dynamic presence. She is said to be a woman of the threshold, of liminal places, and she is a sure guide for our times when we also are in transition on the threshold of a new church and a new world too. She calls to us to step boldly forward with our torches burning brightly, bringing the light and warmth of God’s Love to a world gone cold in the grip of darkness and despair. Her life reminds us that with “God nothing is impossible” and to expect miracles. I shall end on a light- hearted note: I went on pilgrimage to St Brigid’s Well and Solas Bhride in Kildare last Tuesday to prepare for this retreat. On the way back from the well and driving through the wide expanse of the Curragh where thousands of sheep graze freely I started seeing a multitude of rainbows. It reminded me of one of the many whimsical stories about Brigid: Caught in a rainstorm, she hangs her mantle on a sunbeam to dry. Dripping from its edges, colourful rainbows form in the water droplets, and her mantle is ‘bright’ with colour. Lady, from winter’s dark, Star of Imbolc, rise! Dance across our threshold: Scattering warm laughter Seeds of hospitality, Tolerance, forgiveness! Return again to the folk: You the Spring we yearn for! (Tom Hamill)
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