Eucharistic famine: one description of the pandemic keeping people from eucharistic celebrations. The burden is particularly hard for Christians for whom eucharistic liturgy “is the most gracious legacy of [Christ’s] new covenant. On the night he was delivered up to be crucified he left us this gift as a pledge of his abiding presence.” Because liturgy is ritual behaviour its repeated experience shapes hearts and minds to count on it. What does “counting on it” mean? Only to have it?
Does not counting on eucharist mean relying on it to sustain one to embody Christ’s self-sacrificial way in and for the world? During the ease of sharing eucharistic communion do Christians run the risk of missing the ways in which Christ is present to us and with us? Orthodox Fr. Alexis Vinogradov reflected about “communion beyond the eucharist in pandemic time.” Directed to ministers of the eucharist, his reflection affects all the baptized.
“But is communion limited to the Eucharist? And is not the purpose of the Eucharist itself to reveal the very essence and goal of all of life as communion?” https://t.co/bOnhtzJtjw— Aristotle Papanikolaou (@atpapanik) April 22, 2020
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