The Weight of the Wafer

But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ John 4. 27 - 32

Being a purist, intinction was never acceptable to me. I embraced the excuses like:

it is less sanitary than sipping from the cup because all the people's fingers go in the wine, or it is not a holy as drinking from the cup just as Jesus and the disciples did.

Then COVID came, and like the rest of the world, I became fearful of sickness. Intinction was enforced unless you were at a church where each person had her own little kit with wine and bread. (I was at one church in a small community where the rector delivered kits to parishioners, leaving them on doorsteps so the recipients could participate in the Eucharist online!)

Since COVID, I have become more careful about spreading germs, and so when I have a cough or a cold, I have started intincting, because of an experience I had a few months ago. As I lifted my hands to receive the wafer, I suddenly had a sense of the holiness of holding the Body of Christ. The wafer no longer felt weightless , but instead I sensed the heaviness of the Incarnation, and I paused to reflect on that honor, that burden. Trancelike, I carefully lifted the wafer with two fingers, dipping it gently into the wine and the Holy Eucharist took on a new dimension for me after 60 years of partaking in it.

The responsibility of participating in the Holy Eucharist is mighty; the burden is real. Like the Piéta, I held Christ in my hands in a new and different way, knowing that I was changed as I walked away from the altar that day. Since then, I often intinct, and the wafer and the responsibility become heavier and heavier.

~from Pray as you Go, I offer this closing.

You have given all to me.

To you Lord I return it.

Everything is yours.

Do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me.