#11: An Ecumenical Community

The eleventh understanding identifies us as an ecumenical community, refreshed by the many streams God has permitted (perhaps caused?) to flow through salvation history.  We neither conform to anyone else's expectations, nor do we need them to conform to ours.  The Understanding puts it quite bluntly, "Other people do not have to be the same as us."  Having lived among other forms of Christian community, this approach is refreshing as well as challenging.

I have just spent three days in retreat with a community of Benedictine sisters. Guests are made most welcome, and the little flyer in each room emphasizes the Benedictine practice of welcoming every visitor as Christ in their midst.  Guests are welcome to attend all of the services in the chapel, and I often saw residents from the surrounding village and town attending services.  The nuns pray the offices several times each day, and chant the psalms in Latin.  The chant is lovely, and I often find it carries me along in a very peaceful manner.  Once each day they celebrate the Mass.  And here I stumble every time.  I am, after all, a sister monastic, and a priest myself.  But my community is "ecumenical."  We welcome all to the table.  But these dear sisters are Roman Catholic, and do not recognize my affiliation.  

I know some folk who would choose to receive communion, regardless of the known stance of the Roman Catholic Church that communion is only open to those in good standing with Rome.  And there are others who stay away with resentment in their hearts -- why am I not good enough to eat at your table?  Jesus wouldn't care!

Of course Jesus wouldn't care.  I don't care.  But at this moment in history, at this monastery, these folks care.  And why would I want to be aggressive or resentful toward these very kind and loving people.  So here's how I resolved the dilemma this time.  I waited until all others in the "public" congregation had gone forward for communion, then went forward and asked the priest for a blessing.  (A working knowledge of ecclesiastical etiquette is sometimes a handy thing!)  I crossed my hands over my chest and bowed my head, and let him bless me.  A small thing, and sometimes a hard thing, to voluntarily forego the heavenly banquet, but done out of respect for my hosts, and in full knowledge that they don't need to be the same as me, they just have to be authentically themselves in God's sight, I think it was the right thing.

And I came home to the hermitage, and rejoiced both for being among my sisters in faith, and in coming home to my chosen path.  Neither is complete in itself, and I will take into Holy Week this year a fresh sense of the woundedness and separation that plagues the Universal Church.  And I will be grateful that I at least have made a choice for ecumenism, and freedom in the Spirit.  Blessed Be.