Practices: Eucharist, or the Sacrament of Silence

The Lindisfarne Community is an expression of New Monasticism from within the Emerging Church movement.  That's a pretty packed statement, and I encourage you to explore what those terms mean, with a warning that the meanings seem to be changing as we speak.

In brief, the Emerging Church movement developed from within Protestant Evangelicalism, and expresses (among other things) the desire among evangelicals to "recover" sacramental practices such as the Eucharist.  As between Catholics and Protestants, Catholics have retained the practice of weekly Eucharist for lay people, whereas mainline Protestant congregations may hold Communion services once a month, or even less frequently.  There are other theological differences between the two broad traditions, but it is not necessary for me to delve into them here.

Suffice to say, I came this expression of monastic life not through Evangelical Protestantism but via Catholicism and Anglicanism, having been an Episcopal priest for several years before finding Lindisfarne.  I have celebrated small communion services at the bedside of dying parishioners, and grand Christmas and Easter services to packed churches with organ and choir and all the rest.  And I loved the Eucharist.  I loved attending it, chanting it, sharing it, consecrating it.  The most holy thing I did, for many years, was feed my people with a sliver of bread and a sip of wine.

But I am not a parish priest any longer.  I am a monastic and a hermit.  I crave solitude.  Silence has become the most sacramental thing I do.  The Eucharist, while listed in our Rule as the first among our practices, has not called to me in many months.  It, too, is Silent.

And so, for now, until the Holy Spirit (or my abbot or abbess) instruct me otherwise, I will cherish silence as the Real Presence of Christ in my life.  It may be an unorthodox definition of "The Good Gift" (a literal translation of the Greek word "eu-charist"), but it is the one which resonates now.