Coming to the Lord's Table - #7

Someone recently said to me that the communion procession, at once a profoundly personal and a profoundly communal action, cuts the most against the grain of U. S. individualism. I think that this simple statement is right on target. Since the reforms of the saintly Pope Pius X a century ago, Catholics have increasingly been encouraged to receive the Eucharist at each liturgy. Receiving communion is the highpoint of the liturgy. It is also clearly the culmination of full, active, and conscious participation in the liturgy.

For many years this action has been profoundly personal and only incidentally communal. The Catholic practice of the first six decades of the twentieth-century inculcated the development of personal sentiment. Each person came up with hands folded, knelt at an altar rail, and received the host from the priest. People then went back to their seats, knelt down, and buried their heads in their hands in adoration, personal prayer and thanksgiving. Any music accompanied this action was either instrumental or done by the choir. Its purpose was to edify and to uplift, to inspire and to move the heart. Frequently this music was done in Latin.

When the Mass format changed in the late 1960s, we never really implemented the communion procession as a communal action. Why were we unable to implement this? First, the personal piety of the first six decades of the last century had deeply ingrained itself into the sentiment, mentality and activity of the communicants. We carried our heart-felt piety into the last forty years. Changing this deeply felt sensibility would take much longer than any liturgical reformers suspected Second, the ritual taught an exclusively private piety; it worked. While our documents envisioned a communal procession, our processions remained rooted in an individualistic, private piety. We simply kept coming up in line, queuing up one after another to the priest, deacon, or lay minister who would give us the host. We never choreographed our processions in a way that they would tutor us communally. Third, we told communicants to join in the communion music. But we did not help the assembly by working out new patterns of ritual movement or by offering our people simple and easily singable tunes. We simply did not recognize that communal singing and processing would require a major inner shift in everyone's deepest self. Consequently, people just did not sing and continued to process as individuals coming up to communion. Cantors found themselves doing solos, choirs found themselves singing on behalf of the flock, and ushers, if they functioned at this time, just kept order.

This has been further complicated with the current emphasis on an individually tailored spirituality. Hence, some parishes only focus on individual reverence at the time of communion. Some assemblies find it difficult to envision this action as a communal, ecclesial action. Furthermore, we are still learning how to move in graceful, rhythmic movement together. We dance well individually; but dancing together requires that we learn new and different skills. Where does this leave us? It leaves us at the beginning. We are discovering new sensibilities and heart-felt piety. We are finding new rhythms and movements in our processions. We are learning to be patient and to pay attention to one another.