Sacramental Communion

One of the great difficulties more specific to Catholics during this corona virus stay-at-home order is unlike "churches of the Word" who can communicate their message via various forms of Mass communication (television, radio, internet-livestreaming), the Catholic Church is a sacramental church.  This means that it isn't about simply communicating a message, but bringing about an encounter.  Yes, messages are important; we want to communicate what Christ has taught and we strive to apply His teaching and message to the contemporary situation - the signs of the times.  But a sacramental church is about more than a message - it's about a person.
While we do what we can at this time - which for many is connecting through word and image,  it is not only not ideal, it is missing a critical component: presence & community.

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, makes this point in his homily for this past Friday.  I encourage you to read it and bring it to prayer.  I would also encourage you to "read between the lines" and see a pastor who is struggling as all priests are.  Blessings!

FULL HOMILY [translated by ZENIT’s Virginia Forrester]

The disciples were fishermen: in fact, Jesus called them while they were at work. Andrew and Peter were casting a net. They left their nets and followed Jesus (Cf. Matthew 4:18-20). The same with John and James: they left their father and the boys working with them and followed Jesus (Cf. Matthew 4:21-22). The call was in fact in their job of fishermen. And this passage of today’s Gospel, this miracle, of the miraculous catch, makes us think of another miraculous catch, that which Luke recounts (Cf. Luke 5:1-11), the same thing also happened there. They had a catch, when they thought they didn’t have any. After He ceased speaking, Jesus said: “Put out into the deep” — “We toiled all night and took nothing!” “Go.” “Trusting in His word — Peter says — I will let down the nets.” Such was the quantity there — says the Gospel – that “they were astonished” (Cf. Luke 5:9) by that miracle. Today, in this other catch, there is no talk of astonishment. A certain naturalness is seen, one sees that there was progress, a path covered in knowledge of the Lord, in intimacy with the Lord; I’ll say the just word: in familiarity with the Lord. When John saw this, he said to Peter: “It is the Lord!”, and Peter put on his clothes and sprang into the water to go to the Lord (Cf. John 21:7). The first time, he knelt before Him and said: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Cf. Luke 5:8). This time he doesn’t say anything, he is more natural. No one asked: “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord, the encounter with the Lord was natural; the Apostles’ familiarity with the Lord had grown.
We Christians too, in our life’s journey are in this state of walking, of progressing in familiarity with the Lord. The Lord, I could say, is somewhat “at hand,” but “at hand” because He walks with us; we know it is He. No one here asked Him: “Who are You?” They knew it was the Lord. That of a Christian is a daily familiarity with the Lord. And, not doubt, they had breakfast together, with the fish and bread; no doubt they spoke of many things naturally. This familiarity of Christians with the Lord is always of community. Yes, it’s intimate, it’s personal but in community. A familiarity without community, a familiarity without Bread, a familiarity without the Church, without the people, without the Sacraments is dangerous. It could become — let’s say –a gnostic familiarity, a familiarity only for myself, detached from the people of God. The Apostles’ familiarity with the Lord was always that of community, it was always at table, sign of community; it was always with the Sacrament, with the Bread.
I say this because someone made me reflect on the danger that this moment that we are living, this pandemic that has made all of us communicate, including religiously, through the media, through the means of communication, also this Mass, we are all communicating, but not together, we are spiritually together. The people are small <in number but> there are many people: we are together, but not together. The Sacrament also: you have it, the Eucharist, today, but the people that are connected with us only have Spiritual Communion. And this isn’t the Church: this is the Church of a difficult situation, which the Lord permits, but the ideal of the Church is always with the people and with the Sacraments — always.

Before Easter, when the news came out that I was to celebrate Easter in an empty Saint Peter’s, a Bishop wrote me — a good Bishop, good, and he reproached me. “But how come, Saint Peter’s is so big, why don’t you put at least 30 persons there, so that people are seen? There won’t be a danger . . . “I thought: “But what does he have in his head to say this to me?” At that moment, I didn’t understand. However, as he is a good Bishop, very close to the people, he must want to say something to me. When I meet him, I’ll ask him. Then I understood. He was saying to me: “Be careful not to virtualize the Church, to virtualize the Sacraments, to virtualize the People of God. The Church, the Sacraments, the People of God are concrete. It’s true that at this moment we must have this familiarity with the Lord in this way, but <we must come out of the tunnel, not stay there. And this is the familiarity of the Apostles: not gnostic, not virtualized, not egotistical for each one of them, but a concrete familiarity in the people — familiarity with the Lord in daily life, familiarity with the Lord in the Sacraments, in the midst of the People of God. They undertook a path of maturity in familiarity with the Lord: let us also learn to do it. They understood from the first moment that this familiarity was different from that which they imagined, and they arrived at this. They knew it was the Lord, they shared everything: the community, the Sacraments, the Lord, peace and celebration.
May the Lord teach us this intimacy with Him, this familiarity with Him but in the Church, with the Sacraments, with the holy faithful people of God.
The Pope ended the celebration with Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction, inviting the faithful to make a Spiritual Communion.