Communal Life… Communal Penance…
In a recent post to the Spitfire Grill, I shared something that had come to me a few months ago when meditating on why God called me into the Catholic Church and not any other member of my family (so far, that I know of).
There was a time earlier in my conversion when I was thinking ‘why me?’ I mean, why not anyone else in my family. I’m the youngest, and definitely the least ’spiritual’ I guess you could say, of them all. The thought also occurs that it probably isn’t anything special about ME per se. Not only that but thinking about how much I wished that I could share what I’ve found with my family… and knowing that wasn’t possible.
I don’t remember how the thought process segued but I ended up thinking about the people of Israel and God’s dealings with them. In the scriptures, when God talks about Israel being taken into bondage, and then brought back out four hundred years later, He talks about them as though they are the SAME people. He considers His promise to bring them back as fulfilled, even though the generation who was taken captive died long ago, even though generations have died during the captivity. He doesn’t see them, or always deal with them, individually. He deals with them COMMUNALLY. He says His people have been brought home, and so they have.
At the time, that was a rather revolutionary concept for me to understand. It did give me a measure of comfort though, to think that however long ago my family broke away from God’s Church militant and the Authority He placed over us, in some small way my family had come home, or begun to come home, in me and my children.
Since then, I’ve been learning a lot more about the communal life of the Body of Christ. As gracious as He is to us individually, it really isn’t about us individually.
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As a former protestant, I was intimately familiar with the individual aspect of faith in an imperfect form. As a Catholic, that individual aspect has been re-formed into a more ancient, more perfect form. A form that helps me to be better at the individual aspect of the faith. However, God has been teaching me more and more about the communal aspect of the faith… something I very much needed in order to have a more balanced and accurate perspective of the life of faith. I find that balance very hard to maintain as I tend to be such a selfish, self centered person. I do not find that focusing on the communal causes me to neglect or sacrifice the individual. Rather, focusing on the communal helps me to keep the individual in it’s proper place and aids me in self discipline and sacrifice.
Tonight we had our Advent communal penance Mass at Church. It began very like a normal Mass, but the altar candles remained dark as we did not celebrate the Eucharist. Having progressed through the readings, and prayed a common confiteor, our priest explained the procedure for individual confessions.
He had two priests assisting, so they were spaced at three of the four corners of the sanctuary. At the front of the Church, there was a small table with a lit Christ candle on it which was surrounded by very small red candles which were unlit. Father turned on music, to assist us in prayer and to help maintain the privacy of the confessional in the open room. After we went to confession, we were to light one of the small candles and return to our pew to pray. After everyone had been to confession and candles were lit, we knelt or sat quietly and prayed.
I was done fairly quickly, as I tend to sit near the front of the Church and the priest I preferred was up in that corner by the baptismal font. Having lit my candle I knelt to pray and wait for my children to finish. Slowly, one by one the individual candles were lit from the Christ candle. Slowly, as each soul was cleansed, the light spread and grew.
As the last parishioner lit their candle and sat, our priest, the last still hearing confessions, came down to sit by one of the other priests. He leaned close and I thought he was just speaking to his brother priest while waiting for us to finish. However, when the priest nodded and completed the absolution and blessing over him, I realized that our priest too had made his confession. Rising, he lit the last small candle and the beauty of this service broke over me. This man, our priest, our brother… the completeness of our communal penance made more perfect by his joining us in the sacrament. This small portion of the Body of Christ come together to purify itself during Advent, to prepare the way of the Lord as best we could in obedience to Him.
It struck me deeply, the beauty of this communal act. The humility and brokenness of each penitent, admitting before each other and God their sins. The mercy, comfort, and forgiveness evident in the welcoming smile of each priest. The indescribable blessing that comes with the hands upon your head as absolution is given, the burden lifted. A new beginning, ours once again.
