Christ’s Body in the World
Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
October 1, 2014
Dom Gregory Dix, in The Shape of the Liturgy (p. 251), notes a curious co-relation in
the history of Anglicanism in the last 300 years: usually the more committed clergy and
laypeople are to acknowledging and liturgically honoring the real presence of
Christ in the bread and wine of the sacrament, generally the more forward-leaning
they have been in working for social justice and caring for the poor. Dix writes:
“…
[It is] a matter of observable historical fact in the English history of the
last three centuries, from [Lancelot] Andrewes and [Archbishop William] Laud
through [John] Wesley, F.D. Maurice and the early Ritualists of the English
slums down to Charles Gore and Frank Weston, that a high doctrine of the
sacrament has always been accompanied by an aroused conscience as to the
conditions of Christ's poor...[and] that Christian neglect or oppression of the
poor has generally been accompanied by a disesteem of the sacrament.”
This co-relation has sometimes appeared
surprising to those who associate “high Church” practice with social
conservatism and wooden traditionalism.
But the link is clearly there nonetheless.
The reason, I believe, is the idea that we
cannot worship Christ on the altar on Sunday and then on Monday simply turn a
cold shoulder to beggars and homeless people.
Christ, after all, was homeless and made his living off the charity of
others. Common things made holy—bread
and wine become the body and blood of Christ, in whatever mysterious way we
might understand that—implies that our common day-to-day life, with its common,
day-to-day problems like poverty and hunger, must be sanctified as well.
In addition, the experience we have of the Real Presence in
the Sacrament is part and parcel of the idea that the Church itself is Christ’s
body, and, in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, “ Christ has no
body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.”
May we all have an increased reverence
for the wonderful gifts God gives us, and act in ways that show God’s love to
all.
Grace and Peace, Fr.
Tony+
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