THE ALTAR IN THE HEART: SPIRITUAL COMMUNION AND COVID-19
Jeremy Taylor, The Worthy Communicant.1671.(https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012476112); Pierre Lombart portrait of Jeremy Taylor (https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/97928/jeremy-taylor-1613-1667-bishop-down-and-connor)
Perhaps few saints ever envisioned a near-worldwide closure of parish churches, though that is the reality we are facing today. Still, the words of those who came before us can resound with unexpected prescience.
Jeremy Taylor’s 1660 devotional work, The Worthy Communicant, is a case in point. Near the very end of that book, Taylor addresses himself to those for whom typical communion is no longer possible. For those suffering in anomalous situations, he recommends what he calls a “comfortable doctrine,” a doctrine meant to comfort the afflicted: namely, the doctrine of spiritual communion. This doctrine, which Taylor traces to St. Augustine, states that the faithful can receive the Eucharist through prayer even when geographically separated from the celebration of the liturgy. In the pithy words of the Latin church doctor: “Believe, and thou hast eaten.”1
In circumstances not so governed by our concern with COVID-19, I suspect several of Taylor’s statements would jump out at us, particularly his identifications of who might be comforted by this doctrine. For starters, he explicitly names those whose lives are affected by illness. But he goes on to mention those attempting to avoid “the hands of a wicked priest,” a phrase that is chillingly relevant to our own religious culture. In this way, Taylor completely rejects the idea that the abused are somehow dependent on their abuser for the mediation of sacramental grace. The idea of the local church gathered at Eucharist is not to be contorted into a kind of prison, outside of whose bounds—so the threat goes—there is no salvation.
In contrast to this idea, Taylor proposes that when someone communes spiritually, they in fact experience a deep union “with all the congregations of the Christian world,” a daringly ecumenical statement to make in the context of the vitriolic 17th century. In this sense, spiritual communion is profoundly catholic, an encounter with the universal body of Christ. Far from hedging the believer into a painful solitude, Taylor instead opens up horizons.
Yet Taylor argues that this expansive catholicity only makes sense if, at the same time, the communicant forswears an overly individualistic piety. He warns that spiritual communion is not meant to be undertaken with an attitude of “peevishness and spiritual pride; not in the spirit of schism and fond opinions; not in despite of our brother.” Rather, it may only be undertaken out of “actual charity” for the neighbor.
Reading these words, it is hard to think of a time that more strictly met these requirements than our own. The current pandemic has transformed our solitude into one of the most pressing acts of neighborly concern that we could ever imagine. We refrain from actual communion precisely out of an “actual charity” and “spirit of devotion.” We have realized that we are, indeed, one body, and each member of this body deserves our attention and care.
We can therefore have no doubt that Taylor’s words apply to us. He writes that those who are moved by love of the neighbor “may place themselves upon their knees…building an altar in their heart” in order to be “fed of the spirit.” This unadorned act of prayer is all that is necessary for us to receive the sacrament.
In other words: now is the time for us to lean in to our eucharistic piety, not away.
Granted, Taylor’s words do not necessitate a single, uniform solution across all the parishes of our church. We are living through a situation for which there is no easy blueprint available. Pastors are making decisions on a day-to-day basis, with as much wisdom as they can muster. Now is not the moment to bicker or to tear down those who see things differently than we do or to shame those whose concerns are distinct from our own.
I still wonder, though, whether Taylor’s advice doesn’t offer us some helpful guidance about how we are to structure our liturgical life during this time of social distancing. The first principle I’d extract from Taylor is that Sunday worship can still be fruitfully centered around a eucharistic piety, a piety that emphasizes the universal body of Christ. It is a time of longing for this body, in which it prays, in the words of that early eucharistic prayer from the Didache: “Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and then was gathered together and became one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom…”2
The second principle would be that, while our meditation might be directed towards the Eucharist, spiritual communion doesn’t necessitate a service of Holy Communion. As we know, Holy Communion only became standard among most Episcopal parishes in the last century or so, and many of our forerunners in the faith lived off of the spirituality of Morning Prayer (most often with Litany and Ante-Communion!) as their weekly bread for centuries. Could an act of spiritual communion be appended to our offering of the Daily Office?
That being said, I find it painful to live through a Sunday without the Eucharist, and the earliest patterns of the Church confirm this habit, even in times of great calamity. The 1979 Prayer Book is without qualification when it states that “the Holy Eucharist” is “the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day.”3 It might be now more than ever that we feel a need for the sacrament’s comfort and encouragement.
Jeremy Taylor knew a similar yearning, something we realize when we consider his historical context. In 1660, Taylor was writing to an audience that knew what it was like to be deprived of Holy Communion—the service from the Book of Common Prayer had been outlawed in 1645, and as the historian John Spurr has noted, some parishes in England went years without a celebration of the sacrament.
Those who did manage to be physically present for a service took enormous risks. As the diarist John Evelyn records in 1657, he and his family were surrounded by soldiers while they were in the act of receiving “the holy Sacrament.”4
It is out of this background that Taylor offers his advice: even if you cannot attend the liturgical service, God will extend to you the spiritual grace.
The last guiding principle I’d pull from The Worthy Communicant is this: our acts of spiritual communion are uniquely capable of recognizing the grief we feel at being separated from one another. As Taylor argued, our acts of spiritual participation take on greater reality the more we are “really troubled for the want of actual participation.”
I think that a livestreamed celebration of the Holy Eucharist—far from being an iteration of a “private” mass—is actually a way to gather the community around this communal “want,” simultaneously acknowledging what we have lost and giving the gift anyways. According to Taylor’s logic, we are already receiving the grace of the sacrament: the visible celebration of Holy Communion would only recognize this interior fact.
What’s more, the prayers of the Eucharist offer a soothing familiarity to many. They act as a touchstone in this time when so many of our daily actions have become deeply unfamiliar. So much of what we love feels like it has vanished. The Church has an opportunity to proclaim that one phrase will never vanish—this is my body, which is given for you—even when all our bodies are hidden from one another.
Our liturgy itself announces the ability of God’s grace to reach us through every distance and disturbance. It asks us to take the eucharistic gifts “in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”5 In times like this, it is Jesus himself who inhabits our poor, fragile faith—so often wafer-thin—and feeds us with the bread that comes down from heaven.
RESOURCES
Act of Spiritual Communion
In union, Blessed Jesus, with the faithful gathered at every altar of your Church where your blessed Body and Blood are offered this day, (and remembering particularly my own parish and those worshiping there), I long to offer you praise and thanksgiving, for creation and all the blessings of this life, for the redemption won for us by your life, death, and resurrection, for the means of grace and the hope of glory. And particularly for the blessings given me…
I believe you are truly present in the Holy Sacrament, and since I cannot at this time receive communion, I pray you to come into heart. I unite myself with you and embrace you with all my heart, my soul, and my mind. Let nothing separate me from you; let me serve you in this life until, by your grace, I come to your glorious kingdom and unending peace. Amen.
Our Father…
Come Lord Jesus, and dwell in my heart in the fullness of your strength; be my wisdom and guide me in right pathways; conform my life and actions to the image of your holiness; and, in the power of your gracious might, rule over every hostile power that threatens or disturbs the growth of your kingdom, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.6
from THE WORTHY COMMUNICANT
Sec. 3: An Advice concerning him who only communicates spiritually.
There are many persons well disposed by the measures of a holy life to communicate frequently, but it may happen that they are unavoidably hindered. Some have a timorous conscience, a fear, a pious fear,—which is indeed sometimes more pitiable than commendable. Others are advised by their spiritual guides to abstain for a time, that they may proceed in the virtue of repentance further yet, before they partake of the sacrament of love: and yet if they should want the blessings and graces of the communion, the remedy which is intended them would be a real impediment. Some are scandalized and offended at irremediable miscarriages in public doctrines or government, and cannot readily overcome their prejudices, nor reconcile their consciences to a present actual communion. Some dare not receive it at the hands of a wicked priest of notorious evil life. Some can have it from no priest at all, but are in a long journey, or under a persecution, or in a country of a differing persuasion. Some are sick; and some cannot have it every day, but every day desire it.
Such persons as these, if they prepare themselves with all the essential and ornamental measures of address, and earnestly desire that they could actually communicate, they may place themselves upon their knees; and building an altar in their heart, celebrate the death of Christ, and, in holy desire, join with all the congregations of the Christian world, who that day celebrate holy communion; and may serve their devotion by the former prayers and actions eucharisticial, changing only such circumstantial words which relate to the actual participation: and then they may remember and make use of the comfortable doctrine of St. Austin; “It is one thing (saith the learned saint) to be born of the Spirit, and another thing to be fed of the Spirit: as it is one thing to be born of the flesh, which is when we are born of our mother; another thing to be fed of the flesh, which is done when she suckles her infant by that nourishment, which is changed into food that he might eat and drink with pleasure, by which be was born to life; when this is done without eh actual and sacramental participation, it is called spiritual manducation.” Concerning which, I only add the pious advice of a religious person: “Let every faithful soul be ready and desirous often to receive the holy eucharist to the glory of God: but if he cannot so often communicate sacramentally as he desires, let him not be afflicted, but remain in perfect resignation to the will of God, and dispose himself to a spiritual communion: for no man and no thing can hinder a well-disposed soul, but that by holy desires she may, if she please, communicate every day.”
To this nothing is necessary to be added, but that this way is to be used never but upon just necessity, and when it cannot be actual, not upon peevishness and spiritual pride; not in the spirit of schism and fond opinions; not in despite of our brother, and contempt or condemnation of the holy congregations of the Lord; but with a living faith, and an actual charity, and great humility, and with the spirit of devotion; and that so much the more intensely and fervently by how much he is really troubled for the want of actual participation in the communion of saints; and then that is true which St. Austin said, “Crede, et manducasti;—Believe, and thou has eaten.”—Adora Jesum.
Source: Taylor, Jeremy. The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Lord Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore. Volume 15. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, et. al., 1839. <https://archive.org/details/wholeworksofrigh15tayliala/page/688/mode/2up> Accessed March 29, 2020.
