WHENCE SHALL WE BUY BREAD?

A REFLECTION FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT

It was not an easy decision to suspend the distribution of Holy Communion, even for a short time, during this health crisis.  People need the Blessed Sacrament, and perhaps never more than when they live in fear.  This is the sacrament that gives us strength, that gives us the graces to get through an emergency of these dimensions.  So it goes against the grain for us to deprive the faithful of these sacramental graces.  We do not it willingly.

We are told that the coronavirus is highly infectious, much more so than the common flu, for example.  Its mortality rate is also much higher, so the risk of dying if we catch it is substantially greater.  We are told that it is now spreading through the community and that thousands, if not millions, might be infected.  These factors contribute to providing us with a proportionate cause for taking such an unwelcome step as suspending Holy Communion.

It is not a sin to skip going to Holy Communion.  So you may do so in all good conscience if there is proportionate cause.  The Church’s normal practice throughout most of her history was not to distribute Communion at every Mass—only the celebrant received the sacrament.  Our purpose in attending Mass is to offer sacrifice to God.  The great multitude followed our Lord into the wilderness “because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.”  They didn’t follow him so they could eat a good meal.  The point is, they ended up not only seeing a miracle, but being the reason why our Lord actually performed the miracle.  The Feeding of the Five Thousand is one of the greatest and most well-known miracles of Christ’s ministry, and was the result of people depriving themselves of food for a higher cause.  In our own case, that higher cause is Charity, the protection of our neighbor’s health.

In return for our sacrifice in not receiving the graces of the sacrament, it is not presumptuous of us to ask our blessed Lord to provide us instead with graces even more abundant.  As we starve spiritually in this present wilderness, we should never lose faith in him.  He will not let us faint along the way, but will surely feed us with as much grace as we need, so many, in fact, that there will be many baskets left over.