Sharing Communion is part of the heartbeat of the Christian community in every part of the world and the Lenten booklet reminds us that in receiving bread and wine we are refreshed by the food we need, offered as a gift, calling us to remember Jesus, and reminding us that being part of his Body now on earth is a risky business.
All the words and phrases we use are signposts to the wonder and mystery of Holy Communion, The Eucharist (Thanksgiving) and the sharing of bread and wine in response to the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, “do this in remembrance of me.”
In what ways is it risky to be part of the Body of Christ?
Many thoughts lie within us as we are touched by the life of Christ in Communion, for instance thanksgiving for all our blessings and His love. Remembrance calling to mind His words and actions. And journey to the Cross and Unity reminding us that we are members one of another in Christ. We can add prayers, reflections, experiences of our life in the valleys, shadows, and on mountain tops, and new horizons of our own journeys, and so much more.
What words/phrases about Holy communion help us in our understanding and action?
In his book ‘Being Christian’ – Eucharist Rowan Williams writes, “For Christians to share in the Eucharist means to live as people who know they are always guests. That they have been welcomed and that they are wanted. Perhaps the simplest thing we can say about Holy Communion, yet it is supremely worth saying. Jesus Christ tells us that he wants our company.” That we might truly be companions on the way.
Companions, roots of this word are from the Latin cum panis meaning “with bread – sharing with bread”. We might all better treasure our companionship with everyone who shares the bread of life in communion. But our communion also reminds us that we are one with all those who have gone before us in every generation and in every part of the world for 2000 years. Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading to every part of the world and this action has been done and is done in every conceivable human condition, week by week, faithfully and unfailingly. The whole company of heaven and earth. How important is the past to us?
Loves Choice by priest and poet Malcolm Guite
This bread is light, dissolving, almost air,
A little visitation on my tongue
A wafer-thin sensation, hardly there.
This taste of wine is brief in flavour, flung
A moment to the palate’s roof and fled,
Even its after taste a memory.
Yet this is how he comes. Through wine and bread
Love chooses to be emptied into me.
He does not come in unimagined light
Too bright to be denied, too absolute
Leaving the seer blind, the poet mute
Chooses instead to seep into each sense
to dye himself into experience.
Crumbs of bread, sips of wine, the significance of the seemingly insignificant, the greatness of small
actions. This is my Body given for you. This is my Blood shed for you. Hands joined across the oceans in
love, in hope to live, and reflect His life in a thousand and one little acts in daily life.
Patrick Evans
April 2026 Eco Church Update
Spring is well and truly here in the churchyard. Primroses are increasing every year, white and blue violets under the copper beech tree, daffodils, fritillaries, pulmonarias and flowering shrubs….
Holy Week Reflection – Sharing in Prayer
Holy Week Reflection – Sharing in Holy Week
