Giving Christ

Here in the Saigon airport, whiling away a three hour lay-over en route to Phnom Penh, I dipped into a marvelous book of essays by Ron Hansen, Gerard Manley Hopkins Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Santa Clara. Having read Hansen's novel Exiles (about Hopkins and the five nuns who inspired Hopkins Wreck of the Deutchsland), I looked forward to this volume entitled A Stay Against Confusion. I have not been disappointed. Hansen's lovely prose is the perfect vehicle for his illuminating thoughts on faith and fiction.

His last essay in the book is simply entitled "Eucharist." I was particularly moved by the final paragraphs of the essay. Hansen, having begun the essay with a nostalgic account of his first communion in Omaha, Nebraska, in the pre-Vatican II Church, ends with a description of his feelings, now that he has become a Eucharistic minister in the Jesuit Church in Santa Clara. For me, he puts into moving words what I have often felt in the two decades I have been privileged to share the Eucharistic Lord to the faithful when I distribute Holy Communion:

"I was a lector at Mass for many years before I became a eucharistic minister. . . . [But] to hand Christ's body and blood to the congregation at Mass, seemed such a staggering and godly thing to do that I felt too unworthy to try it.

"Then I realized there was an important theological point in that: I am, as we all are, a sinner; but in Christ I am as loved and forgiven as the good thief on the cross; in him my faith and worthiness are sufficient.

"And so at noon Mass in the old California mission church of Santa Clara, I have the courage to go up to the tabernacle, genuflect before it just as Monsignor Flanagan would, and get out a ciborium I would not have dared touch in my childhood. And I stand where a railing used to be, holding the consecrated elements of either bread or wine, giving Christ to those holier than me, who walk up with such reverence, simplicity, seriousness, and childlike vulnerability that my eyes sometimes film with tears. It's a gift to me, that giving; it's the glorious feeling I have when I am writing as well as I can, when I feel I am, in ways I have no control of, an instrument of the Holy Being; for I have just an inkling of what Jesus felt when he looked on his friends in mercy and aching love, and I have a sense why, just before he died, he established this gracious sacrament of himself."