While
attending an impromptu Holy Communion service, there was a certain
unusualness about it. Typically, our makeshift chapel is a space used
as a classroom. But, on this occasion, we were shoehorned into a tiny
area where crafts are made.
So last minute was this gathering that none of us were anticipating Jesus to be brought to us in the Eucharist. How can this be? Well, for all intents and purposes we had been scheduled for the Rite of Reconciliation (Confession). Father Lou, a return retired priest who serves this community of thirty souls when he can shoehorn us into his schedule. Well, he was feeling under the weather and could not make it. In Father Lou's stead, a volunteer arrived with Jesus so that we would not be left in limbo. (For those if you wonder how we could take part in the Eucharist if we had not been to Confession - there is a special dispensation for those whom it is impossible to receive the Rite of Reconciliation.)
Unprepared, we neither had Holy Water, missals for those in attendance (save the one copy which the volunteer brought), altar cloth, or crucifix. There was a certain throwback to the early Church when missals and Bibles and general literacy did not exist!
As we proceeded with the Holy Communion service, there was a place where we simply stopped and sat in silence. This deviation was not planned, such simply happened organically. As time elapsed, there was a level of silence, non noise, which we seldom, if ever, experience in the prison environment. Off in the corner was a sink used by those who craft. The silence was so deafening that we could all hear the drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet. Being that this is Holy Week and in the middle of Holy Communion, one could not help but smile at the correlation and symbolism - the woman who washed our Lord's feet with her tears, Jesus crying out in the Garden of Gethsemane, the apostles washing the feet of the disciples, the tears which flowed from our holy Mother, the cries of the repentant thief on the corresponding cross (Saint Dismas, the patron of prisoners), the water which gushed forth when our Lord's side was pierced by a solders lance....
Marana tha
So last minute was this gathering that none of us were anticipating Jesus to be brought to us in the Eucharist. How can this be? Well, for all intents and purposes we had been scheduled for the Rite of Reconciliation (Confession). Father Lou, a return retired priest who serves this community of thirty souls when he can shoehorn us into his schedule. Well, he was feeling under the weather and could not make it. In Father Lou's stead, a volunteer arrived with Jesus so that we would not be left in limbo. (For those if you wonder how we could take part in the Eucharist if we had not been to Confession - there is a special dispensation for those whom it is impossible to receive the Rite of Reconciliation.)
Unprepared, we neither had Holy Water, missals for those in attendance (save the one copy which the volunteer brought), altar cloth, or crucifix. There was a certain throwback to the early Church when missals and Bibles and general literacy did not exist!
As we proceeded with the Holy Communion service, there was a place where we simply stopped and sat in silence. This deviation was not planned, such simply happened organically. As time elapsed, there was a level of silence, non noise, which we seldom, if ever, experience in the prison environment. Off in the corner was a sink used by those who craft. The silence was so deafening that we could all hear the drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet. Being that this is Holy Week and in the middle of Holy Communion, one could not help but smile at the correlation and symbolism - the woman who washed our Lord's feet with her tears, Jesus crying out in the Garden of Gethsemane, the apostles washing the feet of the disciples, the tears which flowed from our holy Mother, the cries of the repentant thief on the corresponding cross (Saint Dismas, the patron of prisoners), the water which gushed forth when our Lord's side was pierced by a solders lance....
Marana tha
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