Some Reflections on Exile

Are we missing an opportunity to rethink how we celebrate the Eucharist?

By Patricia Worden

During this time when churches have been closed, many of us have been finding different ways/substitutions for attendance at Mass. There are many live-streamed Masses available, as well as Masses that can be accessed at convenient times via YouTube or other sources, which many people find to be a good substitute. 

This is good, but also raises a question: Are we missing an opportunity to rethink how we celebrate the Eucharist?

During the Exile in Babylon, when the Hebrews were exiled from their land and the Temple where they worshipped was destroyed, they were confronted with the question of what it meant to be God’s chosen people, no longer in their own land and without a place to worship: “How can we sing a song of the Lord in an alien place?”  

‘By the waters of Babylon there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there we hung up our harps.

For there our captors asked us for songs,

And our tormentors asked us for mirth saying

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”' (Ps 137)

The Babylonians mocked them and demanded they sing their songs, psalms, hence their deep sadness reflected in “How could we sing a song of the Lord in an alien land?”  No place to worship – worship was only for the Temple where God dwelt.

We might see our own times as a sort of exile when churches are closed (though may soon open for individual, private prayer). A time when we can ask a similar question: how can we pray and worship, not our ‘private’ prayer, but how can we now do, as Jesus asked us to do: “Do this in commemoration of me.” 

This was what he told them in a private room in Jerusalem with his close friends and followers. 

We see this enacted in an inn on the road to Emmaus, with a couple of very upset followers who had invited a stranger to stay and dine with them after he had explained why all the things they found devastating had to be - and who then recognised Jesus in the breaking of the bread. 

In the Didache, or  ‘The Teaching of the Apostles’ – a very early document, possibly earlier than the Gospels -there is instruction on how to celebrate when believers meet together for their communal meal and recall what Jesus did.  It tells the community what they should say and do.  It is very simple in its wording:

“Now this is how you should engage in giving thanks, bless God in this way.  First, at the cup, say…………. Then when it comes to the broken loaf, say…….”

Version from Thomas O’Loughlin’s  book, ‘The Didache’

Perhaps in our time of exile from church buildings we can explore how we can give our thanks, “Eucharist” - (“Evcharisto” Thank you in Greek) - in ways other than logging in to streamed Masses. 

It might also be an opportunity to explore how we can be the Body of Christ in the world.