Some time ago, I was very struck by the reflection of the couple "reconstructed" as they say, saying: "Now, we are excommunicated." Each had experienced a difficult divorce, and then they met and, after much consideration, decided to commit together on a new path. But with the heart of great suffering: that feeling of being excluded, "excommunicated"!
I tried to explain that the excommunication, it was not that, and they were neither excluded nor definitively rejected the Church, much less by God, and many tasks or services they remain fully open in the parish life. "Yes, but we no longer have the right to communicate!" It is indeed a great wound, for divorced and remarried, this inability to feed on Christ despite an ardent desire.
Say first that this desire to Eucharistic communion is a sign of good spiritual health. When we said this, several tracks are possible. Thus it happened to me several times to offer the divorced and remarried "communion of desire" when they approach the priest with folded arms, simply to express their desire to receive communion without taking the host.
It may also encourage them to accept the fasting of the Eucharist, recalling that the Word of God is also a consistent food: in the listening, meditating, is that not even Christ himself yourself that you receive?
It may also refer to the text of Vatican II which states that "consciousness is the most secret core of man, the shrine where he is alone with God whose voice is heard. "(Gaudium et Spes No. 16) After careful consideration, and a good spiritual guidance, while having analyzed the possible impact of their gesture to the community, they decided then realize how to behave, and possibly communicate.
There is a major spiritual issue: how to say forget the law without mercy? Of course, an important concern for truth, can not act as if nothing had happened, or as if everything was the fault of the Church in our life together! But how can we not go in with both feet on a difficult past while opening the door to a possible future?
"Come unto me all ye that bend under the weight of the burden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 12/28)
0 comments:
Post a Comment