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IN COMMUNION OF MIND AND HEART...
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These words come from the First Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation, and they are prayed just after the Consecration. We ask: “Be pleased to keep us always in communion of mind and heart, together with Francis our Pope and Thomas our Bishop.” This is not always so simple as it seems.
Sometimes we find ourselves in communion of behavior and obedience but not necessarily in communion of mind and heart. I’m thinking of a scene from the play “I Remember Mama,” when one sister tells another of the sacrifices Mama was making for her. She is berated by Mama, and she responds: “I’m sorry I disobeyed you. But I’m not sorry I told.” Perhaps a more “down to earth” example would be as children when we refused to eat (for example) our Brussels sprouts. The threat usually was, “You’ll eat it and like it!” Our response: “I’ll eat it, but I won’t like it!” This is who and what we are, very often.
Sometimes we don’t agree with (or don’t understand, more likely) what our Pope or our Archbishop does, or why. We judge their decisions as wrong-headed. But we say, “OK. Out of respect for the office of Pope or Archbishop, I’ll do what I’m asked. But I don’t like it.” It’s clear this is not “communion of mind and heart.”
But that is a beautiful goal, after all—think how beautiful the Church would be if we were all in communion of mind and heart! Think how powerful the Church’s witness to the world would be if that were the case! How incredible it would be for us all to think together and feel together, and thus to act and live together in Him!
The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord is intended to help us become this kind of people—all of us members of the Body, all of us rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep (Romans 12:15), all of us working together to bring others to Christ by witness, not by words. Think how wonderful it would be if we all embraced Catholic doctrinal, moral, social, and spiritual teachings not from a perspective of “grit your teeth obedience” but out of joyful, heartfelt agreement with the nuances and aspects of those teachings that our world today needs!
The Lord gave (and gives) Himself to us. To whom (and how) do we give ourselves? In what ways can we foster the “communion of mind and heart” that is the passionate wish of Jesus as He prayed in the Garden before the crucifixion (John 17)?
This is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Let’s pray to make us more and more in communion with Him, and in communion with the other members of His Body—a communion of mind and heart.