At the beginning of this summer, I attended the daily morning Mass at my home parish fairly regularly. In addition to getting to know the familiar friendly old-person faces, I also got to know our regular Extraordinary Ministers (EMs) who assist our priests in distributing Communion. One minister in particular stood out from the rest: a tall, elderly gentleman with a slight British accent and glasses. His wife always took pains to warmly greet the people near her as she settled into her pew—they were altogether a very sweet and pious couple.
The reason that the man stands out in my memory, however, has to do with the particular way he administered the Eucharist. Everything was normal, with the standard exchange: “The body of Christ,” — “Amen,” until he went to place the Eucharist on my tongue. As I waited, he would half-whisper, “Here’s Jesus.” The first time this happened, I walked away with Jesus in my mouth, thinking, “Wait, what just happened?” and resisting the strong urge to burst out laughing. After multiple such encounters, I realized that this was going to be a normal occurance.
However inappropriate and ill-timed, this EM’s brief phrase, “Here’s Jesus,” manages to capture a fundamental truth. Here’s Jesus, and not in some figurative or sentimental way. Here’s Jesus in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Here’s Jesus, the healer who does not stand at a distance, but reaches out to touch the leper and the sinner.
The scandal of the insertion of this phrase as I receive Communion startled me out of my complacency in prayer. The pronunciation of the words as you receive the Eucharist is literally in your face. It’s doesn’t apologize. It’s provocative. So is the Real Presence. The controversy of the Eucharist is nothing new. Many of Jesus’ disciples left when He told them that they would need to eat His flesh, saying, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (John 6:51).
The scandal that our Lord would come down to visit us under the appearance of bread is no more and no less scandalous than his Incarnation as God-Man. The shock of hearing an unexpected phrase in what is usually a very predictable interaction reminds me that receiving our Lord is nothing ordinary. Here is Jesus, in the most shocking, unexpected, and extraordinary of all interactions.
As one would expect, the state of holding in laughter and frustration is not conducive to deep prayer. The brief statement managed time and time again to stop me from being present to the Real Presence in the Eucharist I received. All summer, I was reminded over and over of the startling truth that Jesus is wholly present to me in that wafer I often casually receive. I suspect the re-training of EMs later in the summer was our pastor’s response to this guy’s strange habit. “Here’s Jesus.”
I would neither defend nor recommend this practice, or any other variations in the formulas prescribed by the Church for extraordinary EMs, because of the distraction and difficulty in prayer that it caused me. The moment of reception of communion is a moment of mystical intimacy between Jesus and the communicant and the EM’s remark was intrusive upon that intimacy. But while the timing was off, the message was spot on. If I could get past my irritation and contemplate the significance of the simple phrase, you too can benefit from the spiritual fruits that come from prayerfully considering these words: “Here’s Jesus.”
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