Gathering as Pastoral Care
The issue of Liturgy entitled “Religion Outside of Religion,” guest-edited by David Farina Turnbloom, raises the question of whether the daily rituals of our lives might be seen as contributing to our religiosity. This is an excerpt from David Farina Turnbloom’s essay on the eucharist, bringing out the notion of eucharist as gathering the fragments of our lives together, reminding the assembly of our identity as the body of Christ. –– Melinda Quivik
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In all of the Gospels, Jesus instructs the disciples to gather the fragments that remain. While the act of distribution is more immediately concerned with the ad extra relationship between the Church and the world, the act of gathering (although still ordered toward eventual consumption) is more immediately concerned with the ad intra life of the Church. Gathering is pastoral care of Christian individuals. Ministers gather those who have been eaten and are marked by the teeth of the world.
Here “fragment” takes on a new meaning. In addition to being the fragment broken by Christ, the eaten Christian individual is the fragment that remains, the crumb left over. Participating in the sacrifice of Christ is costly. When speaking to those who dedicate their lives to meeting the needs of the world, we are quickly cured of the notion that the such work is primarily edifying. Ask nurses if they are consistently met with gratitude. Ask therapists if they finish each work day with a sense of having made progress. Ask social workers if they feel they are truly helping to change the systems of oppression. It is far more likely that they themselves need to rigorously practice self-care to maintain their own health. The exhaustion that is felt by a parent, the frustration that is felt by the homeless-shelter volunteer, at these moments these people experience themselves as klasmata—they are eaten fragments. In gathering, the minister must bring the remaining fragments to Jesus so that they might be made whole again through the strength of the unified Body of Christ, the Church.
As with distribution, gathering demands preoccupation with particularity. Again, the minister is concerned with meeting particular needs. The act of gathering is not simply a matter of convincing parishioners to fulfill their Sunday obligation. The needs of the gathered fragments are the needs of people who must once again go back into the world and serve others as Christ. The ministers must systematically gather information about what resources are needed to spiritually, emotionally, intellectually and physically reinvigorate the members of the community. When these particular needs are identified, then those needs should be addressed. Do faith sharing groups need to be established? Do family counseling services need to be offered? Do the sacraments of healing need to be given a more central role in parish life? Attention paid to fragments is attention paid to particularity and difference. There is nothing universal about gathering; every congregation has unique pastoral needs.
All of these moments of gathering are ultimately ordered toward the eucharistic celebration. When considering the movement of God’s people from the world toward the eucharistic table, the table is seen both as a sacrificial altar and an eschatological banquet.
As Lumen Gentium [a primary document of the Second Vatican Council] tells us, Christians offer their daily sacrifices during the sacrifice of the mass. “Together with the offering of the Lord's body, [the spiritual works of the laity] are most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist. Thus, as those everywhere who adore in holy activity, the laity consecrate the world itself to God.” For these eucharistic sacrifices to be meaningful, we must first be eaten. In the Eucharist the Church unites its identity as eaten to the Paschal Sacrifice.
The rest of this essay is available in the full digital and print editions of Liturgy. All of the essays in Liturgy 36, no.4 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.
David Farina Turnbloom is associate professor of theology at the University of Portland and the author of Speaking with Aquinas: A Conversation about Grace, Virtue, and the Eucharist (Liturgical Press, 2017).
David Farina Turnbloom, “An Eaten Church: Celebrating the Eucharist as Fragments of Bread,” Liturgy 36, no. 4 (2021): 60–64.