In the course of my responsibilities Sunday I had the opportunity to hear three different homilies on the appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples and St Thomas. Some important insights were shared: the Lord will appear to those who seek him; he gives just what each person needs in order to believe; words are sometimes not enough, and the actions of those who are sent out [and this is what both ‘apostles’ and ‘missionaries’ mean] witness (to borrow a crucial Lucan term) to the Christ who in St John’s Gospel, after all, is the One who says, ‘come and see’ and performs signs pointing to the inauguration of the Kingdom.
Yet all three homilies, for all their emphasis on ‘the community’ as the (or a) means of experiencing the Risen Christ, missed a crucial element: not once were the Sacraments mentioned. In the context of multiple Eucharistic appearances in the Eastertide Gospels, and given the explicit focus in the Thomas account upon Christ’s wounds, which are traditionally seen as source of the two dominical Sacraments (the ‘water and blood’ that flowed from his side being the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist), the neglect of these most physical manifestations of Christ’s Presence in our own time and place is incomprehensible.
For Christ is present among us; he still shows us his Body; He offers it to us and for us to see and touch (and taste and ingest: in this way it is even more potent a presence than that afforded St Thomas on at least the occasion in question, where we are not told explicitly that he touches the Lord; perhaps he, like Mary Magdalene, did not or could not ‘hold on to him because he had not yet ascended’ [Jn 20.17]*). Christ is present in and among the ‘community’, but the ‘community’ in which he is most clearly present is precisely the sacramental community, established by Baptism and nourished by the Eucharist. For this reason I suggest that, rather than ‘community’ (a word with perfectly adequate denotation but rather diffuse connotation), we would do better to speak of the ‘communion’ (koinônía) of which we are a part by the grace of God given in Holy Baptism: the Church is communion and the Eucharist is communion; the Church is the Body, and the Sacrament is the Body; the Church is the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is the Church. And Christ is truly present in all of them.
Is Christ present only in the Church? I do not believe so. The Baptismal Covenant, after all, calls us to ‘seek and serve Christ in all persons’, and if present in concentrated form in the Sacrament and among the People of God, Christ’s Spirit is also diffused, poured out, upon all Creation, and has been from the beginning. But it is worth noting that this part of the covenant – far from existing in the isolation in which it is sometimes quoted – comes only after we have recited the Apostles’ Creed and promised to ‘continue in the apostles’ teaching [doctrine] and fellowship [koinônía; communion], in the breaking of the bread [the Eucharist], and in the prayers [the Daily Office]’; resist evil and repent and return to the Lord; and proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. That is, it is only when and because we have turned our face to the Lord, been nourished by the Sacraments, and been trained up in the framework of the faith, all in the context of the communion established among and shared with the apostles, where it is most clearly known, that we can learn to recognize the Presence of Christ abroad and point others to it. It is then that we can say with the Apostle to a world that has not learned to see, ‘What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you... indeed [God] is not far from each one of us. For “in him we live and move and have our being”’[Ac 17]. It is then that we can cry, with St Thomas, ‘My Lord and my God!’.
* Perhaps it is through this lens that we can interpret Article xxviii, which concludes, ‘The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped’, and even the (to me) somewhat cryptic phrase in Eucharistic Prayer C: ‘Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal’. Though it is only natural, having caught a vivid glimpse of the Risen Christ, to adore Him and to wish to remain in the moment (cf. the Transfiguration and the post-Resurrection accounts); though we sometimes need simply to rest in his arms, and he will not withhold his motherly embrace (Mt 23, Lk 13); and whatever place Adoration and even Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament may have in a nuanced understanding of the Eucharistic Presence – nevertheless Our Lord regularly thwarts our attempts to privatize, tame, or otherwise control him.