Meeting the Saints at the Altar

As a pastor, sometimes it is a struggle to come up with the right words to say to someone who has suffered a loss in their lives, particularly the death of a loved one. In seminary and Clinical Pastoral Education ("CPE") we are trained (and rightfully so) to avoid resorting to trite sayings that do more harm than good ("God must have needed another angel in heaven" is just plain wrong for multiple reasons).   So, I know what not to say, but it is still difficult to know what I should say. 

A few months ago, I visited an elderly woman from my congregation whose husband died several years ago.  She shared with me that she was still having great difficulty dealing with losing him and living alone. So, the dilemma of what to say to someone in her situation arose once again. 

The purpose of my visit was to bring her communion, so I remembered something I had read once about how the Eucharist brings us together with the saints who have gone before us, so I mentioned to her that when she received communion that day, she would be joined with him. 

I didn't think much of the conversation afterwards, other than hoping that I didn't say the wrong thing.  Recently, when I visited her again to bring her communion, one of the first things she said was how she had appreciated those words and had thought about them since that first visit. 

So, that prompted me to look up where I had read about meeting the saints at the altar during communion, and I found what I was looking for in a book that is little known outside of "Evangelical Catholic" Lutherans (I still have mixed feelings about that label - http://benedictinelutheran.blogspot.com/2013/05/evangelical-catholic-lutheranism.html) called "The Presence - an Approach to Holy Communion." Recently reprinted by the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, the book is a gorgeous reflection on the Eucharist by a Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod pastor named Berthold Von Schenk, who was at the vanguard of the 20th century liturgical movement, as expressed within American Lutheranism.

This was the specific passage from the book that I was thinking of when I attempted to comfort her that day:

"We cannot divide the body of Christ.  The Church militant and the Church triumphant form one Church.  Nothing can separate the members of the Church, neither life nor death, nor powers, nor principalities.  At the altar we have fellowship with our risen and ascended Lord. But there is also a fellowship with all the members of the Church.  At the altar we join hands not only with the great saints in heaven, but also with all our loved ones who have passed within the veil, our faithful departed.

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 We must come to a sense of the continuing presence of our loves ones, and we can do this if we realize the presence of our living Lord.  As we seek and find our risen Lord we shall also find our dear departed.  They are with Him, and we find the reality of their continued life through Him. The saints are a part of the Church.  We worship with them. They worship the risen Christ face to face, while we worship the same risen Christ under the veil of bread and wine at the altar.  At the Communion we are linked with heaven, with the Communion of Saints, with our loved ones. Here at the altar, focused to a point, we find our communion with the dead; for the altar is the closest meeting place between us and our Lord.  That place must be the place of closest meeting with our dead who are in His keeping.  The altar is the trysting place where we meet our beloved Lord.  It must, therefore, also be the trysting place where me meet our loved ones, for they are with the Lord."

And then, in a passage that would put a serious dent in the business of flower shops everywhere if his advice was followed, Von Schenk wrote:

"How pathetic it is to see men and women going out to the cemetery, kneeling at the mound, placing little sprays of flowers and wiping their tears from their eyes, and knowing nothing else.  How hopeless they look.  Oh, that we could take them by the hand, away from the grave, out through the cemetery gate, in through the door of the church, and up the nave to the very altar itself, and there put them in touch, not with the dead body of their loved one, but with the living soul who is with Christ at the altar. 

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The Blessed Sacrament links us not merely to Bethlehem and Calvary, but to the whole world beyond the grave as well, for at the altar the infinite is shrined in the finite; heaven stoops down to earth; and the seen and the unseen are met."

(pp. 118-121 of the 2010 ALPB printing of "The Presence"). For more information about the book, including how to order it, go here: http://www.alpb.org/presence.html