Postcommunion Prayer

     

Lord our God, 

you feed us in this life with bread from heaven,
the pledge and foreshadowing of future glory.
Grant that the working of this sacrament within us
may bear fruit in our daily lives;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

--Katharine Tynan (1861-1931) Irish playwright, author, and poet

Invitation to Communion based on Matthew 11:28-29

Jesus said,‘Come to me, all who are weary
and whose load is heavy;
I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble-hearted;
and you will find rest for your souls.’
(Matthew 11:28-29)

-- from Common Order 1994, Church of Scotland (Presbyterian)

Invitation to Communion based on Luke 13:29

This is the Lord’s table.

The Lord Jesus invites us
to share this joyful feast.
From east and west, from north and south,
people will come and take their places
at the banquet in the kingdom of God.
(Luke 13:29)

-- from Common Order 1994, The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian)

The Last Supper

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed

round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

To this last supper he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape. But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.

Here they are gathered, wondering and deranged,
Round Him, who wisely doth Himself inclose,
And who now takes Himself away, estranged,
From those who owned Him once, and past them flows.
He feels the ancient loneliness to-day
That taught Him all His deepest acts of love;
Now in the olive groves He soon will rove,
And these who love Him all will flee away.

To the last supper table He hath led.
As birds are frightened from a garden-bed
By shots, so He their hands forth from the bread
Doth frighten by His word: to Him they flee;
Then flutter round the table in their fright
And seek a passage from the hall. But He
Is everywhere, like dusk at fall of night.


--Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Austrian poet and novelist

Image: The Last Supper, by Vladimir Zuzurin

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
                       Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

   Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

   Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                                   The soul shrinks

   From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
                “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

   Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
   “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
                     keeping their difficult balance.”

— Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), second poet laureate of the United States

Invitation to Communion: Full of Faith or Doubt

Come to this table,

you who have much faith 

                            and you who would like to have more;
you who have been to this sacrament often
                            and you who have not been for a long time;
you who have tried to follow Jesus 

                             and you who have failed.

Come, it is Christ who invites us to meet him here.

--used in Diocese of Missouri worship, source unknown

Guests, Not Hosts

In the beginning, 

our very first story about ourselves ends 
with the reminder we were born hungry,
body and soul:

On the day before God rested, at the dawn 
of time, God granted the newborn humanity
every herb and fruit tree for our food,
sprung from the same soil
as we were. God invites us all
to a seat at the wedding table of creation-
creation we are bound to
creation we are bound to care for,
into which we ourselves are woven
as a part of the whole. There is
one table, and it is the altar
and sacred precincts
of life itself, insisting on our unity
in shared need for nourishment.

And so it is that we are reminded
in our body’s hunger, and by our food,
from the juiciest boredom-plucked berry
and truffles worth their weight in gold,
to bologna with spelled-out first and second names,
that all the sustenance we receive
is provided from this fragile planet
by God’s tender loving-kindness.

And so it is the soul’s hunger
draws us around God’s holy table
for a foretaste of heaven,
bearing our offerings from God’s creation
formed by human hands, yes,
but sacrament at the invocation
of the finger of God in our midst.
It’s a wonder
our hair doesn’t stand on end.

We are fed 
not through our words
but by holy gift
that calls us into God’s own unity.

You can have communion,
or you can have competition,
but not both. 
We share with each other
what is not ours to give 
or take away.

There can be no jostling or jockeying
for the best place at this table, just rejoicing
that all are invited,
that there is room to spare,
that we are guests, not hosts.

-- Leslie Barnes Scoopmire. This was first published at Episcopal Journal's Speaking to the Soul on August 25, 2022. 

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
This brown paper bag of peaches
We bought from the boy
At the bend in the road where we turned toward 

Signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
From sweet fellowship in the bins, 

Comes nectar at the roadside, succulent 

Peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
Comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
To carry within us an orchard, to eat
Not only the skin, but the shade,
Not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
The fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into 

The round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
As if death were nowhere
In the background; from joy
To joy to joy, from wing to wing,
From blossom to blossom to
Impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

-- Li-Young Lee, from Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor

Meditation XVII (No man in an island)

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

--John Donne (1572-1633), English priest, poet, and essayist, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, 1624, written as he lay ill for 24 days with a recurring fever.

Bread of Heaven (based on John 6)

O Bread of heaven,
come down.
Come down and fill us with your Spirit—
for your Spirit satisfies like no other.
We hunger and thirst for you this morning
and long to be nurtured
in your love and forgiveness.
So we come to this sacred time and place,
where our hungers are finally and fully satisfied
as only your bread can do.
We will wait and listen
for your leading in this hour.

Amen.

--Adapted from The Abingdon Worship Annual 2009, © 2008 Abingdon Press.

Gathering Prayer

Gathered round a table
is where Jesus so often met people...

... gathered round the table of Matthew,
the table of Zacchaeus,
the table of Simon,
the table of Peter,
the table of Lazarus and Martha and Mary,
the tables of Joanna and Susannah...

... gathered round a table
where he could see people face to face,
listen to their stories, share their laughter.

And here,
we are gathered around a table
because this is the place where Jesus has promised to be
for those who want to meet him.

So accept his invitation
and feel welcome at this table.
Jesus Christ,
who here offers us a foretaste of eternal life,
invites us to be his guests.

-- from "A Liturgy for Holy Communion" in A Wee Worship Book, Fifth Incarnation, by John L. Bell and Graham Maule for the Iona Community, 2015

After Communion

Why should I call Thee Lord, Who art my God?
    Why should I call Thee Friend, Who art my Love?
    Or King, who art my very spouse above?
Or call Thy Sceptre upon my heart Thy Rod?
    Lo now Thy banner over me is love,
All heaven flies open to me at Thy nod;
For Thou has lit Thy flame in me a clod,
    Made me a nest for dwelling of Thy Dove.
    What wilt Thou call me in our home above,
Who now has called me friend? how will it be
    When Thou for good wine settest forth the best?
Now Thou dost bid me come and sup with Thee,
    Now Thou dost make me lean upon Thy breast;
How ill it be with me in time of love?

--Christina Rosetti (1830-1894), English poet and supporter of the Oxford Movement, from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, 1994

Conversion account, from "The Everlasting Mercy"

"The water's going out to sea
And there's a great moon calling me;
But there's a great sun calls the moon,
And all God's bells will carol soon
For joy and glory and delight
Of someone coming home to-night."
Out into darkness, out to night,
My flaring heart gave plenty light,
So wild it was there was no knowing
Whether the clouds or stars were blowing;
Blown chimney pots and folk blown blind,
And puddles glimmering in my mind,
And chinking glass from windows banging,
And inn signs swung like people hanging,
And in my heart the drink unpriced,
The burning cataracts of Christ.

I did not think, I did not strive,
The deep peace burnt my me alive;
The bolted door had broken in,
I knew that I had done with sin.
I knew that Christ had given me birth
To brother all the souls on earth,
And every bird and every beast
Should share the crumbs broke at the feast.

O glory of the lighted mind.
How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind
 The station brook, to my new eyes,
Was babbling out of Paradise,
The waters rushing from the rain
Were singing Christ has risen again.
I thought all earthly creatures knelt
From rapture of the joy I felt.
The narrow station-wall's brick ledge,
The wild hop withering in the hedge,
The lights in huntsmans' upper storey
Were parts of an eternal glory,
Were God's eternal garden flowers.
I stood in bliss at this for hours.

O glory of the lighted soul.
The dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll,
The dawn with glittering on the grasses,
The dawn which pass and never passes.
"It's dawn," I said, "And chimney's smoking,
And all the blessed fields are soaking.'
It's dawn, and there's an engine shunting;
And hounds, for huntsman's going hunting.
It's dawn, and I must wander north
Along the road Christ led me forth."

-- John Masefield (1878-1967), English poet and poet laureate, from "The Everlasting Mercy" (1911)