Encountering Holiness

November 5, 2019

“This medicine should not be taken in combination with...” We’ve all read those labels. Some medications can interact with others without serious consequence, but other combinations can prove fatal. Years ago, my father-in-law wasn’t feeling well. When we asked him what was wrong, he couldn’t put his finger on it. He just didn’t feel right. At mealtime, we watched as he downed a handful of pills prescribed by his doctors. Not long after, he was admitted to the hospital where the shift physician looked in amazement at his list of medications. He took him off everything except his heart medication. Almost immediately, my father-in-law started feeling better. The medicines that were supposed to be helping him were making him sick.

Recently, due to his unabashed support of almost unlimited abortion, presidential hopeful Joe Biden was denied the Eucharist by his priest, unleashing a storm of criticism. “Who does this priest think he is, denying communion to anyone?” is among the most moderate of responses to his actions. “Hypocritical, judgmental, unChristlike” are some of the criticisms leveled against this priest. 

Whatever one thinks of his action, at least he is consistent with Catholic doctrine, which is more than can be said of many priests. Catholic doctrine holds that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ; that in the Eucharist we encounter a holy God who judged human sin in the body and blood of Christ as he hung on a Roman cross. The priest quoted from 1 Corinthians 11 where St. Paul declares that some are sick and others have died because they received communion unworthily. He reminded his people that on more than one occasion in the Biblical record, people who encountered God’s holiness unthinking were struck dead on the spot—thinking that is foreign to us, but very real to the original listeners.

In my Wesleyan tradition, communion is a means of grace, and some pastors believe they don’t have the right to deny that to anyone. But what if receiving the Eucharist works spiritually the way pharmaceutical medications work in this life? Perhaps spiritually, combining the holy with the profane is as deadly to our souls as combining certain prescriptions is to the body. Catholic doctrine emphasizes the necessity of Confession before receiving the Eucharist for this very reason. Receiving communion while in an unrepentant state is as Paul said, “eating and drinking damnation to oneself.” While no one has to agree with his actions or his interpretation of Scripture, this particular priest is taking his theology seriously, something the rest of us who claim the name of Christ would do well to emulate. At least he is more concerned for the state of Mr. Biden’s eternal soul than for the world’s approval. Tonight I am thankful for this priest who takes seriously his call to proclaim Truth as his Church has stated it, and for the call to repentance to which we all would do well to heed.