I am visiting my hometown hospital, where I have brought Holy Communion to Dorothy, whom I have known all my life. She was a cook at the parochial school that I attended. Her husband Leonard tended bar for the Knights of Columbus. He would sell my father a beer on summer Sunday afternoons when lawn work was finished. Dorothy chats about Ellen, my classmate, who is now a Catholic school principal.
This concord is what pastoring was meant to be. I know my own, and they know me.
When it is time to receive Holy Communion,Dorothy and I pray the Lord's Prayer together. I hold the host over the open pyx and say, "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb." Dorothy and I both offer a response. Dorothy speaks of herself being unworthy to receive him. I refer to him entering under my roof. The latter is more biblical, more poetic. But the deeply pastoral question, desperately needing to be raised, is this: Should a 90-year-old woman encounter dissidence when she prays, publicly, with the church? Should she or, for that matter, those whom we might call the "seldom-churched" be surprised and unsettled by new words and phrases when they reconnect with us?
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