Mass hysteria: Chris Goodchild’s Thought for the Week

‘I was faced with a rather awkward predicament.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the minister, ‘I believe you have something in your pocket’.

I was in line to receive Holy Communion some eighteen years ago, when the young priest placed in the palm of my hand the largest consecrated wafer I had ever seen. Having just started a gluten-free diet I was faced with a rather awkward predicament: transgress canon law by taking a small nibble and putting the rest in my pocket, or apologise, not take communion, and return to my seat. I had no time to think. Overwhelmed and on the verge of panic, I took what amounted to my usual amount of the host and placed the remains in my pocket.

When the mass ended and I started walking towards the exit, the minister blocked my path. She wanted the remains of the wafer. I apologised, and gave them back. She asked me to empty out the contents of my trouser pockets, too. At that point I decided that enough was enough. I apologised again and informed the minister that I was leaving.

I have told this story numerous times, hopefully with the utmost sensitivity and respect for the church and its minister. With each retelling a deeper truth is revealed to me, the most important part of which was how my belief in transubstantiation simply crumbled, just like the wafer. I gave back more than the host that day. I gave back my childhood beliefs. I could no longer believe that someone could simply get a special type of training, and recite a special prayer, which could then turn something that wasn’t God into something that was.

All my life up to that point, I had ached to ‘believe my beliefs’. This most certainly included the ‘actual presence’, as it is known. But in this most humiliating of moments a deeper truth came alive in me. As I stood there, with myriad pockets turned inside out, time just seemed to stop and everything became sacramental. I felt an enormous urge to cry out laughing at the absurdity of it all. I had no issue with God being in my pocket, I just could no longer believe that God was somewhere while simultaneously not being somewhere else.

As a child I recall musing that either God is in everything or God is in nothing. I chose to believe the former and lived accordingly. My rude awakening in this little church was a flowering of a seed sowed many years ago – a movement from belief to direct experience.

‘It is the test of a good religion,’ said GK Chesterton, ‘whether you can joke about it.’ This is exactly what happened when I met with the parish priest a couple of days later. We agreed to differ and wished each other well. My belief in the actual presence of Christ was not diminished that day. On the contrary, it was simply set free; released from all restraints.

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