The Blessed Sacrament and a Coronavirus-Era Canaanite Canine

My good pastor adopted a dog from the local Humane Society on Saint Patrick’s Day. With public Masses suspended throughout the diocese, he found some time for this. Much before my parish started live streaming Masses, we had a Facebook Live glimpse of this handsome canine addition to the parish staff.

The gentle dog who previously occupied that chair had aged, and had to be “put down” but not before bringing great joy to children of all ages in the parish.

As I watched the new dog romp around the parish office, the hallway, (and imaginably down to the nave of the church), I heard myself sigh out aloud, “I wish I were the pastor’s dog!”

All I wanted was to get into that church again.

My parish is a welcoming community. Anyone can find something that draws them in. For my family—like it still is for most—it was the Sacraments.

“But Mom,” Jonathan, my fourteen-year-old immediately quipped, “You cannot receive the Eucharist if you are a dog!”

The Dog That I Am

When I related this to Jonathan’s godmother, it reminded her of the pesky Canaanite woman of Matthew 15:21-28. This is the pagan woman that Jesus seems to call a dog in an episode where she pesters Him, the “Son of David”, to heal her demon-possessed daughter. He declares:

“It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs”.

The Canaanite woman persists:

“Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters”.

In my mind’s screen, I was now a famished dog circling the altar, my gaze fixed on the sacred vessels set upon it, from which I ate the Bread of Life every day until a never before virus seemed to have brought the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church’ to a veritable standstill. The Church, that Jesus built upon Peter the rock, declaring even “the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

Bam! The annunciation of timely catechesis from electronic pulpits that instructs how the Church is not about its physical structures but a spiritual reality that “in view of these unprecedented times” must be virtually experienced from ‘stay at home church’. (Oh, how I loathe that word ‘unprecedented’ sans a qualifier.)

In response, the Body of Christ peeking into empty churches and private chapels through YouTube and Facebook windows proclaims: “We are the Church.”  Friendly sentiments and wonderments are aired in the comments.

The ‘dogs’ Jesus mentions in the instance of the Canaanite woman is reflective of the perception Jews had of Gentiles in those times. The people of Israel considered pagans unclean and evil enough to refer to them as ‘dogs.’

Members of God’s Household

Jonathan made great strides in his faith and personal dedication to parish life last summer after our pastor retained all-day Friday Eucharistic Adoration having first introduced it for Lent 2019. The parish also made available weekday Confessions over and above the thirty-minute provision for Confession ahead of the Saturday Vigil Mass. During summer, the parish encouraged altar servers to serve daily Masses apart from Sunday Mass.

By the time summer ended, Jonathan’s love for the Eucharist increased as did his weekday Mass attendance. He waited eagerly to crown his school week with the Friday Eucharistic Adoration, and Benediction during which he loved to kneel beside the priest in front of the Blessed Sacrament and swing the thurible. As the months passed, he became comfortable openly discussing his spiritual progress, and his questions about it. He could now confidently express himself about discerning the priestly vocation.

Last summer, he also started volunteering at the tomb of Venerable Fulton Sheen at the cathedral. Before the focus of the hierarchical Church turned to responding to the Coronavirus, Jonathan had come to believe he owns the parish church and the cathedral. He too, like dogs, had become faithful and territorial.

‘Strangers and Sojourners’ Again

Just give dogs some space; they begin to believe they belong to you. Where you meet them is their home. All that is yours is theirs and they guard these fiercely.

As settings familiar to pastors, parish staff, and people alike faded by the minute, creatures of faith everywhere seem to have been agog for a return to status quo, or for how they envisioned the new all-virtual reality. Pastors everywhere who worked hard to engage parishioners now found themselves in a deluge of unsolicited suggestions, feedback, and criticism. It did not feel useful to lay any more burden on mine.

The point, however, is not about my relationship to my parish. It is about where every baptized Catholic (and the desiring Catholic who at Easter Vigil waited to be embraced by Mother Church) stands today and in the future, in relationship to the Church.

After having pointed man to “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), Who “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), is the Church now dedicating her focus defensively aligning herself to earthly law for life-saving rather than the Church’s “supreme law” which is ‘the salvation of souls’?

The Church—called to sacramentalize the temporal through her spiritual work—has locked down in a manner that obscures her own supernatural reality; the sacrifice of Christ reduced to a “non-essential” service.

It is not “more time in the hands of the faithful” sitting at home that leads them to “meddle” in the affairs of the parish, but the natural fallout of the Church’s dramatic self-disincarnating desacramentalization in these trying times. Can anyone deny the ‘separation anxiety’ felt by the Body of Christ for her Head? Even a dog feels it for his master.

This is my story—it is neither for the Facebook comment box nor for the history books, but a personal commentary of these times. Here is a dog alienated from her home, her Master—Who is also His Word—and her Bread of Life.

Staying Alive in Dog Days

When my bishop suspended public Masses across the diocese, my family traveled an hour for Sunday Mass to a neighboring diocese that was still offering public Masses. After there were no more public Masses anywhere, and finding no priest willing even to speak about a ‘Real Presence’ ‘private Mass,’ my family accepted the situation. We had done our very best. We prayed in another local parish church until it too closed due to the Governor’s shelter-in-place order. Later, yet another local parish started offering weekday window-Eucharistic Adoration and Confessions. All hungrily consumed.

With the Bread of Life inaccessible, I make ‘Jericho prayer drives’ around my own parish church with the desire of seeing it open again.  

Lent 2020 was spiritually rewarding. The faith of the ‘domestic church’ deepened as the family turned to giving more time to personal prayer, family Liturgy of the Hours, Lectio Divina, and using Zoom video to connect with others in the faith community, praying Rosaries, novenas, and the Stations of the Cross.

Watching virtual Masses live-streamed from private chapels, Jonathan (with his parents) would “sit, stand, and kneel,” even ringing the bell-like he would as an altar server. He constructed himself a Lego monstrance after watching live Eucharistic adoration from the rectory’s private chapel.

Live-streamed Sunday Masses caused considerable envy, as we watched lay ministers present receive Holy Communion. Confession to the rescue. We heard of parishes in other states that made room for a few faithful at a time to be present in the church for Mass. We ached for that possibility closer home. But we stood cautious about expressing even our deepest thoughts and feelings.

We avoided Facebook Live to avoid an occasion for the sin of reading comments as Mass live-streamed. Soon, my family went back to the distraction-free sure-as-the-sunrise daily Mass telecast by EWTN.

Training the New Dog

With the virtual now the new spiritual, Sacrament-hungry faithful are also reminded about the virtue of humility, the ‘Eucharistic fast,’ the Spiritual Communion, Perfect Act of Contrition, not to forget online-giving.

“All fine. But where is my Master?”

I was now like Hachi (Hachi: A Dog’s Tale), who was not welcome inside the house and would not get trained. All Hachi wanted was to be with his master. Day after day, he would follow him to the train station (my Jericho prayer?), forever waiting there for his return. When his master returned, he would be able to return home with him.

‘I will then listen to whatever my Master commands me.’

Chasing the Master

Sacred Triduum, Jonathan asked for the parish live-streamed Masses/services. These were most lovingly arranged and moving. Jonathan remained prostrate on the carpet in unspeakable pain.

Having gone helplessly lachrymal at the Holy Thursday live-stream, I reached out to the nearest SSPX Priory on Good Friday asking about a parking lot Mass on Easter Sunday. “Where is Bread? Is there Bread?”

The kind SSPX prior who answered my call made inquiries with two other SSPX chapels closest to me, and got back with Easter Sunday Mass timings. The distance sounded daunting. Yet, ‘valid and accessible’ seemed better than ‘inaccessible and virtual.’

Like Jacob’s sons from famine-struck Canaan who traveled to Egypt to buy grain, my family journeyed to an SSPX chapel in Wisconsin on Easter Sunday. We knew a Mass was not a guarantee that we would receive Holy Communion, which might be deemed a risky proposition.

The four hundred miles on road, and ten hours from home in another state were nothing compared to the joy we were granted—the Blessed Sacrament of the Mass with Holy Communion reverentially received. ‘Indeed, my Master is my Bread.’

We thank God for the SSPX. It seems that like Joseph the dreamer, the once-alienated Jacob brother, the SSPX had “saved the grain” (Cf. Genesis 41:48-49), making it available when there is a “famine in all other lands” (Cf. v.51).

The SSPX chapel community meticulously complied with all pandemic-time orders. The faithful, inside their cars, followed Mass over FM radio. Sixty-five or so families received Holy Communion kneeling at a makeshift communion rail, with the priest sanitizing hands before each successive family stepped forward. The community had never had a break in sacramental life because of the Coronavirus.

Lord, Gather Your Church Again

The viability of a fully-compliant parking lot Mass was on demonstration. Yet back home, I am restless from the long sabbath imposed on me in deference to a virus. I still wait for Easter.

Shepherds would have done better learning from abortion outlets how to survive during a pestilence. But then the orphanhood of creatures like me has found no validation with them. Instead, we receive counsel how we must think, and how we must not.

The Lord spoke the language of the Israelites to test the faith of the ‘Canaanite dog.’ But did He not retreat to the territory of the dogs for respite from those rule-mouthing Pharisees of Jerusalem? The dog did pass the test.

Now, I pray the shepherds of His Church will pass the test. May their eyes be opened when they bless and break the bread. May priests who fervently desire the salvation of souls, fearlessly work to strengthen the arms of their bishops. Together, may they receive the confidence to return to Jerusalem, put their lives on the line, and gather alienated flock again.

Disobedience vs. Faithfulness

I am reminded of Jimmy, a German Shepherd dog my parents owned when they were just married. Dad had returned home after several days in a military exercise. Jimmy had missed him sorely. But Dad had to get to work the very next day. As he left home the next morning, Jimmy decided to follow Dad’s Jeep just to be with his master. He would not obey when told to stay back. That day was ‘dog clearance day’ in the cantonment—a day to bring down the mongrel population in the area. Jimmy was brought down by a bullet. Whether it was a prize for faithfulness to his master or the price of his disobedience, I do not know.