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In the fall of 2019, a fellow member of Madonna House asked me what I appreciated most about our Madonna House vocation. I answered immediately: “Receiving Jesus in the Eucharist every day!”
I grew up in the former diocese of Gravelbourg, which was composed of a good chunk of southwestern Saskatchewan, Canada. It was a very sparsely populated diocese, yet quite large geographically, with many small mission parishes and few priests. Most of the priests were responsible for from two to four parishes.
This meant that in practice, it was not easy to get to Mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist. Most, but not all, mission parishes had Sunday Mass every week, but very few had any weekday Masses. Even the main parishes usually had Mass only a couple times during the week.
So until I attended university in the city of Saskatoon, I did not experience the blessing of daily communion. There I lived for two years at the House of Discernment of the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary, and we had daily Mass in their chapel.
Ever since that stay with the Sisters, if I do not receive my Lord daily, I feel the lack. The best way I found to describe this hunger was that it felt like a rat constantly gnawing away inside of me.
I saw this ache as something to be borne, as I could neither stop it nor feed it daily. Later I learned to offer it up, especially for those who had access to Mass and chose not to go. Though I knew the hunger to be a great grace, I never saw the inability to be at daily Mass and communion as a blessing.
Until March of 2020, when all the parishes in the archdiocese of Toronto where I live now were closed to help slow the spread of COVID-19. On March 17, I braced myself for a return to the great Eucharistic hunger I experienced most of my adult life before I came to Madonna House.
Much to my great, great surprise, going without the Eucharist was not as difficult as I expected. I did not like it, I did not want it, I wanted it to end now. It hurt, and it hurt my Madonna House sisters because of the graces I did not receive—but the experience was not new.
It was familiar. As I said before, I had lived something similar for years, decades. I must say I was very puzzled. Why did I not feel worse? I knew that hunger for Christ in the Eucharist was still within me.
By mid-April, I began to look back on my life in the “Eucharistic desert” of Saskatchewan with different eyes. I began to see that it had indeed been a great blessing. I pondered anew that challenges or crosses in our life are given to us by God for our good, and often they prepare us for future challenges.
That period in my life had made me aware of the precious gift of the Eucharist. And it partially prepared me for this extended fast of the pandemic. And this fast, too, is a blessing.
For now that I am back to attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist daily, I can see that my gratitude for the Eucharist has grown. I hope that in the future I, and we, can hold on to the memory of this difficult pandemic time. Please, God, do not let us ever take for granted the communal celebration of the Mass and the reception of our Eucharistic Lord!
