IIC 3: Grief Over the Loss of the Eucharist

Dr. Peter creates a place for owning and accepting your grief and anger about not being able to attend Mass or be with our Lord in the Eucharist.  He invites you to ask the question how this loss of access to the Blessed Sacrament is a gift to you from God and gives examples of possible answers.  Think outside the box and turn this loss into gain in Divine Providence.

[00:00:00] “And Mary Magdalene saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.'” Who else out there of you can resonate with Mary Magdalene’s lament? “They have taken away my Lord.” This episode is for you. We are diving into the topic of grief over the loss of the Eucharist. The reactions of faithful Catholics to our churches being shuttered actually are not getting that much press. But grief. Grief comes up a lot in conversations, often with tears. Committed Catholics are grieving the loss of access to our Lord in the Eucharist. And there are many other emotions as well. And we need to acknowledge this. Welcome to the podcast, Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem, where together we embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. This is episode 3, Grief Over the Loss of the Eucharist. And I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts. Thank you for being here. So we know the reasons that are offered for the closing of the parishes. We’ve got a serious virus situation. On March 16th, the White House issued guidance to avoid gatherings larger than ten people. In response, almost all dioceses closed the churches and canceled public Masses. They also eliminated gatherings of all kinds.

[00:01:58] Even confessions are to be postponed unless there’s a risk of death in many places, including here in Indiana. My daughter’s first communion is not going to be happening in April as we had planned. And you have heard the many statements in the US from bishops about how necessary this closure of all the parishes is and the cancellation of the Masses is for public health reasons and for the public good. And there is a sense that churches are not being singled out. This is happening at sporting venues, movie theaters, banquet halls, all these kind of places where large numbers of people come gathering together are also being shut down as well. No reasonable person wants to arbitrarily increase the death count from the virus. Okay, we’ve got that. But what’s gotten a lot less attention is the real pain and loss of those of us dedicated and devoted to the Eucharist, those of us who love our Lord in the Eucharist. The impact of that loss. “They have taken away my Lord,” said Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene loved Jesus with a deep, abiding, and emotional love. “They have taken away my Lord.” So this podcast is a place where we can acknowledge the pain and the weirdness of it all. I mean, who of you didn’t find it weird to watch Mass on TV or some computer monitor on Sunday morning? That’s weird. It’s not the same. Mary Magdalene, yearning for Jesus outside the tomb, would not have been satisfied if one of the angels said, “Well, Mary, Jesus is not here, but I’ve got a video of him on my iPhone.”

[00:03:46] You know. At Souls and Hearts, and in this podcast, we’re not going to get into criticizing the church hierarchy or pointing fingers at other people. That’s not what we’re about. We’re also not investigative journalists or commentators. What we are about is removing the psychological hurdles to deepening our relationship with God. And we can do that in any situation. So remember, this podcast is all about embracing the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this virus crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. I want to invite all of you in this podcast audience to embrace the situations in which we find ourselves, and to embrace the people we find ourselves with, in deep confidence that all things work together for the good for those who love the Lord. All things, all things. No exceptions. And that includes the loss of our access to the Eucharist. So let’s ask the question. How in God’s providence can this situation of the loss of the Eucharist be good for my spiritual life right now? It’s really important for each of you to ask that question. Many people will not ask that question and they won’t seek the answer and they won’t find it. They will just assume that this is a loss, a disaster, something to be endured, something to be tolerated, not a gift. Some Catholics are going to cover their grief with anger and rail against the present circumstances, suffering like rebels.

[00:05:42] They may want to criticize their bishops. They may want to protest the parish closures. They may cry out in a loud voice, “Why do liquor stores count as essential services and why are our Masses not considered essential? What’s more essential than the mass?” I get it, I totally do. Many of you have feelings like this, and I certainly do as well. Others will endure their grief without imbuing it with spiritual meaning, and they’ll suffer like Stoics. They may not want to talk about their internal reactions or even deal with them. And I understand that reaction too. There are lots of times where I don’t want to talk about my feelings. Some of you are certainly going to resonate with that approach. But we Catholics, we committed Catholics, those of us who love the Eucharist, have another option. And this is the big action item for this episode. Ask the question, how is this loss of the Eucharist best for me? How is it best for me right now that I’ve lost access to the Blessed Sacrament, to the Mass, to Eucharistic adoration, and to confession? It’s vital that each of you, who is struggling with the loss, ask that question. And not just accept answers from other people, including me. And here’s the other thing. You need to turn it into a prayer. Not just asking yourself, not just searching your own intellect, not just searching your own resources for an answer, but taking it to God.

[00:07:26] Because there are reasons for this loss. God only allowed this loss of the Eucharist out of his love for you. Those reasons, though, they vary from person to person, depending on what our needs are. So I want to give you more than merely asking the critical question, you know. So the question again is, how is this best for me that I’ve lost access to the Eucharist? I’m going to give some examples of possible answers. But these are like clothes. These answers are like clothes. They’re not going to fit everybody, right. They’re not going to fit each person. So understand that this is just to kind of give you a flavor of the kinds of ways in which the loss of the Eucharist could be to your spiritual and psychological benefit. So the first one is that it may increase your thirst for the Eucharist. Maybe you’ve started to take our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist for granted. Psychologically, we tend to desire things more once someone takes them away from us. So if that’s going on for you, you can ask for your love for the Lord in the Eucharist to increase. Second, the loss of the Eucharist may help you get in touch with some experience of abandonment or betrayal in your past. There is a psychological technique called an affect bridge. That is where you work to remember when in the past you felt the same way as you do now.

[00:09:00] So you’re bridging from the present to the past, looking for times in which you’ve had the exact same or a similar emotional experience. For many of you, grief or anger about the loss of the Eucharist may tap into some other unresolved loss in your life. You can check that out in your prayer, in your quiet time. Go back through your life to the times when you felt the same way as you do now about the loss of the Eucharist. Obviously, you would have felt it about something else, but is there something there unresolved in that past that you should know about? You know, something that God is allowing to surface in you now so that you can take it to him for healing? It might be some kind of abandonment or some kind of relational loss that needs healing. Third possibility. Right? So for me, I’m finding out how dependent I am on my routine. I rely on my routines. You know, for me, this is about not relying on my spiritual plan of life and my regular spiritual routine. It’s about relying on God moment to moment and maintaining the presence of God, recollection, rather than just during my prayer time. It’s about coming back to deepening the relationship and embracing my dependency. So I don’t need daily Mass or an hour of Eucharistic adoration to do that. In this situation, I can embrace the idea that it’s better that I don’t have them right now.

[00:10:31] As hard as it is for me to say that. I need God, and He is not bound by my lack of access to the Eucharist. I need to be open to looking at the way that he is trying to reach me in my day to day life, moment to moment, listening to his calls. Again, it’s important that you, for yourself, ask how this loss of the Eucharist is best for you. And if you’re so moved, share it. Let me know. Get in touch with me. Send me an email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. And if you want to learn more about your personal psychological reactions in this virus crisis and how those psychological reactions interfere with your spiritual life, I am developing a short assessment tool in some limited space webinars to explore that now. You can sign up on our website at soulsandhearts.com on the Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem page if you want to be notified when those resources are going to become available. All right. So we’ll see you again for our next episode on Monday, March 30th. And let’s add Saint Mary Magdalene to our invocations today with her plea, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” She understands what we’re experiencing, so we’re going to invoke her as well. Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us. Mother Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.