“One of the most transformingly surprising things about Holy Communion is that it obliges you to see the person next to you as wanted by God. God wants that person’s company as well as mine. How much simpler if God only wanted my company and that of those I had decided to invite. But God does not play that particular game. And the transforming effect of looking at other Christians as people whose company God wants, is – by the look of things – still sinking in for a lot of Christians, and taking a rather long time…”

Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.51

How to use this LitBit Liturgical Commentary Snippet

LitBit liturgical commentary snippets are intended to be inserted into a pew sheet in the midst of the liturgy itself. They are mostly easily included by creating a text box in your word processing program and then formatting text and box size and location so that it appears in the right place without obstructing the printed order itself.

Select the above text, copy it and paste it into a text box in your word processor.

Shorter commentary texts might be situated on your page as a “gloss” or side comment; longer texts might span the page. It can help to change the font and colour of the text to minimize confusion on the page.

 

“Holy Communion changes the way we see things as well as people. It changes how we see the world and…it changes how we see one another (as we learn to see our neighbour as God’s guest). It reinforces and sustains the hospitality that believers want to show to those in need, and it also obliges us to look at other Christians and take seriously the fact that they have been invited too.”

Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.51

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

 

“For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests – that they have been welcomed and that they are wanted… In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ tells us that he wants our company”

Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.41

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

“If Jesus gives thanks over bread and wine on the eve of his death, if Jesus makes that connection between the furthest place away from God, which is suffering and death, and the giving and outpouring of his Father, and if in his person he fuses those things together, then wherever we are some connection between us and God is possible. All places, all people, all things have about them an unexpected sacramental depth. They open on to God the Giver.”

Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.49

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

 

“Holy Communion is no kind of reward: it is, like everything about Jesus Christ, a free gift. We take Holy Communion not because we are doing well, but because we are doing badly. Not because we have arrived, but because we are traveling. Not because we are right, but because we are confused and wrong. Not because we are divine, but because we are human. Not because we are full, but because we are hungry.”

Rowan Williams, Being Christian (2014), p.53

 

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.