One Altar, One Sacrament, and One Body
In the Gospels, God’s call to discipleship and a deeper knowledge of Him looks like Jesus confronting the future Apostles in their everyday stations and saying, “Follow Me.” At St. John the Evangelist, it may look like the sacristan approaching you unsolicited and saying, “Come with me to the sacristy; I’m sure we have a cassock that fits.”
A cradle Episcopalian from Dallas, I came to St. John’s in the vicissitudes of student life at McGill University. The Prayer Book language and care for liturgy put me instantly at home, and I recognized the familiar Anglican way that parishioners of all sorts drove the life of the Church. But as I kept serving at the altar after that invitation, my awareness of two particular things grew.
First, I saw a Eucharistic focus as a source of tremendous stability. A community that regularly celebrates the Mass is one that regularly gives thanks to an unchanging God, on whom they are utterly dependent. Things do not always go right at the altar, or in our hearts. Our service to God and neighbour is always imperfect (as the frustrated psalmist knows, and the servers repeat in preparatory prayers: “Why hast Thou [God] put me from thee?”, “why art thou so heavy, O my soul?”, yet “I will go unto the altar of God”). But Jesus shows up anyway, time after time, to be with and feed us, a real motley crew. To paraphrase St. Paul, neither height, nor depth, nor a pandemic, nor an escaped live coal from the thurible landing under the old dry wooden altar (this has really happened), nor a fire alarm being pulled during the Consecration (this too), shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Second, I grasped the real unity of Christ’s Body as downstream of that stable Sacrament of the Altar. It’s right there in the Prayer Book – the Sacrament “assur[es] us… that we are living members of His mystical body, which is the blessed company of all faithful people” – but it was at St. John’s high altar that this truly clicked. Whenever I served at this altar, I was actually serving at the same altar I had when I learned it as a child, and at the same altars of faraway family and friends in the present, and at the same altars of all the saints in the history of the world, because there is one Body and one altar that builds it up. Though I am living and working again in Dallas today, whenever we celebrate Mass, our congregations are there together. I am a ways down the transcontinental altar rail from you all! But it remains one altar, one Sacrament, and one Body. When it comes to the Holy Communion, it’s a small world.
Our day’s challenges are serious, but the increasing closeness of the Anglican world, especially in light of modern communications and technology, can fit right in with this sacramental imagination to help. St. Lazarus Press — a newly formed publishing company specializing in Anglican literature, spun off by the Guild of St. Jude in 2023 — is assisted by nonlocal supporters of St. John’s. Many of its sales come from the United States and the United Kingdom, as fellow Anglicans in those places wish to see St. John’s preserve and publish for the future the things that make the parish special in Montreal today. They are at the one altar too. And those who wish to pitch publications should write to the Press at: stlazaruspress@gmail.com.
Until the next time I see you in Montreal, I will see you at the one rail!
Books available from The St. Lazarus Press
