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Hallo again to all.
Communion tokens, rooted in early sixteenth-century 'houselling tokens' that served the same purpose, were given by ministers to people in their charge who professed themselves prepared to receive the holy communion. Attendance at pre-communion preparatory services or fast-day observances was often a prerequisite to obtaining them. They could be presented by the hopeful communicant on the (then quite infrequent) day when the Lord's Supper was celebrated as a sign of his or her readiness to join in the meal on the terms of the local congregation. In Calvinist Europe, especially in Switzerland and France, they were called méraux; in English- and Gaelic-speaking Christianity they are almost exclusively the domain of various strains of Presbyterianism, though their use by Scottish Episcopal clergy is also attested. In the hands and pockets of Scots they made their way to Canada, Newfoundland, the United States, Vanuatu and other parts of the Hebridean diaspora.
Today, by contrast, receiving communion is more routinized, available without difficulty at least once a week and in some places a few times a day to most of us who desire it and have a means of traveling to an Anglican church. One good consequence is that we can now go shorter periods without eucharistic nourishment; two generally unnoted less positive results are that we are much less familiar with the offices of Mattins and Evensong, and that we're generally much less reverent about the Holy Communion. It may not quite be true that we now celebrate the eucharist at the drop of a hat, but it is the case that half a century ago gatherings that would have begun and ended with a choral Evensong now invariably involve the holy communion. But as we read headlines that describe the 'tearing' of institutional communion in our family of churches, we know of no one who has ever been repelled from the Blessed Sacrament in any church in any diocese on any side of the various presenting issues that are understood to have broken or torn communion among us. We wonder sometimes if Communion and Communion are only coincidentally the same word in light of the inexplicable differences we watch between the two in headlines and on the ground.
It is as impossible as it is undesirable to turn back the clock on eucharistic preparation. We are thankful that we live and move in a tradition that has been unwilling to make windows into souls in connection with it. (On a practical note, we cannot imagine capable smiths coming forward to supply metal tokens in their millions for the Anglicans who receive the sacrament each Sunday around the world, and it is not in any case part of the main stream of our tradition.) But it is worth looking again at the shelves of Anglican devotional books that once set out patterns for systematic self-examination of conscience over a period of a week or a month. Many editions of works by Hobart, Haweis, Nelson and Taylor are relatively easy to find from sources like the Anglican Bibliopole and AbeBooks, and less expensive than a new hardcover book from a university press. There is wisdom to be found on every page, wisdom that stands to deepen and enrich our common lives if only we will tap into it. Tolle, lege. See you next week. |
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None of us has ever participated in a communion service that made
use of communion tokens. We've seen them on occasion for sale in
bric-a-brac shops, and watched them disappear at sometimes fantastic
prices in eBay auctions. But they represent a form of eucharistic
discipline relatively strange to us, one about which we have found
ourselves reflecting recently nonetheless.
All
the examples we own are octagonal, but squares, ovals, circles, diamonds,
hexagons and other fanciful shapes are not too hard to find. Silver
and ivory are known to have been used very occasionally, but the
great majority are made of 'white' metals like tin, pewter or lead,
and often include a biblical verse appropriate to self-examination
before the service. Also common are the name and location of the
congregation, the year the service for which they were made took
place, and the initials of the incumbent clergyman in charge
of the whole affair. Some include a numeral indicating the
particular table to which its holder was assigned. Our favourites
are those that picture the burning bush on obverse or reverse and
include variations on the phrase nec
tamen consumebatur or [it was burned but] not consumed in
an elaborate, multivalent reference to Moses' theopany, Isaiah's
heavenly vision, and the Christian's privileged meeting with God
in the holy eucharist.
Each time we look at a communion token, we marvel to think of the
effort western Christians once put into internal preparation for
this sacrament. There is unimpeachable evidence on this page alone
to indicate that a man or woman in 
Although
we live in a time when the Communion—by which we mean global, structural
Anglican belonging—is quite difficult and fraught with political
issues, Holy Communion—by which we mean the most comfortable sacrament—has
become very easy indeed. It is sad, then, to note that there are
dozens of organizations with their own detailed agendae for re-formation
of the Anglican Communion, but a tiny handful working with single-mindedness
to deepen the lives of communicants in preparation for the Holy Communion.*
We wouldn't mind watching a reverse of the amount of ink and number
of keystrokes expended on the former in favour of the latter.