NICK AND THE EUCHARIST

Nick, who was born with Downs Syndrome, was a member of l'Arche community in Lambeth. L'Arche communities came into being, first in France, in response to the needs of people with learning disabilities. After Nicks death in 1991 Therese Vanier wrote his story in Nick: Man of the Heart (Gill and Macmillan, £2.99) and we are grateful for permission to reprint part of the chapter on Nick and the eucharist.

When l'Arche came to England there were ecumenical questions to be faced which had never arisen in France. There were agonising questions about eucharistic sharing in the community, as there are in an interchurch family. Nick had something in common with the children of interchurch families who cannot understand intellectually the reasons for Christian divisions, but can understand how important it is to be together at the celebration which is at the heart of Christian community and family life.

Nick would get upset by the fact that we went to different churches on a Sunday. He felt "we should do something about it" ­ "it" being the disunity he discovered existed between the churches and thus one very overt factor of disunity among those he loved. When asked what we could do about it he opined that we should organise a march to the Houses of Parliament, via Buckingham Palace. Nick was quite a political animal and his faith in the power of the monarch was unlimited.

No eucharist at all?

Most people in our community are either Anglican or Roman Catholic. Initially we had decided not to invite priests to celebrate the eucharist in the community because previous experience had shown how painful it was if eucharistic hospitality was not offered, or offered and not accepted. The different rules of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches meant that, having chosen to live with the Roman Catholic rules and the normal practice in the churches around us, we developed the tradition of receiving either communion or a blessing at each other's eucharist. After a number of years we decided to have community eucharists at l'Arche Lambeth: once a month an Anglican and a Roman Catholic eucharist were celebrated on different weekdays. This was the context in which Nick experienced division at the eucharist in a community striving for unity among its members and, at least to some extent, living an unusual degree of unity and communion among very different people.

For a period of about two years in the early 'eighties, Nick lived in a small flat with another man with learning difficulties, Brian, who was a Roman Catholic, and an assistant, Chris, who attended a local Baptist church.

Nick's initiative

When I was director of the community I came to the flat which these men shared as I usually did a couple of times a month to hear how things were going. We had supper, and then the tale unfolded ... in the words of Chris, the assistant: "My recollection of the evening in question is vivid. We had finished our meal, and the room was lit by a candle as we began prayers around the table. Prayers were often a time of special closeness and reconciliation, although in the early days Brian's difficulties with speech sometimes distanced him from it. This particular evening's prayers consisted of the usual blend of spoken and silent prayer. Towards what would usually have been the end of the prayer time, Nick rose solemnly from the table and went to the darkened kitchen. I knew something was about to happen. As the bread bin rattled and then the sound of the cold tap was heard, it dawned on me what it was.

"Nick returned to the table with a slice of bread and a glass of water, and after repeating Jesus' words from the Last Supper (which he had often joined in saying with the minister at the Anglican eucharist) he administered these to Brian, to me and to himself. Brian pronounced a reverent and solemn Amen and I did the same rather more quietly. After a further time of silence we joined together in the prayer of l'Arche ... through the hands of your little ones bless us... The fact that all this had taken place in the ceremonial context of prayers around the candle, the focal­point of our life together, served to amplify its significance. It also made me feel powerless to prevent it happening without disrupting the special atmosphere of prayers. Who was I to say Nick was not acting under an impulse of the Holy Spirit to provide what was lacking in our community life? Where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them. However, I was aware that this incident should not be repeated, and to my recollection it was not. I did not feel it was realistic to let Nick develop the idea that he could become some sort of 'community priest'. Later that evening, after the intensity had subsided, we talked it over, but a conflict remained in my mind."

Trying to understand

Nick, Brian, Chris and I talked about all this, trying to affirm what Nick had undertaken but also trying to help us all to understand what was and what was not a celebration of the eucharist. This was very delicate ground, and I'm not sure I handled it well. For instance, it was easy for me to speak of ordained ministers presiding at the eucharist in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, but for a Baptist, any Christian believer is able to preside at the Lord's Table, although usually this will be someone with some status within the local church.

Over and over again

It took me some time to understand more of the symbolism of what Nick had done. Chris writes that although the incident happened only once, he is sure it was Nick's intention to make it a repeated occasion. He adds: "The incident was one of the most moving and challenging moments of my time in l'Arche. Nick had hit on several weak points simultaneously: that the eucharist should be the central point of community life, and yet it was absent; and at the same time he challenged the idea that it was the handicapped person whose voice was listened to in l'Arche, and who was to us a channel of God's blessing."

As time went on, the significant points for myself became that Nick had chosen the end of a meal to celebrate a eucharist with his companions of each and every meal and that it was clearly his intention to repeat the celebration at other meals and prayer times. For him this was to be not once but over and over again. And it was the "over and over again" that became important for me. Unity comes from getting to know each other, which means sharing simple things over and over again. It means in particular sharing our time, our food, our daily lives with others who hunger for unity, hold many of the secrets of achieving it, but cannot do it alone.

Expectant open hands

Nick never missed a community eucharist and usually sat as close as he could to the celebrant. He was totally absorbed in what was happening. His attitude had a marked effect on the priests who came to celebrate with us. Canon Donald Allchin is an Anglican priest who has known l'Arche for many years. He writes about his experience during a retreat he gave jointly with David Standley in 1984 to a group of handicapped people and assistants. "What I remember about Nick was the extreme attention and reverence with which he brought up the hosts at the offertory, and also the way in which he affirmed me in my ministry (I was new to l'Arche) by his whole attitude and acceptance. It was very simple but very striking."

David Standley is a Roman Catholic priest who has celebrated the eucharist in our community each month for many years. When he sent us his memories of Nick he began by mentioning his sense of humour, and then added: "For all his humour, Nick had gravity too; he was serious about things that mattered. He held on to truths that he saw and knew clearly. He found his own way of witnessing to that. His expectant open hands for communion at the Roman Catholic eucharist spoke of a longing deeper than in some who received. Nick's longing rekindled mine."

Bewilderment and desolation

These remarks of David's remind me of a particular occasion. Nick loved to prepare the table and the room for the celebration of the eucharist. In his last years we would do it together and start well ahead of time because he needed time and prompting to remember what was needed. I reminded Nick that this was "David's eucharist" and so it was Roman Catholic and he would receive a blessing and not bread and wine. "Oh yes, of course," said Nick. I must have asked four or five times in the next hour or so if he knew which eucharist was being celebrated and of course he had forgotten, and forgotten I had asked him the same question ten minutes before. I saw him sit at David's right and was certain that he would forget again and that this did not matter. Of course it did not matter, but what did matter very much to me on this occasion was the expression I glimpsed on Nick's face as he stood with hands held out for communion at the moment he realised that he would not receive the bread. It only lasted a split second because his face regained its peaceful expression as he felt David's hand on his head, giving him a blessing. But the look of bewilderment and desolation I had seen brought tears to my eyes and a searing feeling of anger and grief which I had not experienced in relation to the divisions at the eucharist for many years.

Questions

"What are we doing?" I thought. "Why impose this on Nick who at this point has no idea what it is all about?" After the service, which was more crowded than usual, Nick tried to make his way across the room, at the same time asking people if they had seen his coat. Amid the noise and chatter no one seemed aware of Nick and he had trouble getting through the crowd. His coat in fact was out in the hall and when he reached the door we began to make our way to my car. It was raining and it was cold and dark. Stepping off the pavement, Nick lost his balance and fell. At that moment a couple of lads came along the pavement and yelled some obscenities at him; in mitigation of their behaviour I should add that they sounded and looked either drunk or drugged. After I had left Nick at his home I went back to my flat and wept and then I asked myself what was making me so angry. Why was I so angry and sad? At the imposed division at communion, at the institutional church? Yes. At those who came to the eucharist and ignored Nick? At myself for ever having got involved in an interdenominational community and in respecting rules with all the divided feelings this left me with? Yes. And why not: with God?

And yet part of me knew and still knows that there is deep significance in experiencing and suffering these divisions in our hearts, in our guts; that in so doing (in the words of St Paul) we are, in our small way, "making up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ". Then I remembered Nick struggling through a crowd of people who on this occasion neither saw nor heard him, and I thought of the obscenities shouted at him as he struggled to get on his feet after falling in the gutter. I began to see that division at the eucharist reflects and ultimately originates from all the other divisions, failings and faults of human beings. The divisions in each person, in myself, in our community, in our neighbourhood, in our society, affect all of us and especially those among us who, like Nick, live at the level of the heart with the profound need for unity, for communion between people that this implies.

It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the ... eucharist ... to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church but who greatly desire to receive (it), freely request (it) and manifest the faith which the Catholic Church professes with regard to (it).

Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint on Commitment to Ecumenis, 25 May 1995 (46)

Return to Journal index
Published by the Association of Interchurch Families, England