When he was a curate, Il Rettore was handed the list of home communicants in the parish and sent off to see them. It's a way of doing something useful with a new curate who can't do much else and isn't supposed to be deluged with preaching duties and the like, and also gets them to meet people. But the temptation is just to get them doing all of it. Il Rettore once took communion to fourteen people in the same day. I wondered that his mental equilibrium was maintained, saying the same words over and over again. Perhaps it wasn't.
It isn't like that in Swanvale Halt, but I tend to do a series of home communions just before Christmas and Easter, to make sure people are included at these vital times. Some of my most moving moments in my ministry have been doing this as I encounter people who have lived lives of faith and faithfulness, and share with me their thankfulness for the mercies they have received and still do. They are always grateful to me, but when I say thank you at the end of the meeting I do mean it. Taking communion to someone in their own home, not celebrating a eucharist but simply administering the sacrament - to myself as well as them - is a situation of great equality. We are both recipients, approaching the Lord in his sacramental presence, even if I say most of the words. When Marion the curate was with us she did some home communions, but not all of them. I think any incumbent who delegates this job because they're awfully, awfully busy doing more important things is genuinely missing out.
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