Simply One Word, Amen,

Not I Believe or ANYTHING else!

This is part of another Blog, but I feel that it needs to be repeated.  I have preached on it, taught about it and still feel that we are a long way from people getting it!  When receiving communion and you hear, the simple phrases “The Body of Christ” and “The Blood of Christ”  there is only one possible response, AMEN.  Period, end of story, I should stop writing.  That is it, just AMEN.

First issue.  We are a universal Church.  Catholic means universal.  There are two words that are almost the same in all languages, AMEN and ALLELUIA.  I have not been able to confirm, but in all the places I have been it has been amen, not always spelled like that and I found a list of 80 languages with the sound being amen, just the writing was different.

Second issue.  Amen from the original texts is more accurately translated, “so be it”.  It is more a statement of faith with many other nuances that trite phrases like “I believe” just don’t have.

Finally, if the whole, or even most of the church is uttering the same thing, who are we to change it.  We are attesting with those present, those at neighboring parishes and those around the world that we are one Church.  With our amen we affirm our communion of faith and purpose with the entire Church.  We have come together at Eucharist as one universal Body of Christ all using the same affirmation, AMEN.

I believe…

When receiving communion we only say Amen.  No more Thanks yous, thanks, I believe, Jesus is my Lord and Savor or anything that doesn’t sound like AMEN.  As our sending forth song proclaimed tonight, “let the people say AMEN!  (and nothing else when receiving communion)