REMODEL YOURSELF WITH A WAFER IN THE DIGITAL AGE

  

“Wafer” means a thin, crumbly and impermanent flattish food item. In the pantry you search around for something sweet, or something salty and flat and crumbly and you might find wafers. The kind you really like!   

    

            

Wafer, backing up an ice cream desert.     Author: LotusHead, Johannesburg   Licensed under Gnu Free Documentation License via Wikipedia

Just yesterday on Friday, April 8, 2016, wafers—communion wafers this time--hit the news when Pope Francis released his 250 page paper on the family. The exhortation caused celebration, confusion, and wonderment, depending on the stance of the reader.

Amoris Laetitia, “the joy of love” in English, speaks volumes by itself. Speaks optimism, too.

Now, think of those communion wafers. In the ritual of Holy Communion Christians use a flat wafer made of unleavened bread. Though tasteless, the consecrated wafers represent--or they actually become, depending on your views—the body of Christ. The Roman Catholic Church technically forbids divorcees to commune. The Pope didn’t override or change that law. However, local practice may vary and reports have reached all the way to this protestant that many Catholic divorcees actually do attend upon communion, as permitted by loving and supportive priests.

                                                 

                                                      Communion wafers. 

                      Author: Patnac licensed under Gnu Free Documentation License, via Wikipedia.

Logic tells me that everyone, unmarried, married and divorced, needs help and support in attaining life, love and joy.

So I wonder how divorcees are supposed to remodel themselves—remake their lives—without access to the life-giving, love-giving body and blood of Christ.

In an age of digital devices, which run on yet another kind of wafer—the semiconductor sort--the solid ground shifts under our feet. Rampant change blows freely around the globe, affecting every culture. No one is immune. Change is the condition of our lives. Due to these wafers.

                                                                         

                                                    Author; Hebbe at German Wikipedia. Image in the public domain, via Wikipedia

There are some constants. Reach out for them like you’d grab for an overhead branch if you were swept downstream in a torrent. One constant is the communion wafer. Tie yourself to the ancient liturgical words of love and peace that float to you across the sea of the ages. Those words, and that bread, that wine, are your moorings.

Today, in our amazing times, you may and perhaps must use two kinds of wafers for a full life. The life-changing semiconductor wafers and the devices they make possible are the change agents. The others—the life-saving wafers, the consecrated bread—bring bushels of unchanging love and joy.