I recall seeing a photo of a priest giving communion to a boy, with the caption announcing “Father M. communicates members of the choir.”  This is one of those anachronisms, along with “bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness” and “we are very members incorporate in the mystical body” that endeared me to old style Anglicanism.  

I find it most interesting that an archaic use of the word “communicate” is to participate in communion.  The Latin root “communicare” means to “make common”, something that can be applied both to disseminating information and to disseminating the sacramental bread and wine.

In communion God does indeed speak to us. When we communicate, or eat the body and blood of Christ, God speaks into our hearts.  He tells us of His great love—of His “goodness and favor towards us” (another great phrase from the old prayer book).  

Communion is like an appointment.  Whenever people of faith gather in Jesus’ name, he comes to us and is in our midst.  Jail cell visits are an image that comes to mind.  We leave the prison yard of this world, go to the booth (a church or fellowship group), and God sits down at the other side of the barrier.  The bread and wine are like an intercom.  

Someday we will be sprung from prison into a life of true freedom—freedom from death, fear, sorrow, and all other mortal travails.  For now, though, we are happy to receive the message from the other side.  

God indeed communicates with us, and what a message it is!  As St. John gasps in his first epistle, “Behold what manner of love is this! That we’ve been allowed to be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1, my own slight paraphrase)