WHO EVER SAID IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE EASY?:

Paradox at the heart of the Mass: Communion is sign of unity, but often it leaves people feeling excluded, on the outside of the community of the faithful. In the fifth of our series, a Benedictine monk seeks a theological basis for a pastoral re-examination of the problem (Dominic Milroy, 3/12/05, The Tablet)

It is sad that the collective and individual experience of the central Christian act should be clouded by so many anomalies, by so much half-understanding and by so much personal pain and deprivation. It is clear from the New Testament and from the history of the early Christian communities that these tensions are not new.