“What’s the Point?” — A Franciscan Clarean Reflection on the Open Table

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Someone recently shared this with me:

“I haven’t been to Mass in over a year. Since I live with someone who isn’t my spouse, I’m not permitted to take the Eucharist anyway, so I figure… what’s the point?”

Oh friend… I hear that ache. And let me say this as clearly and fiercely as a Franciscan Clarean can:

You are not exiled from God’s table.
Not today. Not ever.

Whatever someone told you about being “not permitted” doesn’t get the final word — Christ does. And Christ’s entire ministry was basically one long, holy potluck with the “wrong” people at the “wrong” times in the “wrong” places. If exclusion was the rule, Jesus broke it constantly.

From a Franciscan Clarean perspective, the table of Christ is radically open because grace was never meant to be a reward for moral tidiness — it is food for the journey, nourishment for the hungry, medicine for the wounded.

Francis and Clare didn’t spend their lives building gatekeeping systems.
They built circles of welcome where the poor, the irregular, the complicated, and the scandalous could finally breathe again.

So let me speak this truth over you:

You belong.
Your hunger matters.
Your story is not disqualifying.
The Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect, but bread for the broken.

You don’t need to be married, sorted out, or checkbox-approved to encounter the living Christ. You just need to be human and hungry — which is all of us.

So if your heart has been aching for Mass, don’t let shame or someone else’s rulebook convince you you’re unworthy. Come. Sit. Rest. Pray. Let the liturgy hold you, shape you, heal you. The table is mercy, not measuring.

And if anyone tries to shut the door on you?

Sweetheart… we’ll just build a bigger table.