Holy Communion: Jesus is Mine

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my Guardian Angel, intercede for me.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.

In Holy Communion, Jesus gives himself to each one of us. We could say that in those moments Jesus is mine. He is all mine, in His body and His blood, His soul and His divinity.

With Communion, Our Lord enters our hearts and our soul and remains corporally present as long as the appearance of bread lasts, which is usually 10 or so minutes. The Fathers of the Church taught that during this time, the angels surround us and continue to adore Jesus and to love Him without interruption.

St. Bernard wrote, “When Jesus is corporally present within us, the angels surround us as a guard of love.” These truths can give us plenty of food for thought.

These truths can be something that we remind ourselves of daily, or on a weekly basis when we receive Our Lord in Holy Communion. Wonderful truths that can be so consoling, so uplifting, so precious. He in me and I in Him. It may be that we think too little about the sublimity of every Holy Communion.

St. Josemaría used to say that we should try to receive Holy Communion as if it was the only time in our life that we were going to receive Holy Communion. That thought can help us to focus.

St. Pius X said, “If the angels could envy us, they would envy us for Holy Communion.”

St. Madeleine Sophie Barrett, the founder of the Religious Congregation of the Sacred Heart, defined Holy Communion as Paradise on Earth.

All the saints have understood by experiencing the divine marvel of our meeting and our union with Jesus in the Eucharist. They have understood that a devout Holy Communion means being possessed by Him and possessing Him.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.

It's not possible to have a union of love that is deeper, more total. He in me and I in him, the one and the other. What more could one want?

St. John Chrysostom said, “You envy the privilege of the woman who touched the vestments of Jesus, of the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears, of the women in Galilee who had the happiness of following him in his pilgrimages, of the apostles and disciples who conversed with him familiarly, of the people of the time of those who listened to the words of grace and salvation which came forth from his lips. You consider fortunate those who saw him. However,” he says, “come to the altar and you will see him, you will feel him, you will give him holy kisses, you will wash him with your tears, you will carry him within you like Mary most holy.”

Some of the saints have said a day without the Mass is like a day without the sun. Our Lord unites us with everybody. When Jesus is mine within me, the whole Church rejoices. The Church in heaven, the Church in purgatory, and the Church on earth. We could imagine the joy that the angels and saints feel at every Holy Communion worthily received.

“A new current of love,” said one writer, “enters Paradise, and a new delight comes to the blessed spirits every time a creature unites him or herself devoutly to Jesus, to possess Him and to be possessed by Him.”

One holy communion is of much greater value than an ecstasy or a rapture or a vision.

Holy communion transports the whole of Paradise into our poor hearts. For the souls in Purgatory, Holy Communion is one precious personal gift that they can receive from us.

We don't know how helpful our Holy Communions can be towards their liberation from purgatory. St. Bonaventure says, “Oh Christian souls, do you wish to prove your true love towards your dead? Do you wish to send them a most precious help and a golden key to Heaven? Receive Holy Communion often for the repose of their souls.”

We can also be mindful that in Holy Communion we unite ourselves not only to Jesus but to all the members of the mystical body of Christ, especially to the souls most dear to Our Lord and most dear to our heart. St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread.

It's in Holy Communion that we realize fully the words of Jesus, I in them, that they may be perfect in unity, as we're told in St. John.

And St. Paul says to the Galatians that the Eucharist renders us one, even among ourselves, his members, all one in Jesus. It's a very good thing to prepare ourselves well for our Holy Communion, to have a remote preparation as well as approximate preparation. That we can be very focused on what we are doing and try to actualize that intention.

We're told in my St. Thomas Aquinas that the sacraments produce graces, what's called ex opere operato, by the very fact of receiving them, no matter what our dispositions. But also we can increase the graces we receive by receiving them with greater piety and devotion. The more focused we are and aware of what's happening, the more graces we receive in Holy Communion.

We achieve a great unity of soul when we receive the bread of angels. We know that the saints have a great refinement of conscience when receiving Holy Communion that was, well, truly angelic. Aware of their wretchedness, they try to present themselves to our Lord holy and immaculate, St. Paul says.

As we receive, as we approach the altar, with humility we can also be aware of our miseries, of our failures, of our wretchedness. But yet God comes to us with the bread of angels to lift us.

The words of the publican can be very relevant, O God be merciful to me a sinner. That awareness of our miseries can lead us to have a greater devotion to the sacrament of confession, to take great care of cleansing our soul so that we can prepare ourselves to be a more worthy recipient.

One of the greatest sins we could commit in this world, a great sacrilege, would be to receive Our Lord unworthily in the state of mortal sin. And the major mortal sins that we commit would be missing Mass on Sundays, getting drunk, taking drugs, most things in the sexual area, and stealing large amounts of money. Just to have a little bit of an idea as we examine our conscience quickly. And if we get to confession frequently and have more grace in our souls, then it's as though we clean up our house to receive a very special guest.

St. John the Baptist de La Salle said, “Approach the sacred banquet with the same dispositions that you would desire to have to enter Heaven.” One should not have less respect for receiving Jesus than for being received by Him.

If the most important person in the country was going to visit our house, we'd probably take a lot of care to clean up the house and make it into the best place we could achieve to receive him well.

St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina used to say, “God sees stains even in the angels. What must he see in me?” For that reason, he was very diligent in making his sacramental confession.

St. Josemaria Escriva recommended weekly sacramental confession for everybody. And he proclaimed frequently that he often went more frequently during the week.

St. Teresa of Avila said when she was aware of having committed the least venial sin, she would go to confession before receiving Our Lord.

St. Mary Magdalene of Dapiazzi said, “Oh if we could only understand who is that God whom we receive in Holy Communion, then with what purity of heart we would bring to Him.”

Many of the saints, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Thomas Aquinas, very often went to confession before celebrating Mass. St. Camillus de Lellis talked about wanting to dust off his soul.

St. John Bosco said, “When a child knows how to distinguish between ordinary bread and the Eucharistic bread and is sufficiently instructed, one should not be too worried about his age. One should want the King of Heaven to come and reign in his soul.”

In the early 1900s, in the time of Pope Pius X, instituted the practice of First Communion early for small children, even five or six, not waiting until they were older, which was the custom beforehand.

Before receiving Communion, it's good to examine our conscience, and foster a certain repentance, a desire for purification, so that we make sure we're well disposed to receive Our Lord, and that we're in a state of grace. We take very good care of those things.

St. Anthony Mary Claret says when we go to Holy Communion, all of us receive the same Lord Jesus. But not all receive the same grace, nor are the same effects produced in all. This comes from our greater or lesser disposition.

To explain this fact, I will take an example from nature. Consider the process of grafting.

The greater the similarity of one plant to the other, the better the graft will succeed. In the same way, the more resemblance there is between the person who goes to Communion and Jesus, so much the better will be the fruits of Holy Communion.

A kindergarten teacher asked some little girls who were being prepared for their first Holy Communion. She was talking to them one day about the Feast of the Annunciation, and she told them how Jesus came down to Our Lady, and then he grew and grew and grew inside her.

And then nine months later, on December 25, he was born. And the following week, she asked this little girl, “So what's going to happen on your first Communion Day?”

And the little girl said, “Well, I'm going to receive Jesus beside me.”

And the teacher said, ‘Beside you? Why not within you?”

The little girl said, “Well, I don't want him to grow and grow.”

In one of his encyclicals, Pastores Dabo Vobis, I Give You Shepherds, John Paul II wrote, “All Christians should be trained to share in the intimate dispositions which the Eucharist fosters, gratitude for heavenly benefits received. Because the Eucharist is thanksgiving, an attitude of self-offering, which will impel them to unite the offering of themselves to the Eucharistic offering, the Eucharistic offering of Christ. Charity is nourished by a sacrament, which is a sign of unity and sharing. The yearning to contemplate and bow in adoration before Christ, who is present under the Eucharistic species.”

“And in the splendor of truth,” he wrote, “sharing in the Eucharist, the sacrament of the new covenant, is the culmination of our assimilation to Christ, source of eternal life. The source and power of that complete gift of self, which Jesus, according to the testimony handed on by Paul, commands us to commemorate in liturgy and life.”

St. Paul says, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

And The Council of Trent had said that “If anyone says that the special fruit of the Most Holy Eucharist is the remission of sins, or that from it no other fruits are produced, let him be anathema.”

The Catechism also says, “The Eucharist separates us from sin.” In other words, the sacrament for having our sins forgiven is the sacrament of confession, it's not Holy Communion. The main purpose of Holy Communion, as the bread of life, is to nourish our souls.

St. Thomas Aquinas liked to say that all the effects that human food has on the body, the spiritual food has on the soul. It nourishes, strengthens, and maintains our health, it helps us to grow.

The body of Christ that we receive in Holy Communion, we're told, is given up for us and the blood we drink is shed for the forgiveness of sins. “The Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us, cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins,” says the Catechism.

While we have to go to confession, if we have a mortal sin, before receiving Holy Communion, Holy Communion itself has the capacity, the power to wash away our venial sins. As bodily nourishment, as the Catechism restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life. and this living charity wipes away venial sins.

One great way to grow in the virtue of charity is to receive Holy Communion frequently so that the supernatural virtue of charity can be infused into our souls. The Catechism says, “By giving himself to us, Christ revives our love and enables us to break our distorted attachments to creatures and root ourselves in him.”

In his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem of 1986, The Lord and Giver of Life, John Paul II says, “Through the Eucharist, individuals, and communities, by the action of the Paraclete counselor, learn to discover the divine sense of human life, as spoken of by the Council, that sense whereby Jesus Christ fully reveals man to himself, suggesting a certain likeness between the union of the divine persons and the union of God's children in truth and charity. This union is expressed and made real, especially through the Eucharist, in which man shares in the sacrifice of Christ, which this celebration actualizes.

He also learns to find himself through a gift of himself, through communion with God and with others, his brothers and sisters.”

The Eucharist vivifies charity, grants the gift of contrition, erases venial sins, and preserves us from future mortal sins. The Catechism says, “The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church.” Somebody who is not in full communion with the Church should not receive Holy Communion.

St Thomas quotes Our Lord when he says, “For we being many are one bread, one body, all that partake of the one bread, from which it is clear that the Eucharist is the sacrament of the Church's unity. The Eucharist is the sacrament of ecclesiastical unity, a unity that is brought about by many being one in Christ.”

The Eucharist is both a symbol and a cause of this unity. The Council of Trent states that Our Lord bequeathed the Blessed Eucharist to his Church as a symbol of that unity and charity with which he wished all Christians to be most intimately united among themselves and hence as a symbol of that one body of which he is the head. It is quoted by St Paul VI in Mysterium Fidei, The Mystery of Faith.

And an early document of the Church says regarding the Eucharist, “If thanks in this manner, just as this bread was scattered and dispersed over the hills, but when harvested was made one, so may your Church be gathered into your kingdom from the ends of the earth.”

St Cyprian says, “Finally the sacrifices of the Lord proclaim the unity of Christians bound together by the bond of a firm and inviolable charity. The Eucharist is the creative force and source of communion among the members of the Church, precisely because it unites one of them with Christ Himself.”

And in Redeemer of Man, Redemptor Hominis, John Paul II says “The Eucharist builds ever anew this community and unity, ever building and regenerating it based on the sacrifice of Christ, since it commemorates his death on the cross, the price by which he redeemed us.”

St Albert the Great says “The Eucharist came from the paradise of virginity, namely Our Lady and our Eucharistic Lord does not find such a paradise except in virginity.

No one can repeat what the spouse of the Canticle of Canticles has spoken at every Holy Communion. “All mine is my true love, and I am all his. He goes out to pasture among the lilies and addresses his love to me.”

One good way to prepare for Holy Communion is to invoke Our Lady, to count on Her to enable us to receive our Lord with Her humility, Her purity, and Her love, and pray that she may come to receive Him in us. Many of the saints have recommended this. The best preparation for Holy Communion is that which is made with Mary.

St Teresa of Lisieux used to appeal to Our Lady. She says, “Immediately the Virgin Mary occupies herself with me. She quickly replaces my dirty dress, ties up my hair with a pretty ribbon, and adds a simple flower. This is enough to make me attractive and enables me to take my place without embarrassment at the banquet of the angels.”

We could ask Our Lady, the Woman of the Eucharist, that She might help us to grow in the fervor and piety with which we regularly receive our Lord, preferably every day.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St Joseph, my father and lord, my Guardian Angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

GD