Communion

We’re very happy on this Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi to welcome two young men to the Communion Rail for the first time.  Here they will receive the closest union with God that is possible in this physical and material world.  It is their first taste of divinity, the fulfillment of God’s will to be “with” the children of men.  With us.  The Latin word for with is cum so Communion means nothing other then Union With.  For there to be any union, there must be two things, two factions, two separate entities that unite.  What are these two entities that unite with each other in Holy Communion?  Man with God.  Our humanity with Christ’s divinity.  How is this possible?  How can our miserable human nature be made one with the infinite divine nature of God?  The answer is because God became man.  Because our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity humbled himself to take on a second nature, that of mortal man.

In descending, lowering himself, by becoming Flesh and Blood, the Word dwelt amongst us for thirty-three years as a man.  Eventually he would ascend back to heaven, resuming his rightful place as God.  There he waits for us to join him, for man to join God.  Those who die in the state of grace will eventually do so, our human nature finally uniting with the divine for all eternity.  To prepare us for this union, our Lord has given us a special sacrament by which our mortality already unites with the divine.  When we approach the communion rail we approach heaven on earth, and as the priest places the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity on our tongue, the consummation of this earthly union with God is complete.

It is for this reason that the Holy Eucharist is called the Sacrament of Unity.  But for us to gain the benefits of this unity, we must fulfill certain conditions first.  There is of course the communion fast but this isn’t what Christ himself demanded of us.  The communion fast was added by the Church so we could prepare our bodies for the reception of the Body of Christ and make sure we didn’t think of Communion as part of a meal.  But far more important than any fasting we do is the commandment of Christ to resolve any differences with our brethren before receiving Holy Communion.  This is the first and foremost condition we must fulfill.  And it makes sense that God would demand our union in charity with our neighbor before considering us worthy of any loving union with God.

This is not just a demand to stop quarrelling between one man and another, although this is an essential part of our preparation to receive.  The most perfect unity between men on which our Lord insists is the union between the members of his Mystical Body.  These should be as united together as the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.  It would be simply absurd, a contradiction, for someone to be outside union with this Mystical Body the Church while expecting to achieve union with the Divine Being himself.  We cannot be outside the Church, we cannot deliberately deny any of the teachings of the Church and still think we’re entitled to unite with Christ in Holy Communion, let alone that we’re worthy of eternal union with God in heaven.

For this reason, men and women who publicly refuse Christ’s teachings, as taught by his Mystical Body the Church, must be refused Holy Communion because they have placed themselves outside the Church through their obstinacy.  The priests of Christ’s Church are bound under pain of mortal sin to refuse Communion to public sinners.  Public sinners have placed themselves outside the Mystical Body by their open defiance of the laws of God, and are therefore to be considered as excommunicated.  Note that word—ex-communicated. Ex in Latin means out of.  We are out of union with the Church, out of union with Christ.  When someone like Joe Biden presents himself at the communion rail a Catholic priest has no option but to refuse him Communion.  By his public stance on abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender policies, and so on, Biden has openly defied the Church’s teachings.  As if this were not bad enough, he does so while claiming to be a devout Roman Catholic—as if we’re so stupid that we don’t notice the blatant contradiction.  So what happens when Biden goes to Holy Communion?  Does he receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord?  Setting aside the question of the validity of the Novus Ordo Mass and the presbyters who celebrate it, and supposing for a moment that the host he receives is actually a valid sacrament, then yes, he does receive the Body of Christ in all its glory.  But here’s the sad thing—because he is so obviously unfit to receive Christ, because he is no longer in union with the teachings of Christ’s Mystical Body, because he is therefore “outside the Church”, he receives the sacrament, as we read in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians, to his own condemnation:  “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.”  While we can’t judge their souls, we can certainly observe their actions, and that they obviously conflict with Holy Scripture and the Church’s teachings.  Their hypocrisy is public and sinful, and so they perfectly fit the definition of “public sinners” who must be refused Communion.

The punishment that will fall on the priests who give them Holy Communion will be much worse.

Meanwhile, the lesson for us here today is simply this: that we must be as worthy as possible to receive the Blessed Sacrament.  We can never be truly worthy—Domine non sum dignus—but we rely on God’s word to make us worthy enough.  That word of God is contained in the Sacrament of Penance, Ego te absolvo… and it is for this reason that we must go to Confession before receiving Communion if we are in mortal sin.  That absolution from God is the difference between Holy Communion uniting us with God or damning our souls to an eternity without him.

We don’t need to dwell scrupulously upon this thought.  Our Lord is truly merciful and ever ready to forgive the sins we repent.  If we are of good faith we can approach the communion rail with full confidence in reaping the eternal benefits that come to us from this most high and blessed Sacrament.  God is ready for us to unite himself with us, and we are commanded to do so, albeit with humility and acknowledging our imperfections.  This union with God, our heaven on earth, will fill us with the graces we need to rid ourselves of those imperfections.  Through our Holy Communions with God here on earth we can become saints on earth, enabling us to rise at last and continue forever our sainthood in eternal union with God.