“Were we to communicate only once in our life, our whole life, however long it might be, would
not be too long to prepare ourselves worthily for receiving so holy and so awful a mystery. This
should not, however, keep us from it. It should only urge us to approach it with the requisite
dispositions. We are wrong, then, when we say: '' I will not communicate, because I feel I am
unworthy." We should say, on the contrary: “I will endeavor, as far as possible, by the innocence
and regularity of my life, to make myself worthy to communicate."
To approach worthily, is to believe ourselves unworthy; while, at the same time, we do what we
can to make ourselves less unworthy. A single good Communion is enough to make a Saint. Not
much more is necessary than a good will, and a few reflections, in order to make a good
Communion.
Those who communicate often without becoming more devout, more mortified, more recollected,
without loving Jesus Christ more and more, are in a more dangerous state than they think. What
would have been said, if those who often conversed with Jesus Christ, and usually ate at His table,
had not become daily more virtuous? What further hope would there have been for those sick
persons who were presented to Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ had not cured them?
Famine and dearth are not the severest chastisements with which God punishes His people.
The most terrible, says the Prophet, is when He threatens so to chastise us, that we die of
hunger in the midst of an abundant harvest. Many bunches of grapes shall be pressed, and
they shall not yield a drop of wine (Isaiah iii. 1). This is the most fearful of all punishments;
the bread you eat shall have no more nourishment for you. You shall eat much, and yet die
of languor and weakness. You shall die of hunger.
Whatever may be our danger from sickness, there is always some hope as long as we can have
recourse to the last remedies. But when the most violent have been several times tried without
effect, what must we think of the sick person? If we were ill, and had repeatedly tried the most
powerful remedies without effect, we should be filled with alarm, and consider our death
inevitable.
We have repeatedly received the adorable Body and the precious Blood of Jesus Christ
without profit. Have we reason to be satisfied ? There are many fatal causes from which
this misfortune may proceed.
Each one should examine himself on this point. The general dispositions which we ought to
bring to Communion are : profound humility and a sincere acknowledgment of our poverty;
a certain spiritual hanger, which indicates, at the same time, the need we have of this food,
and our good dispositions to profit by it; a great purity of heart, an ardent love of Jesus Christ,
or at least an ardent desire of loving Him, and of accomplishing the design which He had in
giving Himself to us in the Eucharist — namely, to unite us intimately to Him by a perfect
conformity of heart and mind. Those who, at Communion, have no sentiment of devotion,
no fervor, no tenderness, are certainly without some of these dispositions."
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