Eucharistic Reflection - Communicating Worthily


 
 

"Of ourselves, we cannot communicate worthily. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. Even though we approach the altar free from mortal sin, He must sharpen our spiritual apprehen­sion and inflame our love to intense ardor, that Christ may find in us a more beautiful habitation every time we receive Him.




The sacramental God has a divine right to expect on our part after each Holy Communion an intensification of our gradual growth into His likeness. As often as we receive Him, He would have us burn with the desire for greater progress in virtue that will manifest itself in an irrevocable detachment from the world and a more unselfish love of Him, grounded on the conviction of our nothingness and consequent sore need of Him.

 

With greater joy will He abide in us if He beholds us by degrees assimilating His life, resembling Him in virtue by more complete conformity to His will. Christ will unite Him­self most intimately with us if we are constant in our effort to imitate Him.

 

And all this is the effect of the direct operation of the Holy Spirit, who beautifies our souls with His holiness, and adorns them with His invaluable gifts. Being one with Christ, He traces in us the image of our Savior, for only by His power does the mind that is in Christ become the mind that is in us. Thus does He unite us with the sacramental God in the bonds of a common love. And because He is the Spirit of love, He stirs to the depths the love of the Eucharistic God, and moves us to rec­iprocate it whenever we approach the banquet of the Lord.

 

St. John, speaking of Christ, says, 'Of His fullness we all ye received.' He who, in the Incarnation, filled the sacred humanity with the fullness of the Godhead, fills our tainted humanity with the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the God of ineffable sanctity.

 

Reflecting, before Holy Communion, on the essential, intimate association of the Holy Spirit with the central mystery our Catholic Faith, we will beg Him to remove far from us whatever would impede our reception of the fullness of the grace of this sacrament. We will do more. With an ardor that dilates our hearts with exquisite joy, we will constrain Him to ennoble our thoughts and desires so that we may embrace Christ with a faith that moves mountains, and with a love suprem­ely sacrificial. Then will we glorify our hidden God, and our souls will be His home until the shadows flee away, and we return with the garnered fruits of infinite, eternal love, to contemplate forever, the inexhaustible beauty that we adored under the Eucharistic veil."

                         (Transforming Your Life Through the Eucharist by Father John A. Kane)

 

 

 

Comments

  1. I often believe that I could do a lot better job of receiving Our Lord than I do. Fortunately, He goes ahead with His transformational work, often unnoticeably, even though we of ourselves are totally unworthy. The main thing I have to keep reminding myself of is that how I feel is irrelevant. It is the act of will that really counts.

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    1. Barb, you make an important point here. We should never feel ourselves worthy of receiving Him, for once we do, we have (paradoxically, I think) become unworthy because of our pride. And as you stated, though we are often in need of doing a better job at receiving Him, "He goes ahead with His transformational work . . . ".

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  2. I am remembering this first paragraph, praying that HE shall make me worthy!

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  3. Barb and Nancy:

    Thanks for commenting.

    If we desire transformation and ask to be transformed, God will transform us. Faith in His promises and faithfulness to His commands are our necessary contributions.

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    1. I am not sure if such are 'necessary.' I am coming to believe more that God's grace trumps even my sometimes faithlessness. If I had to rely on my faith -- and not His grace -- to receive His grace, then I would be of all people most to be pitied.

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    2. Richard:

      Sorry for the delay in responding. Your point is well taken. It is only by and through His grace that we can do anythng of value. Blessed are we on those occasions when grace and faith meet.

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