Eucharistic Reflection – Approaching the Eucharist With The Proper Dispositions

“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." 

                    (From Devotion to The Sacred Heart of Jesus by Father John Croiset, S.J.).