Eucharist: Food for the Sick, Not a Prize for the Perfect” PART I “Should Anything Keep Me from Receiving Eucharist?”
Something I personally believe—and also share with others—is when we realize our mistakes and, especially, our sin, the one thing God does not want us to do is beat ourselves up about it. The Lord, in His infinite mercy, invites us to do 3 things: 1. honestly acknowledge the wrong; 2. sincerely ask for forgiveness; and 3. move on with our lives, with the firm resolve—as firm as humanly possible—to do better. Period. We don’t need to place ourselves in time-out. We do not need to “do time” in any way. God’s love is greater than any wrong we could ever do. No, this does not give us a “blank check” to do whatever we want. It’s all about an honest assessment of how we’re living—and an honest desire to be forgiven, to grow and do better.
However, while being “properly disposed” or what one could term “spiritually ready” to receive Jesus in Eucharist requires an honest assessment, it also requires a balanced and heathy assessment. To put it simply, while some things are sinful, some are not. During our recent Confirmation retreat, one of our candidates submitted this question in our grab-bag question box: “How do we always know if something is a sin, when some people teach one thing and others teach something else?” That’s a fair question. There is a line between, for example, thoughts and feelings that are normal and free from sin and those that cross the line. Where is that line? How does one draw it? Well, we have the scriptures and the moral teachings of our Church to help guide us. We have been offered a distinction between mortal sin and venial sin. In the end, we seek to have an informed conscience. If we find ourselves “redrawing that line” ourselves, one way or another, based on personal preference, then we take unnecessary and potentially harmful risks. While we shouldn’t say to someone, “Hey, do whatever you want,” it would be detrimental to go in an extreme opposite direction, leading others, especially our children, to question everything. In that case, we risk imposing on them an unhealthy sense of unworthiness or, worse yet, encouraging or influencing them to do that to themselves. To say to a young man or woman, for example, “If you look at someone who is attractive, then you shouldn’t go to communion,” is wrong. “All feelings, in and of themselves,” Archbishop Gregory Aymond would tell us in seminary, “are gifts from God.” I tell myself and others, “Own the feeling—don’t let it own you.”
The reason why we want to be as prepared as possible to receive Eucharist, to be as free as possible from mortal (or serious) sin, is because we are receiving the true and real presence of Jesus. Will we always shave the opportunity to go to confession before receiving? No. I will address this in the third of these articles. For now, I leave you with this thought: in the end, God does not ask rigidity. He certainly does not want us to make ourselves suffer for our sins. He did that once and for all—in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Next week’s topic, “Part II: The Physical Manner in Which We Receive Communion”