Lesson 26: On Communion and Penance

1. What do you mean by going to communion?

Receiving the blessed Eucharist.

2. Is it advisable to go often to communion?

It is; as nothing can conduce more to a holy life. He that eateth this bread, saijs Christ, shall live for ever. John, vi. 59.

3. How must we be prepared for communion?

We must be in the state of grace; penetrated M§th a lively faith, animated with a firm hope, and inflamed with an ardent charity. 1 Cor. xi, 28.,

4. What means to be in the state of grace?

To be free, at least, from the guilt of mortal sin.

5. How are we to be penetrated with a lively faith?

By firmly believing, that the Blessed Eucharist is Jesus Christ himself, true God and true man, his very flesh and blood, with his soul and divinity.

6. How are we to be animated with a firm hope?

By having great confidence in the goodness of Christ, who gives himself to us without reserve, in that banquet of love.

7. And how are we to be inflamed with ardent charity?

By returning love for love to Christ, and by devoting ourselves in earnest to his service, all the days of our lives.

8. Is any thing else required before communion?

A ^s; to be fasting from midnight; and we should

appear very modest and humble, and clean in dreas showing in our whole exterior the greatest devotion and reverence to so holy a sacrament.

9. What should we do after communion?

We should spend some time in meditation and prayer; and particularly in acts of thanksgiving.

10. Is it a great sin to receive it unworthily?

Yes; Whosoever receives unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord; and eats judyment, (that is, damnation,) to himself not discerning ilie body of the Lord. 1 Cor. xi. 27. 29.

11. What do you mean by receiving unworthily?

To receive the blessed Eucharist in the state of mortal sin.

12. What should "a person do, if he be in mortal sin, before communion?

He must obtain pardon in the sacrament of Penance.

13. What is Penance?

A sacrament, by which the sins are forgiven, which are committed after baptism.

14. By whose power are sins forgiven?

By the power of God, which Christ left to the pastors of his church.

15. When did Christ leave to the pastors of his church the power of forgiving sins?

Chiefly when he said to his apostles, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them: and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. John, xx. 22, 23. '

16. What must we do, to obtain pardon of our sins in the sacrament of penance?

We must make a good confession.