VII — THE SACRAMENT OF UNION

Presence of God. — O Jesus, who nourish me with your Body and your Blood, grant that I may live by You, by your life.

Meditation

1 — In his discourse on the “bread of life” Jesus Himself presented the Eucharist to us as the sacrament of our union with Him: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn. 6:57). It is a true interpenetration of Christ in us and of us in Christ. Evidently, the life of Jesus and ours, his Person and ours remain distinct, and yet He penetrates us so deeply with his life, with his spirit, with his Divinity, that we remain immersed in Him and He in us. “The Body and Blood of Christ that we eat,” says St. Hilary Bishop, “bring it about that we are in Christ and Christ in us. He Himself, therefore, is in us and we in Him through his Flesh and - marvelous conclusion - with Him in God is all that we are.” Never as at the moment of sacramental Communion are we united to Jesus, penetrated by Him, transformed, deified, and plunged into Divinity: “with Him in God is all that we are.”

It is true: through faith and grace too we are united to Christ and inserted in Him as his members, but this union, begun in Baptism, reaches its fullest measure in the Eucharist. Through this sacrament Jesus unites Himself to us so that we become one same body with Him, and not only by faith, but effectively and in reality” (St. John Chrysostom). Union with Christ through faith and grace is also effective, real union; but in Communion we have something more, namely physical union with Christ: then, even if only for brief instants, we carry Him within us as the Most Blessed Virgin Mary carried Him for nine months in her most pure womb. And if to this physical union there is joined moral union, which consists in full conformity of our will and aspirations to the will of God, to his good pleasure, Communion truly becomes for us the moment of the highest union with God that we can attain on this earth.

2 — But Jesus goes further and, to explain to us better the profound union established between Himself and the soul of the communicant, He does not hesitate to compare it to the union existing between Himself and his Father. “As the living Father has sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me” (Jn. 6:57). Jesus lives because the Father communicates life to Him: all the life of Jesus comes solely from the Father; He has no other life except that which the Father communicates to Him. Likewise, he who nourishes himself with the Eucharist lives by the life that Jesus communicates to him, that is, he lives by his life; a life that, without doubt, he has already received through Baptism or Penance, but which in Communion he receives with greater immediacy from Jesus, since He Himself, in person, comes to bring it to him; indeed He comes to live it in him. Jesus lives for the Father because the Father is the only source of his life; and the communicant lives for Jesus because Jesus, by making Himself his food, becomes in the most direct, intimate, and profound way the source of his life. But we can understand Jesus’ words under another aspect as well: having received all life and all being from the Father, Jesus lives for the Father also in the sense that He lives solely for his glory, employing all He has received from Him to fulfill the mission that He entrusted to Him, to do his holy will. So it must be with the communicant: he must no longer live for himself, no longer live an egoistic life, a life narrowed to cares and earthly interests, but must live for Jesus, for his interests, for his glory. He must live by Jesus, source of his life; he must live in Jesus who, nourishing him each day with his Flesh, draws him close and unites him more intimately to Himself; he must live for Jesus, employing for Him all his strength and his capacities, giving himself wholly to his service. That divine life Jesus communicates to us must find in our soul the suitable ground for full development - ground cleared of pride, selfishness, and attachments to creatures - and thus produce works worthy of Jesus and pleasing to Him. As Jesus lived for the glory of the Father “who sent Him” (Jn. 7:18), so we must live for the glory of Christ who, by becoming our food, communicates his life to us.

Colloquy

“O Lord, where does your love lead You? It leads You so far as to leave Yourself to your creature, to leave her your Body and Blood as food and drink. And for how long? O my God, You Yourself have said it: until the consummation of the ages! So that we may be able to have You not once only, not every year, not every month, not every week, no, but every day, every morning we may receive You; and each time we wish, we may have You within us and remain with You as we desire. O great goodness of my Spouse, the Word! O poor me, who have so many riches and make so little fruit from them! But more unhappy is one who does not know this gift and does not care to be deprived of it for many and many years, or one who receives it while in mortal sin, so that that Bread of life becomes for him food of death. For these souls I pray to You, Lord: look not at their demerits, but at your goodness; convert them that they may recognize the very great wrong they do to themselves and to your infinite goodness.

“But when the soul, O Lord, receives You with the dispositions required, one can say of her what is said of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary: ‘Blessed are you, for you carry in your womb Him whom the heavens cannot contain!’ And just as Mary is clothed with the sun, so this soul that receives You within herself is clothed with the sun, because You are the Sun, O Sun of justice, Christ our God.

“As for me, O Lord, it seems that I am more indebted to You for having left Yourself to me as food than for having created me, because if You had created me and had not left Yourself to me, what would I do? And thus You show me how much You have willed to communicate Yourself to us, for You were not content to communicate Yourself to men while on earth for thirty years, but You also willed to leave us your Body and your Blood, so that we might remain continually in You, and You in us. And thus, dwelling in the soul, You go, so to speak, deifying her, transforming her into You, continually communicating Yourself to her and keeping her united to You” (St. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi).