59. The Fruit of Holy Communion — Fourth Sermon for the Feast of Corpus Christi

Synopsis — God's goodness slwion in the real presence — The process of assimilation "between God and man — The bitter taste and the sweet nourishment — The inner change from the human into the divine — Tlie good of frequent communion — Advice about preparation.

FIRST SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI.

For My flesh is meat indeed. — John vi : 56.

This is a most blessed day, on which we venerate the precious body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Although the Sacrament of the Altar is honored every day of the year, and has a special festival on Maunday Thursday, yet our holy mother, the Church, sets this day apart that we may do particular honor to our Lord in the blessed Sacrament, thereby renewing our devotion to Jesus really present with us. Thus has holy Church done her part ; and she has met with hearty response from her children, who honor our Lord in the blessed Sacrament by carrying Him in procession from one church to another, with splendid and costly ornaments, the sound of church bells and of organs and of loud musical chants.

Children, all this is good, because it helps the interior praise of Christ in our souls — everything even the littlest may be made to serve that end. Let us gladly do reverence to God ever}' way we can think of — the humblest little earth worm, had it but the use of reason, would willingly lift up its head to God and then bow down in all reverence to Him. But as to man, he has a high degree of praise to offer, for he has the privilege to love and honor God out of the depths of a heart endowed with intelligence; and this far surpasses all that he can ever do without this in the external order of religion.

And he can reach a yet higher grade of praise, namely, by having so full a knowledge of God's greatness and of his own littleness, that he feels that he cannot praise Him enough — a veneration of God exceeding all speech, song, memory and understanding. A certain master teaches, that the man who discourses most beautifully of God, is the one who from his knowledge of the interior riches of God, can be content to remain silent about Him. Once a certain doctor praised God with many words, and another doctor bade him hold his peace, saying: "Thou blasphemest God." And both were right. It is a wonderful thing, that the unspeakable Goodness is so great that no one can rightly praise it. Eight praise of God is infinitely beyond the two degrees we have mentioned, and exceeds all words and methods of veneration. Let a man be absorbed in God, blending selfhood into God, until in this man's soul it is God who praises Himself and returns thanks to Himself; and whosoever reaches this state, it can hardly be supposed that God will permit him to fall away from Him.

Our Lord says : "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed," and He adds: "He that eatheth My flesh and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me and I in him." Behold our Lord's fathomless humility, in that He is silent about His infinite greatness, and speaks only of the least of His attributes. His greatness is His adorable Godhead, and yet he speaks only of His flesh and His blood. Yet in the Holy Communion His blessed soul and His divine nature are also present. His amazing and unspeakable love for us is shown in that He was not content to make Himself our brother and assume our poor human nature. No, He became man that man might become God — nay more: He insists that He shall become our food. Of this St. Augustine speaks: "No nation is. so great as the Christian people, nor any to whom God has come so close as to us: we feed upon our God." How wonderful a love is His, to invent this way of union. This love overwhelms us ; it should wound every heart of man with its overpowering greatness. No act in our material existence is so close to us, or enters so intimately into our bodily life, as eating and drinking. And this is the reason why our Savior chose this marvellous way of being brought into the closest and most interior union with us,.

Let us consider the processes of taking bodily food ; it may seem ai gross thing, but it serves to illustrate the Holy Communion. St. Bernard says: "When we eat this food, we ourselves are eaten." When we take food we first chew it, then it passes into the stomnch and is changed in the heat of our organs of digestion, which separate the coarser and useless portions from the good parts; sometimes oat of a whole pound of food only a small portion really serves for oar nourishment, and the rest is rejected, the good part passing througn three processes of digestion. When the bodily powers have done their work, a higher force comes from the soul, making flesh and blood, and distributes the food into the head and the heart and every member, filling the veins with blood. It is thus with us and our Lord's body and blood, only differently in this: whereas our bodily food is changed into ourselves, on the contrary when we receive our Lord's body and blood we are changed into Him. Thus did He say to St. Augustine: "I shall not be changed into thee, but thou shalt be changed into Me." Whosoever receives this divine food worthily, it penetrates the veins of his most interior existence.

Let us explain St. Bernard's saying: "When we eat this food, we ourselves are eaten." For then God feasts upon us; as He enters He scourges us for our sins, which He > reveals plainly to us — His divine presence scourges our conscience. As one turns his food over aud over again in his mouth and continually bites it, so is a man cast back and forth under God's scourging, namely, in anguish, dread and sorrow about his sins. Dear child, gladly endure this biting of God's presence in thee, let Him eat thee and chew thee to pieces, seek not to escape His chastisement, and offer Him the deep sighs of thy heart : Oh, Lord, have mercy on me a poor sinner ; and meantime keep close within thyself. Be sure that all this is more for thy profit than much pious reading or praying if these should take thee out of thyself. But be on thy guard lest the evil one cunningly afflict thee with excessive sadness about thy sins ; for he would gladly sow in thy heart the seed of bitter sorrow. Our Lord sows the seed of a sorrow that is sweet and good.

After the chastisement comes a gentle softening of one's soul, loving trust, divine confidence, holy hope: it is now that God is absorbing and, as it were, swallowing thee. And just as well-cooked food when it is chewed, softly and gently sinks into the stomach, so shall it be with thee in Communion when thy conscience has been prepared. But thou must give thyself up to our Lord with all trust, and then shalt thou be gently absorbed in Him. If we have followed St. Paul's directions about the Eucharist: "Let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice" (I Cor. xi:28), then our Lord will consume us as we consume our food. This is done by renouncing all our selfhood, and destroying out of our lives all attachment to created things. The more carefully food is masticated the more it becomes unlike its former self. Thou shalt find out if thou art absorbed into God as His food, if thou are so changed as to find nothing in thyself except Him, and findest thyself nowhere else but in Him. For does He not say : "He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me and I in him." Therefore must thou be stripped of thy old self, as it were, by the divine mastication of thy soul — just as thou dost change thy food by chewing it. If anything will be turned into what it is not, surely it must cease to be what it is — when wood is turned into fire it is perforce no longer wood. If thou shalt be changed, as it were, into God thou must cease to be thyself.

Again, our Lord says: "He that eatheth Me, the same shall live by Me." Hence, if thou wouldst gain the life of Jesus, thou must receive the blessed Sacrament often, for thereby the old Adam within thee shall be wholly destroyed. As the forces of nature fill our veins with the strength that is in our food, making it one thing with ourselves, so shall the divine food entirely change thee into itself. Thou shalt know if this is done, if after receiving this Sacrament thou feelest thy heart wholly detached from whatever is not God. And this new life within thee will work outwardly and be manifested in thy conduct and actions and conversation. This adorable Sacrament separates all that is bad, profitless and superfluous, casting it all out of the soul ; and then God enters into all one's life, love, thought, intention, making all newer, cleaner and more divine.

This Sacrament cures a man's inner blindness and gives him to know himself, teaching him how to turn away from self and all created things. Thus says the wise man : "With the bread of life and understanding, she shall feed him" (Eccli. xv:3). This divine food so changes a man into itself, that his whole life is regulated by God. He is led by God, he is changed by God, through this food. Therefore, if a man goes to Communion and still remains empty of heart, vain and arrogant, his demeanor frivolous, if he be yet addicted to fine clothes, fond of amusements — if, I say, he wilfully adheres to these defects, then his going to Communion is a perilous thing. Better a thousand times that he stayed away. He goes to confession, indeed, but he does not give up the occasions of sin. Not the Pope himself can forgive the sins of an impenitent man; yet such a one goes to the altar along with the rest.

Prudent confessors will tell each one how often he should receive Communion, some every week, others every month; and these should be able to spend a week before and after each Communion very piously. Yea, yea, and nay, nay, should be their guileless rule of life, besides much moderation at their morning and evening meals. Others, again, may receive Communion at the great festivals, and some at Easter. These will do little enough if they spend all Lent in preparation. And some, alas, should never approach the holy table as long as they have no grief for their sins nor any firm purpose of amendment of life — such a one would make himself guilty of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Children, you know not how serious a matter this is, for some seem to think going to Communion a sort of recreation. But I assure you that it is a matter of life and death as to what diligence one exercises in preparing for this Sacrament. Any man who neglects the teaching of the Church's ministry in this matter of preparing for Communion, falls into a state of the greatest possible danger. There is a class, besides, who will go to Comunion weekly, often actuated by no spirit of devotion nor moved by any divine impulse, but rather out of mere custom, or because they see others going. No, no — let none yield to such a tendency. If, however, a man would approach the altar weekly out of gladness of heart towards God, and with reverent fear, and in order to strengthen his soul against damnation — by no means to put on airs of perfection — a man, in fact, who is of good life and carefully guarded against the occasions of sin, then let him do it, after obtaining the counsel of his father confessor. Let me tell you this : if I found a man who had been a vile sinner, and who now has given up his vices and turned to God with all his heart, I had rather give him Communion every day for half a year, than do so a single time to a half-hearted and lukewarm man. For 1 believe that thereby I should drive the world out of my poor penitent's heart.

I have shown you the reasons why the holy Sacrament does these tepid men so little good — men who once had some trace of God in them, and who now after Communion remain cold-hearted. One reason is a secret sin, a deed of inner or outer wickedness. Perhaps it is the sin of unguarded speech. The harm thereby done is often incalculable — attend to that, for God's sake, or you will come to nothing. Another reason is going to Communion not out of real love but from custom.

Now there are some customs that are really good, such as that of staying home in one's interior self after Communion, the lack of which does much harm, and hinders the realizing of the good effects of this heavenly food. The immediate fruits of Communion are perceptible for three or four days, if one will but advert devoutly to them. Dwelling with one's interior self sweetly and happily, one will not fail to experience them, no matter in what circumstances he may be placed or in what company, as long as he avoids as much as possible what hinders his soul's solitude. Be sure that if thou keepest faithfully to thyself, the holy Sacrament will keep thee company and work its way in thee, changing thee into a noble being. Any priest whatsoever will serve thee for receiving this Sacrament, and it may happen to be better for thee than for himself. And every time thou hearest mass thou shouldst cherish a longing for Communion, a practice which tends to train one's thoughts towards God. And may God grant us that we may all worthily receive this adorable Sacrament. Amen.