We’re now four weeks into our series of homilies about the Holy Mass, focusing on some vital aspects of our most important activity as Catholic Christians. We’ve talked about Holy Mass as the holy sacrifice of Christ on the Cross made present for us here. We spoke about Mass as the perfect act of worshipping God, what we’re really here to do. We talked about the Eucharistic Prayer as the holiest moment of this holiest of all human activities. Today we’ll talk about Holy Communion.
It may seem strange that it’s taken us a month of homilies to get to this point, to talk about receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. But there’s a lesson there. Even apart from receiving communion, Mass is already the most sublime, important, and spiritually fulfilling reality we could ever experience. Mass was worth talking about “on its own,” as it were, for three weeks. Holy Mass is not just a machine for the production of Holy Communion. It’s not just 45 boring minutes you have to sit through to get that special wafer. Mass is our opportunity to worship God, and it’s our point of access to the salvation that God is offering us. And it’s that, before we receive Holy Communion, or even if we don’t receive Holy Communion, for whatever reason. That’s why it’s such a good thing to be at Mass, even if we don’t receive for some reason. Or if we do receive, to remember that even before that extraordinary privilege, we were already receiving something truly incredible, simply by being at Mass.
It’s important to remember that the Church actually only requires us to receive Communion once a year. But she obliges to attend Holy Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. That’s worth thinking about. We have to go Mass every Sunday and Holyday, but we only have to receive Communion once a year. It’s because, as I’ve said before, we’re not here as consumers. Of an experience, or even of the Blessed Sacrament. We’re here as faithful people who know we need to worship God, and who want to unite our prayers and sacrifices to Christ’s perfect prayer of sacrifice. We have to do that every week to keep our lives and priorities in order. Receiving Holy Communion is something more. It’s an incredible, mind-blowing thing. Or at least, it should be for us. Even though we only have to do it once a year, we certainly should try to receive Holy Communion as often as we possibly can, if possible whenever we’re at Mass. But we can’t ever forget what an incredible, earth-shattering thing it is, that Almighty God permits us to do. Fight the urge to just blow through the line. Our Lord allows us to consume, to welcome into our very bodies, his Sacred Body and Blood. It’s not bread and wine any more, at all, in any way, other than appearance. It’s his Body and it’s his Blood. Sacrificed for us. And he allows us, in Holy Communion, not just to be present to the sacrifice, not just to worship the sacrifice, but to ingest the sacrifice. To ingest the sacrifice. We shouldn’t do that lightly. That old saying, “You are what you eat,” is perfectly true for the Blessed Sacrament. And this is the most powerful food in the world. What we do when we receive Christ’s sacrificed and glorified Body and Blood, is: we’re saying, I want to be transformed by this sacrifice. I want to be transformed into this sacrifice: you are what you eat! I want sacrificial love to be who I am, in my body and in my mind and in my soul. This is serious business. It’s dangerous: it’s dangerous to receive Holy Communion. It’s dangerous to our pride, dangerous to our comfort zones, dangerous to our selfishness, dangerous to all our little false gods that we cling to for comfort.
If this is just some pleasant community meal ceremony, honestly, if I were you, I wouldn’t waste my time: sleep in and play golf; go to the Titans game. But if it’s this: then it’s the most important thing in the world. Why would I ever deprive myself of it. Holy Communion is so beautiful: even after the glorious gift that Mass already is, and should grow to be in our hearts, God does something unthinkably more magnificent. He gives us himself. His Sacred Body, His Most Precious Blood. Broken and poured out for us. He invites us to digest his sacrifice, and be nourished by it; be comforted by it; be transformed by it. In the beautiful words of St. Thomas Aquinas, it is a most sacred banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of his Passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us. We should participate in this sacred banquet as often as we can. But we should know what we’re doing. We should be in awe of it. There’s a reason the Blessed Sacrament is worshipped: reverence given only to God. Because the Blessed Sacrament is the true Body and true Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And we can welcome him within ourselves. We fall down in adoration, in awe, and in humility. Filled with hope and with peace at this great sacrament of love.