In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My dearly beloved in Our Lord,
Last Sunday we have explained how the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity has become impossible for the moderns and the modernists. The false concept of radical agnosticism leads to fundamental religious indifferentism. If we cannot know anything for sure, how could we ever pretend to know that God is one in substance and three in Persons…! Let us pretend that “the three monotheistic religions adore the same one true God.”
Moving closer to home, to ourselves as Catholics, we will today briefly consider another great ‘unknown’ reality, that of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. This is most appropriate on the day of the solemnity of Corpus Christi.
On the afternoon of Easter two of Our Lord’s disciples went from Jerusalem to their dwelling place Emmaus. Our Lord joined them, but they did not recognize him. They had been close to him, though. One of them was presumably Cleophas, the owner of the Cenacle and whose wife was one of the pious and courageous women, Maria Cleophae, the sister of Our Lady (cf Jn 19:25), persevering at the foot of the Cross. The disciples of Emmaus did not recognize Our Lord because having been close to him through the bonds of blood and fellowship, they had not yet made the great leap to become truly intimate with who he really is.
It is similar for the Catholic. He starts his quest of Heaven, drawn towards the Son by the Father (cf Jn 6:44), pushed by divine grace. But almost infallibly this person of good will becomes entangled and ensnared on the surface of the Christian life withits technicalities, modalities, rules, devotions. He may be fervent to some degree. But at some point the first fervor and love of Our Lord will give way to routine and superficiality. The Christian life will be considered as something rather outward than inward with regards to the human personality.
Thus a person who admired the saintly bishop of Geneva, Francis de Sales, wanted to imitate him in order to become holy. He observed the holy priest and thought he had found the secret of his holy conduct: the manner in which he inclined his head while he prayed. Of course this is blunder. Pious blunder, but still blunder.
The secret of a good, perfect and holy Catholic life lies not in any outward observance. The outward observances, like a decent bodily composure for prayer which favors devotion and recollection, or the ceremonies and usages of the Church are important because we consist of body and soul. We are not simple animals, bodies with a perishable principle of life. We are not Angels, pure spirits without bodies. We are rational animals, animal rationale as philosophy puts it. But clearly the soul is more important than the body, and we have to respect the right order, the right reason.
The heart and center of the Catholic life is Holy Mass, the Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion.
The big question is: Why does Holy Communion, frequent Communion together with regular Confession, make such a relatively minor impact on most Catholics’ life? - Why have millions of Catholics accepted receiving Communion in their hand when papa Montini introduced his ‘new Mass’? Certainly there have been number of priests and faithful who have never accepted such a sacrilegious practice; some have sacrificed their career and their life in defense of the venerable practice of receiving Holy Communion on the tongue, not on the hand. But they remained a minority. This happened after the cult of the Holy Eucharist, devotion to the Blessed Sacrament had constantly developed over the centuries. The 4th Lateran Council has defined the dogma of the Transubstantiation in 1215. In 1264 Pope Urban IV established Corpus Christi as a Feast for the entire Church and had St Thomas Aquinas compose its Mass and Divine Office. After more vicious attacks in the 16th century the Holy Council of Trent has taught more elaborately still about the Mass as a Sacrifice and Holy Communion. The long fight against false reform was crowned by the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus propagated in the entire Catholic world. Pope St Pius X resumed all this in his decrees about early and frequent Communion at the dawn of the 20th century.
In a nutshell we can say that modern so-called spirituality has blocked the way to true intimacy of the soul with its Creator and Redeemer. Similarly modern so-called science has blocked the way to true knowledge which must be ‘cognitio certa per causas – sure knowledge through causes’. True philosophy, true spirituality and true science search for that which is inmost in God’s Creation. False ‘modern’ science looks at the outside of things, the phenomena, and ‘drowns the fish’ by the sheer number of studies and pages without getting to the core of any problem. The look for ‘aliens’ in the supposed infinity of the universe; but they forget about the Divine Spirit who desires to live in the innermost chamber of the human soul.
Modernity consists in going along with sensuality which is perverted through our many sinful inclinations. ‘Modern man’ takes pride in that which is shameful and sinful, as we see in ‘the month of pride’ which he celebrates in June.
The Catholic is in constant danger to succumb to such superficiality and outward-ism.
The Catholic life consists in going against the weakened and badly-inclined sensuality by the means of abnegation, mortification and grace. Each page of the Gospel talks about just that.
Holy Communion and the Holy Eucharist are the dividing line between true and false spirituality and sensuality. We receive Our Lord in the form and manner of food. Nothing becomes more a part of us than food and drink. It is totally absorbed into our body. But the Eucharistic food is solely intended for our soul, the Sacred Host is only the Sacramental vehicle or instrument through which our soul receives Our Lord’s grace. While the Sacrament is received in our body, its effect is in the soul.
We must always receive Holy Communion in a state of grace, not in a state of mortal sin. The Church explicitly prescribes that if someone’s conscience reproaches him with a mortal sin, he needs to go to Sacramental Confession before receiving Holy Communion. An act of perfect contrition is not enough in this case although in itself it is sufficient to restore sanctifying grace to the soul. In view of the great dignity of the Holy Eucharistic the Church insists that every precaution be taken.
The Holy Eucharist not only gives us God’s grace, like any other Sacrament. It contains substantially the author of grace himself, Our Lord Jesus-Christ, true God and true man. Therefore it contains an infinitude of grace. One single Holy Communion; each Holy Communion has the power to make a soul perfectly holy. There is no limitation on the side of him who gives himself totally to us, his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity!
He is undivided – we are not. The reception of Holy Communion is, so to say, the choice terrain of application for the Great Commandment: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength.” (Mk 12:30; Dt 6:5) Like any good parent or educator God demands nothing of His creatures what He himself is not prepared to do. God has created all things in a perfect manner and order. Our Lord showed us the perfect example of all virtues. He had put into practice whatever he then taught. He has shed not a little bit of his Precious Blood, but every last drop of it. In this we need to imitate him ever better, ever more perfectly. Similarly we need to get ourselves to serve God wholeheartedly. We need to always grant him the best of what we are and what we have.
Doing this we progress in true intimacy with Our Lord and God. Our knowing God must become more and more intimate, deeper and more heartfelt. Our love of God must become a true and unfailing adhesion to God who is infinitely worthy of our love, and who is jealous of our love. True love wants to always better know, embrace and possess its object. We need to be more curious to know God, like St Thomas Aquinas who kept asking his teachers at Monte Cassino: “Who is God?” We also need to have a great desire to possess God. We need to convince ourselves ever more of God’s goodness, His will to do us good: “O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet: blessed is the man that hopeth in him.” (Ps 33:9) God wills our sanctification and salvation, and we need to catch up on this matter. Through the Prophet Isaias God says: “Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee.” (Is 49:15) What greater, what more tender expression of love could there be?
Right after the Octave of Corpus Christi Holy Church celebrates the Feast and the Octave of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is simply the continuation of the same formal object of our Faith and devotion. Let us pay back Our Lord not with indifference and neglect, but with love for the great love he has shown and is still showing us: “Heart of Jesus, glowing furnace of charity; vessel of justice and love; full of goodness and love – have mercy on us!” (Litany of the Sacred Heart)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski.
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