Denied the Eucharist

Denied the Eucharist

...and they are not to be admitted to Holy Communion. Canon 915 

Whether this is a public or private action on the part of the Catholic Church authority, I have to ask, how much does it really have any effect? Now if the denial is public that’s very humiliating and puts all eyes on the one being denied. It also puts that person on the defensive. Some will judge them as a victim of a rigid, old fashioned, authoritative bureaucracy. Others may say it’s about time the Church hierarchy followed the Church’s rules.  

When I look back over the two years of COVID shut down and the denial of the Eucharist to the whole Church for months, where was the outcry then? Rarely did Bishops or clergy speak out against government interference nor the deprivation of this Divine Food to the laity.

“Unless you eat my Flesh and drink my Blood,  you shall not have life within you.” Jn 6:53

We starved in silence. Pastors withheld Food from the hungry. But there wasn’t a whimper.

Like docile sheep we obeyed false leaders. Why?

I propose there was no outcry because belief in the Real Presence is weak, if it exists at all. It is a ritual we participate in at Mass out of habit and little conviction. Therefore, the absence of Mass or the Eucharist is not felt.So when we were forced into lockdown by magnates flexing their power, we didn’t miss the Mass nor receiving the Eucharist.  When the ban was lifted, many just did not return. Why? Because it didn’t make any difference in their lives!

If, as Pope Benedict XVI says, heaven is a person. Union with a person, then begins on earth, in the Eucharist. “ Rejoice, the Kingdom is at hand.”.  Mt. 3:2  We walk into the embrace of heaven every time we receive the Eucharist. We should be in pure ecstasy, if we realized the depth of that reality. How could we allow a day much less a week to pass without entering into this divine union. Heaven is life, life in a person, so much deeper and more intimate than any earthly marriage. This is union with our Divine Spouse!

Adele Brise , the visionary in Wisconsin in 1859 walked eleven miles to attend Mass whenever a visiting priest was in the region. Why?

St. Tarcisius, 575 AD, a mere altar boy, protected with his life, the Hosts he carried to the sick.  Why?

St. Clare drove off an army while holding up the Eucharist before them.  Why?

St. Dominic Savio  from the age of five would sit for hours in Church chatting with his friend Jesus in the Eucharist before he even made his first communion. Why?

In 1957 Fr. James Brenner, while on a trumped up sick call, protected and saved the Eucharist while being stabbed to death by communist revolutionaries. Why? 

Paul Comtois in 1966 ran into a burning building to rescue and save the Eucharist. Why?

They believed. Our culture has become one of relativism. ‘Believe what you like, one’s as good as another. There is no objective truth!’ Were all these people insane to go out of their way to receive a dried up wafer or give their lives to protect it? Or could it be something more? 

For politicians denied the Eucharist, it may be no great loss or maybe just  a loss of face. To Bishops who do not take a stand it may be out of fear, human respect, threat of public reprisals or even weak faith or no faith in the real presence.  But God will not be mocked.

God is indeed a loving and merciful God but to those who repent. For those who stubbornly, knowingly do not repent there will indeed be a reckoning. Let us pray that all the fallen away Catholics who willingly deny themselves of the Bread of Life, the Real Presence of God on earth, will repent and return to the Eucharistic Table with a clean heart and conscience. Let them publicly retract the lies Satan has been feeding them.

To us who are still believers, I challenge you to to speak up. Show them the scripture to support what you say. Talk about Eucharistic miracles and martyrs of the Eucharist or bring family and friends to the new Catholic movie, ALIVE, when it appears in theaters  on June 21. It just may be life changing and bring someone home.