Fourth Way to Stymie Grace

There are four principal ways in which we can stymie the flow of grace that is available to use in the Eucharist. [This is the presentation of the fourth way and the last way will follow in the next article].

Receiving the Eucharist Sacrilegiously

Receiving the Eucharist sacrilegiously leads to the fourth way in which we can stymie the flow of grace: by receiving Communion sacrilegiously in a state of serious, unrepented, and unconfessed sin. Examples of serious sin abound: having an abortion, committing adultery, living in an invalid marriage, missing Mass on Sunday without good reason. Those who commit such serious sin, and fail to confess and repent of their sin before receiving Communion again are receiving the sacrament sacrilegiously. Such sacrilegious Communions can cause not just great spiritual damage to the soul but even physical damage to the body.

St. Paul reminds us of this in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30 (NAB); “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm and considerable number are dying.”

The last sentence of the above quote from St. Paul is significant. St. Paul is speaking about the opposite of healing – the destruction of the body. Many people, he says, are weak, sick, or even dead because they received Communion unworthily or sacrilegiously. These words tell us how sacred Communion is. We are not simply eating a piece of “blessed bread.” After the consecration, the bread is no longer bread, it is the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, a person, not a thing. That is why St. Paul addresses the seriousness of receiving Communion unworthily when writing to the Christians of Corinth.

What does it mean to receive Communion in an unworthy manner? No human being, even the sinless Virgin Mary, could ever be worthy of receiving Communion in the strict sense of the word, because a person would have to be God to be worthy of receiving God. In this sense, we are all unworthy.

The second sense in which we are unworthy to receive Communion is the unworthiness to which St. Paul refers. A person is unworthy to receive Communion when he or she is in a state of enmity with God by having committed a mortal sin but not repented of that sin. We read in 1 John 5:16b (NAB): ‘there is such a thing as deadly sin.” The Latin word for death is mors, from which we get the word mortal, as in mortal sin. Not every sin is deadly; not every sin is a mortal sin. If you swipe a penny, you do not commit a mortal sin. If you rob a bank, you are committing a mortal sin. There is a great difference between the two.

There are different degrees of sin. But anything that is a serious violation of God’s law, that a person commits with full knowledge and complete consent, is mortal sin. Obvious examples would be abortion or murder. Such sin creates enmity with God until repentance takes place. People who are at enmity with God, who are living in a state of mortal sin, are excluded from Christ’s kingdom and destined to the eternal death of hell. The only way they can change their destiny is by making an act of repentance and receiving God’s forgiveness.

St. Paul elaborates on this unworthiness to receive Communion when he tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:21 (NAB), “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.” People who are involved in occultism or witchcraft have clearly aligned themselves with demonic forces. But we know that people who are in serious sin have also aligned themselves with the devil because St. John writes, “Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning” (1 Jn 3:8, NAB). As we have already observed, St. Paul tells us that these people cannot eat at the table of the Lord because they are unworthy to do so, and they face some serious consequences, including possible even an early death, if they do (see 1 Corinthians 11:30).

When people knowingly refuse to believe in the real presence of the Eucharist, they fall into the type of unworthiness to which St. Paul refers. As we have already noted in unequivocal terms, these people are guilty of heresy according to the definition contained in Canon 751 of the canon law of the Catholic Church. Such thinking is contrary to God’s teaching in the Bible, as well as the unremitting reaching of the Catholic Church from the time of Christ. For twenty centuries the Church has taught nothing but the real presence. Tragically, nonacceptance of this doctrine poisons two-thirds of the Catholic population in the United States.

It is interesting to note that, in the course of the history of eucharistic theology, there have been 152 different interpretations of those four words, “This is my body,” and that ninety of those interpretations are currently being used by various Christian religions today. Yet the teaching of the Catholic Church has never wavered throughout the centuries. The Catholic Church has always taken those words literally, which are supported by all the other scriptural cross-references to the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Catholics are truly “fundamentalists” when it comes to the Eucharist – more so than almost all Protestant fundamentalists on this issue! This theology is the basis for our devotion to the Eucharist.

In summary, these are the four ways in which we can fail to cooperate with grace when receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist: First, we can let a certain apathy set in by receiving Communion with limited fervor. Secondly, we can receive the Eucharist too infrequently. Thirdly, we can fail to receive the Holy Sacrament at all. Fourthly, we can receive it sacrilegiously.

By way of analogy, this great gift of God can be rendered ineffectual, to a greater or lesser degree, in four ways. First, fervor-less reception of the Eucharist is like gasoline in a car that has a wastefully inefficient engine. We are not using the full capacity of the gasoline when the engine is not efficient. Secondly, infrequent reception is like gasoline in a car that is seldom used. The gasoline is there, but it is not being transformed into actual energy. In the third case, where the sacrament is totally neglected, the sacrament is like gasoline in an abandoned car in a junkyard. It is not being used at all. Finally, when the Eucharist is received sacrilegiously, it is tantamount to using gasoline to drive a car with a defective motor, which is further damaged by being driven. In these four ways we can truncate the flow of God’s grace and show ourselves truly unthankful (and the worthy “Eucharist” means  thanksgiving) for the presence of Jesus himself, God’s “indescribable gift” (2 Cor 9:15).

This excerpt is from the book The Healing Power of the Eucharist, by John H. Hampsch, C.M.F., originally published by Servant Books, an imprint of St. Anthony Messenger Press. This and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.