"He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him.""He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him."
The meaning of these words of our Lord Jesus Christ, this mutual dwelling of Him in us, and of us in Him, is something so grand and so Divine that it is impossible for us to understand it perfectly. This wonderful effect of Holy Communion takes place more or less in all souls in proportion as their dispositions are more or less perfect; and as these dispositions can always become better and better, the effect which corresponds with them can also become more and more excellent in the same degree. Who shall express to us what is this dwelling of Jesus Christ in us, and of us in Jesus Christ? This is a thing above all created intelligence. Let us not try to comprehend it fully, because we never shall succeed, but let us do all that depends on us to deserve it.
This indwelling is the closest and most intimate that can be conceived; it is a union of Jesus Christ with us, and of us with Him, which is such that nothing in nature can approach to it. His Body is united to our body, His Soul to our soul, His Faculties and all their operations to our faculties, in such a supernatural and transcendent manner that Jesus Christ lives in us, and we in Him: our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions become identified with His thoughts, His feelings, and His actions.
This indwelling is universal; it includes everything that we can possibly have in common with Jesus Christ, and therefore it must necessarily exclude sin only, and our irregular concupiscence, which is the source of sin.
This indwelling is in its very nature permanent and everlasting; this is the intention of Jesus Christ, and it is our own fault entirely if, after a good Communion, He ever leaves us again, or if this blessed union, so firm in itself, is ever broken. It is not by a few moments of a sensible devotion and fervour that we can judge of this dwelling of Jesus Christ in us, but it is by the habitual disposition of our souls.
If Holy Communion detaches me more and more from the good things of this world, if it makes them insipid to me, and wearisome, and insupportable if in all matters of ordinary human life Holy Communion only teaches me what is my duty, and how I ought to practise all Christian virtues if it teaches me to look upon myself only as a traveller and a pilgrim whose true home is in Heaven, and who must only make use of the things he meets with on his way in such a manner that by them he may reach his home more quickly and surely if Holy Communion inspires me with a taste for recollection, for prayer, for mortification, for the renunciation of myself and my own judgment if it reforms my thoughts and my affections on the perfect model of the thoughts and affections of Jesus Christ, so that His doctrine becomes to me familiar, and, as it were, natural to my heart, and I take pleasure in practising it on all occasions if, like Jesus Christ, I begin to have a horror of the world and its false maxims if I begin to despise what the world esteems, and to fly from what it most seeks after if, on the contrary, and still like my Divine Lord and Master, I begin to seek after and embrace all that the world most shuns and abhors then I have the greatest assurance, and at the same time the only true and solid assurance I can have in this life, of the good effect of my Communions; then I may believe that Jesus Christ dwells in me, and I in Him.
It is principally by the Holy Communion itself that the effects I have been describing are produced, and in their turn, our good dispositions render every day the fruit of our Communions more excellent and abundant.
Thus, little by little, we are transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, and each good Communion adds some more perfect strokes to this transformation.
The whole secret, therefore, of drawing from the Holy Communion all the profit which Jesus Christ wishes for us, is to try, from one Communion to another, to dwell in Him in a manner more and more close and perfect, to suffer ourselves to be animated and guided in all things by His Spirit, and to beg of Him never to allow us to think or say or do anything which He cannot acknowledge as His own. All this requires great attention and a constant watchfulness, but we must do it all quietly and peacefully, and without effort, until it becomes a second nature to us.
Let us persuade ourselves once for all that our own action spoils everything, if we allow it to precede the action of God, instead of following it. But, since it is quite certain that in the Holy Communion Jesus Christ really dwells in us, what can we do better at that time than to place all our conduct in His hands, and to beg of Him to guide us in all things, that we may do simply, and humbly and peacefully, and without reflection, whatever He puts into our heart to do? As long as a soul that is determined to follow Jesus Christ in all things is at peace in her inmost depths, she may be quite certain that Jesus Christ is guiding and directing her. But the moment she begins to be involuntarily troubled, to be agitated and over-eager the moment she begins to give herself up to uneasy reflections from that moment she withdraws herself from the guidance of Jesus Christ and assumes the guidance of herself. The best method, therefore, of preparing for Holy Communion, is to leave to Jesus Christ alone the care of preparing us for it. He will do it infinitely better than we can; and as we shall have been passive in the matter, we can take credit to ourselves for nothing, but leave all the glory to Him. We shall not be tempted to think that our good dispositions are the effect of our own industry, but we shall acknowledge humbly that He alone has produced them in us. And I will say the same of our thanksgiving after Communion. Can we possibly, by our own efforts, thank Jesus Christ as we ought to do? Are we capable of it? Is it not more glorious for Him, and more advantageous for us, that He should thank Himself for us, and make use for that purpose of the faculties of our soul, then so closely united to His? This simple abandonment of ourselves to Jesus Christ, this simple placing of ourselves in His hands, that He may be the first and only motive of our thoughts, our affections, our words, and our actions, is without contradiction the most excellent disposition we can have, the most conformable to the principles of faith, the most glorious to God, and the most efficacious for our own advancement. It is thus that our life will become the life of Jesus Christ, because He will be the soul and the motive principle of our life, and will never allow us to do anything that is unworthy of Him; instead of which, if we act of ourselves, we live by our own life; we do neither what Jesus Christ wishes, nor in the manner He wishes.
I have not yet said what is the most Divine and ineffable thing in this dwelling of Jesus Christ in us, and of us in Him, which is the fruit of Holy Communion: it is that it is the very image of the union of Jesus Christ with His Father, and of His Father with Him. Our Lord says, "As I live by My Father, so he that eateth Me shall live by Me" In like manner, as the Father is the principle of the life of the Son, so is the Son the principle of life to the faithful soul who feeds on His Sacred Body. The Son dwells always in the Father, because He always draws His life from the Father. The Father dwells always in the Son, because He is always communicating His life to His Son by an action which never ceases and will never cease. In the same manner, he who worthily receives the Body of the Son of God dwells in Him for ever, because he receives for ever his supernatural life from the Son of God; and the Son of God also dwells in him for ever, because He is for ever communicating to him His own Divine life. This effect is continual and permanent in its very nature; it can only be hindered or interrupted by the fault of the creature.
O Christian soul, who now reads these words, ask of Jesus Christ the grace of always receiving His life when you receive His Sacred Body; ask to receive it in all its fullness, each time of Communion, according to your present capacity, and to preserve it carefully from one Communion to another, in such a manner that each time you may receive a fresh increase of it.
What must you do for that end? I have already told you: never do anything of yourselves, nothing of your own activity, but do everything by the action of Jesus Christ, and by the principle of life which He will communicate to you without ceasing. Far from having any occasion to fear that in this way you will fall into idleness, you will on the contrary be always very active, because the Spirit of God will always be acting within you. The devotion which we produce by our own efforts exhausts itself all the more quickly as our efforts have been the more violent. But the devotion that is produced by the Spirit of God is never exhausted, whether we feel it sensibly or not. We must not even reflect about it, or seek curiously to know if we have it or have it not. We often have this devotion most fully when we think the least about it.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou