That food may be beneficial to the body, the body must necessarily be living, for food cannot avail the dead. So with regard to the spiritual food of Holy Communion: it is only the soul that enjoys the supernatural life in God through Divine grace that can draw profit from the reception of the Holy Eucharist. In other words, to receive worthily, the soul must be in the state of grace; the absence of this wedding garment renders the soul unfit and unworthy to approach the Adorable Sacrament. Yet we know that Christians are sometimes found who do not hesitate to go to the Holy Table, their souls defiled with mortal sin, thus making a bad Communion, and rendering themselves guilty of sacrilege in so doing.
The unworthy communicant acts like the Philistines, who took possession of the Ark of the Covenant, and placed it near their false god, Dagon, for he introduces his Eucharistic God into a soul where Satan himself holds sway.
To turn a church into a stable, as the first Napoleon is said to have done during his military campaigns, would be a desecration before God and man. So, too, was the act of Baltassar, King of Babylon, in sending for the sacred vessels of the Temple, and turning them to profane use, by drinking from them to the honour of his gods (Daniel 5). What, then, must be the guilt of one who introduces Our Lord into his soul, when plunged in the mire of grievous sin, profaning thus the great Sacrament of Sacraments! No greater crime can be conceived, no greater insult can be offered than this sacrilege of deepest dye, bringing the infinite Sanctity of God into contact with the corruption of a soul in mortal sin. It is like tying a living body to a putrid corpse, as was sometimes done with the Martyrs.
The usual cause of a bad Communion is the making of a bad Confession beforehand, by concealing a sin through false shame and fear in declaring some sin, or through want of true contrition, or again through carelessness in examining one’s conscience, which leads to the omission of some grievous sin that would have come to light in an examination of conscience properly made. This shows the importance of a previous good Confession, for if the Confession be faulty and sacrilegious, so too will be the Communion that follows.
This great evil may sometimes arise also from a sort of human respect, which impels one to go to Holy Communion after breaking one’s fast. This may perhaps happen in the case of children; having prepared themselves well for their Communion the night before, they accidentally break their fast the next morning, and then, through false shame, or through human respect, are afraid to abstain from going to the Altar, which their parents or companions know they intended to do; thus are they led to make a bad Communion. Such as these must remember the weighty law of the Church, that Communion must be received fasting, apart the exceptions we have already considered. Should they happen to break their fast, there is no help for it but to abstain from Holy Communion that day; let them proclaim boldly the cause of this, and then prepare to receive another day. On no account must they go to the Altar in such circumstances, and so commit a grievous sin.
Judas was the first bad communicant, who on the very night of Our Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist, having planned in his heart to betray his Divine Master to His enemies, yet dared to receive Him in such unworthy dispositions, and “Satan entered into him” (John 13:27). Since his day, alas! many have done, and still do, in like manner, receiving Holy Communion unworthily, and committing a grievous sacrilege; better far to make no Communion at all than to make a bad one. To do this is to turn the food of the soul, so calculated to raise it to the heights of sanctity, into a deadly poison that kills the soul in the eyes of God. Holy Communion is like the light of day, salutary to the healthy eye, but hurtful to one that is diseased; Our Lord’s Body is a medicine, giving health to the pure of heart, but spiritual death to the unclean.
The consequences of a bad Communion are expressed in the words of Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 11:29): eating and drinking judgment to oneself, that is to say, the sinner entails damnation on himself, in punishment for not discerning the Body of the Lord, and treating It with no more respect than he would treat common bread.
1. God has ever punished sacrilege with marked severity and indignation; His punishments for this are oftentimes of the temporal order and more terrible than for any other kind of sin. Even in the days of S. Paul we find sacrilegious Communions among the Faithful, and he tells the Corinthians that in consequence thereof many among them were afflicted with divers ailments and diseases, while many, too, were punished with premature death (1 Corinthians 11:30). “Durandus says that for many years in Rome there were so many sudden deaths about Easter that the public attention was drawn to it, especially as there seemed no reason in the ordinary course of things why the average should be so greatly exceeded always at the occurrence of that movable feast. At length the Pope received some light by which he was led to infer that this annual visitation of sudden deaths was in consequence of the number of sacrilegious Communions made by those fulfilling the Easter precept.” Even to this day one of the breviary hymns for Paschal time contains a verse recalling this fact, and begging God to spare His people: Ut sis perenne mentibus.
Jesus, that Thou to our poor hearts
May’st e’er true Paschal joy remain,
From evil death, deserved by crime,
Free us, to life now born again.”
Anyone who despises the law and refuses to obey offends the king and gives him displeasure. But if he advance still further and maltreats the king himself, then he commits a more grievous crime and is guilty of high treason. This is exactly what is done by one who receives Communion in the state of sin. If he disobey the Divine commands, he offends and dishonours God; but if he have the temerity to receive Our Lord with mortal sin in his soul, then he not only offends God, but directly maltreats His Divine Son, and commits the awful crime of high treason against Him. No wonder that God Almighty punishes such sin with severity!
2. Bad Communions more than anything else tend to harden the heart, and as it were to sear it over, as sealing-wax is spread over the paper. The grace of God makes no impression on the soul and can hardly effect an entrance; hence the great difficulty of repentance and conversion which they experience who are thus guilty, hence too the danger they expose themselves to of dying in their sin. A band of robbers numbered among them a young man, as yet timid, whose sense of virtue had not been quite stifled. “Go and make bad Communions,” said the Captain, “and you will no longer fear!” Unfortunately, the young man followed this diabolical advice, and soon found how true it is that sacrilege hardens the heart, for he became in time the most desperate of a desperate lot.
In one of the towns bordering on the Rhine there lived a man who had given himself up to every passion, and had become by his life a scandal to all who knew him. Being at length on his deathbed, his family, who were good Catholics, sent for the priest, who heard the sick man’s confession, and prepared to give him Holy Viaticum. He already held the Blessed Sacrament in his hand, when the patient cried out: “Stop, father, stop! I made a sacrilegious first Communion, and have never been to Communion since. One surely is sufficient to suffer for in hell for eternity.” In vain did the priest and the bystanders, struck with horror, exhort him to repentance and remind him of the infinite mercy of God, who is ever ready to pardon the repenting sinner. He sank into the depths of despair and died miserably.
3. Furthermore, sacrilegious Communions lead to great remorse of conscience and to unhappiness, which goad the guilty to every sort of crime. When a sinner reflects on his crime, he feels oppressed in heart and realizes the weight of sin that lies on his conscience; then, losing his peace of mind, he is ready to do any evil that may present itself to his thoughts.
The example of the unhappy Judas will be handed down to all time. After making his bad Communion, and then selling his Lord into the hands of His enemies, filled with the bitterness of remorse, he went forth and hanged himself with a halter (Matthew 27:5).
The famous Goethe writes a magnificent page on the beauty and power of the Sacraments of the Church; then he declares that a bad Communion made him leave the Church to embrace Protestantism, for he thought, as Saint Paul says, he had eaten his own condemnation, and he strove thus to stifle remorse. Full of gloom, fear, and despair, he wrote a wicked book that has caused innumerable suicides. Thus did sacrilege become the poisoned source of many evils.
Among the signs of predestination given by the Fathers of the Church, one is that we know how to draw good out of evil, and turn to the advantage of our souls even the very sins we may have committed, as the bee draws sweetness from bitter flowers. “To them that love God all things work together unto good” (Romans 8:28). On the other hand, it is a sign of damnation to draw evil out of good and convert into deadly poison that food which should naturally give us life, as they do who communicate unworthily. Instead of reaping benefit from so great a Sacrament, they do but draw down upon themselves the malediction and vengeance of God.
What then must we do to avoid so great a crime and escape the chastisements it often brings? If we cannot attain to the highest dispositions that will make our Communion so worthy and fruitful, at least must we have the elementary and essential disposition of being in the state of grace; to this add humble preparation and thanksgiving, then the Eucharistic Bread will always prove to be the bread of eternal life to our souls.