How many people stop seeking communion to avoid living with greater recollection and more detachment from worldly things. This is the real reason why many do not receive communion more often. We reproduce here some advise by St Alphonsus of Liguori in this book “The practice of the love of Jesus Christ.”
Newsroom (January 8, 2022, 9:15 AM, Gaudium Press) Certain timid people, advised by their confessor to receive communion more often, usually reply:
1- ‘I am not worthy.’
Don’t you know that the less you take communion, the more unworthy you become, because without communion you will have less strength and fall into more faults? Obey the confessor, let yourself be guided by him! The faults, when not completely voluntary, do not prevent communion. Of your faults, the greatest is that of not obeying your confessor.
Yet, you will still say:
2- “I have led a bad life in the past!”
Don’t you know that the person who is most ill has the greatest need of a doctor and medicine? Jesus in the Eucharist is doctor and medicine. It is St. Ambrose who says, “I, who always sin, always need the medicine within my reach.”[1]
This Bread of Heaven requires one to be hungry, He wants to be desired [2]. This thought “today I took communion, tomorrow I will take communion” makes us watchful to flee sin and do God’s will!
3- “But I am not fervent”
If you talk about the sensitive fervour, that is not necessary and God does not always give it to even the most pious people. It is enough that you have the fervour of a will resolved to be all God’s and to progress in God’s love. Gerson says that those who leave communion because they do not feel the devotion they would like to feel, do like those who do not go near the fire because they feel cold.[3]
How many people stop seeking communion because they don’t feel compelled to live with greater recollection and greater detachment from the things of this earth. This is the real reason why many do not take communion more often. They know that daily communion cannot be combined with the desire to appear, with vanity in dress, with the attachment to the pleasures of gluttony, the comforts, the mean conversations. They know that there should be more prayer, more internal and external mortification, more recollection.
That is why they are ashamed to approach communion more often.
No doubt such people do well to leave frequent communion while they are in this sorry state of lukewarmness. But anyone who feels called to a more perfect life and does not want to endanger his own eternal salvation should come out of this state of lukewarmness.
By St. Alphonsus Mary de Liguori
In: LIGÓRIO, Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. The practice of the love of Jesus Christ. Trad. Gervásio Fabri dos Anjos. Aparecida: Santuário, 1996, p. 106-107.
[St. Ambrose, De sacr., 1. 4, c. 6.
[St. Gregory Nazianzen, Carminum, 1. 1, sectio 2, XXXIII, Tetrastichae sententiae, Sententia 37, vers. 145-148, MG 37 – 938-939.
[3] John Gerson, Collectorium super Magnificat, tract. 9, prt. 3, Opera, tom. 2, (Antwerpiae), 1706, col. 422.
Compiled by Zephania Gangl
