Transcript

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father, son, and the holy spirit.

We ask for your grace, Lord to penetrate more deeply into the effects of holy communion, through Christ our lord.

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

So in this...

so this is episode 11, our course on the Eucharist mystery of present sacrifice and communion, and now we've finally gotten to the last part, Holy Communion.

So this episode will be on the effects of Holy Communion.

So it is not by accident that the Eucharist is both the church's sacrifice and the sacrament of communion, right?

In which we've spoken about that in earlier episodes.

The offering of sacrifice and communion in the sacrifice are intimately linked and express the covenant, right?

A covenantal relationship of offering and receiving.

Mutual self-gift of the covenantal parties, God and his church.

Saint Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:18, expresses the meaning of the people's participation in partaking of the victim.

He says, "Consider the people of Israel are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?" Right?

So the key point there is sacrificing communion go together.

Right?

Now it's...

the church doesn't oblige us to receive communion every time we participate in the sacrifice, but we're recommended and urged to if we are in the right dispositions.

We'll look at that in our next talk.

So the ritual consumption of the victim, say in the, in the sacrifices of Israel manifest one solidarity with what has been offered to God.

And once in interior configuration with it, right, and that's true likewise in the sacrifice of the mass.

Right?

The two go together, sacrifice and communion in the sacrifice.

Precisely so that we become configured to the Lord's cross and sacrificial self-gift.

Saint Thomas speaks about this in the Summa question, third part, question 82, article four on holy communion.

He says that, "Eucharist is not only a sacrament, but also a sacrifice." Now whoever offers sacrifice must be a sharer in the sacrifice because the outward sacrifice he offers is a sign of the inner sacrifice whereby he offers himself to God, right, as Saint Augustine explains him the city of God book ten, and as we've spoken about in talk episode nine.

Hence by partaking of the sacrifice, he shows that the inner one is likewise his.

In other words, receiving Christ in holy communion means that we're in solidarity with his offering and it means that we're receiving his grace so as to configure ourselves ever more perfectly day by day, week by week.

Ratzinger speaks about this in his book, The Feast of Faith.

He says, quote, "Throughout the entire history of religions, sacrifice and meal are inseparably united.

The sacrifice facilitates communion with the divinity and men receive back the divinities gift in and from the sacrifice." Right?

That was true of Israel and you can see this, this is transformed and deepened in many ways in the mystery of Jesus Christ.

Here the sacrifice itself comes from the incarnate love of God, so that it is God who gives himself taking man up into his action and enabling him to be both gift and recipient.

Right?

Gift and recipient.

Gift is the participation in the sacrifice, recipient receiving Holy Communion.

Right?

The two naturally go together.

Um, Charles Journet, Cardinal Journet, great theologian mid 20th century writes, quote, "The Lord's banquet, yes, but one calculated to immerse us actively in the Lord's sacrifice." Hans Urs von Balthasar, quote, "The Eucharist presupposes the cross of Christ, but the Eucharist has as its goal our total crucifying gift." How many of those who go forward to communion realize this, right?

That's a huge pastoral problem.

Challenge, better.

So in Israel, communion we could say had three fundamental meanings.

First is the union with the victim offered, right?

Because the victim is a sign of the interior offering of the heart.

Secondly, and more importantly, it represents communion with God, right?

To whom the sacrifice is offered.

Table fellowship is established with God himself, right?

And this expresses the essence of the covenant between God and man that is being celebrated.

And then third, it represents communion among all those who share in the sacrificial meal, binding them together in the households of God.

Right?

And so these three meanings of community in Israel apply also then to the new covenant, right?

We unite ourselves with the victim, who now is not a mere lamb but Jesus Christ, the lamb of God.

We unite ourselves with the Father through his self-gift, through his sacrifice, and this establishes communion and with all of those who share in the sacrifice....

deepens the communion of the church, and builds up the church's unity.

So there's an order between sacrifice and communion, right?

First is the sacrifice, and the communion is its fruit and culmination.

All right.

The sac-, the communion in the sacrifice presupposes that God has first been propitiated by the sacrifice, which enables the faithful to enter into deep, deeper intimacy with him.

Right?

That's the logic of sacrifice and communion.

The communion aids one to offer oneself then more completely in the following sacrifice, having been nourished, nourished by it.

And thus, sacrifice and communion make up the Eucharistic life.

We've said in previous talks, uh, episodes, that the link, this link between sacrifice and communion has grown dim in the eyes of, um, our contemporaries.

Right?

That people are generally unaware that Jesus was received in communion is first offered in sacrifice to the Father.

Right?

And we've seen even theologians contrast these aspects of the Mass, sacrifice and banquet, as if they were separate aspects in competition for the proper emphasis, rather than being a both-and, that both are elevated together, or ought to be.

The Mass is not just any banquet, we said, but a sacrificial banquet like, um, the Passover in Israel.

And to worthily receive the Lamb who was sacrificed, we need to reproduce ourselves the interior self-offering of the Lamb.

Right?

We receive communion to become what we receive, as Saint Augustine explained in the Confessions.

Um, and we'll return to this in our final episode.

So let's look now at the effects of Holy Communion.

And again, this is very, very rich.

The effects of Holy Communion are all the effects of grace won for us by Calvary.

Saint Thomas has a marvelous article on this in the third part of the Summa, Question 79, Article 1.

And he says, um, explains that the effects of communion can be understood according to four different aspects of the Eucharist.

First, that it contains the real presence.

Second, that it is the sacrifice of the cross made present sacramentally.

Third, that it's the sacrament of spiritual nourishment.

And then fourth, which we can see is an outflow of that, it's the sacrament of ecclesial unity.

Right?

And so we can gather the, we can understand the effects of Holy Communion from each of these four aspects.

Or we could say, from the three that we've been speaking about in this course, presence, sacrifice, and communion, communion being in personal and ecclesial.

Now, it can be helpful in understanding this to recall, um, something we spoke about in our fifth episode, I believe it was, on the Berengarian Controversy.

We saw in that episode that, um, the Eucharist has three levels.

There's the sacramental sign, the bread and wine, the words of the institution narrative.

There's the real presence, the body and blood.

And then there's the effect of grace and charity that builds up the unity of the church.

And it's that third level that we're looking at in this talk.

Okay, so taking the point of departure that, of the real presence, right?

So what do we receive in Holy Communion?

We receive the Lord whole and entire.

Right?

So here, this is, um, sufficient to show us the effects of Holy Communion, and Jesus gives to us his very self in the whole of him, humanity and divinity.

And we receive his humanity only for a time, right?

For about 10 minutes, until we digest the, the Eucharistic species.

Um, but the divinity, he does that to nourish us with an increased, an increased share in his divinity.

And that means sanctifying grace, which is a participation in the divine life, and faith, hope, and charity that flow from it.

And, but this doesn't happen in a mechanical or automatic way, or, or in a magical way, but it, it happens according to the degree of our disposition.

Right?

So everyone who receives Holy Communion receives the same Jesus Christ, right, receives the same Lord, whole and entire.

But we receive him with different dispositions.

So if I receive him, God forbid, with a disposition of mortal sin, I receive, yes, his humanity, but I don't grow in a share of his divinity, because I'm lacking the necessary disposition.

And we'll come back to this in the next talk.

If I do receive him with the right disposition, sanctifying grace, um, he'll give himself...

I will always receive an increase of grace and faith, hope, and charity, but according to the degree of love and desire.

Right?

As I explained, um, previously with regard to the fruits of the Mass, it's also true of Holy Communion.

And, and this is simply an illustration of the universal, uh, principle, theological principle, everything is received, or I should say philosophical principle, everything is received according to the mode of the recipient.

And God takes that into account, our mode.

Right?

And so he gives himself, um, according as we, um, are disposed by desiring him.

Now, obviously he doesn't need to respect it.

He can do whatever he wants.

But as we said, he's an order, a God of order.

Um, and so he respects our frame and our disposition, which he himself brings about, but we have to cooperate it.So what do we receive?

We receive the Lord and all of His gifts, but in a way that respects our temporal growth.

Um, so we receive Him whole and entire, but we grow step by step, day by day.

Secondly, we said that the Mass contains the passion of Christ, right?

It's re-presented sacramentally.

And that means that we're going to receive the effects of Calvary into our lives, and that of the whole Church.

But again, just as we said before, that is received according to our dispositions, and according to our mode of growing day by day.

And our cooperation.

So yes, the eph- the potential fruits of Holy Communion are utterly unlimited in themselves, but in fact, they're limited according to our dispositions, um, which He is seeking to enlarge.

Right?

So we...

going back to that principle, everything is received according to the mode of the recipient.

But the goal of pastoral action is to enlarge the mode of the recipient, and that's also the goal, we could say, of the sacramental economy, is to enlarge our dispositions, the mode of the recipient according to His generosity and His gift.

But nevertheless, that's going to take place in time, which is the law of human life.

Okay.

Third consideration.

We receive this Sacrament as spiritual nourishment, and thus it's going to sustain us in the life of grace and nourish its growth.

Right?

And therefore, that applies to sanctifying grace, it applies to faithful and charity, it implies to all the infused moral virtues that now are directed by charity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Now, we'll take these one by one.

And then fourth, that very effect, all of those graces, enables us to live unity with one another, and thus it builds up the, um, the unity of the Church.

Right?

And again, it doesn't build it up without us, but it gives us the faithful and charity to be able to be peacemakers, and thus strengthen that communion of the Church.

This effective ecclesial unity is manifested, uh, represented by this, the sacramental sign of the Eucharist, bread and wine.

So just as one loaf is made from many grains, so one chalice of wine is made from many, many grapes that now becomes one.

Right?

And that's a sign of the effect of the Eucharist.

And, and that comes about precisely by each one of us being nourished with charity.

Faith, hope, and charity.

Okay.

Let's do...

go more now in depth, in particular, to the different effects of grace given by Holy Communion.

We can distinguish, um, two different kinds of effects of all of the sacraments.

There's a common effect of grace that all the sacraments give, and so the Eucharist will be not different here than baptism, confirmation.

Um, and then for each of the sacraments, there's a special effect that's proper to the particular purpose and mission of that sacrament.

So let's look first at the common and then the particular sacramental grace of the Eucharist.

So common first.

All seven sacraments communicate sanctifying grace, right?

That's the fundamental purpose of the sacramental economy.

We can't get it ourselves, right?

Sanctifying grace is the participation in divine life.

I can't...

I, uh, I don't possess it, the divine life, so as to give it to myself.

We have to receive it.

Right?

And so all the sacraments are conduits by which sanctifying grace is given to us.

Baptism as the initial reception, right?

And then all the other sacraments to make it grow, except...

and penance can also be to restore it if we've lost it, tragically.

So in this, the Eucharist, like all other sacraments, um, is a way of receiving sanctifying grace.

But it happens in the Eucharist in a way proper to the Eucharist, and that is frequent reception, right?

The Eucharist is a Sacrament of spiritual nourishment, and therefore it serves to nourish us with an increase of sac- of sanctifying grace week by week, day by day, right?

If we are able to...

according to the frequency w- with which we're able to receive.

Now from this first effect, many other effects flow.

Um, so from sanctifying grace, which is a sharing in the divine nature, other effects flow such as faith, hope, and charity.

And maybe it's easiest to see with regard to charity.

God is love.

So...

and that means if we're sharing in the divine life, we're sharing in the divine love.

A love...

and so charity has a technical sense.

We often use it simply to mean, um, natural kindness.

But properly, we mean a kind of love that we don't have by our own power, um, a love that's proper to God.

And we see this in the new commandment.

Jesus says, "Love one another as I have loved you." I...

that's the charity that we're talking about, a, uh, an ability to love that is properly divine and involves loving God as Father and Bridegroom, and loving one another as sons and daughters of God.

Right.

So every, um, worthy reception of any sacrament will increase charity, um, and together with charity, faith, and hope.

Um, but again, the Eucharist does this in a way proper to the Eucharist, and that is by frequent nourishment....

and, and so nourishing the life of faith, hope, and charity day by day.

Right?

Sometimes people ask, you know, "What, what can I do to increa- to grow in faith?" And well, prayer is obviously a good answer.

But also, we should participate frequently in the Mass, and receive frequent Communion, right?

Would be the best answer, because that's its purpose.

In addition to faith, hope, and charity, um, all the Sacraments and the Eucharist in particular, nourish us in the infused moral virtues.

And that is all the cardinal virtues, which now come to us in a new way from above by being linked with charity.

And so we get, um, infused prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and all of the other virtues that are related to those.

The virtue of religion that we spoke about before, by which we, um, seek to give honor to God, now exists in us in a new way, and we're nourished in that supernatural religion.

Um, in addition to that, um, the sacraments also give us, um, a deepening of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and in fact, of the whole Trinity.

And that's because that's a fruit of charity.

Um, Saint Thomas explains that, um, w- God is present in all beings, right?

So God, uh, upholds everything in being.

But he becomes present in a new way in those who love him, and that's a presence by which he's in us, not simply as Creator upholding us in being, but as the beloved of our souls.

Right?

And we can...

Jesus explains this to the apostles in af- in the discourse after the Last Supper.

He's just given them their first Holy Communion, and so he's able to explain spiritual things to them, and it's also his last chance, and it's the last night of his earthly life.

And so it's in John Chapters 14 through 16 that Jesus explains the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity.

Um, and he puts down a condition.

"If you love me," right?

"And keep my commandments, I will come, and my Father will come, and the Spirit will come," et cetera.

And so we can see that that indwelling is conditioned on love.

Our loving him, right?

It's a special presence of the beloved in his temple, which is each one of us, in our hearts.

And so, Holy Communion nourishes us with the indwelling, right?

I know, I think we don't normally think of this.

We tend to think, I think, of the indwelling of the Trinity as something, um, either yes or no, like an on and off switch.

But it's something that is meant to deepen every day of our lives, in so far as charity deepens.

All right?

And so, um, Holy Communion enables us by feeding charity to deepen the indwelling of the Trinity in our hearts.

And together with that, deepens our divine filiation.

And again, I think most of us think of this simply as a yes/no, black/white, on/off, um, we are sons of God or not.

Um, but, um, we're actually nourished in this by sanctifying grace and charity.

We become sons and daughters of God by sharing in his nature.

Now because that's what it means to be a son, to share in the nature of the parent, son or daughter.

Um, and so, it's not by conception that we become sons or daughters of God, um, because we're conceived in original sin without sanctifying grace.

Our Lady alone was conceived in grace, and thus conceived as a daughter of God.

We are conceived without grace, right?

That's the result of the fall, and we have to receive it, and the only way is sacramental, through baptism.

So we become sons and daughters of God, um, through baptism, um, by sharing in his nature through receiving sanctifying grace.

But since the Sacraments increase grace, and in a particular way, the Eucharist, since we receive it frequently, its purpose is to nourish us with sanctifying grace.

That also nourishes in us the life of divine filiation.

Right?

Uh, it sounds strange to say, but in, in some real way, we become more deeply and profoundly sons or daughters of God as we're nourished with his love.

And then, the Eucharist also strengthens in, in us the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are, um, best understood, right?

The seven gifts that's spoken of in Ef- in Isaiah Chapter 11.

Wisdom, understanding, um, knowledge, um, counsel, fortitude, um, piety, and fear of the Lord, in essence, are gifts of docility to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit.

And these gifts of docility, um, are fed by, by love.

By charity, right?

Because we become docile to another in so far as we love them, right?

So we're docile to our parents when we love them, children are, um, and, um, and so it is with God.

Um, the seven gifts are, um, ways by which he can lead us with his inspirations, um, and, um, they're gifts of docility to make us more attentive to his lead, right?

To his inspirations.

And, um, by nourishing us with charity, the Sacraments in general, and in particularly the Eucharist, because we receive it frequently, is nourishing us with these seven gifts.

Now, this might seem confusing to people, because we associate the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit with Confirmation, and that's correct.

But Confirmation, we could say, well r-...

originally baptism gives them, confirmation deepens them, but they're nourished in us, in our souls, by frequent communion.

So, um, I think many of us don't think enough about how, um, Holy Communion and the Holy Spirit are connected.

Right?

Holy Communion is feeding us with the life of the Trinity, and thus feeding us also with the Holy Spirit and his gifts.

John Paul II spoke about this in his encyclical Ecclesiae Diu Eucharistia, number 17.

He says, "Through our communion in his body and blood, Christ also grants us his spirit." Saint, and he quotes Saint Ephrem, "He called the bread his living body and he filled it with himself and his spirit.

He who eats it with faith, eats fire and spirit." Right?

A beautiful quote from Saint Ephrem, given, um, reproduced by, um, included by John Paul II in Ecclesiae Diu Eucharistia, 17.

Okay.

In addition to, um, all of these gifts of habitual grace, the sacraments also give us actual graces, and this is the particular, um, effect of the particular sacrament.

So every sacrament gives actual graces in accordance with the mission or purpose of that sacrament.

Actual graces are those graces that come to us in the here and now, a grace, um, of illuminating the intellect to see something that we didn't see before, and a gift to the will to be attracted to the supernatural good, um, and to our- our supernatural end, and to other supernatural means that God, um, chooses for us and seeks to, um, to guide us towards.

And so these actual graces come in the here and now.

We need them every day.

Right?

We can't do any, um, salvific act, any act that works towards salvation without actual grace aiding us and moving us and attracting us and illuminating.

Um, and so each of the sacrament also wins for us actual graces according to its purpose.

All right.

What's the purpose of the Eucharist?

We said it's the Sacrament of Love and Ecclesial Unity, and therefore, the Eucharist in particular has the purpose of feeding us with an increase of charity, not just as, let's say, a virtue or habit that would be stable, but also impulses of charity, um, fervor of charity that's experienced in the here and now, leading us to live for eternal charity and- and- and love of God.

And that is, that effect then strengthens us in so many ways.

So those actual graces to increase the life of charity would be graces to forgive those who have offended us, graces to reconcile with those with whom we're, um, have different kinds of- of, um, estrangement, um, graces to resist temptation out of love for God, graces to, um, to make resolves to live better, et cetera.

Um, and so, um, Holy Communion serves to nourish as it were to, um, love, to make it fervent and, um-um, be a better motor in our spiritual life.

And in the same way, venial sins are forgiven, right?

So the proper sacrament for the forgiveness of sins is penance, but Holy Communion serves to, um, forgive venial sins precisely by leading the recipient to an increase of charity, and that increase of charity ought to lead us to resolve, to break with habits of venial sin.

All right.

Now, venial, habits of venial sin can co-exist with charity, but they, um, limit charity's, um, ardor.

And so an increase of charity ought to lead to a resolve to combat those habits of venial sin, and even to blot them out, depending, but this is not an automatic effect.

So we should not think, "Oh, I've just received Holy Communion, therefore all my venial sins are forgiven." Right?

That should happen by leading us to greater fervor, but it requires our cooperation.

We have to actually break from those habits and want to and resolve to.

And then, of course, it, um, defends us against future sins, whether mortal or venial, precisely by giving us that increase of charity.

Right?

And it's in this sense that Jesus said in John 6:50, "This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that man may eat of it and not die." Right?

Not die by mortal sin because it's fortifying us with charity to protect us.

But we have to cooperate.

All right?

And then it gives an- a- a spiritual consolation, right?

Thomas Aquinas, um, writes, "No one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion." And he quotes, um, the Song of Songs, "Eat, O friends, and drink, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved." All right?

So, um, Eucharist has that effect of spiritual consolation.

But that isn't always, um, equally, um, felt, right?

Because that also depends on, um, on God's will.

Right?

He can allow, um, this happens in the dark night of the soul, that someone who is, in fact, um, being nourished in love to not experience that effect of consolation.

But it would be the ordinary, um, eff- um, effect of an increase of love to experience that consolation.

But we shouldn't be concerned about that because God can, for our good, withhold that at times.

There's a beautiful quote by J.R.

Tolkien about the effects of Holy Communion and the spiritual consolation in a letter to his son.

He writes, quote, "Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on Earth, the Blessed Sacrament.

There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on Earth, and more than that, death," right?

Death to self, death to sin.

He continues, "By the divine paradox, that which ends life and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste or foretaste of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships, love, faithfulness, and joy, be maintained or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires." And then finally, ecclesial communion.

Precisely by nourishing us, each- each of the faithful, right?

The church's communion is built up because the church's communion, um, has an outward part, but it also has an inward part that is made from faith, hope, and charity.

And the more faith, hope, and charity are nourished, the more that, um, ecclesial communion, um, grows.

So let us, um, pray to Lord that in our Holy Communions we may cooperate with these effects by way of desire and be filled with his super abundant generosity through Christ our Lord, in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.