Let's start with John in Omaha, listening on Spirit Catholic Radio. Hi
John, you're first this hour with Tim Staples. Hi guys, thanks for taking my
call. Tim, I've followed your work long enough to know that I'm not smart enough
to try to stump you with a question. So I'm just going to just present what I
have. Ask him some about cooking, John. You'll stump him, to be sure.
I'm not much smarter in that area either. I'll tell you what, my question has to do with...
oddly enough, it's Communion. It's St. Paul's teaching on receiving the
Eucharist; and it's one I've tried to adhere to, but I've always been
curious about it and not really fully understanding it, I don't think--
understanding, I guess, from a sense that the Church has a responsibility of
making sure that the Sacrament's not desecrated ,I can certainly see that;
but you--all the way through Scripture...Jesus is the one that wanted
sinners to come to Him, and He even went out to them. And He was
never desecrated by their presence, or... well in fact, He came to the Earth for
the very purpose of being with them and saving us from that, too. So I was kind of
wondering, how can we bring condemnation on ourselves? And I know, and I understand,
it's--one can be a hypocrite in the sense you continue to live a certain way, and
then perhaps you want to be seen receiving the Sacrament because, you know,
for just social reasons, whatsoever. And I can see how that would be
wrong, but in terms of--I guess I saw, there's a very good prayer that Thomas
Aquinas wrote, it's a Thanksgiving after-- before and after Communion, I think, it's
brilliant actually, I just stumbled upon it; but in which he says in there, he says, "Lord
please let this Communion not be a sin for me, but an opportunity for
forgiveness." And so because of that, there have been times in my life when I might
have gone kind of on the dark side of things, and I really needed Communion, but
didn't do it because of that teaching and what the Church teaches. Okay.
Well, I think I gotcha, I think I got the gist of your question and
I appreciate it. But here's the key, I think we have to understand, as St.
Thomas Aquinas taught and as the Council of Trent defined infallibly in session
13--it might be something, John, you might want to take a look at. Session 13 from
the Council of Trent, it's a beautiful section, on the Eucharist; in particular, Canon 11,
but you want to read through the main teachings before you get to the
canons as well. But Canon 11 pretty much nails it to the wall here. It says "If a
member of the Church knows within their conscience that they are guilty of a
mortal sin, they cannot receive Communion until first receiving Sacramental
Confession." And it actually adds that no matter how contrite he may think he is,
he cannot receive the Eucharist unless he first receives Sacramental Absolution.
And then it has a little parenthesis there-- "If there is a confessor available."
Now if there's an extended period of time where you have no access to the
Sacrament, you can make an act of contrition and go ahead and receive...you
know, that that virtually, you know Jerry, that doesn't exist in the United States.
I mean, there can be certain areas, Mission territories and such, where you
don't have a priest available for, say, six months or more where that can apply,
but in general, here's the key, John: the reason why the Council of Trent defined
that--and attached an anathema to it, by the way, so this is a matter of dogmatic Catholic teaching--is because
really, in 1 Corinthians 10: 11-17--er, 1 Corinthians 10:
15-17, Saint Paul talks about the Eucharist, and
he says, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the
Blood of Christ? And the bread which we bless, is it not a participation in the
body of the Lord? And the Greek word there is actually "koinonia," which means
"communion." The Eucharist is our "communion" with Jesus Christ; so it
presupposes that you are already in communion with Him, because it's a
sacrament that both--it symbolizes that communion, makes it stronger, but it
presupposes that you have that communion first. If you don't--in fact,
it's analogous to a marital embrace, right? You know, you need to be in
communion with your bride--that means you have to go to the altar and be married--
before you can have conjugal relations. If you're not in communion with your
wife through the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, then we call that either
adultery, if that person's married, or fornication, see. So you have to have that
communion first. Now there are other sacraments, as you know, that either
cause us to enter into Christ-- Baptism, right? That takes away all sins,
mortal, venial, all punishment due for sins. Or Confession for post-baptismal
sins that are grave or that are mortal. God has given us those two
sacraments for cases where we have mortal sins. But John, you can't receive
Jesus in the Eucharist if you have mortal sin, because you're not actually
in communion with him. It's analogous to, you know, premarital sex. If you're--no
matter how much you love, maybe you're even engaged to that woman, no matter how
much you think you love her, if you engage, that is a grave sin. That's a
mortal sin if you willingly and knowingly do it. So when it comes to
the Eucharist, we have to be in communion in order to receive Communion, otherwise,
you know, to use John Paul the Great, Jerry, "Theology of the Body," we're lying
with our body. We're saying by receiving Communion,
"I'm in communion with Jesus and His Church, but in actuality I am NOT." And by
the way, 1 Corinthians 10:15-17 is beautiful, but then that leads up
to 1 Corinthians 11:27-29, where St. Paul says, "If we receive our
Lord unworthily, we eat and drink damnation to ourselves, because we do not
recognize the body of the Lord," we're not discerning the body of the Lord, "so let a
man examine himself to see whether he is in the faith before he receives." Does
that help at all, John? Well, it's that part I sort of understand. I guess
it's the other...beyond...in the context beyond that particular verse, I
guess; but I think of all the people that, when Christ was walking the earth, all
the people that were approaching Him, or that He called upon, that He never
turned anyone away. Yes John, and that's the key. Yeah, and that's why He
gave us the Sacrament. You make a great point, He doesn't turn people away. However, He
also requires that we make a commitment to him, right? I mean he doesn't just say,
"Oh, everyone come as you are, it doesn't matter if you're not sorry for your sins,"
right? I mean even the woman caught in adultery, He says, "Go and sin no more." You
have to repent in order to have an intimate union with Him. Now John, there
were lots of folks all around him that both believed and didn't, but the ones
who did not believe, and did not obey Him, did not have the intimate relationship
with him that, say, the Apostles, when Jesus says in John 15:3 to the
Apostles, He says, "You are already made clean because you have received my word."
That's not true for Herod, you know, that's not true for those who were
rejecting Him. They may have been in close proximity to Him, and such,
but they didn't have the intimate relationship with Him. And that's what
we're talking about, John. When you go to Mass, we have people sitting in the pews,
some of which may not be baptized at all, they're not Christians, they're inquiring
about Catholicism, they can't receive the Eucharist; you may have people in mortal
sin and such, so we're all together in that building, but you have to, like I
said, have that already intimate relationship with Jesus in order to be
considered one of the "many" that we refer to in the Eucharistic
prayer, the family of God that are welcome to receive him in the Eucharist.
I hope that helps, John. Yeah, thanks, John, for letting us assist
you with that.