We are delighted to be celebrating First Holy Communion with members of the parish community and with learners from St Teresa’s Junior Primary School. I would like to congratulate each one of them, particularly those who decided during the year to enter the Church through the waters of baptism. The journey
of each one of those receiving Holy Communion has had the support of their family, the faith community, their teachers, catechists and friends. They are part of us, as we are part of them. They will continue to need our encouragement, support and good example to continue growing in Christian maturity.
I hope that one of the things that they learn from this community and this celebration is that they don’t need to be perfect to gather around the altar of Christ. We cannot buy the eucharist through the perfection gained through rule keeping. It is not a reward. In today’s world the body of Christ is medicine which cures our wounds, it is food for our Christian life-journey.
Pope Francis said that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” As the great doctor of the Church, St Ambrose wrote: “If, whenever Christ’s blood is shed, it is shed for the forgiveness of sins, I who sin often, should receive it often: I need a frequent remedy.” Neither Pope Francis nor St Ambrose were advocating an “anything goes” attitude. There are sins that we need to repent of and receive forgiveness for, before bringing our gifts to the altar. The old language of the church speaks of Mortal and venial sins, though the tendency today is to speak of serious and less serious sin.
St Aquinas said that that the Eucharist is food, but food only helps the living. The one who commits a mortal or serious sin “is not alive spiritually, and so he ought not to eat the spiritual nourishment, since nourishment is confined to the living.” While Holy Communion, like bodily food, strengthens the weak and helps heal the infirm (which Aquinas equates with venial sin), it does not raise the dead. This, he said, is what the sacrament of penance or reconciliation is for.
While the Eucharist is medicine for the soul, it does not mean the Eucharist heals even when the sinner clings to his sin. The Eucharist isn’t magic. It heals repentant sinners — people who have been raised to life in Christ through grace, even while they still struggle to grow in that life. We may fall into serious sin and cut ourselves off from spiritual life for a time, but through the gift of repentance — especially through the gift of the sacrament of reconciliation — the Spirit restores us to life in Christ.
