Making
a Good Thanksgiving After Holy Communion
Friday April 15, 2005 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Third Week of Easter
Reading (Acts 9:1-20) Gospel (St. John 6:52-59)
In the Gospel reading today, we see in extraordinarily clear terms the
reality of what Our Lord is teaching about the Eucharist: Unless
you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in
you. Now in case
anybody wanted to think that the Lord was speaking in some sort of vague
spiritual terms about this, He goes on to say, My flesh
is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My
blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. He goes on talking in the same vein. We see
the reality that Our Lord is teaching us about the Eucharist, that this is Jesus
Christ.
We have to have some means of being able to receive Him that is not
going to be cannibalism because that, of course, is completely forbidden (even
if we tried cannibalism, the flesh of Jesus would have been completely consumed
centuries ago). So how is it that Christian people are to do this unless, by
some miracle, He is going to give us a means by which the bread and wine are
going to be changed into His very Body and Blood, into the fullness of His
Person, so that we will be completely united with Him? Again, that is exactly
what He tells us in the reading, that whoever eats His flesh and drinks His
blood will have union with Christ – He will live within. That is what happens
when we receive Holy Communion. Jesus Christ in the fullness of His Person
comes to dwell within us.
We realize,
then, that there are these different forms of the presence of God. Each and
every person throughout the world already has the presence of immensity, that
is, God is simply keeping them in existence. The same is true of every material
thing. God has to keep everything in existence by His presence of immensity, so
He is present everywhere in that way. For anyone who is in the state of grace,
from the moment that we are baptized as long as we are in the state of grace
the indwelling presence of God is there. The Three Persons of the Holy Trinity
literally and actually dwell within our souls. So there is that union that is
already there. But
there is an even greater and more perfect union, and that is what happens in
Holy Communion. We receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and He is now
substantially present; in the fullness of His Person, He is there. That
probably lasts for about twenty minutes after we receive Holy Communion. The
grace, of course, lasts much longer; but the actual, sacramental, substantial
presence of Jesus Christ within us probably lasts about twenty minutes.
Now that should tell us what we need to be doing
after we receive Holy Communion. We should be with Our Lord, we should be in
our hearts as deeply as we can, we should make a good thanksgiving after
receiving Holy Communion, and we should take the opportunity to love Him. Ask
our Blessed Lady to come and be with you and to love Jesus in your heart,
because that is where He is at that moment in Holy Communion. If you think
about it, each time you receive Communion you have these few moments of
intimacy with Jesus. And so if you have the opportunity to stay for a while
after Mass and pray, please do so. If you have to go, that is understandable.
But if you can stay and pray, how much better that you have Our Lord right
there within you and you can commune with Him in the depths of your being. He
is literally and substantially present within you at that moment, and, again,
that only lasts for a little while. Those are the most intimate moments we can
have in this life with Our Lord, and we want to spend them in the depths of our
being. We want to enter in and be fully united with Him, as He has promised us
that we would be able to do.
He is there for us, and we see His love for us so
clearly. Now the question is: are we there for Him and can He see our love for
Him as clearly as we can see His love for us? The only way He is going to have
that love demonstrated is if we are doing it, if we are entering into the
depths of our heart and we are spending that time with Him while He is right
there within us. Spend those few moments of intimacy with Jesus. He is Almighty
God, and He lives and dwells right there in your soul for just those few moments,
substantially and sacramentally, every single day when you receive Him. These
are the most privileged moments of our time on earth. We do not want to
squander them; we want to make the best of them by entering into the depths of
our hearts and uniting ourselves with Jesus, Who has already entered the depths
of our hearts to unite Himself with us.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.