Last weekend I preached on the call of Christ and His Church to those who struggle with issues of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. Especially if you find yourself in position of not being married in the Church – or know someone who is such a situation – I encourage you to read & share the post of that homily I put up last week.

After having offered that homily and reflecting on the responses I received from parishioners afterwards (including the teasingly offered feedback of ‘great Saint Valentine’s Day homily, Father’ – which I clearly did not put together ahead time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), it became clear to me that the natural follow-up was worthy reception of communion for us all! Once again, the Lord put before us in the Mass excellent readings to assist us in re-orienting us all towards that goal.

It was the gospel reading, in particular, that first got to me. Saint Matthew’s account of Jesus’ temptation starts with this summary: “He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry.”

Ya think?!?! We just got off of a single day of fasting – and that with the option to have one full meal and two small snacks not together equally a full meal, and that left a great many of us hungry!

Once I got over Saint Matthew’s talent for understatement, I found that I rather appreciated his implied affirmation of the underlying truth: that Christ’s hunger – a hunger which each of us knows well – is itself actually something good. Of course Jesus, like us, feels hungry. And not only hungry materially, but also spiritually. We all know the need – and satisfaction – of being fed so to be fulfilled in body & spirit. In fact, so important is this reality of hunger and being fed that Jesus establishes His Church such that our entire faith revolves around the Last Supper. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). All of our sacraments simultaneous flow from and towards the re-presentation of Christ’s self-offering on the cross and our subsequent communion (from the Latin communio, meaning participation or ‘union with’) with Jesus.

When we talk about worthy reception of communion – especially online – there is a lot of hay made about priests (or other ministers) refusing communion to those unworthily approach. In fact, the Church is quite strict about if and when a minister of communion may (in fact, must) refuse communion – we can find that laid out in the Code of Canon Law, number 915 (skipping the part about those under the penalties excommunication & interdict, which obviously exclude them from communion): 

“[those who are] obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion [emphasis added].”

Notice those four key words: 1) obstinately, 2) persevering, 3) manifest, and 4) grave. Each of these likely have technical meanings to which I won’t do full justice, but the essence is this: that a person must be 1) unrepentantly (ie, deliberately recalcitrant after having been warned by the proper authority), 2) continuing in that sin in an ongoing way, 3) the sin being evidenced before the minister 4) and the sin being itself grave. And here’s the thing: all four of these qualities must be present at the moment of reception of communion for a minister to refuse communion to a Catholic. As you might imagine, the coming together of these four qualities is extraordinarily rare. Confident (sometimes rightly!) though a minister may be that a Catholic coming forward likely shouldn’t be presenting themselves, that minister is forbidden from refusing communion unless & until these conditions exist all together and in that moment.

But that isn’t the end of the teachings and the law that She has written to articulate that teaching! I present to you the canon immediately following 915: canon 916! Here we read the following: “A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess”.

Before going to the real meat of the canon, let’s clarify those last to bits – ‘grave reason’ and ‘no opportunity to confess’ – by highlighting what those canons don’t mean. ‘Grave reason’ does not mean ‘but I want it!’ or ‘I really feel like I need it!’. Grave reason has to do with situations akin to the Titanic sinking into the ocean and Father is rushing out of the chapel with the ciborium in hand, offering communion to the poor souls around him. Likewise, ‘no opportunity to confess’ means truly no opportunity, not ‘I had to wait some extra time (days or weeks) because the line was too long!

If a person were to truly have grave reason and no opportunity to confess (BOTH conditions being necessary to consider approaching communion while having unconfessed mortal sin on one’s soul), canon 916 concludes by saying that “in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible. [emphasis added]“

Which brings us back to the heart of canon 916 – that weight of worthy reception of communion lands squarely on the shoulders not of the minister, but of the communicant themself. No less personage than Saint Paul himself warns us that “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.” (1 Corinthians 11:29). From the very beginning, Christians understood that we must approach the altar of sacrifice with repentance, humility, and reverence.

Central as the Eucharist is to our faith, this is temptation that comes alongside this great gift – a temptation that is as old as creation, as we heard in the readings of this Sunday: to take, rather than to receive, the gift offered to us. Whether we are considering the temptation Satan whispered into the ears of Adam & Eve or that which he presented to Jesus, it is at its root the same message: ‘take it!’

‘Yes, you’re not married in the Church – but that doesn’t really matter; take communion anyway. So, you skipped Mass last Sunday when you could have gone – it was just one time!; go ahead and take it. Yeah, you looked at really impure images last night, but who got hurt after all? just go take communion. Sure, you and your wife are contracepting though the Church teaches otherwise – but having children is scary, expensive, and difficult; keep taking communion anyway. You haven’t forgiven that one person who hurt you, but they’re jerks anyway; go forward for communion.’ 

These are perhaps low-hanging fruits in the naming of temptations common to the modern heart, but the truth is that each of us has our favorite sins – sins that weigh heavily on our hearts and desperately need laid before the Lord.

Though they arguably had everything they needed to respond to the devil’s temptations, Adam & Eve utterly failed in resisting the call to take rather than to receive. We suffer the consequences of their choice even today – born into a broken world, inheriting Original Sin, and having often personally chosen to participate in sins venial and mortal.

That’s an important distinction to make, by the way – that of mortal versus venial sin. Happily, not every sin is necessarily a mortal sin! In fact, if we only have venial sins on our hearts, these can be forgiven in the very act of celebrating the Mass – at the penitential rite as well as the very reception of the Eucharist! It is mortal sin, that sin which cuts us off from the life of grace (by our actions, not God’s), that requires us to go to confession before approaching for communion.

But let’s get back to the Lord – because unlike Adam & Eve, Jesus is perfectly prepared to refute and rebuke the devil. What is truly telling is how He chooses to do so; by humbling submitting Himself – He Who is God, Who does have every right and ability to take whatever He desires! – to the will of His Father. Even Jesus Christ waits in trust, refusing to take, and instead choosing to receive in the way and at the time His heavenly Father chooses.

Between the readings this Sunday, we all prayed these words together, taken from Psalm 51. Those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours will recognize this psalm – a psalm so close to the heart of Christ and His Church that She has Her members offer it as the first psalm of Friday each week. The Divine Office (as the Liturgy of the Hours is also called) is not the exclusive prayer of clergy & religious, but the whole Church. In Sacrosanctum Concilium, the very first document of the Second Vatican Council, not only exhorts pastors to see to it that the chief hours are celebrated in churches on Sundays and solemn feasts but declares that “the laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually”! (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 100)

In short, the choice to so elevate Psalm 51 as to have it prayed at least once every week on Fridays is meant to be a gift to – and a rallying cry of – every and all members of the Body of Christ!

Though the responsorial psalm is at its origin the sentiment of those God chose in His first covenant, we hear again this cri de coeur (cry of the heart) made again and again in the New Testament as the crippled, lame, blind, mute, and so many others call out to the Lord “have mercy!”. And to each He responds with generosity beyond all expectation: both ‘be healed’ and ‘your sins are forgiven – go and sin no more’. In the final hours of his life, after enduring tortures that should have otherwise killed Him long before, Jesus lovingly responds to the plea of the good thief on the cross as he asks, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom”. Despite His own agony, Jesus responds with the greatest of assurance: “today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

The Lord so desires our salvation that He established the sacrament of Reconciliation before His disciples had the first inkling of the means by which He would effect that reconciliation. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18). The early Church understood this to establish confession of sins as a necessity (James 5:16, 1 John 1:9), with authority given by Christ Himself to exercise the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-20)

As always, however, the Lord proposes, never imposing upon our free will. The pathway to forgiveness to sins is open – but it is we who must walk it, we who must choose to receive the gift offered.

As we reflected on a week ago around marriage, divorce, and remarriage, there is always a path forward to full communion with Christ and His Church. I can personally attest to the difficulty of confessing the hard sins – of naming out loud the specific mortal sins that have weighed me down, of owning my responsibility for knowingly & freely choosing them, of making no excuses but instead pleading for mercy and healing. It is usually hard, it is often humbling…..and it is always healing! What the devil hates most is the fact – the fact! – that it takes but a single confession for shame to be banished, friendship restored, and the truth renewed in our hearts that we are beloved sons & daughters of God….and always will be! There is no sin too big nor offense too grievous that the Lord will not lift from our souls, restoring us to the glory of being His friends.

It is one of my greatest joys to be able to share in this grand movement of the Holy Spirit. Whether it is after decades of being away from the sacraments or a few days, every confession is a celebration of Jesus’ triumph over sin & death. If you haven’t been to confession recently – especially if it has been a long time – don’t wait! Know that you will be received with patience, gentleness, and compassion. We priests are literally the experts in celebrating the sacrament; we will discreetly guide you through the process of making a good confession. Moreover, we rejoice with you in the words that every one of us longs to hear: ‘your sins are forgiven, go in peace!’.

In our parishes here on the Olympic Peninsula – and I daresay in every parish in the world during this season of Lent – there are many (so many!) extra opportunities to go to confession. Don’t delay: come receive the mercy of God and prepare yourself to receive worthily the gift of the Eucharist, the gift of Himself for you, His beloved.

Those on the Olympic Peninsula – but especially in the central region, where I most regularly minister – will know that one of the changes I made early on in my ministry here was to only have the Sign of Peace exchanged within the congregation at Sunday Masses, an option afforded the priest celebrant (see the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, #154). Starting this Lent, we will be revisiting this option: the Sign of Peace will be exchanged by all at all Masses.

As we make this change, I want to highlight two aspects of this part of the liturgy. The first is the aspect of fellowship – that we are fraternally greeting those around us in mutual friendship & affection. This is a good thing and one that is most commonly felt in greeting of ‘Peace be with you’ and the response ‘And with your spirit’ (this, by the way, means that one of you has to offer the greeting and the other to respond!).

There is, however, a deeper and I daresay more profound aspect: that of forgiveness. It is no coincidence that the Sign of Peace follows immediately after we have finished saying together the Lord’s Prayer, in which we ask God to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. And while we likely are not sitting in Mass next to people with whom we have major issues, the fact of the matter is that there is likely not a single person who comes to Mass who doesn’t have someone they desperately need to forgive – and someone from whom they desperately need forgiveness.

Jesus Himself tells us “Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23). When we offer the Sign of Peace, we are doing more than simply expressing affection – we are assuring each other of our communion with each other, declaring that we are at peace with everyone. That means that even if the person who we need to forgive – or whose forgiveness we need – is not near us or even at the same Mass as us, we are declaring our peace with them before all.

This is at the heart of the Sign of Peace: that we never come to communion without having fully committed ourselves to also being in communion with each other – because how can the Body of Christ be divided among itself? How can Jesus truly enter into our hearts if we have separated ourselves from those He has also chosen?

As we prepare for worthy reception of the Eucharist through our confession of sins, so let us also – especially in this most powerful moment in the Mass itself – prepare through firm resolution to forgive and seek forgiveness such that the words of the Our Father are truly evident in our own lives. This, too, is a necessary part of coming – together! – to the altar of the Lord.