“With all the strength of my soul I urge you young people to approach the Communion table as often as you can. Feed on this bread of angels whence you will draw all the energy you need to fight inner battles. Because true happiness, dear friends, does not consist in the pleasures of the world or in earthly things, but in peace of conscience, which we have only if we are pure in heart and mind.” (Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati)
Looking back on my “Brother Rice” High School days and especially my “Beta Theta Pi” fraternity days at Michigan State, I have no doubt that the secret behind the silent moral victories of me and my buddies, was the benefit of a strong Eucharistic life, Confession every 2 weeks, and the daily rosary. After 16 years of youth work here in DC, I am even more convinced that without the help of God’s grace, purity and self-control are simply not possible.
Father Sliney, you are absolutely right. My children attend Everest Academy in Clarkston, MI, where they have gender specific education. One day I was talking with two of the male teachers at the Boy’s School about the famous scene from the movie “When Harry met Sally” where Harry tells Sally it is impossible for boys and girls to be “friends.” Harry claims boys cannot look at women without lust. The teachers asked me if I agreed. I answered that, for boys and men who are under the weight of original sin, it is impossible for them to see women as they should. But for boys and men redeemed by Christ, it is absolutely possible.
I am a student of JPII’s TOB, a teaching which I have to say, has completely changed how I understand God’s creation of man and woman in his image and our redemption in Christ. I learned that the Eucharist is our strength and our healing regarding our attraction to and behavior toward the opposite gender. Christ incarnates the meaning of his words “This is my Body given for you.” Below are some excerpts from a paper I wrote for a class at Sacred Heart Major Seminary where I was studying toward a degree in Theology. Please ponder JPII’s words:
“John Paul II explains the notion of “gift,” also called the “spousal” meaning of the body, is evident to man only in his “natural state.” However, man in the dimension of history is not in his natural state. To understand why man is in an unnatural state, John Paul II again turns to the concept of heart. The heart is the place where man can properly interpret the meaning of his body, and this involves achieving a “deep knowledge of human interiority.” Theologically, John Paul would submit man’s heart has been wounded as the result of original sin. In anthropological terms, he would explain this wound as a rupture “in the human person’s interior, a breakup, as it were, of man’s original spiritual and somatic unity.”30 The result of this split is the disorder called concupiscence. Concupiscence is the very disorder exemplified by the lustful man mentioned by Christ in Matt. 5.
With this understanding, John Paul II indicates man in the “dimension of history” is affected by concupiscence, but this wounded nature does not define him. In John Paul II’s words, man must distinguish between what makes up the “manifold richness of masculinity and femininity in the signs that spring from the perennial call and creative attraction” and that which “bears only the sign of concupiscence.”31”
Human persons are able to see each other as they should be through the redemption of Christ, continually renewed and strengthened by prayer and the sacraments, especially the worthy reception of His Body and Blood through the Eucharist.
30 Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Pauline Books & Media, Boston, Mass, 2006, pg. 244.
31 Ibid, pg. 320.
The other day my coworker complained about Catholics refusing communion to visiting Protestants. Afterall, his church would never do that to visiting Catholics!
That left me searching for a simple and easy way explain why this is so.
I thought about the usual reasons we hear – we don’t all believe the same thing, and so we can’t take “communion” together, because of the symbolism…and I thought how weak this is as an acceptable answer to Protestant ears…afterall, they call it “communion” too. Some of them even believe it’s truly Jesus Christ hidden behind what appears to be bread and wine…
But then it came to me to explain it this way: if you’re not Catholic, you’re AWOL. You can’t just go into HQ and expect the General to invite you into his office, sit you down in his own chair and give you a cigar…no way! You’re not even in uniform there, buddy!
Unless the Eucharist is received into a soul free from mortal sin, that is, in the state of grace, its reception is a sacrilege, another grave sin against God!
But if the soul is not dead, but rather alive and clean, then only true love and true purity could possibly result from it…all things the world, the flesh and the devil hate most. So as long as they exist, the world, the flesh and the devil, that’s how long the war will go on.