Communion with Jesus

The early Church understood that the Risen Christ was truly present in their midst - in the life they lived together and in the celebration of the Eucharist. In other words, they realized that their new communion with Jesus was a holy communion.

This is what Pope Benedict meant when he wrote, "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event - a person - which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." That event - that person - is Christ.

I remember a retreat director saying something similar. “Christianity is not as much about doing good, as it is about being with the good.” That good - that person - is Christ.

In our encounter with Jesus through the communion we share with Him in the Eucharist we discover a way of allowing Him into our hearts and minds as we sacramentally consume the Sacred Host.

Are we exempt, then, from having to obey the Commandments and follow the Laws of God and nature and to do good? Of course not. But we fulfill them not because they are imposed on us from the outside, but because of the life of Christ at work within us, which is the law of love.

A Catholic who falls away from the reception of Holy Communion may begin to think of the call to be holy as an impossible burden imposed upon us by God - a kind of sad reversion to Judaism - despairing that while the Law remains there is no Savior.

We see this in the eyes of the Catholics who do not come to the Church on Sundays - the exhaustion of trying to live a holy and fulfilling life without the grace of Holy Communion. But of course it’s impossible to live Christianity without Christ.

But when God said to the people of Israel, "I will put my Spirit within you, that you might live by my statutes," He was promising that the Law would not always feel like a burden imposed from the outside. He would come to us in such as way as to change our hearts and minds from within, enabling us to fulfill the Law by living according to our new and transformed nature.

This is why Christ says to us, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life within you.” He’s inviting us to see that He is the fulfillment of that promise made to the Israelites. By receiving Christ in the Eucharist, we allow God's Spirit into us. Once in, He changes our hearts and minds into His own. Then, all we have to do is be ourselves, just as Christ needs only to be Himself.

This is why He can say to us, "My yoke is easy; my burden light." Because the man who is in love fulfills the law, not because he feels some outside pressure, but precisely because he is in love. It is love that compels him from within to live well, to live according to his human nature, which is good.

If, therefore, we are faithful to Holy Communion with Christ, we’ll have only to live naturally, according to this new way of seeing that comes from His presence at work in our hearts and minds, and we will find ourselves fulfilling the Law naturally. +