XXXV

Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ is a powerful time for us. We sing a communion song, raising our voices in joy and thanksgiving for this gift that we are receiving in the Lord. We also take time for silence, to listen to Jesus and what he wants for us. We need both the singing and the silence to fully express our love for this gift we have just received from the Father – his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, now present within us!

AFTER COMMUNION:

After communion, the priest, deacon or acolyte will purify the ciboria and cups ensuring that every particle and drop of the Body and Blood of Christ is reverently consumed before the vessels are washed. After the purification has taken place, everyone stands while the priest prays the Prayer after Communion. This prayer is not a concluding prayer for the Mass! Instead, it is a prayer on our behalf that the communion we have received bring us spiritual strength and growth in holiness. At the end of the prayer, we all respond, “Amen.”

THE CONCLUDING RITES:

The concluding rite of the Mass is very short but is nonetheless important! The priest gives us God’s blessing before we are dismissed to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” Both the blessing and dismissal are important! We are given the graces of God’s blessing that we will need as we live out our lives during the week. The dismissal reminds us that the Mass may be concluded, but our call to live out our Catholic identity goes with us to work, school, our family and friends! While we have been dismissed, it is a mark of respect to allow the priest and assisting ministers to leave first.

Someone said that Christians enter the church to love God and come out to love their neighbors.

As the deacon (or priest in his absence) announces the dismissal, the faithful are reminded that what we do in the Sacred Liturgy does not end when we leave the church. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us – the liturgy is the source and summit of the Christian life. As the source, we find our nourishment in the Most Holy Eucharist, so that we can be empowered to enter into the world and proclaim Christ crucified, died and risen! 

In each of the four options for the dismissal the word “go” begins each. It is no coincidence that the Lord Jesus prior to concluding His time on earth and ascending into Heaven also used the word, “Go!” He said to His disciples in Matthew 28:19: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” 

Having just marked ourselves with the Sign of the Cross in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, we are reminded that we are to go into the world proclaiming the Gospel in both word and deed, so that all the nations will come to know the One who has loved us beyond all our imagining — to make disciples of those around us. While each option of the dismissal is slightly different, at the heart of each is this message — this mission of the Church and of all her members. 

XXXIV

Who can doubt the Real Presence? For those who still have doubt about the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, there is a story or incident that happened a few years ago. Even sniffer dogs can recognize Jesus’ living presence in the Eucharist.

On the evening of the last day of his October 1995 visit to the United States, Pope John Paul II was scheduled to greet the seminarians at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore. It had been a very full day, beginning with Mass at the Oriole Park in Camden Yards, followed by a parade through the downtown streets, a visit to the Basilica of The Assumption, the first cathedral in the country, lunch at a local soup kitchen, run by the Catholic Charities, a prayer service at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in the north Baltimore area, and finally a quick stop at St. Mary's Seminary.

The schedule was tight so the plan was to simply greet the seminarians while they stood outside on the steps. But Pope John Paul II made his way through their ranks and into the building. His plan was first to make a
visit to the Blessed Sacrament. When his wishes were made known, security personnel quickly flew into action ahead of the Pope. Their activities included a sweep of the building, paying closest attention to the chapel
where Pope John Paul II would be praying. For this purpose, highly trained dogs were used to detect any persons who might be present.

The dogs are trained to locate living people in collapsed buildings after earthquakes and other disasters. These intelligent and eager canines went through their rounds in the halls, offices and classrooms quickly, and
were then sent into the chapel. They went up and down the aisles and past the pews, and finally into the side chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. Upon reaching the tabernacle, the dogs sniffed and whined and
pointed, refusing to leave; they were convinced that they discovered SOMEONE there and firmly remained, their attention riveted to the tabernacle, until called out by the handlers. The dogs were right; they found a REAL LIVING PERSON in the tabernacle! (Snopes.com)

In the reception of the communion, we receive the living Christ. St.Augustine says in the reception of the communion, it is Christ who is receiving us and not us receiving him. If you look into the nature, you notice that the higher principle consumes or absorbs the lower principle. The grass absorbs minerals. Cow eats grass and grass doesn’t eat a cow. Tiger eats cows and cows don’t eat tigers. So in receiving communion Christ, God, eats us and we are eaten by him out of love. Just like a mother out of love feels like nibbling her baby, so Jesus out of love for us eats us. But if he eats us we are not going to be alive, therefore he allows us to eat him externally, and allows us to grow in him. Each worthy reception of the communion makes us grow in him and each unworthy reception will make us sick more and more just like junk food or poison eaten little by little can kill us. Therefore communion can be an elixir or venom for us depending on our attitude and disposition. Last supper proved fatal for Judas.

XXXIII

Black Mass

One of the things that strengthen my faith in the real presence in the Holy Eucharist is derived from the affirmation of Satanists in the real presence of Jesus in the sacred species.  There have been a number of stories in the news lately of small Satanic groups publicly performing so-called “Black Masses.” These rituals are based on the Catholic mass but are inverted toward Satan and often involve the desecration of a Eucharistic host.

There are two types of Satanists: “LaVey Satanists,” and “theological Satanists.” LaVey Satanists are atheists who don’t believe in Satan, and use “Satanism” as a tool to harass and provoke Christians (unlike“theological Satanists,” who believe in Satan and worship him). And it is worth pointing out that when Satanists (of both kind) want to mock a religious ritual, you can bet that it’s going to be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that they target. How often do you hear about Muslim or Hindu or Jewish (or even Protestant) services being subjected to such intense Satanic mockery? None, Never. Nor is this Satanic targeting of the Mass anything new. As far back as the fourth century, St. Epiphanius of Salamis described a sect of Gnosticism performing a perverted mockery of Mass. The Mass, which is the central form of worship of Catholicism being the target of Satanic ire, is a good reason to believe that Catholicism was the true religion.

Satanism was structured specifically as the opposite of the Catholic Church. It possessed its own sacraments, all of which were evil opposites of the Catholic sacraments, and it performs dark rites with the Black Mass being its primary, which was a backwards parody of the Catholic Mass.

The host that the dark priest blesses is black and has three points; he consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into which the body of an unbaptized infant has been flung.

The Black Mass’ main objective is the profanation of a consecrated host that has been stolen from a Catholic Mass. Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity under the appearance of bread is profaned by means of some ritual related to sexual practices. There are unbelievable horrors that go on in a black mass and I won’t mention them to protect the innocent minds.

Most Satanists and Bonafide (real) Witches can discern a Consecrated Host among thousands of unconsecrated hosts. It needs to be understood that people who can do this has made a direct pact with devils enabling them to inhabit one and use their powers which are much superior to the abilities of ordinary humans. Black mass is performed not only to dishonor God, but to get favors through Satan. 

XXXII

There are numerous eucharistic miracles verified and attested by the Vatican. 

One at Santarem Portugal 50 miles from Fatima is one that I have seen during my last visit to Fatima.

A woman living in Santarém, Portugal in the 13th century was distressed over the unfaithfulness of her husband,  and decided to consult a sorceress for help. The sorceress told her the price of her services was a consecrated host.

She went to Mass at the Church of St. Stephen and received the Eucharist on her tongue, removed the Eucharist from her mouth, wrapped it in her veil, and headed to the door of the church. But before she got out, the host began to bleed.

When she got home, she put the bloodied host in a trunk. That night, a miraculous light emanated from the trunk. She repented of what she had done and the next morning confessed to her priest. Her priest came and retrieved the host and took it back to the church.

The bloody Host was taken in procession to the Church of St. Stephen, where it was encased in wax (to contain the blood and the Host) and secured in the tabernacle. Sometime later when the tabernacle was opened, the wax that had encased the Host was found broken into pieces, and the Host was found miraculously enclosed in a crystal pyx, along with the precious Blood. After the investigation and approval by the Church authorities, the Church of St. Stephen was renamed "The Church of the Holy Miracle."

Argentina-miracle-of-the Host

Back in 1996, when Pope Francis was formerly Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, a miracle of the Host occurred in Buenos Aires. On August 18, 1996, three days after the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, a woman came up to Fr. Alejandro Pezet after Holy Mass in a local church, and pointed to a discarded Host on a candleholder at the back of the church. Unable to consume the Host, Fr. Pezet put it in a container with water and placed it inside the tabernacle.

On August 26, a week later, as he opened the tabernacle, he saw that the Host had turned blood red. He informed Bergoglio, who immediately had it photographed. On September 6, the photographs revealed that the Host “had become a fragment of bloodied flesh and had grown significantly in size”. For years, the Host was kept secretly in the tabernacle. On October 5, 1999, Bergoglio, now an Archbishop, seeing that the Host did not decompose, sent it for scientific analysis in New York City through his representative Dr. Castanon.

Dr. Castanon purposely did not give any background about the Host to Dr. Frederic Zugiba, a well-known cardiologist and forensic pathologist, who did the examination. His findings revealed that it was “real flesh and blood and containing human DNA. Zugiba testified that the material was a fragment of the heart muscle responsible for contraction to supply blood to all parts of the body.

Dr. Zugiba reported that the examined material was inflamed flesh containing a lot of white blood cells, indicating that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken. Dr. Zugiba added that white blood cells would die in a matter of minutes if the heart was no longer alive and functioning. The white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, indicating that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had a trauma of being beaten on the chest. This reminds us of the pain and trauma of the Crucifixion of our Lord.

Finally informed that it was a Host, Dr. Zugiba was shocked and said, “How and why a consecrated Host would change its character and become living human flesh and blood will remain an inexplicable mystery to science.”

Every day, on the altars of Catholic churches around the world, the greatest miracle possible takes place: the transformation of bread and wine into the true Body and Blood of Christ.

Nonetheless, when we receive Communion, we can only touch its true nature with our faith, because our senses only perceive bread and wine, physically unaltered by the consecration.

XXXI

MAKING A SPIRITUAL COMMUNION

Receiving communion is the climax of the Eucharistic celebration. Jesus said:  Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you (Jn.6:53).

If we cannot receive Holy Communion physically, either because we cannot make it to Mass or because we need to go to Confession first, we can pray an Act of Spiritual Communion, in which we express our desire to be united with Christ and ask Him to come into our soul. A spiritual communion is not sacramental but prayed devoutly, it can be a source of grace that can strengthen us until we can receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion once again.

As we saw earlier, the Eucharistic species is real presence of Jesus and not symbolic presence. He told his disciples, if you do not believe that it is true, you also can leave me like others did. He did not welcome any compromise on that belief. There had been several miracles over the centuries by which Jesus wanted to convince us that it is his real presence, his real flesh.

 A famous Eucharistic miracle took place in Lanciano, Italy, in the year 700. A monk who feared he was losing his vocation was celebrating Mass, and during the consecration the host turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood. Despite the fact that the miracle took place almost 1300 years ago, you may still see the flesh in a monstrance which is exposed every day and the blood in a glass chalice. The blood has congealed and is now in five clots in the glass chalice. In 1971 and 1981 a hospital laboratory tested the flesh and blood and discovered that the flesh is myocardium, which is heart muscular tissue, so we could say it is the heart of Jesus, the Sacred Heart, and the blood is of the blood group AB. In 1978 NASA scientists tested the blood on the Turin Shroud and interestingly also discovered that it is of the blood group AB. (The Sudarium, Face Cloth of Christ, in John 20:6 is also of the blood group AB.) Despite the fact that human flesh and blood should not have remained preserved for 1300 years, the hospital lab tests found no trace of any preservatives. One final interesting point about the five blood clots in the chalice is that when you weigh one of them, it is the same weight as all five together, two of them together weigh the same as all five. In fact no matter what way you combine the blood clots individually or in a group to weigh them, they always weigh the same.  (This shows that the full Jesus is present in a particle of the Eucharist no matter how small.)

There are at least over 100 Eucharistic miracles approved by the Vatican.  We will see a couple more of them next weekend.

XXX

Many Non-Catholics do not understand why the Catholics don’t share communion with other Christians while they are ready to share their Lord’s supper with the Catholics. They say the Catholics are very rigid and very unchristian in not sharing their Eucharist with them.

First of all, a priest does not have that power to do it as the Canon 844 says a Catholic Priest can licitly administer sacraments only to Catholics. Therefore he would be violating the law when he does give communion to Non-Catholics. The Eucharist belongs to the Church, not to the Priest. Therefore he cannot do as he wishes even though he may like to. If he thinks of being charitable with what does not belong to him he will be unfaithful to the Church.

Eucharist is the sharing of Christ and the Church. The Eucharist can be received only in the Church and not outside the Church. Therefore those who are not members of the Catholic church cannot share the Eucharist.

The Church is the bride of Christ as Apostle Paul clearly says. Receiving the Eucharist is having a spiritual communion. It is something like having sex between a husband and a wife. Sexual union is permitted only between a husband and a wife. It is not permitted between friends, even if they are the best of friends. Christians of other denominations are like friends or neighbors or relatives. Only those who are in the Church become the bride of Christ. Those outside, even though they may be having a very good relation with Jesus, are not permitted to have that spiritual sexual union with Christ. Not only Catholic mystics but even Hindu mystics say that human soul is feminine and the soul accepts God in Christ in the communion like a bride accept groom in sexual union. Bride takes the role of receiving which a member in the Church takes.  All through the bible God compares himself as the Husband of Israel, the wife. There are numerous references for that in both the Testaments. John the Baptist mentions Jesus as the bridegroom and him as the friend of the bridegroom. The book of revelation ends with the marriage of the lamb and his bride the church in glory.

For most non-Catholic Christians this deep level relationship understanding is not there. They think it is just a piece of flesh of Jesus and it is the symbol of the body of Christ. Therefore in most denominations after the Lords supper they put all the remaining hosts back with the old stock. And they consider it as like unconsecrated. This is not the Catholic understanding. Once consecrated it remains consecrated till the quality of the bread remains, a bread.

Therefore even if a non Catholic is holier than a Catholic he is not permitted to receive the Holy Eucharist from a Catholic Mass, because he does not believe what the Catholic Church teaches.

There are some former Catholics who think they can receive communion whenever they show up at the Catholic Mass. For Instance when a Catholic who marries outside the Church because he or she does not want to go through the regulations of the Catholic church, he or she is not allowed to receive communion. I sometimes think of them as someone who refused to invite his mom for his wedding and then shamelessly show up next day at mom’s kitchen and eat the food what his mom prepared. He did not want his mom who gave him birth and brought him up to be part of his most important event in his life but he wants the food his mom prepared. Catholic Church has given this person birth in Christ by baptism and fed him with the Eucharist and strengthened him with other sacraments and when he got married he refused to have the Church a part of his life. Actually they are spiritually dead members of the Catholic Church. Such people can receive communion only after rectifying their marriage and making a confession and then can receive communion. But we sometimes see that at weddings and funerals just show up and receive communion. It is mostly due to lack of understanding of the real nature of the Eucharist. 

XXIX

Can a non-Catholic  receive Communion at a Catholic parish or a Catholic may take the "Lord's Supper" at a non-Catholic church?

Canon 844 of the Code of Canon Law makes it clear. That canon has five sections. The first says that "Catholic ministers may licitly administer the sacraments to Catholic members of the Christian faithful only and, likewise, the latter may licitly receive the sacraments only from Catholic ministers." But there are exceptions, and those are handled in the following three sections of the code.

Section 2 permits a Catholic to receive Communion in a non-Catholic church if that church has a valid Eucharist. Since no Protestant church, including the Anglican, has a valid Eucharist, Catholics who sit through the "Lord's Supper" at, say, a Baptist church may not partake of the bread and wine there.

The problem is that the bread and wine are just that bread and wine and not the body and blood of Christ. Protestant churches have no valid Eucharist because they have no valid priesthood, because the l6th-century reformers did away with the episcopacy.

By contrast the Eastern Orthodox churches have maintained a valid episcopacy and priesthood and thus have all seven sacraments. These are the non-Catholic churches at which a Catholic might receive Communion provided "it is physically or morally impossible" for the Catholic "to approach a Catholic minister." This could occur if the Catholic were living for a long time in an area, such as Siberia, where there are few or no Catholic parishes.

Section 2 is not applicable to Catholics in this country who simply want to "sample" another religion. The permission is given only when "necessity requires" and "provided that the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided. Almost no American Catholic will ever be in a position to take advantage of Section 2. After all, if a Catholic in the United States can make it to an Eastern Orthodox parish, he likely can make it to a Catholic parish.

Section 3 deals mainly with Eastern Orthodox who want to receive sacraments at a Catholic parish. It says that Catholic ministers may give penance, anointing of the sick, or the Eucharist "to members of the oriental churches which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church."

This holds also for members of other churches, which in the judgment of the Apostolic See are in the same condition as the oriental churches as far as these sacraments are concerned. 

Non-Catholics who qualify under Section 3 must "ask on their own for the sacraments" this means there can be no general invitation to them and they must be "properly disposed," which means in the state of grace.

The possibility of a Catholic receiving from the minister of another church, when the first three conditions are fulfilled, is limited to the Orthodox Churches, other Oriental Churches, Old Catholics, Polish National and others whose sacraments are recognized by the Holy See.

Section 4 applies mainly to Protestants. (Anglican, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist etc.), none of whom have valid sacred orders, and therefore, a valid Eucharist. This Section says that "if the danger of death is present or other grave necessity," and if the diocesan bishop approves, Catholic ministers may give the three sacraments to Christians who are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox. Such people must not be able to approach a minister of their own community, must ask for the sacraments on their own (again, there is to be no general invitation to non-Catholics to "come up and receive Communion"), must be in the state of grace, and must "manifest Catholic faith in these sacraments."

This means their understanding of the Real Presence, for example, must be the Catholic understanding. Several Protestant churches describe what they have as the Real Presence though in fact none of them have it and they do not mean by the term the same thing we mean. This causes no end of confusions.

Some Protestants who profess belief in the Real Presence have in mind a "really meaningful" symbolism. Others say Jesus is "really," though only "spiritually," present at their churches' celebration of the "Lord's Supper." Not a single Protestant church teaches the Catholic doctrine, though a few individual Protestants have come to accept the Catholic understanding on their own. It is for them that this Section makes provision. Section 5 says that no diocesan bishop or conference of bishops may institute general norms regarding the four preceding sections of Canon 844 "except after consultation with at least the local competent authority of the interested non-Catholic church or community."

We don't want to step on anyone's toes, and we don't want anyone to step on ours.