In Holy Communion With Christ

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’ the 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.

So are we exempt, then, from having to obey the Commandments, to follow the Laws of God and of nature, to do good? Of course not. But we fulfill them no longer because they are imposed on us from the outside, but by the life of Christ at work within us, the law of love.

It makes sense that someone who has fallen away from the reception of Holy Communion might think of the call to be holy as an impersonal burden imposed from the outside, like a kind of reversion to Judaism: the Law remains, but there is no Savior.

And one can see this in the eyes of the Christian who does not come to the Church on Sundays something that looks like exhaustion from trying to live without Holy Communion. It's understandable, since it’s impossible to live Christianity without Christ. If they would only allow Him in.

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, but that He would come to us in such as way as to change our hearts and minds from within, enabling them to fulfill the Law by living according to our new and transformed nature.

Of course, then, Christ says, "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 in.

This is why He can say to us, "My yoke is easy; my burden light." It’s not that we’re exempt from the Commandments. Nor does He relieve the obligation: "I have come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it." But rather He relieves the burden by living in us by His grace. That is, if we are faithful to Holy Communion with Christ, all we’ll have to do is live naturally, according to this new way of seeing that comes from His presence at work in our hearts and minds. +