According to Catholic teaching, Holy Communion can only be received by Catholics who are in a state of grace. “State of grace” essentially means a state of friendship with God, where the sanctifying grace of God dwells in one’s soul. The opposite of the “state of grace” is the “state of mortal sin”, which means that one has committed a sin grave enough to merit hell if unrepented. A person can know with relative certainty whether they have committed a mortal sin since their last confession, and thus whether they are in a state of grace.
The Blessed Sacrament in St Dominic’s Priory, London. Image by Lawrence Lew OP, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0, here.
However in recent decades, an attitude has spread in the Church, where essentially everyone who goes to Mass goes to receive Holy Communion.
The Bible speaks explicitly against such a practice. In St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, there is a very important passage, which sheds light on this question. This passage, namely chapters 10 and 11, is very interesting and shows that the Church didn’t come up with the rule that Catholics in mortal sin cannot receive the Eucharist on its own.
In this article, I am going to quote two commentaries on St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. The first is the fairly well-known Bible commentary of Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637), a Dutch Jesuit. The second commentary I am going to use are the sermons of St. John Chrysostom (“golden-mouthed”), who was the Bishop of Constantinople.
I don’t think I’m alone with the opinion that St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is especially beautiful. It is the book where the apostle describes the supernatural virtue of charity (love in other versions).
However, for this article, chapters 10 and 11 are important.
In Chapter 11, St. Paul writes:
“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” (11:23-29)
There is a very important point here. After having admonished the Christians of Corinth of their uncharitable acts towards the poor during common meals, St. Paul turns to the topic of the Eucharist.
This passage is very important, because it establishes that Jesus is really present under the appearances of bread and wine. St. Paul says that whoever “eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” If this is all just symbolic, how can one profane the body of the Lord by eating a piece of bread “in an unworthy manner”?
Being in mortal sin is what is meant by “an unworthy manner”. So it is not the Church which is uncharitable by reminding people that not everyone can receive Holy Communion, but this goes back to the apostles.
This letter by St. Paul contains also the important observation that the Eucharist is a sacrifice:
“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?” (10:16-19)
St. Paul is talking about the Eucharist as a sacrifice. He directly contrasts the body of Christ as a sacrifice to God and food which was offered to idols as a sacrifice to devils.
A Lapide comments:
“The cup of blessing which we bless. (1.) That is the wine in the chalice which is blessed by the priest, and hence the chalice itself, containing this consecrated wine, does it not communicate to us the blood of Christ? (2.) It may be called the cup of blessing, because it blesses us and loads us with grace, as Anselm and Chrysostom say. (3.) More accurately, it is called “the cup of blessing,” because Christ blessed it before consecration, i.e., called down the power of God to afterwards effect a change both in the bread and in the cup (S. Matt. 26:26).
1. We see from the accounts of the Last Supper in S. Matt 26, S. Luke 22, and here and in chap, 11, that Christ, before consecration of the Eucharist, gave thanks to God the Father, and, as He was wont, lifted up his eyes to heaven […]. Hence this sacrament is called the Eucharist, or Thanksgiving, because it is the greatest act of grace, and consequently is to be received with the greatest thanksgiving.
2. […] Christ blessed the bread and the cup, i.e., invoked the blessing and power of God on the bread and wine, that it might be present, both then and at all future consecrations, to change the bread into the body, and the wine of the chalice into the blood of Christ, when ever the words of consecration should be duly pronounced. […]
Is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? 1. The communion, or communication, of the body and blood of Christ not only signifies that we receive the same body and the same blood of Christ, but also, as is said in ver. 17, we become one body and one blood. Therefore, the sacrament is not a type of the blood, as Calvin thinks, but it is the very blood of Christ itself, and is given to us in the Eucharistic chalice. […]
2. If this cup is only a figure of the blood, as the Protestants think, then we have not more, but less, in the Eucharist than the Jews had in the manna and the water miraculously provided for their drink. The Apostle, too, should have said that we eat the spriritual body and drink the spiritual blood of Christ, that is that which represents them, just as he said that the Jews ate the spiritual meat—the manna, and drank the spiritual drink—the water from the rock. But as a fact he contrasts the blood and the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist, as the reality and the thing signified, with the manna and water, as the figure and spiritual type, signifying the flesh and blood of Christ. Moreover, he calls the manna spiritual meat, i.e., typical, and the water, spiritual drink; but he calls the body of Christ in the Eucharist the body, and the blood the blood. Who, then, can doubt that, as the manna was truly a type and shadow, so in the Eucharist there is really the blood, flesh, and body of Christ?”
St. John Chrysostom (“golden-mouthed”), the Bishop of Constantinople, preached a series of sermons on the First Letter to the Corinthians.
“But let a man prove himself: which also he says in the second Epistle: try your own selves, prove your own selves: 2 Corinthians 13:5 not as we do now, approaching because of the season rather than from any earnestness of mind. For we do not consider how we may approach prepared, with the ills that were within us purged out, and full of compunction, but how we may come at festivals and whenever all do so. But not thus did Paul bid us come: he knows only one season of access and communion, the purity of a man’s conscience. Since if even that kind of banquet which the senses take cognizance of cannot be partaken of by us when feverish and full of bad humors, without risk of perishing: much more is it unlawful for us to touch this Table with profane lusts, which are more grievous than fevers. Now when I say profane lusts, I mean both those of the body, and of money, and of anger, and of malice, and, in a word, all that are profane. And it becomes him that approaches, first to empty himself of all these things and so to touch that pure sacrifice. And neither if indolently disposed and reluctantly ought he to be compelled to approach by reason of the festival; nor, on the other hand, if penitent and prepared, should any one prevent him because it is not a festival. For a festival is a showing forth of good works, and a reverence of soul, and exactness of deportment. And if you have these things, you may at all times keep festival and at all times approach. Wherefore he says, But let each man prove himself, and then let him approach. And he bids not one examine another, but each himself, making the tribunal not a public one and the conviction without a witness.”
A Lapide brings up another possible interpretation of this passage.
“Ver. 29.—For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, &c. This is, say Photius and Anselm, he that treats it as ordinary and everyday kind of food. For, as S. Justin says (Apol. ad Ant. Pium): ‘We Christians take the Eucharist not as common food, but we believe that, as by the Word of God the Son of God was made man, so by the words of consecration are the body and blood of Christ made to be present in the Eucharist.’”
It is probable that the warning of St. Paul refers to both things: that not recognizing the Eucharist as the real body and blood of Christ as well as receiving it unworthily.
St. John Chrysostom comments on 1 Corinthians 11:29:
“2. ‘For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself.’
What do you say, tell me? Is this Table which is the cause of so many blessings and teeming with life, become judgment? Not from its own nature, says he, but from the will of him that approaches. For as His presence, which conveyed to us those great and unutterable blessings, condemned the more them that received it not: so also the Mysteries become provisions of greater punishment to such as partake unworthily.
But why does he eat judgment to himself? ‘Not discerning the Lord’s body’: i.e., not searching, not bearing in mind, as he ought, the greatness of the things set before him; not estimating the weight of the gift. For if you should come to know accurately Who it is that lies before you, and Who He is that gives Himself, and to whom, you will need no other argument, but this is enough for you to use all vigilance; unless you should be altogether fallen.”
In other words, receiving the Eucharist unworthily is only due to the disposition of the recipient.
The Eucharist is called the Bread of Life, since it is the real Body of Christ which has the power to strengthen us in the Christian life and lead us to heaven.
As Jesus says in John’s Gospel, Chapter 6: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (6:51)