“Love transforms one into what one loves.” – Saint Catherine of Siena

Yesterday, June 8, 2023, I had a lot of thoughts pour over me about the Mystical Body of Christ. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the wages of sin is death, but that death, in God’s original plan, was an unnatural thing. Our bodies weren’t designed to be separated from our souls. But of course we know this happened because of the fall. And it got me thinking about just how amazing what God did is.

He took the wages of our sin into His very body, His flesh, and He conquered this sin by rising from the dead. He makes this conquering of death available to us. In baptism we die in our sin with Him but our resurrection is contingent on our consumption of His glorified flesh. It is contingent on the Eucharist because we all know that at this moment in time, we all still die. Currently our souls go on after we die, but our bodies our meant for Resurrection and a union once again with our souls at the end of time.

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
 and the life of the world to come.

And then I began to think about how this means we really do need to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus with proper care and discernment.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 1 Corinthians 11:27

You see the Eucharist raises us up into Jesus’ Divine nature, which is to say, into eternity with the Trinity. Mary resides there body and soul. Our resurrection at the end of time depends on our consumption of this Divine Nature with a grace filled pure heart. In the passage from 1st Corinthians, where Paul speaks that quote, notice what he says prior to speaking about receiving in an unworthy manner;

For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper.  For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. 1 Corinthians 11:18-21

Paul is chastising them for the hearts they bring to the Eucharistic table. What a sorrow that a large chunk of the Christian world walked away from the Eucharist. What a sorrow that people no longer pray for the conversion of the Jews and the Muslims so they too could partake in this Divine Nature. Paul, in this passage, was pointing out the impurity of hearts. Receiving the Eucharist with an impure heart brings judgment and not an elevation into the Divine Nature. When you receive unworthily you are, in fact, harming yourself, but not just yourself, you also, as a baptized person in mortal sin, harm Christ’s Mystical Body, which is to say, you harm others. Think of it like an actual body. If the liver gets cancer, the rest of the body will be harmed by that cancer. It takes treatment, that is to say, pure hearts, for the toxin to be purged. Receiving unworthily begets more suffering not only on yourself, but others as well. Those that receive with pure hearts are actually received into Christ’s Divine Nature. We must also remember that a pure heart isn’t in the business of judging others souls, but will’s for their good, even those you know receive in mortal sin. It is a spiritual work of mercy to admonish the sinner, but it can in no way be out of judgment, it must be from love and with gentleness. Often times, when people’s hearts are so hardened in their sin the only thing to be done is pray, fast and offer reparation with a pure heart. With a pure heart, Christ is incorporating you into Himself, those who reject this are essentially refusing to help the body.

So what happens when we see widespread reception of the Eucharist when people are in mortal sin? We see an overall harm of the church because Christ cannot take away sin that we don’t freely give to Him to do so. We see chaos, hatred, division and diabolic things;

So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.”  John 13:26-27

Jesus wants to give us His heart. And here is the thing, Jesus has an unguarded heart. What do I mean by that? Jesus is totally open and vulnerable to us. We see the Divine Child holding His heart in His hand. We see it in the Sacred Heart. Behold the Heart that has so loved men;

We have a hard time understanding this vulnerability because we have been hurt. When you share a vulnerability with another human person they often use it against you. They can “Lord it over you”. This causes us to have walls around our hearts. We hide, we don’t let people see who we really are. Christ has no such wall. His heart sits in His hand waiting for us to share fully our heart with him. He wants for us to hide nothing from Him, not our sins, not our hurts, not our grudges, nothing. When we hide from Him we harm our own body, our own soul, and the Mystical Body of Christ. He holds out His heart and we abuse it and stomp on it the way others have done to us. We eat our own supper and we go hungry.

But, Christ’s unguarded heart will actually protect your heart if you hand it to Him. His heart protected the heart of His mother and she, in turn, gave all of herself to Him. Their hearts beat in unison. He wants our hearts to beat in unison as well. If we could see into the spiritual realm and understood the harm we caused to ourselves and others by receiving unworthily we would never willingly do it like so many do today. If you could see the spiritual realm you would desire the most pure heart that makes sacrifice for others. We would actually help Christ repair, like white blood cells that fight an infection in the body. The more we can receive His Divine Nature, the more power and glory is seen in the world. It dwarfs the power of the enemy.

Imagine my surprise when I had the opportunity last night to attend a High Solemn Latin Mass at Church of the Assumption for the Feast of Corpus Christi, which on the traditional calendar was yesterday, though in the Novus Ordo is moved to this coming Sunday. The Epistle was the very reading from 1st Corinthians that had been pouring over me all day. The Sequence spoke of His feeding of us and His defense of us;

Bread whose shepherd-care doth tend us, Jesu Christ, Thy mercy send us, Do Thou feed us, Thou defend us, Lead us where true joys attend us, In the land where life is given.

I got teary eyed, once again, at the intimacy of the Lord who speaks to us. Church of the Assumption is still not repaired from the tornado that hit it in 2020, a few days before worldwide Corona Virus shutdown. Their Masses are held in a hall across the street. My understanding is that set backs have plagued the speed of the repair. It felt as though we were in exile (which we are on this earth) while God whispered to me, “rebuild my church”. And then I remember how Saint Martin de Porres asked Jesus what He could do for his country of Peru and Jesus told him simply that it takes only “one Saint.”

One Saint can help Jesus transform His Mystical Body so a country can be changed. One Apostle at the Foot of the Cross can help birth a church. One Mother who gives a Fiat can usher in a Savior. One pure soul receiving the Divine Glorified Nature of God can change things. That could be you.

If you would like donate to help Church of the Assumption, please do. Please also keep praying for them.