Good food, bad health

Once, I was invited to lunch by a family friend. He suggested that we try out a restaurant that served very healthy food. We found the place and started checking out what to order.

“This one looks so delicious, but I don’t think I can take it,” he said rather dismayed.
“Why so?” I asked.

“My doctor has advised me to keep away from these types of ingredients. And this particularly tempting dish seems to have a lot of it.”

“Then why don’t you try out this other one…,” I pointed to another dish.

“Nope, I cant take that either.”

“…and this one…?”

“Nah…!”

“And how about…?”

“[SIGH!] I thought this was a healthy restaurant,” he quipped.

The waiter who was patiently awaiting our orders couldn’t help but give a large grin at my friend’s comment.

“I believe that the food is good, but I think you’re that one who isn’t so healthy.”
“I think, I’ll just have a salad then,” my friend conceded defeat.

* * *
Our Lord Jesus Christ was not satisfied with saving us by simply suffering and dying upon the Cross. He also promised that ‘He will be with us until the end of time’, so that we -as pilgrims or wayfarers journeying towards our Heavenly destiny will never be left on our own.

Jesus marvelously carries this out by instituting the Sacrament of the Eucharist before dying in Calvary. The bread becoming His body and the wine becoming His blood are the Christian’s spiritual food to nourish and strengthen him on his way to Heaven. These spiritual ingredients are not simply some supplementary power-ups, but are the very source of grace, Grace itself, the

Author of grace Himself, who transforms the person into Himself.
The grandeur of the Eucharist is that it simultaneously and mysteriously already contains both the means for and the end of the Christians awaiting perfection. While still alive on earth, the faithful son of God receives the food that makes him grow in holiness, but already mysteriously gives him the end to which he aspires to be united with one day in Heaven.

Thus, the Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes why anyone desiring to receive this spiritual treasure must strive to prepare himself properly to receive Jesus in the Mass.

The Catechism teaches that this preparedness to receive our Lord in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist means that one may only receive communion if he is not conscious of having committed any serious or mortal offenses against God and neighbor.

Awareness of any mortal sin requires that a person must first receive sacramental absolution before receiving communion.

Very often, people would come to me saying that “they had no choice but to receive” or “they couldn’t resist not taking holy communion even if they were not spiritually conditioned to do so” or “they had to receive because the Mass would seem incomplete if they hadn’t.” I believe that my recent gastronomic experience would help individuals who feel some ‘entitlement’ to receive our Lord to understand why they may not go to communion.

Like my friend in the restaurant, the problem of enjoying the good food in the restaurant wasn’t because there was any problem with the food. In reality, it is the other way around: my friend was ‘not healthy enough’ to eat certain foods because taking them would harm his health. He was physiologically lacking what a normal person has in order to adequately ingest and enjoy a certain dish.

In the same way, we can understand that anyone wishing to receive communion in an undignified state only causes himself harm and puts to waste such an exquisite divine nourishment. Obviously this is not due to any fault of our Lord, but of the person whose sinful condition prevents him from truly absorbing all the spiritual graces our Lord extends with every communion.

Moreover, we understand why St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, admonishes them about the need to worthily receive our Lord. “Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” Thus, his words clearly demonstrate that when unworthily received, the person harms himself more not because our Lord’s Body and Blood are evil, but because these are spiritual goods.

* * *

Here are a few helpful points to better prepare oneself to receive our Lord in Holy Communion:

a) Save your faith not your face. By choosing not to receive communion, one may feel uncomfortable with ‘what other may say or think’, but it’s more important to know what ‘Jesus thinks and will say’ if we decide not to receive because of our love and respect for Him.

b) Swallow our pride, not our Lord. For the same reason, when we don’t receive because we are not prepared, then it would be more refined with our Lord if we ‘swallowed our pride’ and offered ‘not receiving Him’ as a form of prayer and penance lifted to God for the sins or omissions committed against Him and our neighbor.

c) Frequenting confession. Growing in the habit or devotion of frequently going to confession is not only instrumental against grave disorderly tendencies. It also predisposes us more to receive our Lord in Holy Communion as well for our personal pious practices.

d) The deeper conversion. To receive is always good. This is one reason the Church encourages us to receive communion –yearly as a precept– when we have the proper spiritual dispositions to do so. But one’s frustrated desire ‘to receive communion’ should not always be seen as something negative. It can help one to learn how to prepare himself more adequately in the future, consider that this ‘spiritual frustration’ can be converted to a form of a penitent prayer offered to God for one’s sins.