Preparing for Communion, it is necessary to realize Communion itself: as what I have already acquired and what, making me a partaker of the Body and Blood of Christ, judges my life, demanding that I be who I should become; and what I will acquire in life and holiness, approaching the light in which time itself and all the details (deeds, actions) of my life acquire importance and spiritual significance. It is necessary to introduce the awareness of the Sacrament into our daily life, bringing everything to the reception of the Holy Gifts. It is necessary, first of all, that each believer through preaching, teaching-announcement, discussion truly, anew discover for himself the Eucharist itself as the Sacrament of the Church, as the true source of all Christian life. The second stage of preparation involves self-examination, which the apostle Paul wrote about: “Let a person examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Cor. 11:28). The purpose of this preparation, which includes fasting, special prayers (The Order before Holy Communion), spiritual concentration, silence, etc., is not for a person to consider himself “worthy”, but on the contrary, to realize his unworthiness and come to true repentance. Repentance consists of the following: a person contemplates his sinfulness and weakness, realizes his separation from God, experiencing grief and suffering, desires forgiveness and reconciliation, makes a choice, rejecting evil for the sake of returning to God, and finally, desires Communion for the “healing of the soul and body”. But such repentance does not begin with immersion in oneself, but with the contemplation of the holiness of the gift of Christ, the heavenly reality to which we are called. Only because we see “the bridal chamber adorned”, we can realize that we are deprived of the garment needed to enter it. Only because Christ came to us, we can truly repent, that is, see ourselves as unworthy of His love and holiness, desire to return to Him. Without true repentance, this inner and decisive “change of mind”, Communion will be not “for healing” but “for judgment”. But repentance bears true fruit when the realization of our total unworthiness leads us to Christ as the only salvation, healing. Showing us our unworthiness, repentance fills us with the desire, the humility, the obedience that make us “worthy” in the eyes of God. All prayers before Communion contain one single plea: …I am unworthy that You, Master, Lord, should enter under the roof of my soul; but because You, as the Lover of Mankind, desire to live in me, I boldly approach. Command, I will open the door, which You alone have created, and You will enter lovingly, as You are by nature, enter and enlighten my darkened mind. I believe, You will do this…
And finally, we reach the third and highest level of preparation when we desire to partake simply because we love Christ and desire to unite (be one) with Him who “desired with desire” to be one with us. Above the need and desire for forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing is and should be only our love for Christ, whom we love, “because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And it is this love and nothing else that makes it possible for us to overcome the abyss that separates creation from the Creator, the sinful from the Holy, this world from the Kingdom of God. This love, which alone surpasses and therefore nullifies, as futile dead ends, all our human, “too human” deviations and considerations about “worthiness” and “unworthiness”, rejects our fears and prohibitions, and makes us obedient to Divine Love. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. He who fears has not been made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). It is this love, in which abiding, the saint prays: “…thus partaking of the Divine and Deifying graces, he is no longer alone, but with You, my Christ… So that I may not remain alone without You, Life-Giver, my Breath, my Life, my Joy, Salvation of the world”.
Here is the goal of all preparation, all repentance, all efforts and prayers – that we love Christ and, “daring without condemnation”, can participate in the Sacrament (partake of the Holy Spirit), in which the love of Christ is given to us.
The Church is left in the world to celebrate the Eucharist and save man, restoring his eucharistic nature. But the Eucharist is impossible without the Church, that is, without the community-parish, which knows its unique, irreducible purpose – to be love, truth, faith, and mission, all that is accomplished and revealed in the Eucharist, or even more briefly – the Body of Christ. The Eucharist “explains” the Church as a parish (love for Christ and love in Christ), as truth (who is Christ? – the only question of all theology) and as a mission (the conversion of all and everyone to Christ). The Church has no other purpose, no other goal, no separate “religious life” from the world. Otherwise, it itself becomes an “idol”. It is a home from which each of us goes “to work” and to which each returns with joy, to find at home the very life, the very happiness, the very joy, where each brings the fruits of their labor and where everything is transformed into a celebration, freedom, and fullness. But the very presence, the experience of this home – already out of time, unchangeable, already pierced by eternity, which only eternity reveals, – only this presence can give meaning and value to everything in life, relate everything to this experience and fill it with it…