HOLY COMMUNION
‘Of resurrection of the dead.’
It is as a present fact of practical everyday importance that the Christian teacher insists on the resurrection of the dead. For it means that the life he is developing, the mind he is informing, the body, soul, and spirit which he is moulding, form the nature in which the inner self makes its shadow and which is to last for eternity.
I. And here the teaching of our Blessed Lord comes in with startling emphasis.—In the words of His great discourse at Capernaum, in which He treats of life eternal and the food and support of life, he says, ‘Whoso eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.’ He Who taught and worked for eternity provided the food of immortality, the food of eternity. And so it is that if it be true whenever we examine the teaching of the early Church we find great prominence assigned to the doctrine of the Resurrection, it is also true that whenever we have a glimpse of early Christian worship it is concerned with this food of immortality in the worship of those who had learned the truth of these words: ‘Whoso eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.’
II. There can be little doubt that our Blessed Lord desired this Holy Communion, as I have said, to be our food in the wilderness, food for the way, and not a victor’s feast for those now putting off their armour. ‘I receive daily, because I sin daily’ is an attitude which, if the words are rightly understood, explain the position of this heavenly feast in the economy of Christ’s Church. There is nothing incompatible between youth and Holy Communion; to refuse to remember our Creator in the days of our youth is not a sign of virtue, but rather a sign of a spirit niggard towards God, which wishes to exhaust the supposed pleasures of this world while they last, and then providentially to turn to God in time to secure anything there may be to be had in the world beyond the grave. We do not value a present which has first been used, damaged, and defaced, and consigned to us only when the owner has no further use for it. There is no incompatibility between Holy Communion and innocent and proper amusements. It is a sorry thing to divide our life into sacred and secular, and to let religion lie outside our ordinary existence. The Christian has to learn that whether he eats or drinks, or whatsoever he does, he must do all to the glory of God. There is no incompatibility between Holy Communion and business. The Lord Who called St. Matthew at the receipt of custom still visits us at our business, and would wish us to be tried money-changers for Him.
III. Only if this attitude be the right attitude, the obligation it lays on us is a very severe one.—There is a great deal of irreverent tripping in and out before the presence of God, without love, without preparation, without repentance. Even in our ordinary physical life the doctor will warn us that things which would do us good in conditions of an ordinary healthy life may become deadly in case of unarrested disease. How little care or attention is paid to the very solemn warnings conveyed by the Church as to the need of preparation of the soul before we approach this feast.
Rev. Canon Newbolt.
Illustration
‘Surely to push away this most prominent feature in our Blessed Lord’s system and one engrained in the whole history of the Church as denominational and unnecessary is the height of insolent presumption. Surely to treat it with careless levity is dangerous and unworthy of a serious Christian. To come to this Sacrament on the spur of the moment without preparation or repentance, with no aim or object in view, is the very height of folly. Every communion we make ought to make itself felt in the formation of our spiritual life. Each Communion should be a spring upward on which some solid superstructure can be raised, so that we grow in grace, living the Eucharistic life as the Church meant us to live it.’