← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 191: The Eucharist Changes Us (2025)
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As the popular adage goes, “you are what you eat.” The Catechism tells us that, as food nourishes the body, so Jesus present in Holy Communion nourishes the soul. It especially highlights the Eucharist’s role in separating us from sin. Fr. Mike reminds us we must be open to change if Jesus is going to change us in the reception of Holy Communion. If—to use Fr. Mike’s analogy—Holy Communion is a “shower” of graces, we must ensure that we’re not wearing a raincoat. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1391-1395.
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Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 191. We are reading paragraphs 1391 to to 1395, just a few short paragraphs. Today, as always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year Reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and you can also click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Today is day 191. We're reading paragraphs, as I said already, 1391 to 1395. We can sometimes who forget. What is it that happens to us when we receive Holy Communion? Like, what are the fruits of Holy Communion? That's what we're talking about today, the fruits of Holy Communion. Because what happens to us? What happens in us? Kind of like we talked about the five effects of confirmation that sometimes it's really helpful to spell out. Okay, Roots us more deeply as sons and daughters of God the Father. Roots us more deeply, unites us more closely to Christ. We become even more filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Well, it's also worth knowing and noting what happens when we receive Holy Communion. Well, we're going to hear today that it not only strengthens and augments our union with Christ, it also separates us from sin. It wipes away venial sins and also preserves us from future mortal sins. We're talking about that. And tomorrow we'll talk about even more things that it does. But today, as we launch into this day of just these few short paragraphs, we just get to open your heart and open your mind to this is what can happen every time I approach our Lord in Holy Communion. So in order to prepare ourselves to hear about this, let us pray. That's easy. Wow, that sounded really profound. In order to prepare ourselves to hear about this, let's pray. Let's do that. Anyways, here we go. Oh man. Father in Heaven we praise you and we glorify you. We thank you so much for this day. Thank you for bringing us to this day. Lord, you give us life, you give us your love, and you pour it out into our hearts in abundance, without measurement. Lord God, you did not ration your Holy Spirit, but you pour out your Spirit upon us and into our hearts, into our lives. To whatever degree we are willing and open to receive you. Please help us become more willing to receive your love. Help us to become even more open to receive your grace now and always. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 191. We are reading paragraphs 1391 to 1395. The fruits of Holy Communion. Holy Communion augments our union with Christ. The principal fruit of receiving the Eucharist in Holy Communion is an intimate union with Christ Jesus. Indeed, the Lord said, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. Life in Christ has its foundation in the Eucharistic banquet. Jesus said, as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. On the feasts of the Lord, when the faithful receive the body of the Son, they proclaim to one another the good news that the first fruits of life have been given. As when the angel said to Mary Magdalene, christ is risen. Now too are life and resurrection conferred on whoever receives Christ. What material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit preserves, increases and renews the life of grace received at baptism. This growth in Christian life needs the nourishment of Eucharistic communion. The bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum. Holy Communion separates us from sin. The Body of Christ we receive in Holy Communion is given up for us, and the blood we drink shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins. For this reason, the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins. As Saint Ambrose for as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord. If we proclaim the Lord's death, we proclaim the forgiveness of sins. If as often as his blood is poured out, it is poured for the forgiveness of sins, I should always receive it so that it may always forgive my sins. Because I always sin, I should always have a remedy. As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life, and this living charity wipes away venial sins. By giving Himself to us, Christ revives our love and enables us to break our disordered attachments to creatures and root ourselves in Him. As St. Fulgentius of Ruspi stated, since Christ died for us out of love, when we celebrate the memorial of his death at the moment of sacrifice, we ask that love may be granted to us by the coming of the Holy Spirit. We humbly pray that in the strength of this love by which Christ willed to die for us, we, by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, may be able to consider the world as crucified for us and to be ourselves as crucified to the world. Having received the gift of love, let us die to sin and live for God by the same charity that it enkindles in us. The Eucharist preserves us from future mortal sins. The more we share the life of Christ and progress in his friendship, the more difficult it is to break away from him by mortal sin. The Eucharist is not ordered to the forgiveness of mortal sins that is proper to the Sacrament of reconciliation. The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church. All right, there we are, paragraphs 1391 to 1395. As I said, kind of a short little shot in the arm when it comes to this topic of what happens, what are the fruits of Holy Communion? Now these are the things again we mentioned this Holy Communion augments our union with Christ, deepens that strengthens it. Holy Communion produces spiritual life and gives us an increase in spiritual life. Holy Communion separates us from sin, wipes away venial sins, and also preserves us from future mortal sins. We One of the things we need to approach our Lord in the Eucharist with, though, is this openness to change. This is one of the things that just so many of us, we can miss this. We can approach the sacraments of our Lord. And these are and again, here's the Eucharist, Holy Communion, which is the sacrament of our Lord, right? The Sacrament of sacraments, the source and summit of all graces for the Christian life. And yet, you know, we can approach the table of our Lord. We can approach that sacrificial banquet. We can receive Jesus and remain unchanged. Remember, we talked about this when it came to the sacraments of baptism and Confirmation. There's that sense of, you know, getting into a shower with a raincoat on, that sense of like, okay, so I'm there, the graces are here, and yet I'm not open to them actually changing me. So here, as we begin to talk about the fruits of Holy Communion, I think it's once again really helpful to be reminded of, okay, so what is my disposition? Is my disposition, you know, Your disposition doesn't have to be perfect. None of us approach the Lord in perfection, obviously, but our disposition needs to at the very least be open to change, open to conforming our lives to Jesus. In fact, we're reminded a bunch of times in today's paragraphs that we've been crucified to the world and the world has been crucified to us, which means that the life we live is not our lives, but it's life for Christ. And it's even that desire, even the desire to have a life lived for Jesus that opens us to experiencing the fruits, the actual graces of Holy Communion. Okay, so just keep that in mind. And now again, not perfection, keep. Remember that. Not perfection, but just an openness. Lord, do in me what you will. Turn me away from sin, turn me more and more towards you. Help me become more and more like you. And then with that intention, with that openness, here's the fruits. First one Holy Communion augments our union with Jesus. Obviously, it's just kind of as the catechism says, this is the principal fruit of receiving Holy Communion is having intimacy with Jesus Christ. And I remember years ago, I'd given a talk about this a couple times. There's a young man, he was a FOCUS missionary. FOCUS stands for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. His name was Eric. And Eric and I and a bunch of other people were on a pilgrimage to Israel and, and at one point we would all sit at our tables in our group of people who would just be traveling through the Holy Land. It was incredible, it was great. But at one point, here's this young man, Eric, who's off at another table talking with. I always describe eric as this 6 foot 2 Nebraska Catholic young man. And basically he looks like Thor, right? The idea. And he was talking at this table, many meals in a row with the five foot two, blonde hair, blue eyed, female Baptist. That's the important part of the story. Female Baptist, equivalent of Eric Clark. And at one point his buddies were giving him a hard time, like, what are you doing over there? Like, you know, we know what you're doing. You're evangel Dating, right? You're flirting to convert. And he's like, no, no, no. He's such a genuine guy, such a genuine man that he was like, no. We were talking about Jesus and our relationship with Christ, and. And she asked me if I had a relationship with the Lord. And I said, of course I do. You know, he. Here's Eric, who just. Is a. As a missionary, just, you know, spent time with the Lord, loves the Lord. And he said, of course I have a relationship with Jesus. He says, I want more. I want intimacy with Christ. And she was kind of like, wait, more? Because that's what we're made for, right? Yes, we have a relationship with Jesus, that we're brought into this relationship through baptism and faith. And yet every one of us is made to have intimacy with Christ. And in fact, every one of us is made for intimacy in this sense that you and I have bodies, right? Every human being has a body. Therefore, you and I have only ever known or only ever experienced love in and through our bodies. Like, every time you've been loved, it's been loved through your body. Whether that's someone feeding you, someone caring for you, someone being with you when you're sick, someone holding your hand. The only way you've ever expressed love is in and through your body, whether that's again, feeding someone or clothing them or saying, I love you, hearing the words I love you, you and I have only ever experienced or expressed, received love in and through our bodies. And here's God, right? Who, God, who is love? And. And yet God has no body. So how does God communicate His love to us? Well, we know this in the fullness of time, 2000 years ago, God did this miracle of the incarnation where he took on a body so that you and I, in a whole entirely new way, could know the love of God, which is great for those friends of his for 33 years while on this earth. But we know that after his death and resurrection, he ascended to heaven and took that body with him. How do you and I, how do we now, 2000 years later, know the love of God? Well, this is the story that you've heard a thousand times by now, at least. The night before he died, Jesus, knowing that all was going to be fulfilled, he took bread and said, take this, all of you, and eat of it. This is my body, took a chalice filled with wine. This is my blood. And so here's God took on a body, but also he's given that body to us as food. Why? Well, one of the reasons the principal Fruit of this is so you and I can have intimate union with Jesus Christ, that you and I can have intimacy with Christ. Just like Eric had said to that young woman all those years ago, I want more than just a relationship with Jesus. I want intimacy with Christ. And this is what we get now to our life and resurrection conferred on whoever receives Christ. And I love this paragraph 1392 says what material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spirit spiritual life. That I've heard many people say all the way back, you know, a couple first centuries of the Church, that normally when we eat food, it becomes us, right? When we eat food, it becomes us, that it gives us strength, it builds muscles, etc. But in this unique way, when we receive the Eucharist, we become Him. This remarkable, remarkable thing that we eat other food, it becomes us. But when we receive the Eucharist, we become like Him. And so going on, Holy Communion does a couple more things. We'll talk about three more things before we take a break today. Holy Communion separates us from sin. I love this quote that we have from St. Ambrose. He says that if as often as Christ's blood is poured out, it's poured out for the forgiveness of sins, I should always receive it so that it may always forgive my sins. Because I always sin, I should always have a remedy which is so incredible. I love this. For this reason, the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins. And this is so critical for all of us because we need to understand that my venial sins should not prevent me from approaching our Lord in the Eucharist. In fact, as we noted in paragraph 1394, receiving the Eucharist not only strengthens our love, which tends to be weakened in daily life, but this increase in love, this strengthening in love, this receiving of Holy Communion wipes away venial sins. And this is so important for us that if you have a venial sin, you can receive Holy Communion and just trust in that. This reception of Holy Communion, this reception of our Lord Jesus Christ is medicine for sinners. This is one of the things that, you know, Pope Francis has said, and others have said this too, that Holy Communion is not a reward for the perfect, but is medicine for sinners. And this is completely true. This is medicine for the sick. Holy Communion is medicine for the sick. So when we have venial sins, it wipes away those venial sins. It also strengthens us to face future mortal sins. It strengthens. It gives us a power, the grace of Jesus Christ himself, living in us, dwelling in us, giving us that strength. I mean, think about this once again. Go back to your proteins, right? Or go back to your carbs. Is that okay? I have a race tomorrow. Let's carbolo load, right? Let's get the fuel for the race. I want to build some muscles, okay? Eat some protein, and that's going to build those muscles so you are strong enough to face whatever's coming against you. By analogy, the Eucharist strengthens us to preserve us from future mortal sins. And I love how the catechism highlights it doesn't say, this is like a magic thing. You ate this magic pill, and now all of a sudden you're strong, like Popeye eating spinach. But it's about the relationship with Jesus. The more and more we receive Holy Communion, the deeper and deeper that relationship is made possible. So it goes on to say, it says, the more we share the life of Christ and progress in his friendship, the more difficult it is to break away from him by mortal sin. And that, again, it's not magic, right? It's not Popeye's spinach, but it's the fact that the more and more I approach Jesus and have intimacy with him in Holy Communion, the stronger I am by virtue of the friendship that I have with Him. Again, it's not strength on my own. It's not like now I'm powerful because I've taken this medicine, or not more powerful because I've eaten this food. I'm now more powerful because of the friendship that I have with the Lord God himself. I'm now strengthened by the fact that I have this deeper and more powerful friendship with the Lord of the Universe. That is what's happening in here. Does that make sense? Hope that makes sense. And the last thing here, you know, we mentioned yesterday or the day before, I think it was yesterday. We talked about how to prepare oneself for Holy Communion and the fact that if we are aware of mortal sin, we cannot approach Holy Communion without eating and drinking condemnation upon ourselves. That's so serious. And so keep this in mind that while we're saying that receiving Holy Communion wipes away venial sins, the very last line that we've read Today in paragraph 1395 highlights this. The Eucharist is not ordered to the forgiveness of mortal sins, that forgiveness is proper to the Sacrament of reconciliation. The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church. And so we can't misunderstand, you know, the Pope Francis or anyone's quote of saying that the Eucharist is not a reward for the perfect, but is medicine for sinners. Yes, of course it is. It's medicine for sinners. You give medicine to people who are sick, but you don't give medicine to people who are dead. And that's the difference. If I'm venial sin, I'm sick. If I have mortal sin, I'm dead. You give medicine to those who are sick. You don't give medicine to those who are dead. When I'm suffering from venial sin, then I'm spiritually wounded. When I'm suffering from mortal sin, I'm spiritually dead, in a manner of speaking, if that makes sense. Keep that in mind. Always, when we talk about the great love of God who wants to come to us. He wants to meet us in our need, wants to meet us in our brokenness. Absolutely. But also there's a proper way. He wants to meet us. He first meets us in our brokenness. He first meets us when we're in mortal sin, when we have that spiritual death. He first meets us in the great sacrament of healing before he can meet us in the great sacrament of Holy Communion. So he first meets us in the great sacrament of reconciliation before he can meet us in the greatest sacrament of the Eucharist. Hope that makes sense. Man, what a day. Awesome. You know, tomorrow we're talking about even more ways in which there are fruits in our lives when we receive Holy Communion. And so I can't wait tomorrow. Until then, I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.