Meditation for the Fifth Monday after Pentecost, July 14, 2025: On Frequent Communion
Excerpt from the book Meditations for all the Days of the Year
On Frequent Communion
Preparation
We will meditate today upon frequent communion, and we shall see:
That frequent and fervent communion is a source of great good.
That frequent and tepid communion is a great evil.
We will then make the resolutions:
To live in so holy a manner that we shall be able to communicate often.
To watch over ourselves after our communions, that we may profit by them.
We will retain as our spiritual nosegay the words of St. Augustine: “Live in such a way that you may be able to communicate everyday.”
Let us adore the Eternal Father, who, having adopted us as His children, gives us daily, on the altar, His dear Son to be the food of our souls. Let us adore the Son, who, in the ardor of His love, desires nothing but to unite Himself to us in communion. Let us adore the Holy Spirit, who, having no other desires than those of the Father and the Son, invites us often to partake of this divine nourishment. What goodness on the part of the three Divine Persons, and how we ought to thank them for these tender invitations!
First Point
Frequent and Fervent Communion is a Source of great Good.
Holy Communion is a divine repast which God makes us take, that supernatural life may be maintained within us. Now, as our bodies cannot subsist upon one sole repast, but require several reiterated repasts, in the same way the life of our souls can only be preserved by frequent communion, and it is to each one of us that is addressed the words of the angel to the Prophet Elias: “Arise, eat, for thou hast yet a great way to go.” (3 Kings 19:7) The bread which he must often eat in order to have strength to walk along the road which leads from earth to heaven is the Eucharistic bread, the bread which makes men strong.
Sorrowful experience shows us indeed that when we only rarely communicate we neglect prayer and pious exercises; we watch but very little over ourselves; we allow ourselves to be carried away by worldliness, the love of pleasure, of our own ease, and of earthly possessions, and by pride; whilst those who communicate often and fervently prepare themselves for it by means of a better life during the days which precede it, and they sanctify in a better manner the days which follow it. The grace of the sacrament sustains them, fortifies them, and enables them to make progress in virtue.
Therefore all pious souls ardently desire often to sit at the Holy Table; they rejoice at the approach of the days when they communicate, and are ravished when several follow immediately one after the other. Their heart is filled then with holy gladness, like that of Zacchaeus, when Our Lord said to him: “This day I must abide in thy house” (Luke 19:5). It is with them as it is with the heavenly spirits who feed continually upon God without ever being satisfied; the more they communicate, the more they still desire to communicate.
Have we, like these holy saints, a great desire often to communicate? Do we not feel a kind of indifference, and almost a dislike for the Bread of angels? Do we not absent ourselves from it, under the pretext that such frequent communions would take up too much time, would oblige us to lead a more holy life, inconvenience us, and constrain us to do violence to ourselves? Have we not even sometimes insinuated, when speaking to others, that to communicate so often is to be wanting in reverence to Jesus Christ?
Second Point
Frequent and Tepid Communion is a great Evil.
1st — To ally together frequent communion and tepidity, which derives no fruit from it, which leaves the soul always in the same state, without any reformation of its defects, without any progress in virtue, is to accumulate upon our heads the abuse of graces, the responsibility of which is sufficient to make us tremble.
2nd — When we have the misfortune of familiarizing ourselves with communion, so as to make of it a routine which says nothing to the heart, religion has no longer anything in it which can stir the soul; there is in it the coldness of marble, the insensibility of stone; and is not that a great misfortune?
3rd — To communicate often without mortifying ourselves, without renouncing the idle satisfaction which tepid souls take in creatures, is to paralyze the whole effect of communion, as would be the case with a man who, after having partaken of excellent food, were to eat other things that would be injurious. We cannot nourish ourselves carefully at one and the same time with Our Lord and the world.
4th — Lastly, not to take to heart the work of our sanctification is to render ourselves unworthy of often eating the bread of the children of God, according to the words of the Apostle: “If any man will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
What then is to be concluded from this? That we must absent ourselves from Holy Communion because we are tepid? No; but that we must issue from out of our tepidity and communicate often.
Meditations for All the Days of the Year, Vol. 3 by Reverend M. Hamon, S. S. (Benzinger Brothers, 1894, pages 344-347).