Meditation for Thursday of the Fourth Week after Pentecost, July 10, 2025: Preparation for Holy Communion
Excerpt from the book Meditations for all the Days of the Year
Preparation for Holy Communion
Preparation
We will consider today:
The importance of preparing ourselves well for Holy Communion.
The manner in which we ought to prepare ourselves.
We will then make the resolutions:
To prepare for our communions better in future than we have done until now.
To encourage ourselves everyday to lead a more holy life that we may communicate better.
We will retain as our spiritual nosegay the words of the prophet Amos: “Be prepared to meet thy God.” (Amos 4:12)
Let us adore Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament, warning us, by His prophets, to prepare ourselves for His coming. What goodness in this divine Jesus, to desire not only to come to us, but to warn us of the obligation we are under to prepare ourselves rightly to receive Him! May our heart be dilated with praise and thanksgiving for conduct so full of love!
First Point
The Importance of Preparing ourselves well for Communion.
We owe it, first to Our Lord. He who was about to receive into his house a great monarch would carefully prepare the apartments which the sovereign was intended to inhabit; he would cleanse them with solicitude, and would decorate them in the best possible manner; what preparation then ought we not to make in order to receive a god within us? (1 Chronicles 29:11)
We owe it, second, to ourselves; for communion without preparation would only lead to our ruin; and the measure of the graces which he who communicates receives is more or less great, in proportion to the dispositions he brings to it. We cannot read without trembling the story in the gospel of the wicked man who, on account of having presented himself at the wedding-feast without the nuptial robe, was cast, with his hands and feet bound, into the exterior darkness; it is the type of him who would dare to present himself at the Holy Table without being worthy of it.
O my God, keep this misfortune far away from me. Do not ever permit me to present myself at Holy Communion without having prepared myself with all the care so holy an action requires.
Second Point
The Manner of Preparing ourselves for Holy Communion.
First of all we must cleanse our souls of everything that might wound the holy eyes of God. Now, there are two things which wound them:
Sin : not only mortal sin, which God has in horror, but also venial sin, which is to the soul, in the presence of God, what spots and ulcers are on the face.
Attachment to creatures, because attachments divide the heart, and are on that account displeasing to the heavenly Spouse, who desires to have the whole heart.
In the second place, on the days which precede Holy Communion, we must be wholly occupied with this great thought: I am preparing myself to communicate, and consequently we must perform all our actions in a holy manner, in a spirit of preparation, and multiply holy aspirations toward Jesus Christ, often asking ourselves, Who is He who is about to come to me? It is the Lord. Who am I that am going to receive Him? O Lord, I am not worthy. What is He going to do with me? He desires to make of me a saint. What is it that procures for me so great a happiness? It is His pure love; it is, on His side, gratuitous goodness. I do not in the least deserve it.
Lastly, during the day we must often have a great desire to receive Our Lord, and if we do not feel it, we must at any rate have a lively wish to experience it, and offer in place of it the dispositions of the Blessed Virgin and of all the saints.
Thirdly, on the eve of Holy Communion we must be more recollected, more separated from the world, less occupied with worldly affairs; we should leave less liberty to the senses, above all to the eyes, like the saint of whom St. Jerome says: “His eyes desired in so lively a manner to behold Jesus Christ that they did not deign to look at anything else.” (St. Jerome, de Nepot.).
At night we must go to sleep with the thought of the communion to be made the next day, return to it during the night when we awake, and at our rising in the morning; until the moment when we approach the Holy Table we must persevere in prayer and in holy desires. Is it thus that we act?
Meditations for All the Days of the Year, Vol. 3 by Reverend M. Hamon, S. S. (Benzinger Brothers, 1894, pages 327-330).
And king David said to all the assembly: Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is as yet young and tender: and the work is great, for a house is prepared not for man, but for God.” — 1 Chronicles 29:1