How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist - part 27 Michael Dubruiel Michael Dubruiel

From How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist by Michael Dubruiel

From Chapter 4 - Confess - Part 3

LE S S O N S LE A R N ED F RO M A T H REE -Y E A R -O L D

When my son admits to disobeying either his mother or me his bottom lip will quiver and he can barely admit to his misdeed. Often as soon as the confession leaves his lips he is on the floor, weeping. It moves us to see how badly it hurts him to have dishonored us.

Isn’t this the same way we should feel when we who confess that we believe in God act as though we do not? It is all about love, and perhaps we do not experience the contrition of a threeyear-old because our love for God has grown cold.Could it be that because we have committed the same sins for so many years, we have come to define ourselves by them?

I ’ M N O T O K AY

I once heard Franciscan Father Richard Rohr say that the pop psychology view of the human person is “I’m okay, you’re okay” but that the gospel message was “I’m not okay but that’s okay with God.” St. Paul said, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say that “it used to be that only Catholics believed in the Immaculate Conception; now everyone believes that he or she is immaculately conceived.” Dr.

55

Karl Menninger penned a famous book with the title, Whatever Became of Sin?

The loss of the sense of personal sin greatly reduces our capacity to feel the necessity of being saved by Christ. We risk having to hit rock bottom before we realize how far we have fallen, if we do not regularly acknowledge our sinfulness and our need to be saved from ourselves.

T H E FA L L E N W O R L D

Previous generations of Christians had a deeper understanding of the fallen nature from which Christ came to save us. When I recently mentioned the fallen nature of humanity in the course of writing another book, the editor queried me as to whether what I was stating was even “Catholic,” so foreign has the notion become to the modern follower of Christ.

If we want to get the most out of the Eucharist, we have to understand what Jesus, the Bread of Life, came to save us from, and how he can save us from our sins.

H ELP FROM THE FATHERS OF THE C HURCH

If a precious garment is not put away into a box that is soiled, by what line of reasoning is the Eucharist of Christ received into a soul soiled with the stains of sin?

— S T. AUGUSTINE