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A few years ago, a religious sister shared a dream that has remained with me ever since. Her life is devoted to caring for those with severe mental and physical disabilities in Mumbai.
In the dream she saw ordinary city streets. Open drains and sewers brimmed with filthy water and refuse. Floating amid the garbage were hundreds—perhaps thousands—of small, white, perfectly round discs: consecrated Hosts. The Body of Christ drifted away like refuse.
When I asked what it meant, she answered with simplicity and sorrow: “Too many people receive Holy Communion without repentance, preparation, or awareness of what they are doing.” The image has stayed with me. At a time when casual reception has become increasingly common, this dream invites us to examine our consciences and meditate on the Lord who longs to heal our wounded hearts.
She also spoke tenderly about the priesthood and offered practical advice on how a priest should prepare himself, celebrate the sacred mysteries, receive the Lord, and distribute Him to the faithful. Her words have stayed with me.
We must never presume to judge the inner state of any soul. Yet signs such as neglected confession and casual attitudes suggest that unworthy communions are not uncommon. Inadequate catechesis and shortcomings in pastoral care have contributed to this situation. We see people approaching the altar casually, noise replacing sacred silence, and homilies that sometimes emphasize “inclusion” more than discernment and reverence. Still, Christ continues to offer His mercy. He calls us back. He desires our healing and gently draws every heart towards Himself.
In my pastoral ministry I have often observed three common patterns. I share these not to judge, but to invite reflection and a deeper sense of mercy.
- There are the lax, who receive routinely without recent confession or honest examination of conscience.
- There are the scrupulous, tormented by exaggerated fear, who sometimes abstain even when they are in grace.
- And there are the delayers, who know their sin but keep postponing repentance.
Commenting on the parable of the wedding garment (Mt. 22:1–14), St. John Henry Newman reminds us that the Eucharist requires a well-disposed heart. Inward sanctification is not automatic; it requires our cooperation with grace.
St. John Damascene taught that to those who partake worthily with faith, the Eucharist brings “remission of sins and life everlasting,” while to those who partake unworthily it brings “chastisement and punishment.” St. Albert the Great likewise insisted that it should be received “in the bitterness of compunction”—a heart pierced by sorrow for sin and filled with awe at Christ’s Passion, of which our sins are the cause.
The Catechism is clear: “The Eucharist is not ordered to the forgiveness of mortal sins. This is proper to the sacrament of Reconciliation” (CCC 1395). And “Anyone conscious of having committed a mortal sin must not receive the Holy Eucharist…without having first received sacramental absolution” (CCC 1457).
Even the greatest sinner can approach worthily after confessing, once genuine repentance has cultivated humility, a sense of unworthiness, and loving trembling before the Eucharist.
Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) captured this tension in The Feast of Faith: more people receive Communion, yet “do we not feel a slight uneasiness at times in the face of an entire congregation coming to communion? …Paul insisted that the Corinthians should ‘discern’ the Lord’s body (1 Cor. 11:29): Is this still happening?”
Those words always remind me of an incident from my student days in Fribourg, Switzerland. After a young student tragically took his own life, his single mother asked me and a Trappist monk to help arrange the funeral Mass. We knew the boy’s grandmother well—she had a deep love for the Dominicans and the monks of a nearby Cistercian abbey.
I celebrated the Mass in a large church packed with young people, something rare in secularized Western Europe. The responses during the liturgy were sparse and quiet. Yet when the time came for Communion, almost the entire congregation came forward. In the midst of grief they turned instinctively to the Eucharist, yet I sensed something of the same unease Ratzinger described: full participation in receiving, yet little outward sign of discernment.
The Holy Eucharist is not given to the already-holy; it is given to make us holy. The Lord desires to be received truly, really, substantially present—Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
In this mystery we encounter something far deeper than distant benevolence. As the Swiss theologian Charles Journet (1891–1975) beautifully distinguishes, there is a mercy of simple goodwill that wishes us well while keeping an infinite distance—the kind the Qur’ān attributes to Allah, invoked at the beginning of nearly every surah as “the Merciful, the Compassionate,” yet remaining an unrevealed Mystery. But in Christianity we are offered the mercy that flows from the love of friendship, the “holy extravagance” of charity in which God unites Himself with the beloved. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (Jn 3:16); “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
The French Catholic novelist and Nobel laureate François Mauriac (1885–1970), reflecting on conversations with Muslim friends, captured this difference poignantly. He spoke of “the solitude of the believer before the infinite Being in Islam, devoid of the Incarnation.” In contrast, he treasured the intimate closeness of the merciful God made accessible to us Christians especially through the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. Penance kindles a longing for the Eucharist; together they sustained his own faith and shielded him from despair. For us, faith in a God who is both brother and divine profoundly shapes our lives.
This is why indifferent or routine reception wounds the Heart of Christ so deeply, and why the sister’s dream of Hosts floating in the sewer is so haunting. We are not approaching a distant decree, but the living Person who invites us into friendship.
Some fear that preaching repentance and confession will reduce the number of Communions. In my experience the opposite is true: gentle, clear invitations to approach worthily actually increase worthy Communions. The Eucharistic Christ is no killjoy. He brightens and lightens us, calling us deeper into God’s life. As Journet wrote, the Incarnate Word is like bait: He comes down in His meek humanity to captivate us, then draws us into His divinity.
The practical counsels the sister offered, born of her deep love for the Eucharistic Lord, continue to guide how priests celebrate Mass. A priest does well to arrive early, enter into silence, pray, and examine his heart rather than rushing in distracted. After the words of consecration, it is good to gaze upon the Host with living faith—as if seeing Christ for the first time—and hold Him up steadily for adoration. The elevation should not be rushed; a moment of shared silence can be allowed to breathe. The Mass prayers, too, can be read slowly and attentively, from the heart, as a living dialogue with the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
When priests show such reverence, the faithful are gently formed. Reverence is caught more than it is taught.
You can mirror this reverence simply: arrive early for silence and an Act of Contrition, observe the Eucharistic fast, dress modestly, kneel if you are able, and linger in thanksgiving. Make regular confession a habit—even monthly—and gently invite others along.
Let the Eucharistic Lord draw us: the lax to holy fear and Confession, the scrupulous into childlike trust, the delayers into the confessional without delay. Let Him draw priests, families, and parishes deeper into the intimacy of His divinity.
Hosts do not belong in a sewer. No, they wait on the altar and in the tabernacle—where Christ waits for us.
