By Erika Anderson

Staff Writer

ATLANTA—We wear our Sunday best. We dress our daughters in frilly dresses with patent leather shoes and our sons in suits.

Perhaps the week has allowed us time to prepare for Mass. We may have prayed as a family or looked over the readings to be familiar with them beforehand. We are ready to receive Christ in the Eucharist. Or are we?

“We do all kinds of things at home to make the celebration of the community of God’s faithful the best celebration,” said Father Patrick Kingery, pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Church, Woodstock. “At the same time we need to prepare our hearts, minds, souls—everything. One way to prepare our hearts is through the sacrament of penance, so we can be sacramentally reconciled with God and his church.”

At the same time, the Eucharist is the “one sacrament of reconciliation,” Father Kingery said, and can help prevent us from sinning in the future.

The Catechism says that the Eucharist “separates from sin.” It states that 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” (Catechism of the Catholic Church,1393).

Father Darragh Griffith, parochial vicar at Holy Cross Church, Atlanta, said that before the sacrament of penance, the Eucharist was the principal form of reconciliation.

Father Kingery said that each time we receive the Eucharist we are experiencing Christ’s sacrifice, which can further help to prevent our sinfulness.

“At the heart of our faith is the belief that Christ died for our sins; with his death on the cross on Calvary, he paid the price for our sins and opened the way to eternal life,” he said. “In the Eucharist we participate by way of a living memorial in Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. Therefore each time we come to Mass, we experience Christ’s death on the cross—the sacrament that paid the price for our sin.”

“So, in a real way, the Eucharist is a sacrament of reconciliation, a reconciliation that cleanses us from past sins and allows us to participate in the here and now of Christ’s resurrection and so therefore preserves us from future sin,” Father Kingery said.

At the same time, the Eucharist can help to wipe away prior venial sins. As a person’s body needs food to restore physical strength, so too does the soul need the nourishment that is found in the Eucharist. The Catechism states: “As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened by daily life; and this living charity wipes away venial sins” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1394).

“The word ‘Mass’ comes from the Latin word meaning ‘dismissal’ or ‘sending,’” Father Kingery said. “An intrinsic part of the Eucharist is the going forth into the world to live what we’ve celebrated. We are called to be Christ in our world. Through our living charity we build up the kingdom of God here on earth, and in our personal lives we make amends for our own sinfulness.”

Father Griffith said it is important that we remember what we are receiving in the Eucharist.

“We become what we receive in the Eucharist. We become Jesus,” he said. “Because we have the Body and Blood of Jesus within us, we become Jesus to other people. The Eucharist gives us the grace to live the Christian life.”

As we receive the Eucharist more, we become closer to Christ and because of this, have a tendency to sin less. The Catechism teaches us that the Eucharist preserves us from future mortal sins.

“The Eucharist builds up our moral character so that we are less likely to sin in the future,” Father Kingery said. “The more we become Christ in the world, the less room there is for sin to take hold of our heart.”

Though the Eucharist is the best way to reconcile one’s heart to God, it is also necessary to approach the sacrament in a state of grace. The Catechism states that “anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive Communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1415).

“The Eucharist is a sign of our unity, and when we have sinned we have broken that unity,” Father Kingery said. “That brokenness needs to be healed for our participation in the Eucharist to be more genuine. Therefore we prepare ourselves by celebrating the sacrament of penance, and that makes us able to participate more fully.”

The Eucharist also enables us to be united with others. The Catechism states that “As sacrifice, the Eucharist is also offered in reparation for the sins of the living and the dead and to obtain spiritual or temporal benefits from God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1414).

The faithful who receive the Eucharist can offer up their Communion for someone who is sick or perhaps a soul in purgatory, Father Kingery said.

The Catechism tells us that in the Eucharist Christ gives us the “pledge of glory with him.”

“Participation in the Holy Sacrifice identifies us with his heart, sustains our strength along the pilgrimage of this life, makes us long for eternal life, and unites us even now to the church in heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints” (Catechism of the Catholic Church,1419).

Prepared for this heavenly unification by the sacrament of penance, our souls are clean and pure, much like the clothes we don each Sunday for Mass.