“Go often to Holy Communion. Go very often! This is your one remedy.”

“Someone once told the Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor that it is more open-minded to think that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is a great, wonderful, powerful symbol. Her response was, “If it’s only a symbol, to hell with it.” ― Flannery O’Connor (1925 – 1964 American writer and essayist)

Gospel Text: (MK 6:53-56)
After making the crossing to the other side of the sea,
Jesus and his disciples came to land at Gennesaret
and tied up there.
As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him.
They scurried about the surrounding country
and began to bring in the sick on mats
to wherever they heard he was.
Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered,
they laid the sick in the marketplaces
and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak;
and as many as touched it were healed.

Today gospel’s passage can help us reflect on how we receive Our Lord in Holy Communion. Do we do so with faith that this contact with Christ can work miracles our lives? More than merely touching the «fringe of his cloak», we receive Christ’s very Body into our bodies. More than merely healing our physical infirmities, Communion heals our souls and grants them a share in God’s own life. St. Ignatius of Antioch thus calls the Eucharist, «the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, that we should live forever in Jesus Christ».

Taking advantage of this “medicine of immortality” consists in being healed of whatever separates us from God and others. Being cured by Christ in the Eucharist thus entails overcoming our self-absorption. As Benedict XVI teaches, «Nourishing ourselves with Christ is the way to avoid becoming extraneous or indifferent to the fate of the brothers (…). A Eucharistic spirituality is the true antidote to the individualism and selfishness that often characterize daily life, and leads to the rediscovery of gratuity, of the centrality of relationships —starting with the family— with particular attention to healing the wounds of disrupted ones».

Just as those who were cured of their infirmities by touching his garments, we too can be cured of our egoism and our isolation from others by receiving Our Lord with faith.