October 24

f you acknowledge that the Lord's flesh is the bread of life and that it communicates life, and if you know that his blood also gives life to those who receive it and becomes like a spring of water welling up to eternal life in the one who drinks it, tell me how you can possibly receive them in communion without deriving any spiritual benefit, and even if you do perhaps experience a little joy, how you can soon afterwards continue to be the same as you were before, without seeing in yourself any increase of life, any bubbling spring or light of any kind?

To people who have not risen above the level of the senses this bread perceived by the senses seems to be only a fragment of food, but in the spiritual order it is light unapproachable and unbounded. And the wine likewise is light, life, fire, and living water. Therefore, if when you eat the holy bread and drink the wine of gladness you are unaware of having begun to live an incorruptible life, of having received within yourself bread which is luminous or fiery, of having drunk the blood of the Lord as though it were water leaping up and speaking, if you experience nothing whatever of this kind in contemplation and communion, how can you believe that you share in eternal life?

From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.

HTML text prepared by David P. Steelman