The month of May dedicated to The Virgin Mary opens with St Joseph worker and ends with the Visitation! Between the two, we will celebrate no less than three great Solemnities: Ascension, Pentecost and the Holy Trinity! That’s enough to rejoice and nourish our faith!
Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart Bernaud reminds us here of all the benefits of spiritual Communion! To us to live it and to receive all the graces!
Spiritual communion
To commune is to unite, to enter in communication of ideas, of feeling, of life, of substance, either with a being or with a thing. When we communicate with the ideas, the projects, the affections of a friend, we unite with them One can also commune with the beauties of nature by feeling attracted to them. There are a thousand other kinds of communions, but there is one which is far superior and desirable, to which our Lord invites us.
To bridge the distances that separates us from Him, Jesus gives himself under a parcel of consecrated Host. We can assimilate it, commune with its substance and transform ourselves into it. Such is the immense honor reserved for the children of the Holy Church. Apart from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and if unable to receive our Lord bodily, are we thinking of multiplying our spiritual communions? Indeed, when we love, we desire and we only want what we love. If our relations with Jesus Christ are purely speculative and reasoned, we remain cold and sterile without feeling the need for an intimate union which constitutes spiritual communion.
A soul deeply enamored of his God sighs of love, his heart aspires to this union. Spiritual communion is nothing else. It is a hunger for love, an impulse to Jesus, a call to his tenderness: “O Lord, I beg you to bless me and give me the same graces as if I really received you”. Spiritual communion becomes a refreshment for the soul and it compensates for the absence of Our Lord while making Him present to us. One day Jesus showed Saint Catherine of Siena the satisfaction that these communions gave : the enclosed sacramental communion was contained in a golden vessel, and spiritual communion in a silver vase. No pretext can prevent us from offering this consolation to Jesus, and by doing so, we obtain the graces that flow from it! With the psalmist, we can say several times a day: “My soul thirsts for you; after you my flesh languished, dry land, altered, without water. »(Ps 62) (Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart Bernaud)