I greet you, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, with receiving of the Body and Blood of our Savior. You’ve received into yourself such a blessing, of which there is nothing higher or better in the world. St. Simeon the New Theologian testifies to its great value. He says that one of those blessings about which the Apostle Paul says, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him (1 Cor. 2:9), is the Body and Blood of Christ, which we partake of in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. According to the teachings of St. Simeon, in this Sacrament we become so close to Christ that we become flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone, and thus are deified with our whole being.
It's hard for us, beloved, to imagine and feel all the blessedness and all the power of Holy Communion. We have to purify our passionate feelings to do so. “Let us purify our senses,” it says in the Paschal Canon, “and we shall behold Christ radiant.” The saints, as ones pure in heart, experienced this blessedness, and the Lord shone with His great grace not only in their souls, but also visibly, in their bodies, when they communed of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. From the life of St. Seraphim of Sarov can be seen what unearthly delight filled his soul after communing of the Body and Blood of Christ and with what an ineffable light His face shone. He was like an angel then; and pious Sarov pilgrims, contemplating this blessed glory in him, dared not approach him or disturb his conversation. They say that the face of St. Martha, the mother of the great St. Simeon the Stylite, shone with the same light of grace after Holy Communion. We ourselves witnessed that blessed joy, that vigor of strength that filled Fr. John of Kronstadt after Holy Communion.
However, it wasn’t only the saints of God who experienced the blessed effect of this greatest of Mysteries. The Lord, in His ineffable mercy, also grants sinful men to experience the blessing of Holy Communion if they approach the holy chalice with sincere repentance. In the life of St. Simeon the Fool for Christ, it’s said that once in church during the communing of the faithful, he saw how the faces of many simple farmers, who approached the holy chalice with repentance and contrition for their sins, shone with the wondrous light of grace.
Often, the amazing power of this Sacrament is manifested in our lives when we resort to Holy Communion during an illness. By God’s grace, I myself experienced the almighty Divine power of this great Sacrament when I was terminally ill with typhus. And recently in Serbia, in Sremski Karlovci, I saw an amazing miracle of healing from a terminal illness after a young man received Communion, though he had had no hope of being cured.
Such is the power of this Sacrament and so great is its benefit for us. Greeting you, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, with the communion of the Holy Body and Blood of our Savior, I wholeheartedly wish for you to always live worthy of this greatest Sacrament, that is, to live in constant repentance and humility, with the unwavering fulfillment of the commandments of God. Remember the words of the Apostle Paul: For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s Body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep (die) (1 Cor. 11:29–30).
If we keep God’s commandments, we’ll always feel the amazing power of Holy Communion. Then we’ll know all the joy of the Christian life from our own experience, for we’ll always be in living, close, and joyous union with Christ, the source of our true happiness and eternal salvation.
Amen.
