RECEIVING COMMUNION IN A STATE OF MORTAL SIN

Bishop Vincke (The Australian Catholics Page)

You are welcome and encouraged to attend the Holy Mass but you should not receive the Eucharist since you have not restored that relationship with God

Someone recently told me they are shocked by how many people do not know that a person in the state of mortal sin should not receive Holy Communion. The fact that many people do not know this falls on me. We do not preach this enough.

What is mortal sin? The word’s origin gives us a clue as to what these sins involve. The word comes from the Latin word mortale, which means causing death. It is the purposeful severing or ending of our relationship with God through sin. All sin hurts our relationship with God, but some sins are so severe that committing them is us actively choosing to turn our back on God and no longer be in a relationship with him. For a sin to be mortal, it needs to meet these three criteria.

1. It has to be of grave nature.
2. We have to know it is wrong.
3. We have to choose to freely and willingly commit the sin.

So, we know it is wrong, we know God has said not to do it, and we make a free-will choice to do it anyway. We damage
and end our relationship with God through this action and choose a life without a relationship with God. God desires us to always be in relationship with Him in this world and continue that relationship for eternity with Him in heaven. One important note is that the relationship’s ending is always on our side, and God is constantly there to forgive and restore the relationship. All we have to do is go to confession, acknowledge our sin, and ask for forgiveness. God is always waiting for us in the confessional and desires to fix that relationship. Living in a state of mortal sin is a dangerous place for a soul to be. Dying in that state would cause us to spend eternity in Hell away from God. Some may think this sounds cruel, but Hell exists because God loves us enough not to force us to be with him for eternity if we don’t want to.

We can find in Galatians 5:19-20 a long list of examples of mortal sin. Some of these include: murder, fornication, missing Mass on Sundays or holy days of obligation, heresy, etc. Remember that for a sin to be a mortal sin, the above three conditions must be present. For example, if you miss Mass on Sunday, but it is because you were sick, you did not miss Mass freely or willingly. The Church teaches that those in mortal sin should repent before receiving Holy Communion. You are still welcome and encouraged to attend Mass, but you should not receive the Eucharist since you haven’t restored that relationship with God yet through confession. Perhaps an analogy would be helpful.

Imagine a woman whose husband goes to strip clubs and repeatedly sleeps with many other women, and she knows about it. The husband comes home and wants to have dinner with his wife, acting as though nothing was wrong. He is indifferent to the many ways he has hurt and wounded her. How would she feel? With all that pain and hurt, could she even fake that they had a relationship at that point? Let’s take this a step further. The cheating husband now wants to be intimate with his wife. Again, he shows no remorse for the ways he has hurt her. At the very least, shouldn’t the husband first apologize to his wife? Shouldn’t he take ownership of what he has failed to do and tell her he is sorry? But more importantly, shouldn’t he ask for her forgiveness? In a similar way, Holy Communion is a sacred banquet in which Jesus becomes intimate with us. He desires to be one with us in Holy Communion, much like a married couple becomes one flesh. Jesus has a heart. He feels rejection and joy like all of us. When we commit mortal sin or “cheat” on God, we must first apologize and beg for his forgiveness. We know he will grant it in the saving sacrament of confession. And then, once our broken relationship has been healed, we can return to the intimate banquet of the Eucharist.

As a Church, we need to do a better job teaching the faithful about the consequences of mortal sin, and this is a message everyone needs to hear. Often it is the politicians we publicly criticize for receiving communion while in the apparent state of mortal sin, and at times rightfully so. The most recent example of this is when Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Archdiocese of San Francisco stated Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will no longer be able to receive Holy Communion because of her outspoken stance on abortion rights. Archbishop Cordileone stated he did this for pastoral reasons, saying he cares for the soul of Pelosi. He hopes the outcome of this situation is reconciliation. The Church has an essential role in standing up for truth and guiding others for their good. As I mentioned earlier, murder is a mortal sin. Abortion is the murder of innocent life. And while Pelosi might not have explicitly committed an abortion herself, she is one of the greatest advocates for abortion. She supports abortion in the name of women’s rights and freedom. Here’s the thing. Our Catholic politicians who support abortion, such as Pelosi and President Joe Biden, are not the only Catholics who support abortion.

According to a 2022 Pew Research study: 10% of Catholics believe abortion should be illegal in all cases; 32% of Catholics believe abortion should be mostly illegal, except for certain cases; 43% of Catholics believe abortion should be mostly legal, except for certain cases. And 13% of Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all cases.* It breaks my heart to see these statistics. Isn’t it sad that the mother’s womb is one of the most dangerous places for a child? Abortion is a grave evil. There are no questions about that. Abortion is the murder of the innocent. It is an attack on the family. It is what the devil wants.

As Catholics, we cannot support abortion. As Catholics, we cannot support advocates for abortion. This situation raises a good question that we should all be asking ourselves as we approach the Eucharist. Is our soul in the state of grace? I do not ask us to think about this question out of judgment or malice but out of love. Before we start pointing out the splinters in our brother’s eye, let us first remove the beam from our own. Let us truly examine our hearts and discern whether or not we are leading the life God calls us to lead. It is a great time to be a saint, and we must be living the life first before we call others to join us. A question that may arise is this: “God was inclusive of lepers, prostitutes and all people…why would we deny communion to anybody?” My response is this: Jesus reached out to all people, but his main goal was to call each of us to repentance and conversion. Jesus came to forgive our sins, not give us permission to sin. All of us are sinners. I am a sinner. But as long as we always approach the sacrament of confession with a humble and sincere heart, God will always forgive us. And he will be anxiously and happily waiting for us to join him in the heavenly banquet of the Mass.