Spiritual Communion

 Paul Murray, OP is a poet and a Dominican theologian.  I enjoy his poetry and even more than his poems, I enjoy his essays or articles, because he writes beautifully.  This is the case in this article in Australia's Catholic Voice.  The article is a few years old--during COVID.

People couldn't attend Mass, so the church told people to unite themselves spiritually to the Eucharist.  Of course, my saying this is so banal, but Father Murray explaining it makes you want to pray a Spiritual Communion.  

Spiritual communion, when it is authentic, always has at its core a desire to be one with Christ in the Eucharist.

His example is one of a prisoner on death row.  Priests to celebrate Mass are hard to come by, not only here where I live, but in Australia, where Father Murray is writing.  Actually, it's a universal problem.  The idea is that prisoners are in prison to be punished, not rehabilitated. I hope depriving Catholic prisoners of the Eucharist isn't a deliberate punishment, because that would be heinous, indeed.  But Mass hadn't been celebrated in this prison for years!  

Catholic Mass had not been celebrated in that particular part of the prison for several years. The prisoner in question, a Catholic, struck me as a very ordinary guy. All the more striking, therefore, was the strength, the force, of his desire to attend Mass and to receive the Eucharist. He asked the authorities of the prison that Mass be celebrated at least on Sundays, and he kept on asking although ordered to stop. After some considerable time, permission was granted, but only after he had suffered a great deal.

When, some months later, I celebrated Mass for him and for a small number of other prisoners on Death Row, I noticed that he wept at the moment he received the host. And, just after the Mass, when I spoke to him through the bars, I noticed that once again tears were flowing down his cheeks. He said to me: “It’s only when you are deprived of something that you realize how precious it is!”

Yes indeed, like manna in the dessert.  The Eucharistic host is spiritual food.  Jesus emphatically says that it is His Body and Blood.  John 6: 51.

The prisoner had been denied Divine Manna.  This is how many people felt when they were denied the Eucharist during COVID.  Hence, praying a Spiritual Communion was used.  The one I know is: 

Lord, since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart and dwell there forever. Amen.