Chapter XXI.
That although we acknowledge that we cannot be without
sin, yet still we ought not to suspend ourselves from the Lord’s
Communion.
Yet
we ought not to suspend
ourselves from the Lord’s Communion because we confess ourselves
sinners, but should more and more eagerly hasten to it for the healing
of our soul, and purifying of our spirit, and seek the rather a remedy
for our wounds with humility of mind and faith, as considering
ourselves unworthy to receive so great grace. Otherwise we cannot
worthily receive the Communion even once a year, as some do, who live
in monasteries and so regard the dignity and holiness and value of the
heavenly sacraments, as to think that none but saints and spotless
persons should venture to receive them, and not rather that they would
make us saints and pure by taking them. And these thereby fall into
greater presumption and arrogance than what they seem to themselves to
avoid, because at the time when they do receive them, they consider
that they are worthy to receive them. But it is much better to receive
them every Sunday for the healing of our infirmities, with that
humility of heart, whereby we believe and confess that we can never
touch those holy mysteries worthily, than to be puffed up by a foolish
persuasion of heart, and believe that at the year’s end we are
worthy to receive them. Wherefore that we may be able to grasp this and
hold it fruitfully, let us the more earnestly implore the Lord’s
mercy to help us to perform this, which is learnt not like other human
arts, by some previous verbal explanation, but rather by experience and
action leading the way; and which also unless it is often considered
and hammered out in the Conferences of spiritual persons, and anxiously
sifted by daily experience and trial of it, will either become obsolete
through carelessness or perish by idle forgetfulness.