St. Joseph of the Lakes

Not long ago someone greeted me at church and told me that they were just coming back after the great COVID scare (my words, not theirs) and they were very happy to be back. A month later they once again alerted me to their return, because they had stopped coming to church after their first return, but they had been watching Mass on TV and that was just about as good. They wondered why we did not say the “Act of Spiritual Communion” at our Mass the way it is done on ETWN and at other churches whose Mass they watched. I had only experienced this prayer being said when I was visiting my niece in California, and I found it confusing at the time they prayed it (before the reception of the Eucharist) and afterwards I wondered why we prayed it at all since we did receive communion. I print the prayer from the ETWN WEB site:

My Jesus, 
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament. 
I love You above all things, 
and I desire to receive You into my soul. 
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, 
come at least spiritually into my heart. 
I embrace You as if You were already there 
and unite myself wholly to You. 
Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen.

It is a nice “pious” prayer that sounds fitting given the circumstances of not being able to receive communion, however it rails against what we believe and treasure as a Catholic community. Jesus came body, soul and divinity to bring us salvation and he gave us in the Eucharist his body, blood, soul and divinity. There is nothing independently spiritual about the Eucharist. It is always a physical as well as a spiritual connection. These cannot be separated, or it is no longer a “human” encounter with God. God communes spiritually with the angels, but the great privilege we humans have been given is that we receive the food that even the angels cannot receive! It is the very physical presence of God who has made his dwelling with us. 

There are many ways in which we can and do seek spiritual communion with Jesus.  Every time we pray; or sit in his presence before him in the tabernacle; or open our hearts to him in our prayer with the community we have spiritual communion with Jesus.  But it is only when we receive him in the Eucharist that we come completely in union with him (both physical and spiritual).