SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
DESIRE
My Jesus, I believe that Thou art present in the most Blessed Sacrament. I love Thee above all things, and I desire to receive Thee into my soul. Since I cannot now receive Thee sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace Thee, as if Thou wert already there, and unite myself wholly to Thee. Never permit me to be separated from Thee. (St. Alphonsus Liguori)
UNION
O my Jesus, living in the Blessed Eucharist, come and live in my heart in the might of Thy love by which all within me may become transformed. Rule over all my faculties, so that I may no longer live or act but by Thy life and movement. Be Thou, O my Love, the life of my life, that so each day my heart may become more and more like Thine.
THANKSGIVING
I thank Thee that Thou hast deigned to give Thyself spiritually to my soul. I give myself likewise to Thee, without reserve, that it may please Thee to do in me all that Thou willest to have done. Destroy this spirit of self-love; bring down all that exalts itself, and destroy all that resists Thee.
ON SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
“In order to make us understand,” says St. Alphonsus Liguori, “how pleasing spiritual communion is to Him, Our Lord appeared one day to Paula Maresca, the foundress of the convent of St. Catherine of Siena at Naples, and showed her two precious vessels, one of gold, the other of silver. ‘The first,’ Jesus said to her, ‘contains thy sacramental communions, the second, thy spiritual communions.’ Our Lord also told the Blessed Jeanne de la Croix that every time she made a spiritual communion she received in a certain sense a grace equal to that which would have been hers had she really received communion.”
“On a certain Good Friday,” the Blessed Margaret Mary tells us, “feeling within myself an ardent longing to receive Our Lord, I spoke thus to Him amid many tears: ‘Amiable Jesus, I would fain be consumed with longing after Thee, and, being unable to receive Thee on this day, I shall never cease to desire Thee.’ He came to console me with His sweet presence, and said to me: ‘My daughter, thy desire has entered so deeply into My heart, that if I had not instituted this Sacrament of Love, I would do so now in order to become thy food. I take so much delight in being desired, that as often as the heart of any one feels this desire, just as often do I look lovingly upon that individual, in order to draw him to Myself.’ ”
“It is enough to know,” continues St. Alphonsus Liguori, “that the holy Council of Trent highly approves spiritual communion, and earnestly recommends the faithful to adopt this pious custom. Devout souls, moreover, reckon it among their favorite practices.”
— From Fr. Lasance's “The Prisoner of Love” (1918)