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question

Dear Father Angelo,

While attending a funeral an unbaptized friend of mine received communion as a result of a fortuitous event because the priest did not know who he was.  He is not a believer, but could this event be considered as the sacrament of First Communion, although he is not even baptized?  In what kind of position he is now?

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The Priest’s answer

My dear,

  1. The first condition in order to be able to receive the Eucharist is Baptism.

The effect of Baptism is the one to incorporate to Christ and to the Church.

This incorporation occurs through the infusion of character, that is a spiritual seal impressed in our soul, for which we become Christ’s property.

This incorporation takes effect also through the infusion of the sanctifying Grace that makes us participants in the very life of God.

In this way, all the baptized constitute in Christ one body.

  1. The Eucharist is ordained to feed this incorporation

Indeed, He wants to perfect it even more so with the objective of transforming all the baptized in Christ, so that they can say like Saint Paul:  “yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2, 20).

But, how one could be fed and perfected in the incorporation to Christ and to the Church if the incorporation has not yet happened nor it has even started?

  1. For this reason, the Baptism is “the beginning of the spiritual life” and “the door of

the sacraments”.

The Eucharist, instead, is almost the “crowning” of the spiritual life and “the goal of all the sacraments”:  in fact, the graces of all the sacraments prepare to receive or to consecrate the Eucharist.

Therefore, while to receive the Baptism is necessary to begin the supernatural life, receiving the Eucharist is necessary to bring it to fulfillment” (Saint Thomas, Summa Theologiae, III, 73,3).

  1. Furthermore, it must be remembered that the Eucharist must be received in a state 

of Grace through which the soul is purified from the original sin and all the actual sins.

But these sins are eliminated by ordinary means through the Baptism and the sacrament of Confession that is like a second Baptism.

Now,  perfecting the union to Christ presupposes the state of grace, also called “formed faith”, “which nobody has when in a state of mortal sin.

It is clear, therefore, that whoever receives the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin perpetrates a falsehood with regards to this sacrament and as a result he stains himself with sacrilege as a defiler of the sacrament.  And so he mortally sins” (Ib.).

  1. With these premises, it is very clear that your friend received the Eucharist only in a

material sense, maybe not knowing what he was doing.  Perhaps, he thought that it was simply a gesture in communion with the people mourning and with the deceased.

But, as a non believer, he had not thought to the very least of joining himself to Christ and that the proper effect of the Eucharist is the transfiguration in Christ.

Consequently, he did not do the First Communion with Christ and with the Church because of the lacking premises.

  1. He made the material gesture of the Communion, which ended up staining 

his soul further by committing a sacrilege.

Since he is not a believer and he did not know and he did not thought about Whom he was going to receive, in conclusion, it should be said that he did not receive the First Communion, but he committed the profanation of the First Communion.

  1. Exactly because he does not believe and, nonetheless, he approached the Holy

Altar, applies to him as well the strict words of the Scripture: “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying” (1 Cor 11, 27-30)

  1. For your friend is necessary to pray so that the Lord might touch his heart in such a

powerful way to open it to the faith and gave him the grace to nourish himself of Christ so that to be able to obtain that eternal life of which Saint John talks about and which consists in possessing God already from now.

And that he might possess Him within himself in a way to be able to “use and enjoy Him as he wishes”, like Saint Thomas taught us when he says: “where we are said to possess what we can in freedom use or enjoy as we wish. A divine person cannot be possessed in this second sense by anything except a rational creature who is conjoined to God (Summa theologica,I,38, 1).

I wish all of this for you as well, I will remind the Lord of you and I bless you.

Father Angelo