“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”
I have always found it particularly annoying that there are those within the ‘big tent’ of our faith who insist on applying litmus tests for purity, particularly for those who might approach the table of the Eucharist. There is a reason why we all pray the beautiful and humbling prayer of the centurion prior to our reception of the Sacrament of love and unending forgiveness, “Lord, I am not worthy….” No one of us is ever truly worthy of so great gift. Yet, we humbly follow the Lord’s enduring command to ‘take and eat and take and drink…’.
While St. Paul reminds us not to take the sacrament if we are conscious of ‘sins unto death,’ few of us who might tragically turn our backs completely on the Lord of life would be approaching the table of grace and blessing in the first place.
Many have forgotten that the Eucharist is not a reward for the perfect but rather a healing remedy for those of us who are keenly aware of our daily brokenness and in need of the Lord’s strengthening grace and real presence.
St. Irenaeus, writing in the 2nd century, spoke of the Eucharist as the ‘medicine of immortality.’ For all those who are sick of heart, wounded by looking for love in all the wrong places, let us be refreshed, renewed and healed by the eternal physician who offers us daily, the medicine of immortality.