The Catholic Mass had, and forever will have, the effect of raising men to the Cross, to unite them in Our Lord Jesus Christ crucified, to weaken in them the turmoil of sin which leads to division. If the Cross of Our Lord disappears, if His Body and Blood are no longer present, men will find themselves gathered about a lonely and lifeless table. Nothing to unite them will remain. ..Little by little, by reason of this protestant conception of Holy Mass, Jesus Christ is leaving the churches, all too often profaned ,,,,One thing remains an absolute duty and right - the safeguard of the Faith. Of this the Holy Mass is the most living expression and the divine source - hence its primordial importance. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre — March 13, 1971



“Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord,...that we may ever remain in thanksgiving” These words from the Postcommunion prayer of last Sunday (after the Ascension) are a fundamental reminder to us: namely that it is not enough to simply receive the sacrament of everlasting life, but that we must constantly live accordingly, with gratitude in our hearts. We have already mentioned how St. Pius X spoke of the necessity of adequate preparation to receive Holy Communion worthily. However, at the same time he also gives the reason behind the necessity of thanksgiving after having received Our Divine Saviour: “Since the sacraments of the New Law ... produce a greater effect in proportion as the dispositions of the recipient are better, therefore, one should take care that Holy Communion be...followed by an appropriate thanksgiving, according to each one’s strength, circuмstances and duties.” (20/12/1905, §4).



Yet how often is it the case that when the priest leaves the sacristy to return to the church, he finds it empty – everybody is outside speaking with friends, nobody inside speaking with our Divine Friend! Thus the Holy Eucharist is paralysed, unable to produce the grace of divine intimacy that it ought to bring to our souls. Such is not the mind of the Church. Allow me to quote the Roman Ritual, which gives the directions to priest and faithful alike concerning how to correctly receive the sacraments: “Moreover, the communicants should be warned not to leave church right after receiving, nor to engage in idle conversation nor to violate custody of the eyes, and neither to begin at once the reading of prayers from a book nor to expectorate, lest the Sacred Species fall from the mouth.” (Tit iv, C. 1, §4). Moreover, the Church does not just tell us that we must make a thanksgiving. She even tells us how to do it, and this not just by reading prayers from a book, but by speaking with Our Lord personally, and reflecting on the depth of His love for us on the Cross, on which He gave us His body and blood. Here is the rest of the paragraph just quoted: “Rather, as befits devotion they should spend some time in mental prayer, thanking God for this singular favor and at the same time for the Savior’s sacred Passion, in memory of which this mystery is celebrated and consummated”.

It is not lightly that I apply the term “necessity” to thanksgiving after Holy Communion. For thanksgiving is not an optional extra for those who have more time, or who consider themselves more contemplative, or who like to spend time in church. No, it is truly a necessity for us to profit from the graces of Holy Communion. Without thanksgiving the sacrament of Divine Love can hardly be called fervent or beneficial for our souls. Pope Pius XII in his magnificent encyclical of 1947 on the Sacred Liturgy has this to say: “Such personal colloquies are very necessary that we may all enjoy more fully the supernatural treasures that are contained in the Eucharist and, according to our means, share them with others, so that Christ Our Lord may exert the greatest possible influence on the souls of all”. (§125) So the necessity is not just for us as individuals, but for the good of the Church, and for us to perform our duties of charity towards our fellows. ,


From where does our obligation of thanksgiving come? It is, first of all, the acknowledgement of the divine dignity of a sacrament which does not just give grace, but contains the very Author of grace Himself. Who could begin to appreciate the infinite goodness and charity of this sacrament, which perpetuates the mystery of the Incarnation, and brings God into our sinful hearts. Did Our Lord not Himself say: “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abides in Me and I in him” (Jn 6:57)? If He abides in me, how can I have nothing to say to Him? As the Imitation of Christ teaches us: “What can I think on better or more wholesome to my soul than to humble myself entirely in Thy presence, and extol Thy infinite goodness above me?” (4,2,2).

Secondly, it comes from the reverence due to the mystery of our Redemption, for this sacrament applies to our souls the propitiation of the Cross, by which God Himself atoned for our sins. Is it not just that we should give ourselves in turn to Him who gave Himself up on the Cross to deliver us from our own sins? How could I not long to offer myself to Him? “For as often as thou repeatest this mystery, and receivest the Body of Christ, so often dost thou celebrate the work of thy redemption, and art make partaker of all the merits of Christ” (Imit. Ib.).

Thirdly, our duty of thanksgiving comes from the many benefits bestowed on our souls by this sacrament, which not only gives an increase of sanctifying grace, but also nourishes our souls with a multitude of actual graces. However, to profit from these grace, our personal and immediate cooperation is required. For at the very moment that the Real Presence is consumed in our body, graces flow into our souls. Which graces? That will depend upon our need, and also upon our own cooperation. Consequently, our thanksgiving must take the form of a petition for the graces that we need and which God wants to bestow upon us.



Proud, I will beg for humility; passionate, I will ask for self-control; judgemental, I will beg to be merciful; angry, I will beg for meekness; covetous, I will seek detachment; self-willed I will beg to embrace God’s will; a liar, I will beg to be truthful in all things; scandalous, I will ask to be a good example; envious, I will beg for kindness; slanderer I will ask to protect others’ reputation. There is, indeed, no fault for which Christ, Our God, is not the perfect and divine remedy. Indeed the most frequent reason why our thanksgivings are dry and empty is that we do not dare to ask for the actual graces, good thoughts, desires and inspirations that we need to overcome our faults. No wonder, we do not progress! No wonder that Our Divine Saviour himself stated: “Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name. Ask and you shall receive; that your joy may be full” (Jn 16:24).

Petition is consequently an essential part of our thanksgiving. It is not to lack gratitude to ask for more and more graces. It is, to the contrary, the best way to express our gratitude to Almighty God really received in the Holy Eucharist, for it is the best way to acknowledge our entire dependence upon grace. Allow me to once again quote Thomas A Kempis: “For this most high and excellent sacrament is the health of soul and body, the remedy of all spiritual diseases, by which my vices are cured, my passions are restrained, temptations are overcome or lessened, a greater grace is infused, virtue receives an increase, faith is confirmed, hope strengthened and charity inflamed and extended” (Imit 4,2,4). However, of all petitions, the most elevated actual grace to be requested is that we might become inflamed with divine love, and transformed into the likeness of Christ, by a spiritual union with Him, so that we might be able to repeat with St. Paul: “And I live, now not I: but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh; I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself up for me” (Gal 2:20).



There are in fact two parts to our thanksgiving. The first part is the thanksgiving in the prayers of the Church, that is the public prayer of the Mass. It is contained especially in the Postcommunion prayer. Rarely do I see our faithful open their Missals to read this prayer, and it is a great pity. In fact, the Church declares that this prayer is not just for the priest, but also for the faithful. This is what we find in the Roman Ritual: “the prayers that follow the Communion in Mass are not intended for the priest alone but apply to the other communicants as well” (Tit iv, 2,11).

The Post Communion prayer, always recited in the plural, is for all who have participated in the Eucharistic Sacrifice to receive the fruits of Holy Communion – most importantly life everlasting and the virtues which enable us to go there. In a great variety of ways the Church begs for us to be fed with this heavenly mystery, to despise the things of earth so as to love those of heaven, to live in accordance with the sacrament we have received, to be cleansed by the light of the Holy Ghost, to delight with fervour in the things of God, to be corrected from our crookedness to see that which is upright, and a multitude of similar graces. We ask these graces not just for ourselves, but also for one another, for if it is true that each one needs a different grace, it is equally true that we all need these graces. It is a prayer for the mystical body, and it is followed up by the thanksgiving at the Ite Missa Est, and the prologue of St. John’s Gospel, in which we rejoice that we have been chosen to participate in the mystery of the Incarnation as sons of God, and to shine forth the true light of the mystery of divine love that we have received.



However, these short prayers are not enough. It was one of the errors of the liturgical movement condemned by Pope Pius XII that private thanksgiving is not important, and is to be discarded in favour of the liturgical thanksgiving of the Mass. The Pope does not hesitate to affirm that those who say that private thanksgiving is not important have departed from the truth, and follow the letter rather than the spirit of the Gospel. They are modernists, and use the liturgy to turn folks away from private devotion, just as the New Mass does. In fact, it is exactly the contrary in the traditional rite. The more one appreciates the beautiful prayers and ceremonies of the traditional Mass, the more one wants to pray personally in thanksgiving. Here are the actual words of the encyclical Mediator Dei: “When the Mass is over...the person who has received Holy Communion is not thereby freed from his duty of thanksgiving; rather it is most becoming that, when the Mass is finished, the person who has received the Eucharist should recollect himself, and in intimate union with the Divine Master hold loving and fruitful converse with Him. Hence they have departed from the straight way of truth who, adhering to the letter rather than the sense, assert and teach that when the Mass has ended, no such thanksgiving should be added, not only because the Mass is itself a thanksgiving, but also because this pertains to a private and personal act of piety and not to the good of the community” (§123).

The absence of any thanksgiving after Communion in the post-Vatican II Mass, is one of the many modernist errors condemned in this encyclical in 1947 and then directly embraced 20 years later in the New Mass, thus destroying so effecively the Faith of Catholics. Let not the more than 50 years of the Novus Ordo undermine our own devotion and make modernists of us. Let us make our thanksgiving. Pius XII insists on his refutation of this modernist error: “So far is the Sacred Liturgy from restricting the interior devotion of individual Christians, that it actually fosters and promotes it so that they may be rendered like to Jesus Christ and through Him be brought to the Heavenly Father; wherefore this same discipline of the Liturgy demands that whoever has partaken of the Sacrifice of the altar, should return fitting thanks to God.” (§124).