What we need then is, first of all, the real rediscovery in the Church and by her faithful members of the true meaning of the Eucharist as the Sacrament of the Church, as that essential act in which she always becomes what she is: the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the new life, the manifestation of the Kingdom of God, the knowledge of God and communion with Him. The Church becomes all this by the "sacrament of the gathering" —-many coming together to constitute the Church, by offering as one body united by one faith, one love, one hope, the Holy Oblation, by offering "with one mouth and one heart" the Eucharist, and by sealing this unity—in Christ with God, and in Christ with one another—in the partaking of the Holy Gifts.
What we need furthermore is the rediscovery of Holy Communion as the essential food uniting us to Christ, making us partakers of His Life, Death and Resurrection, as the very means of our fulfilling ourselves as members of the Church and of our spiritual life and growth.
What we need finally is the rediscovery of the true meaning of preparation as the very focus of our spiritual life, as that spiritual effort which always reveals to us our unworthiness and makes us therefore desire the Sacrament of healing and forgiveness, and which by revealing to us the unfathomable depth of Christ's love for us, makes us love Him and desire to be united with Him.
And if we "rediscover" all this, we shall also discover that in fact the entire life of the Church has always been that preparation: that all her rules—liturgical and spiritual, penitential and disciplinary—have indeed no other reason for existence but to help us in making our own life a constant preparation not only for Communion but ultimately for that for which Communion itself prepares us—the joy and the fullness of the "day without evening" of God's eternal Kingdom.
We shall thus rediscover the real need for the Sacrament of Penance, for sacramental confession. We shall seek in it not a formal "absolution" or an equally formal "condition" for Communion, but a deep spiritual renewal, the true reconciliation with God and a return to His Church from which we are indeed so often excommunicated by the hopeless secularism of our existence. We shall rediscover the spiritual meaning of the penitential seasons of the Church— Great Lent, Pre-Christmas Lent, etc.—which are the proper times and the proper seasons for sacramental Penance. We shall rediscover in ourselves the need for real spiritual guidance. And above everything else we shall—with fear and joy, spiritual trembling and faith—rediscover the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood as the very source and the constant focus of our life as Christians!
All this, to be sure, will not happen overnight. It will take much time, much effort, much patience. Yet the very fact that all these questions—and on a deeper level, a thirst and hunger for a fuller participation in the essential, spiritual and sacramental life of the Church—have appeared in our Church and in her members, reassures us that even in the darkness and the spiritual decomposition of our troubled times the Church "never ages but always rejuvenates herself." It belongs to those whom God has entrusted with "rightly defining the Word of His Truth"—to the bishops, as the guardians of the Truth—to see to it that this spiritual hunger be satisfied in accordance with the true norms, the true demands of the Church's Tradition.