Today's culture puts a big emphasis on the pursuit of happiness, which typically translates into finding whatever makes you happy, even if it means ignoring your neighbor.
We can easily get caught-up into this cultural mindset, thinking that the world revolves around us, and that everything on earth was made for our own selfish pleasure.
Unfortunately, this ultimately leads to seeing other people as objects and ignoring those most in need in our family, or in our local community.
What we need is something that will shake us out of our self-centeredness and force us to look at other people.
Holy Communion
The Eucharist is meant to be that antidote to a self-centered life. This might seem strange to us, but receiving Jesus in the Eucharist is the primary way we can begin to have a heart for others.
Pope Benedict XVI meditated on this topic in a homily for Corpus Christi in 2011:
[P]recisely because it is Christ who, in Eucharistic communion changes us into him, our individuality, in this encounter, is opened, liberated from its egocentrism and inserted into the Person of Jesus who in his turn is immersed in Trinitarian communion. The Eucharist, therefore, while it unites us to Christ also opens us to others, makes us members of one another: we are no longer divided but one in him. Eucharistic communion not only unites me to the person I have beside me and with whom I may not even be on good terms, but also to our distant brethren in every part of the world.
He explains why we use the word "communion" in referring to the reception of the Eucharist:
This transformation is possible thanks to a communion stronger than division, the communion of God himself. The word “communion”, which we also use to designate the Eucharist, in itself sums up the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Christ’s gift.
In being brought closer to Jesus in the Eucharist, we are then brought closer to other people. This why it is called, "Holy Communion."
While this is all true, a key aspect to this teaching is our openness to divine grace. It is possible to receive the Eucharist every Sunday (or even every day) and to be closed-off to God's life-giving grace.
We need to be open and receptive to God's love, so that we can be filled with it and share that love with others. We can not give what we do not possess.
If you find yourself fighting against selfish tendencies, receive the Eucharist with an open heart and let God transform your soul.
