How can one live the Divine Will when the sacraments are unavailable? The question is neither theoretical nor marginal: it concerns the sick person confined to bed, the prisoner, the isolated missionary, the persecuted Christian, the faithful person whom no priest can reach. It arose with renewed sharpness during the 2020 lockdowns, when millions of Catholics suddenly found themselves deprived of the sacraments.[1]
The Catholic answer has two movements that must never be separated. On the one hand, the sacraments remain the ordinary and irreplaceable channels of grace: one never does without them lightly, and whoever can receive them must hasten to them. On the other hand, God is not a prisoner of His own sacraments: when the soul is sincerely prevented, He has provided extraordinary ways — perfect contrition and spiritual Communion — through which He continues to give Himself.
Here the spirituality of the Divine Will, revealed to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, sheds its own light. Jesus teaches a perpetual Communion in His Will, “subject to no obstacle,” which neither illness, nor absence of a priest, nor persecution can interrupt.[2] Far from being a convenient substitute dispensing one from the altar, this continual Communion is the continuation of the desired sacrament: it presupposes hunger for the Eucharist and transforms it into uninterrupted union. This article holds both together: Catholic rigor concerning the value of the sacraments and the mystical depth offered to those who are deprived of them against their will.
When the sacraments are lacking
Before answering, one must take seriously the suffering hidden in the question. Being deprived of the sacraments is not a neutral situation: it is a real poverty, and often the sign of real love.
Real situations, never pretexts
The cases in which the sacraments become inaccessible are numerous and concrete:
- illness or old age that confines a person to bed and prevents going to church;
- health lockdowns, which closed churches and suspended public Masses in 2020;[3]
- prison and persecution, which can deprive whole Christian communities of priests, sometimes for generations;
- geographical isolation in missions, at sea, in military service, or in remote places;
- the absence of a priest, in regions where one pastor serves dozens of churches;
- irregular situations which, without forbidding prayer, temporarily prevent access to Holy Communion.
In all these cases the decisive point is the same: the soul cannot receive the sacraments, even though it would want to. This distinction — cannot receive, not will not receive — governs the whole answer.
A deprivation that reveals love
Far from being a minor disciplinary detail, hunger for the sacraments is the sign of living faith. The one wounded by deprivation shows that he truly believes in the Real Presence: one mourns only what one loves. This pain can become an offering. Jesus tells Luisa that He rewards precisely the deprivation accepted for love — not by devaluing it, but by transfiguring it.[4]
The right way to approach the question is therefore not to ask how to do without the sacraments, but how to remain united to Christ when they are lacking — without ever ceasing to desire them. The neighboring questions of the right way to receive Holy Communion and the validity of the Mass treat the normal case in which the altar is accessible; the present article treats the case in which it is not.
God is not a prisoner of His sacraments
The first certainty to establish is a Catholic principle: God has entrusted His grace to the sacraments, but He has not imprisoned Himself within them. This truth liberates without taking anything away from the sacraments.
“God is not bound by His sacraments”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states this principle in relation to Baptism:
“God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but He Himself is not bound by His sacraments.”[5]
In other words, the sacraments are the ordinary channels instituted by God and which He commands us to use; but His omnipotence and mercy are not captive to those channels. When a person, through no fault of his own, is prevented from accessing them, God retains a thousand ways of giving him the grace he would have received through the sacrament. This is not a flaw in the sacramental system: it is the sovereign freedom of Love, which is stopped by no external obstacle.
Baptism of blood, Baptism of desire
The Church has always drawn precise consequences from this principle. For the sacrament most necessary for salvation, Baptism, she recognizes two supplies when water is lacking. Baptism of blood: those “who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ.”[6] Baptism of desire: the catechumen who dies before the sacrament receives salvation through “his explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for his sins, and charity.”[7] These supplies “bring about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.”[8]
This same logic is applied by the Church to the whole sacramental life: sincere desire, joined to charity, obtains the fruit that the prevented sacrament can no longer give by itself. This is what perfect contrition and spiritual Communion teach, as we shall see.
What this principle does not authorize
A warning is immediately necessary, because this doctrine is often distorted. That God is not bound by His sacraments never authorizes neglecting them, despising them, or believing oneself dispensed from them. Baptism of desire saves only the one who would have received Baptism if he could; perfect contrition remits mortal sin only if it “includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible.”[9] The extraordinary way includes desire for the ordinary way: it supplies it; it does not replace it.
This is exactly Father Iannuzzi's position concerning the pandemic. Before proposing any supply, he begins by exhorting the faithful to seek the sacraments first: to confess and communicate as soon as possible, and to remain in contact with priests faithful to the unchanging doctrine of the Magisterium.[10] Life in the Divine Will, as will be repeated, belongs to the same hierarchy: it does not dispense from the altar; it leads to it.
The extraordinary ways taught by the Church
When the sacraments are truly lacking, the Church does not leave the soul helpless: she has always taught two precise exercises, accessible everywhere, at every hour, without a priest.
Perfect contrition when confession is unavailable
The ordinary means of forgiveness for grave sins is sacramental confession. But the Church teaches an extraordinary means when this sacrament is inaccessible: the act of perfect contrition. The Catechism is explicit:
“When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called ‘perfect’ (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible.”[11]
Canon law expressly foresees this case: one who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the Body of the Lord “without previous sacramental confession, unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition, which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.”[12] The difference from imperfect contrition (attrition, born of fear of punishment) is essential: only perfect contrition, born of love of God above all things, obtains forgiveness of mortal sin outside confession.[13] Forgiveness is therefore never out of reach, even alone, even at night, even dying without a priest: it is enough to turn to God with a heart that loves Him above all and sincerely intends to confess as soon as possible.
Spiritual Communion, or Communion of desire
For the Eucharist, the Church proposes spiritual Communion: an act of faith and desire by which one asks Jesus to come spiritually into the heart, “as if one were receiving Him sacramentally — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.”[14] This practice is not a recent consolation prize: the Council of Trent teaches it with authority. Distinguishing three ways of receiving the Eucharist — sacramentally only (sinners), spiritually only, and both sacramentally and spiritually (the well-disposed) — the council praises those who, “eating in desire the heavenly bread offered to them, with a living faith working through charity (Gal 5:6), perceive its fruit and usefulness.”[15]
Saint Alphonsus Liguori, building on Saint Thomas, gives the definition retained by the whole tradition: spiritual Communion consists “in an ardent desire to receive Jesus in the Host and in an act of love as one would make if one had received Him sacramentally.”[16] Saint Thomas had laid down the principle — the effect of the sacrament can be received by desire (in voto), without being received in reality (in re)[17]; Saint Alphonsus draws the formula from it, and affirms that these Communions “are very pleasing to God and obtain great graces,” to the point that fervent souls multiplied them, and he recalls that the Council of Trent “greatly praises spiritual Communion” and urges the faithful to practice it.[18]
Saint John Paul II made this tradition his own in his encyclical on the Eucharist, citing Saint Teresa of Avila:
“When you hear Mass without communicating therein, you may communicate spiritually, for this holy practice is of exceeding profit. […] His love is thus wondrously imprinted on the soul.”[19]
Spiritual Communion, the pope noted, had “happily spread for centuries in the Church” and was “recommended by saints who were masters of the spiritual life.”[20] It is free, immediate, and subject to no exterior condition — as Blessed Jane of the Cross observed, it requires neither fasting nor the director's permission; it can be made at any hour: an act of love is enough.[21]
The act of spiritual Communion
The formula transmitted by Saint Alphonsus, repeated almost word for word by Father Iannuzzi for the time of the pandemic, can be said in a few seconds, many times a day:
“My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament. I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul. Since I cannot now receive You sacramentally into my heart, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You.”[22]
This already gives every Catholic deprived of the sacraments a solid and fully ecclesial answer. The spirituality of the Divine Will does not contradict it: it carries it to its summit.
The Divine Will: a Communion nothing can prevent
Here lies the specific contribution of the Book of Heaven. Jesus teaches Luisa that living in the Divine Will is in itself a continual Communion, of such a nature that no external obstacle can interrupt it.
“It is enough for the soul to want it”
The decisive text is dated 23 March 1910. Luisa almost expected to hear that living in the Divine Will would be “greater than Communion itself”; Jesus confirms it — not to lower the sacrament, but to show its continuation without limit:
“Sacramental Communion lasts a few minutes. While Life in My Will is perpetual Communion, even more, an eternal Communion: it is prolonged eternally in Heaven. Sacramental Communion can meet obstacles: for example, one may be unable to communicate because of illness or for other reasons, or the one who must administer it may be indisposed. Communion in My Divine Will is subject to no obstacle. It is enough for the soul to want it, and it is done.”[23]
The passage explicitly addresses our question: illness, “other reasons,” the minister being prevented — that is, the absence of a priest. Jesus adds that with this Communion, “no one can prevent the soul from obtaining this so great good, which constitutes the happiness of earth and of Heaven: neither demons, nor creatures, nor even My omnipotence itself. The soul is free.”[24] Where persecution can close a church, confiscate a ciborium, or imprison a priest, it can do nothing against a will united to the Will of God.
A Communion “continual like breathing”
This doctrine is not a novelty of 1910: as early as 1903, Jesus announced it to Luisa in the middle of deprivation from sacramental Communion. He reveals that the holy desire to receive Him, joined to the sacrifice accepted when one cannot, obtains a union that never stops:
“There results for her not only one Communion a day, as the Church permits, but a continual Communion, just as breathing is continual. These are Communions of the purest love, in spirit only, not with the body; and since the spirit is more perfect than the body, love is more intense there.”[25]
The deprivation itself becomes the fuel of this Communion: “Your privation of Me excites your desire. And, through this ardent desire, your soul breathes God,” Jesus says. And God, inflamed by this desire of the soul: “He breathes that soul.”[26] The soul prevented from sacramental Communion is therefore not excluded from union: its burning desire makes it “breathe God” at every instant.
Whom Jesus rewards: “the one who cannot receive Me”
In the same text lies the pastoral key to the whole question. Jesus specifies who receives this continual Communion:
“In this way I reward not the one who does not want to receive Me, but the one who cannot receive Me and who offers this to Me to please Me.”[27]
Everything depends on this distinction. Perpetual Communion in the Divine Will is not offered to the lukewarm person who dispenses himself from the sacraments through laziness or contempt: he “does not want” to receive. It is offered to the one who “cannot” receive and who turns the obstacle into an offering. The exterior situation may be identical — no Mass, no confession, no priest — but the interior will is opposite. One soul closes; the other burns.
The Divine Will as continual Communion
On 8 April 1908, Jesus gives the same teaching in an even more direct formula:
“My Will is continual Communion with the soul. It is not only once a day, but at every hour, at every instant, that the soul who does My Will is in close Communion with Me.”[28]
This is the heart of the article. Sacramental Communion gives the Christ truly present under the species of bread and wine. Communion in the Divine Will does not abolish this gift; it extends its fruit into every instant. The soul does not possess a second Eucharist apart from the Church; it lives in a will so united to Christ that everything becomes union with Him.
How to live this concretely
The teaching would remain abstract if it did not become a concrete rhythm. Living the Divine Will without the sacraments available is not a vague feeling: it becomes a precise practice.
Begin the day with the prevenient act
The first practical act is the morning prevenient act: offering the day in advance, asking Jesus to live, pray, work, suffer and love in us. The detailed form of this act is treated in the article on beginning the morning prevenient act; here it is enough to note its role. It places the whole day under the primacy of the Divine Will before circumstances have taken over. Even if no church is open and no priest is available, the soul begins by saying: “Jesus, I fuse my will into Yours; live this day in me.”
Multiply actual acts throughout the day
Then come the actual acts, renewed through the day: before a task, a suffering, a meeting, a fatigue, a fear. The soul does not merely “think of God” from time to time; it asks Jesus to do the act in it, with it and through it. The neighboring article on making an actual act in the Divine Will treats this practice in detail. In the present context, its meaning is simple: when sacramental acts are impossible, every ordinary act can be placed in the current of the Divine Will.
Unite oneself to the Masses of the whole world
The soul deprived of local Mass is not cut off from the Eucharistic offering of the Church. In the Divine Will, it can unite itself to all Masses being celebrated in the world, to all tabernacles, to all Hosts consecrated and received, to all priests at the altar. This is the sense of the rounds in the Divine Will: to pass through Creation, Redemption and Sanctification in order to place one's “I love You” in every divine work. If one cannot be present at one altar, one can spiritually unite oneself to every altar.
Fuse one's will into His
The deepest act is to fuse one's will into the Divine Will: to renounce self-will, impatience, resentment, and the temptation to accuse God, in order to enter His Will. This is treated in the article on fusing oneself in the Divine Will. This fusion realizes the “continual Communion” of volume 8: the soul no longer receives Christ only at given moments; it abides in Him without interruption.
Ardently desire the absent sacraments
None of these acts dispenses from desire for the sacraments; on the contrary, they nourish it. The soul living in the Divine Will while deprived of the Eucharist multiplies spiritual Communions, makes acts of perfect contrition, and keeps its heart stretched toward the day when it can again approach the altar. Desire is not sterile frustration: it is, in Jesus' words to Luisa, the means by which the soul “breathes God.”[29]
Witnesses: faith lived when the altar is lacking
This doctrine did not remain theoretical. The history of the Church is full of souls who kept — and transmitted — the faith without the sacraments, sometimes for centuries.
The hidden Christians of Japan
The most astonishing example is that of the kakure kirishitan, the hidden Christians of Japan. After the edicts of proscription and the completion of the country's closing in 1639, entire communities lived more than two centuries (1639–1865) without any priest, without Mass, without confession, without Eucharist: of the sacraments, only Baptism was preserved — passed on within families by lay baptizers (the mizukata) — while the prayers learned by heart (orasho: the Our Father, Hail Mary and Creed handed down orally) and the liturgical calendar kept from memory were also kept.[30] When, on 17 March 1865, Father Bernard Petitjean welcomed into the church of Ōura at Nagasaki (blessed in February 1865) these descendants of hidden Christians, they told him that they had kept the faith handed down from generation to generation. Their fidelity, recounted in the articles on the Church in Japan and on the Jesuit missions in Japan, shows that an intense Christian life can survive, by desire and prayer, the prolonged disappearance of the sacraments — without ever ceasing to hope for them.
Cardinal Van Thuan: a prison changed into a cathedral
Closer to us, the Vietnamese Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan (1928-2002) was imprisoned by the communist regime for thirteen years (1975-1988), nine of them in isolation, without ever being tried. Deprived of everything, he obtained from outside a few drops of wine — labeled “medicine for stomach pains” — and tiny fragments of host. Each day when this supply reached him, he celebrated Mass in the palm of his hand:
“Each day, with three drops of wine and one drop of water in the palm of my hand, I celebrated Mass.”[31]
When even that was lacking, he lived from Communion of desire and the offering of his detention. Later made a cardinal, he was chosen by Saint John Paul II to preach the 2000 Lenten retreat to the Roman Curia, under the title Witnesses of Hope; the Church declared him Venerable in 2017.[32] His life demonstrates that union with Christ depends first not on circumstances, but on a will offered.
Luisa herself, dependent on priests
Finally, there is an illuminating paradox: Luisa Piccarreta, to whom Jesus revealed perpetual Communion “without obstacle,” herself lived confined to bed for decades, in close dependence on the ministry of priests: it was through obedience to her confessor that she maintained her state, going so far as to ask his permission to sit up in her bed or to resume her needlework.[33] Far from despising the priesthood, she remained grieved at being unable to communicate each day and eager for the Eucharist.[34] The mystic who teaches the Communion that nothing can stop is also the one who shows the most extreme veneration for the sacraments: proof that the two never oppose each other.
The warning: the Divine Will does not replace the sacraments
We must now close the door to a misunderstanding that would disfigure everything said above. Perpetual Communion in the Divine Will is neither a substitute, nor a dispensation, nor a religion “without the Church.”
The sacraments remain source and summit
The Eucharist remains, according to the Second Vatican Council, the “source and summit of the whole Christian life” (Lumen Gentium, 11). Spiritual Communion, wrote Saint Peter Faber — Alphonsus's “Father Peter Faber,” the first companion of Saint Ignatius, canonized by Pope Francis on 17 December 2013 — powerfully helps to receive the holy Eucharist with the proper dispositions[35]: it tends toward the sacrament; it does not replace it. In the same way, life in the Divine Will continues sacramental Communion beyond the few minutes during which the species remain — but it presupposes that one has communicated, or burns to do so. To use the Divine Will as a pretext for neglecting Mass or confession when one has access to them would be exactly the attitude of the one who “does not want” to receive Christ — the very person Jesus contrasts with the soul He rewards.[36]
“Receive Communion and remain with an empty stomach”
Jesus also warns Luisa that the sacrament itself bears fruit only in proportion to the soul's union with His Will:
“The sacraments produce fruits according as the soul is adjusted to My Will. If the soul is not adjusted to My Will, she may receive Communion and remain with an empty stomach, go to confession and remain dirty.”[37]
This echoes Saint Paul's warning that whoever eats and drinks unworthily “eats and drinks judgment upon himself” (1 Cor 11:29). The lesson is double: the Divine Will does not devalue the sacraments; it conditions their fruit. Conversely, the soul deprived of the sacraments but perfectly united to the Will of God may receive more grace than a distracted communicant. It is never the materiality of the gesture that saves, but the disposition of the will opened to grace.
As soon as the sacraments return, run to them
The practical conclusion is unambiguous. As long as the sacraments are lacking: perfect contrition, spiritual Communion, continual life in the Divine Will, ardent desire for the altar. As soon as they return: run to them. Father Iannuzzi, after teaching all the pandemic supplies, concludes by exhorting the faithful to resume confession and regular Communion as soon as possible.[38] Deprivation, lived in the Divine Will, is never an end: it is an exile inhabited by the desire to return.
In summary
To live the Divine Will without available sacraments is to hold together three certainties:
- God is not a prisoner of His sacraments: to the one sincerely deprived of them, He gives grace by extraordinary ways — perfect contrition when confession is unavailable (CCC 1452; canon 916), spiritual Communion when the Eucharist is unavailable (Trent, Session XIII; Ecclesia de Eucharistia 34).
- The Divine Will offers a perpetual Communion that nothing can stop: “it is enough for the soul to want it, and it is done.” It is given not to the one who “does not want” to receive Christ, but to the one who “cannot” and offers his deprivation out of love. It is lived through the morning prevenient act, the rounds, fusion in the Divine Will, and multiplied desire for the absent sacraments.
- This Communion never replaces the sacraments: it desires them, continues them, conditions their fruit, and leads one to return to them as soon as they are accessible again.
The hidden Christians of Japan, Cardinal Van Thuan in the depths of his cell, and Luisa herself confined to her bed say the same thing with one voice: it is not the absent altar that separates one from Christ, but the will that withdraws. Where the will remains united to His, “no one can prevent the soul from obtaining this great good.”[39]
Further reading
- What is the gift of living in the Divine Will? — the foundation of continual Communion.
- What is the right way to receive Holy Communion? — the normal case, when the altar is accessible.
- How should one begin the morning prevenient act? — the act that makes the day a “Mass” offered.
- What does it mean to make the rounds in the Divine Will? — uniting oneself to all the Masses in the world.
- What does it mean to fuse oneself in the Divine Will? — the fusion that realizes continual Communion.
- Is the Novus Ordo Mass valid? — the liturgical framework of sacramental Communion.
- The Book of Heaven — Luisa Piccarreta's work in which Jesus teaches perpetual Communion.
Notes and References
Father Joseph L. Iannuzzi, S.T.L., S.Th.D., “Can you please share Prayers of Repentance and Deliverance during the Covid Pandemic when we are w/o the Sacraments?”, Questions and Answers on the Divine Will, Question 5 (“Questions and Answers” page of ltdw.org; PDF 5-prayers_for_these_end_times_for_and_end_to_covid_for_confession_communion_and_deliverance.pdf, written during the lockdowns — metadata: 6 December 2020; English text checked on 4 October 2026). Father Iannuzzi there mentions, “according to approved Christian prophesies and Sacred Scripture,” a public eclipse of the sacraments — without naming any prophecy in particular, so that no precise ecclesial status can be attached to this allusion, and without the article repeating the figured duration (no dates, in fidelity to Mt 24:36); the exhortation to seek confession (bi-monthly) and Communion (weekly) first — “to seek out the Sacrament of Confession (bi-monthly) and Communion (weekly)” — and “to remain in contact with those priests who are loyal to the unchanging doctrine of the Magisterium”; and, failing this, the act of perfect contrition (canon 916, CCC 1451-1453 cited in notes) then spiritual Communion, “as if you received Him sacramentally – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity” (formula taken from Saint Alphonsus). The article's French quotations translate this English original; checked translations.
1 3 10 14 38L. Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 9, entry of 23 March 1910 (same ed. — controlled French verbatim) — sacramental Communion “lasts a few minutes” and can meet obstacles (illness, other reasons, indisposed minister), while Communion in the Divine Will “is subject to no obstacle. It is enough for the soul to want it, and it is done”; “no one can prevent the soul from obtaining this so great good, which constitutes the happiness of earth and of Heaven: neither demons, nor creatures, nor even My omnipotence itself.”
2 23 24 39L. Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 6, entry of 5 December 1903 (GE – La Volonté Divine – Lumen Luminis ed., text for private use — controlled French verbatim) — deprivation accepted for love changes into “continual Communion, just as breathing is continual”; Jesus rewards “not the one who does not want to receive Me, but the one who cannot receive Me and who offers this to Me to please Me.”
4 25 26 27 29 36Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1257: “The Lord Himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation […]. God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but He Himself is not bound by His sacraments.” Official text on vatican.va.
5Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1258: “The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.” Official text on vatican.va.
6 8Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1259: for catechumens who die before Baptism, “their explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for their sins, and charity, assures them the salvation that they were not able to receive through the sacrament.” Official text on vatican.va.
7Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1452: “When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called ‘perfect’ (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible.” Official text on vatican.va.
9 11Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 916: “Whoever is conscious of being in a state of grave sin shall neither celebrate Mass nor receive the Body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession, unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case, let him remember that he is bound by the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition, which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.” Official French text checked on vatican.va.
12Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1453: imperfect contrition (attrition), born of the consideration of sin's ugliness or fear of damnation, “does not obtain the forgiveness of grave sins, but it disposes one to obtain it in the sacrament of Penance.” Official text on vatican.va.
13Council of Trent, Session XIII (11 October 1551), Decree on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, chap. 8 (DH 1648; Dz 882): the Fathers distinguish three ways of receiving the sacrament — sacramentally only (sinners), spiritually only, and both sacramentally and spiritually (the well-disposed). Controlled Latin: “…qui voto propositum illum coelestem panem edentes, fide viva, quae per dilectionem operatur, fructum eius et utilitatem sentiunt” (Richter ed., Canones et decreta Concilii Tridentini, sess. XIII, c. 8). Fr. trans.: Denzinger, Symboles et définitions de la foi catholique (Cerf), DH 1648. Confirmed English trans. of Waterworth (“eating in desire that heavenly bread which is set before them… by a lively faith which worketh by charity”).
15Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Visits to the Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin Mary (original Italian ed., 1745), chapter “On Spiritual Communion”: spiritual Communion “consists in an ardent desire to receive Jesus in the Host and in an act of love as one would make if one had received Him sacramentally” — Alphonsus's formula after Saint Thomas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3; “these spiritual Communions are very pleasing to God and obtain great graces”; the same chapter praises spiritual Communion with the Council of Trent and gives the “Act for Spiritual Communion.” Controlled English text: “a spiritual communion consists in desiring ardently to receive Jesus in the holy sacrament, and in embracing him with the same love as if you had already received him”; “spiritual communions are very pleasing to him, and a great source of grace to us” (English trans., chap. “On Spiritual Communion”).
16 18 22Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3 — Latin checked against the Leonine edition: “…effectus sacramenti potest ab aliquo percipi, si sacramentum habeatur in voto, quamvis non habeatur in re… ita etiam aliqui manducant spiritualiter hoc sacramentum antequam sacramentaliter sumant” (“the effect of the sacrament can be received by someone if he has the sacrament by desire — in voto — although he does not have it in reality — in re — … thus some eat this sacrament spiritually before receiving it sacramentally”). Definition taken up by Saint Alphonsus Liguori to ground spiritual Communion.
17Saint John Paul II, encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003), no. 34: on spiritual Communion, “happily spread for centuries in the Church and recommended by saints who were masters of the spiritual life,” the pope cites Saint Teresa of Jesus (Teresa of Avila): passage given here after the French Œuvres (Way of Perfection, chap. 35 — “when you hear Mass without communicating therein, you may communicate spiritually […]”; the break marked by […] is the article's). Reference given by the encyclical itself, note 70: Camino de Perfección, chap. 35 (official text checked on 4 October 2026 on the mirror of the Congregation for the Clergy, clerus.org, and concordant sources — the old vatican.va URLs no longer responding).
19 20Same chapter (controlled English text: “Blessed Jane of the Cross used to say, that a spiritual communion may be made as often as we please, without being observed by any one, without being fasting, and without leave of our director. The entire consists in making an act of love”): this is Juana Vázquez Gutiérrez (1481-1534), Spanish religious of the Franciscan Third Order, abbess of Cubas; declared Venerable in 2015, her immemorial cult was confirmed (equipollent beatification) by Pope Francis on 25 November 2024 — so the title of “Blessed” already given her by Alphonsus is today exact.
21L. Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 8, entry of 8 April 1908 (same ed. — controlled French verbatim) — “My Will is continual Communion with the soul,” at every hour and every instant, for whoever does the Will of God.
28On the hidden Christians (kakure kirishitan): after the edicts of proscription and the completion of the country's closing (1639), the communities left without priests preserved Baptism (lay baptizers, the mizukata), the prayers handed down orally (orasho) and the liturgical calendar; the church of Ōura at Nagasaki, blessed in February 1865 — the 15th according to the biography of consul Léon Dury (S. Chabre, Il aima le Japon et le fit aimer, 2022, p. 82: precise day not re-verified, the article retains the month), a few weeks before, on 17 March 1865, villagers of Urakami presented themselves there to Father Bernard Petitjean. Cf. the Ignispedia article on the Church in Japan, which dates the clandestine period from 1639 to 1865.
30Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan (1928-2002), coadjutor archbishop of Saigon, imprisoned by the communist regime from 1975 to 1988 (thirteen years, including nine in isolation). Testimony reported in Witnesses of Hope. The Retreat at the Vatican (New City, 2000), preached to the Roman Curia at the request of Saint John Paul II for the year 2000: “Each day, with three drops of wine and one drop of water in the palm of my hand, I celebrated Mass.” — on the days when this clandestine supply reached him: the thirteen years of detention include long periods without wine or host. Account corroborated by the stratagem of wine labeled “medicine for stomach pains” with hosts broken into small pieces (testimony taken up by many diocesan sources). Declared Venerable by the Church in 2017.
31 32L. Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 8, entry of 8 April 1908 (same ed. — controlled French text) — Luisa, bound to remain continually in her bed “without movement or occupation,” asks her confessor for permission to sit up in her bed and resume her needlework (rendered “embroidery” in the Fr. ed.); he forbids it absolutely, and she maintains this state “by virtue of obedience.” The same entry opens with her grief “at being unable to communicate each day.”
33 34Same chapter (controlled English text: “Peter Faber, the first companion of St. Ignatius, used to say, that spiritual communions are a most powerful help to receive the holy Eucharist with the proper dispositions”): Saint Alphonsus there reports the saying of “Father Peter Faber” — Saint Peter Faber (1506-1546), first companion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, beatified in 1872 and canonized by equipollent canonization on 17 December 2013 (Alphonsus, who died in 1787, could only give him the title of his time).
35L. Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 11, 25 September 1913, entry 11-64 (not 21 September, entry 11-63 — date and entry number verified in the ed.; same ed. — controlled French verbatim) — “The sacraments produce fruits according as the soul is adjusted to My Will. If the soul is not adjusted to My Will, she may receive Communion and remain with an empty stomach, go to confession and remain dirty.”
37