I have been recently announced by the wife of a Christian from our parish that her husband was about to die and it would have been good to go and give him the Holy Eucharist. I left immediately to the address I was given but I had no one to commune anymore, the Christian was in a comma and he hardly breathed. I asked those who were present there:
`Why didn`t you call me a few days before?`
I was told:
`We didn`t want to demoralize him.`
Well but to whom we can give now the Holy Eucharist? Probably in a a few hours he will leave us (and this is what happened) and won`t we be demoralized because we didn`t do our duty? He was an old man sick for several years his state degrading from a week to another and he hadn`t communed himself since childhood.
How serious is this conception that we don`t want to commune him because we don`t want him to die. I know that the man communes all his life and there are Christians who commune very often, almost weekly. They commune because they feel the power of the Holy Eucharist. They are not afraid they will die they are only afraid not to be found at their end not communed.
In situations similar with the case from above we must find the best way to make that man understand how important the Holy Eucharist is and that it represents our communion with Christ which must be permanent.
As a result, it is very necessary to come more often close to the Holy Chalice.
I knew cases when some Christians who had a Christian life and communed frequently couldn`t leave this life without communing.
That is why we say many times at the Holy Liturgy `And let us ask for a Christian end to our life, peaceful, without shame and suffering, and for a good defense before the awesome judgment seat of Christ. .`
Priest Ion Chirvase
