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ePaper created 2015-02-27, 18:37:22 | version 1.33.01
38 What is Viaticum? It is Holy Communion that is given to those who are about to leave this earthly life. For the faithful who receives Viaticum, the medicine of immortality, a certain contemporaneous experience of death and the fullness of Life takes place, and that person is given the pledge of the resurrection of the body, at the end of time. 39 Why is the Eucharist a pledge of future glory? “Because the Eucharist fills us with every grace and Heavenly blessing. It fortifies us for our pilgrimage in this life and makes us long for eternal life. It unites us already to Christ seated at the right hand of the Father, to the Church in Heaven and to the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints” (Compendium, 294). It acts as an antidote against sin and frees us from venial sins, infuses the soul with the strength of grace that sanctifies the person and prepares him for eternal life, with an invocation addressed to the Lord that he might come: “Maranà tha: come, Lord Jesus!” (1 Cor 16,22; see also AP 22,20). In the Eucharist we break “The one bread, the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death, to live forever in Jesus Christ” (Saint Ignatius of Antioch) with God the Father. 117