[11] About this we have much to say, and it is difficult to explain, for you have become sluggish in hearing. [12] Although you should be teachers by this time, you need to have someone teach you again the basic elements of the utterances of God. You need milk, (and) not solid food. [13] Everyone who lives on milk lacks experience of the word of righteousness, for he is a child. [14] But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties are trained by practice to discern good and evil.
(CCC 104) In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, "but as what it really is, the word of God" (Th 2:13; cf. DV 24). "In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them" (DV 21). (CCC 1392) What material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life. Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh "given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit" (PO 5), preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received at Baptism. This growth in Christian life needs the nourishment of Eucharistic Communion, the bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum. (CCC 1393) Holy Communion separates us from sin. The body of Christ we receive in Holy Communion is "given up for us," and the blood we drink "shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins." For this reason the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins: For as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord. If we proclaim the Lord's death, we proclaim the forgiveness of sins. If, as often as his blood is poured out, it is poured for the forgiveness of sins, I should always receive it, so that it may always forgive my sins. Because I always sin, I should always have a remedy (St. Ambrose, De Sacr. 4, 6, 28: PL 16, 446; cf. 1 Cor 11:26). (CCC 1388) It is in keeping with the very meaning of the Eucharist that the faithful, if they have the required dispositions (cf. CIC, can 916), receive communion when they participate in the Mass (cf. CIC, can. 917; The faithful may receive the Holy Eucharist only a second time on the same day cf. AAS 76 (1984) 746-747). As the Second Vatican Council says: "That more perfect form of participation in the Mass whereby the faithful, after the priest's communion, receive the Lord's Body from the same sacrifice, is warmly recommended" (SC 55).
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