Question: Sometimes a person feels God’s grace after Communion, and this grace supports him for some time. However, one might sometimes think that he does not deserve Communion. Should one worry about it or not?
Answer: You must not rely on yourself. When your soul is sick, you disinfect its wounds by Communion. It can hurt. The Lord may grant comfort and joy one time and you may have to withstand a spiritual battle the other time and feel depressed. The medicine works anyway, and you should not go by your emotions because it may be a trial sent by God. We hear that there used to be ascetics who spent decades praying despite the fact that they could not feel anything. God regarded it as a great feat of ascetic devotion. Naturally, we would like our souls to be soaring high after a Communion; sometimes they feel pain and suffer instead. It doesn’t mean that we are unworthy. In fact, no one deserves the Holy Gifts—who can be worthy of it? Do you really think that the fact that you don’t eat something or read some prayers means that you deserve the Communion? Of course not! Speaking of worthy Communion, the less worthy of it you feel, the more you deserve it. If you acknowledge that you are guilty and that the Lord loves you as you are: the dirty, ungrateful, and ill-spirited person that you are; if you feel sorry for that, this is what makes you worthy. The other kind of “worthiness”, i.e., when you deem yourself better than someone else; when you feel superior because you have read all there was to read because you have prepared properly to receive this love—that’s a shameful condition. We’d better avoid it.