Rosenius and Holy Communion as Medicine

It would have been easy to tell this story as though I first discovered Holy Communion after becoming interested in the Catholic Church. But that would not be true. I had known of Communion as a means of grace and a spiritual medicine long before becoming Catholic. I had encountered this understanding in the writings of Carl Olof Rosenius, among the preachers who have meant the most to Norwegian low-church Christianity.

The problem was not that the medicine was unfamiliar. The problem was that I did not take it often enough.

A Preacher for Troubled Souls

Carl Olof Rosenius lived from 1816 to 1868 and was one of the most influential figures in Scandinavian revival Christianity. Through the journal Pietisten, devotional books, and daily meditations, his influence reached far beyond Sweden, not least into Norway’s prayer-house communities.

Rosenius wrote especially for people struggling with guilt, doubt, and spiritual anguish. He knew how easily someone could become preoccupied with the condition of their own faith: Is it strong enough? Is my repentance deep enough? Was my conversion genuine?

His answer was not that people needed to search still more deeply within themselves. Their eyes were to be turned towards Christ and what God had said. In a meditation for 22 June, he writes about holding fast to God’s word as it stands, whether one’s feelings are “sweet or bitter”.

None of this was unfamiliar to me. I had heard these things in the preaching with which I grew up, and I tried to live by them.

But knowing where to direct your gaze is one thing. Finding your footing when life is also marked by anxiety, loneliness, and uncertainty about where you belong is something else.

I Already Knew the Medicine

I also knew that Rosenius wrote about Holy Communion as medicine for the spiritually weak.

In Guds ord og Guds ånd (God’s Word and God’s Spirit), published by Lunde Forlag in 1978, I particularly remember a chapter near the end of the book. There I encountered the idea that someone who is ill should not wait until he has recovered before taking his medicine.

It is an image that is easy to understand and harder to live by.

In the life of faith, the opposite can seem reasonable: first I must put myself in order. First I must become more serious, more sincere, or more composed. Only then can I come to Communion.

Rosenius turns this thinking on its head. In a meditation for 7 February, he writes that “Holy Communion, like the Word of God, is a means of grace”. He compares the apprehensive communicant to a sick person who hesitates to visit the doctor precisely because the illness is serious.

It makes no sense to stay away from help because you need it.

I had not missed the point. I knew that Communion was not primarily a reward for people who had put their spiritual lives in order. I knew that it could help precisely those who were struggling.

Yet it did not become a natural and regular part of my own life.

A Means of Grace That Did Not Always Appear

How could that be?

Part of the explanation may lie in the difference between what a tradition teaches and what actually receives the greatest emphasis in practice.

Rosenius could write powerfully and clearly about Holy Communion when the subject arose. In a meditation for 27 July, he describes Communion as a real union with Christ. Elsewhere he calls the sacraments “resting places along our way”.

But in many other settings, preaching, God’s promise, and faith in the word occupy the centre. That does not mean Communion is denied. It simply means it does not always remain equally visible in everyday pastoral care.

The Norwegian theologian Egil Sjaastad has examined some of the differences between Rosenius himself and later pastoral practice influenced by his teaching. In “The Order of Salvation in Rosenian Pastoral Care”, he shows how baptism can be clearly present in Rosenius but receive less attention in the later pastoral material he studies.

His discussion concerns baptism in particular, not my own experience of Communion. But it points to a distinction I recognise: a means of grace can be fully affirmed in doctrine without being used as clearly in practice.

That was also how I experienced Communion. It was there. I knew what it was meant to be. But it was not always presented as naturally or as consistently as preaching.

The Advice I Did Not Follow

A pastor at Ganddal parish once gave me advice that now seems very obvious: I should receive Holy Communion regularly.

What he said did not contradict anything I had already read in Rosenius. On the contrary, he was stating the practical consequence of what I already knew.

Even so, I did not follow his advice straight away.

I did not feel ready, and I usually tried to avoid services at which Communion would be celebrated. There is a certain irony in that. I had read that someone who is ill should not wait before taking the medicine. Yet I behaved as though I needed to get better first.

Nor was this simply a question of assurance of salvation. I lived with anxiety and a sense that I did not really know who I was or where I belonged. I knew I was not supposed to look for salvation in my own feelings. But that knowledge did not automatically resolve everything else that was difficult.

Perhaps that was why I needed more than another reminder of what I ought to think. I needed something to which I could return. A place where help was not merely explained, but actually given.

When Staying Away Became More Difficult

A few years later, I began attending Hana parish regularly. Communion was celebrated there every other Sunday.

That made it harder to maintain my old strategy of avoiding services whenever Communion was being offered. Gradually, I began receiving it more regularly.

And I noticed that it mattered.

Not because all my spiritual anguish disappeared. Not because receiving Communion once resolved my questions of identity, belonging, or direction. But I experienced Communion as giving me something I did not receive in quite the same way from preaching alone.

It is important to be precise here. I do not mean that God’s grace can be measured by the intensity of our feelings. Nor do I mean that Communion works like a medicine with a simple and predictable dosage.

But there is a difference between knowing about a medicine and allowing it to become part of your life. As Communion found a more regular place in mine, it also had the opportunity to shape me over time.

What I had known in theory slowly began to become experience.

When the Absence Became Impossible to Ignore

Later, I began attending Catholic Mass with my Filipino wife.

At first, I also received Communion, without understanding that the Catholic Church has specific rules about who may receive it. When I became aware of those rules, I stopped.

That was when the sense of loss became clear.

I had once treated Communion as something I could avoid whenever I did not feel ready. Now I discovered that its absence hurt. Something I had once received too infrequently had become important enough for me to notice when I could no longer receive it.

This was not the only reason I began exploring the Catholic Church more closely. But it became an important part of the journey that eventually led me to become Catholic in 2008.

The transition was therefore not a matter of suddenly discovering something entirely unfamiliar. It also involved something I already knew becoming impossible to leave at the margins of my spiritual life.

More Than a Feeling

The Catholic Church teaches that the Eucharist strengthens our union with Christ and nourishes the life of faith. In paragraphs 1391–1393 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Communion is described as spiritual nourishment for the life given in baptism.

But this does not mean Communion is a machine that produces a particular feeling whenever it is received.

The Catechism also emphasises that grace cannot simply be read from our feelings. Paragraph 2005 states that we cannot rely on our feelings or actions to conclude that we are justified and saved.

Here the distance from Rosenius is smaller than one might imagine.

At the same time, this does not mean the sacraments have no bearing on life as it is actually experienced. What is received regularly can gradually establish a different rhythm. It can give someone a place to return when thoughts keep moving in circles.

For me, this was not simply about Communion in isolation. It also involved the Mass, the community, bodily participation, the prayers, and the experience of belonging to something greater than my own inner life.

Marriage also mattered a great deal. I became less lonely. My circumstances changed. I do not want to pretend that everything can be explained by a single factor.

But I do not think it was accidental that the sacramental life gradually began to address something that preaching alone had not been able to resolve.

Communion Is Not for the Indifferent

When Rosenius describes Communion as medicine for the sick, he does not mean that questions of preparation and disposition become unimportant.

He also warns against self-deception and approaching Communion without a willingness to repent. In a meditation for 10 October, he underlines the seriousness of how Communion is received.

The same is true in Catholic teaching. The Church distinguishes between someone who comes in weakness and need and someone who deliberately rejects the life to which the sacrament calls us. Communion presupposes both ecclesial fellowship and an approach that takes what is being received seriously.

The point is not that the sick person does not need the doctor. The point is that the sick person should not demand of himself that he be healthy before seeking help.

There is a difference between being weak and being indifferent.

Common Ground Without Erasing the Differences

None of this means Rosenius can simply be turned into a Catholic theologian.

He stood within a Lutheran tradition, and there are genuine differences between Lutheran and Catholic understandings of Communion, the Mass, and the authority of the Church.

The Catholic Church, for example, describes the Mass as making Christ’s one sacrifice sacramentally present. This does not mean Christ is sacrificed again, or that people must make up for their sins through their own achievements. Paragraphs 1362–1368 of the Catechism relate the Mass to the one sacrifice that has already been accomplished.

This nevertheless remains an area in which the traditions do not express themselves identically, and their differences should not be concealed.

For me, the connection lies elsewhere: in the conviction that Christ meets people who need him, and that Communion is not primarily our gift to God, but God’s gift to us.

Rosenius does not help me overlook the differences. He helps me understand why the journey from the prayer house to the Mass was not simply a break.

The Medicine Had Been There All Along

When I read Rosenius today, I do not look back on a preacher who failed to understand Holy Communion.

I see someone who knew that troubled souls need more than demands to pull themselves together. He knew that the gospel must not only be explained, but given to those who need it. And he knew that Communion can be medicine for people who otherwise remain trapped within themselves.

What I did not fully understand at the time was what it means to give that medicine a regular place in life.

That does not mean I should have expected an immediate and measurable effect. Nor does it mean everything would have been different if only I had received Communion more often at an earlier stage.

But I believe I long underestimated the difference between knowing that help exists and living in a way that actually brings you back to it.

That difference has changed the way I read Rosenius today.

The medicine had been there all along. It simply took me a long time to start taking it.

Rosenius and the Medicine I Did Not Take Often Enough