Can communion be received without true repentance?

St. Ambrose says, “No one in a state of sin (with negligence) ought to claim a right to or the use of the sacraments, for it is written: You have sinned, be still. As David says in the Psalm lately quoted: ‘We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it … How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?’ (Ps. 137:2, 4). For if the flesh wars against the mind and is not subject to the guidance of the Spirit, that is a strange land which is not subdued by the toil of the cultivator, and so cannot produce the fruits of charity, patience, and peace. It is better, then, to be still when you cannot practise the works of repentance, lest in the very acts of repentance there be that which afterward will need further repentance. For if it be once entered upon and not rightly carried out, it obtains not the result of a first repentance and takes away the use of a later one … To which case the words apply: ‘Raze it, raze it, even to the foundations’ (Ps. 137:7).

“And David, pitying her, says: ‘O wretched daughter of Babylon.’ Wretched indeed, as being the daughter of Babylon, when she ceased to be the daughter of Jerusalem. And yet he

1529 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the First Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 28.2 (NPNF I/12:164) amended.

1530 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the First Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 27.6 (NPNF I/12:151) amended.

1531 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 40.1 (NPNF I/6:392) amended.

1532 St. Augustine of Hippo, The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century: Part III— Sermons; Volume VI: Sermons 184-229Z , trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle (New City Press, 1993) Sermon 227: p. 255.

calls for a healer for her, and says: ‘Happy is he who takes and dashes your littles ones against the rock!’ (Ps. 137:9). That is to say, shall dash all corrupt and filthy thoughts against Christ … For if it is said to Moses when he was desiring to draw nearer: ‘Take your sandals off your feet’ (Ex. 3:5), how much more must we free the feet of our soul from the bonds of the body, and clear our steps from all connection with this world.”¹⁵³³