While everyone is preparing for that happy day, here is a section from The Treasury of the Sacred Heart on preparing to receive Holy Communion:
The preparation for Communion is twofold -- remote and proximate. The remote preparation consists in detachment from creatures. If you expected a visit from a great personage to whom certain objects in your house should be offensive, would you not remove them before his arrival? When, then, you wish to receive Jesus Christ, you should remove from your breast all earthly affections which you know to be displeasing to Him. He who wishes to communicate often, must empty his heart of the things of the earth. This is precisely what our Lord once saint to St. Gertrude: I want nothing more from you than that you come to receive me with a heart divested of all self-love.
As to the immediate preparation, you should begin it in the evening before Communion by acts of love and of desire. As soon as you awake in the morning, consider that you are to receive Jesus Christ, and, with a fervent aspiration, invite your Spouse to hasten into your soul. Immediately before Communion, you should excite in your soul lively sentiments of faith, humility, and desire.
First, you ought to animate your faith by reflecting on the majesty of Him Whom you are to receive. if faith did not assure us of it, who could ever imagine that a God wished to make Himself the food of His Own creatures?
Secondly, you should excite sentiments of humility by considering that, in spite of your misery, you are to receive God into your moth and into your heart. The Ven. Segneri used to say, that for a person going to Communion, the most appropriate sentiment is one of astonishment, which would make him exclaim, What! a God to me! a God to me! What would be the sentiments of a shepherd, if he saw his sovereign coming to dwell with him in his tent? What are your sentiments when you behold the King of heaven coming into your heart in the Holy Communion? Will you not at least say to Him, with true humility, "Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof?" To humility unite an act of contrition and of hope, confidently expecting that Jesus Christ, when He comes into your soul, will enrich you with His graces.
Thirdly, you must excite an ardent desire of receiving Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrament. To nourish the soul, this Celestial Bread must be eaten with hunger. He who receives It with the strongest desire, receives from It the greatest graces. St. Francis de Sales used to say, that He who gives Himself to us only through love, should be received only through love. Our Redeemer once said to St. Matilda, "When you communicate, desire to have the greatest love which the saints have had for Me; and, in return for this desire, I will accept your love in proportion to the fervor with which you wished for it."
To remember these acts, it will be sufficient to say to yourself, before Communion: "Who comes? To whom does He come? Why does He come? A God of infinite majesty comes; He comes; to me a miserable sinner; and He comes to be loved by me."
Keep the Faith!
