How to Eat the Lord's Supper Worthily

"Therefore, this is the worthiness – the best and only kind we can bring to God – to offer our vileness (and so to speak) our unworthiness to him so that we might be lifted up by him; to accuse ourselves so that we may be justified by him; moreover, to aspire to that unity which he commends to us in his Supper; and, as he makes all of us one in himself, to desire one soul, one heart, one tongue for all… How could we, needy and bare of all good, befouled with sins, half-dead, eat the Lord’s body worthily?  Rather, we shall think that we, as being poor, come to a kindly giver; as sick, to a physician; as sinners, to the Author of righteousness; finally, as dead, to him who gives us life.  We shall think that the worthiness, which is commended by God, consists chiefly in faith, which reposes all things in Christ, but nothing in ourselves."

~ John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion

(HT: IXMarks)