XXV

Reception of Communion

RECEIVING THE HOST:

When you come up to receive the Host, you have the option of receiving in the hand or on the tongue. If you choose to receive in the hand, remember to hold your hands to receive the Host instead of taking the Host out of the priest’s hands! (It is the gift of God. Gift is received not snatched) St. Justin Martyr described receiving in the hand as “making a throne for the Lord,” your left hand over your right, so that you can then pick up the Host with your right hand to consume the Body of Christ. (If you’re left handed, you may want to reverse the order of the hands.) The priest or extraordinary minister holds the host in front of you and says, “The Body of Christ,” to which you will respond by bowing your head (not your full body) and saying “Amen.” No other gestures of reverence are necessary. And you immediately consume it before moving away from the station.

If you choose to receive on the tongue, the priest or extraordinary minister holds the host in front of you and says, “The Body of Christ,” to which you will respond by bowing your head (not your full body) and saying “Amen.” After saying “Amen,” immediately open your mouth wide enough for the priest or EM to place the Host on your tongue. Make sure that the priest’s or EM’s fingers are out of your mouth before closing your mouth.  Some people say “thank you” instead of Amen. Don’t thank the priest, it is not his gift for which he is to be thanked. It is the body of Christ and ministers are only custodians.

RECEIVING THE PRECIOUS BLOOD:

At Masses where communion is also distributed from the cup, you have the option of receiving from the cup as well. Receiving from the cup is never required, as the complete Body and Blood of Christ is present in both the Host and the cup. When you receive from the cup, the deacon, acolyte, or extraordinary minister holds the cup in front of you and says, “The Blood of Christ,” to which you will respond by bowing your head (not your full body) and saying “Amen.” When consuming the Precious Blood, take only a sip, so that there is enough for all to receive. If you choose not to receive from the cup, you should stop and bow as you pass the cup out of reverence for the Precious Blood.

If you receive with your hands, you run risk of tiny particle, which still is Jesus Christ, falls from your hand is trampled upon by yourself and everyone else in Church. Christ died for our sins and gave us Himself in the Eucharist to be our food, not to be trampled again by the negligent.

(Pope Benedict’s preference for receiving Holy Communion on tongue: “I am not opposed in principle to Communion in the hand; I have both administered and received Communion in this way myself. The idea behind my current practice of having people kneel to receive Communion on the tongue was to send a signal and to underscore the Real Presence with an exclamation point. One important reason is that there is a great danger of superficiality precisely in the kinds of Mass events we hold at Saint Peter’s, both in the Basilica and in the Square. I have heard of people who, after receiving Communion, stick the Host in their wallet to take home as a kind of souvenir. In this context, where people think that everyone is just automatically supposed to receive Communion — everyone else is going up, so I will, too—I wanted to send a clear signal. I wanted it to be clear: Something quite special is going on here! He is here, the One before whom we fall on our knees! Pay attention! This is not just some social ritual in which we can take part if we want to.")

The prerequisites for the reception of Holy Communion are 1) being in the state of grace, 2) having fasted for one hour (for the sick 15 minutes if possible, no fast if fasting is not possible), and 3) devotion and attention.

2.State of Grace. As St. Paul notes in his letter to Corinthians, reception after examining oneself is a prerequisite for worthy reception, otherwise Communion has the opposite effect from the desired union with our Lord. The scripture tells that Judas received the holy communion and Satan entered into him and he went out of the upper room immediately to betray the Lord. If you’re planning on committing a mortal sin in the days ahead, then you can’t repent. Holy Communion should not be received by people who are objectively contradicting the truth of Christ."

If our mind is still intent on doing the evil, and not ready to repent and the resolution not to sin any more we will get confirmed in the evil intention and the reception of the communion is going to fire back. God does not work against our will. If our will is to commit sin that will is not be changed to change by the reception of the communion.

This is why, out of respect for Christ and our own good, the Church obliges us to be in the state of grace when we receive. It should be noted, however, that some Catholics have the mistaken notion that they cannot go to Communion unless they go to Confession first. This is incorrect. Both the theology of the Church and her law oblige Confession ONLY when there is mortal sin. Confessions of devotion, however, are highly recommended. Thus, two errors are to be avoided, liberalism and rigorism.

If there is a grave sin and there is a practical impossibility to make the confession before receiving the communion, one may with true contrition receive the communion with the condition that one will make the confession at the earliest opportunity.

In "Ecclesia de Eucharistia," St. John Paul II teaches,

Along these same lines, the Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly stipulates that "anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to Communion."

Canon 915 forbids Holy Communion from being given to people who live such sinful lifestyles without repentance. "Those who have been ... obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

But the Church in forming Her disciplines never judges the interior heart of man, which is known to God alone. Rather, Catholic discipline has always focused on the external and public acts of man, which can be judged as being in accord or not with Church teaching. And when man's external actions are gravely at odds with the Church's unchanging moral truths, then Holy Mother Church bans such men from receiving Holy Communion to prevent them from spiritually harming themselves by making a sacrilegious Communion.

XXIV

Last Sunday we saw that the breaking of the bread symbolizes the death of Jesus and the commingling symbolizes his resurrection.

Why do we pray the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), and where does it come from?
    As the priest performs the Fraction Rite, the choir immediately intones the threefold Agnus Dei, “Lamb of God.” St.John the Baptist pointing Jesus to his disciples said, this is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (1.29). This lamb is the pascal lamb, originally killed and eaten just before the Hebrews were delivered from Egypt. The blood of the lamb was smeared on the door posts so the angel who slew the firstborn of Egypt would Passover the Hebrew homes. This symbolism presents Jesus as the one whose blood is shed for the saving and deliverance of his people from evil and from death. The lamb is also mentioned in the Suffering servant Song of Isaiah 53. Here the main idea is that the servant of Yahweh takes upon himself the sins of the people, giving his life as an offering for their sin. John’s gospel records that Jesus was crucified at the very time the Lamb of God was sacrificed in the temple on the day of atonement, for the expiation of sins. The words of this great prayer should focus us on the Book of Revelation, a connection that becomes more explicit when the priest, after the Agnus Dei, says, “Behold the Lamb of God…” We have already seen the connection of our Lord to the Lamb of Passover, but here we see the connection to the Book of Revelation – a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem – which declares, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 5:12). Here, in this vision, the angels praise the Lamb of God and we, who join in this heavenly liturgy by our own earthly liturgy, do the same and join with them in this praise, but also plead with him that he may show us mercy as we prepare to receive him in Communion. The priest then elevates the Body and Blood of Christ, proclaiming to all the faithful in words drawn from the Book of Revelation that truly this is the Body and Blood of Christ! How blessed are we truly to be invited to this foretaste of heaven (Revelation 19:1-9)!
    Why do we say, “Lord, I am not worthy…?”
    Now, we can truly understand the reason for our response to this bold proclamation. Here before us is the glory and grandeur of Jesus Christ, present in the Blessed Sacrament, and we have the same reaction as the Israelites when they are faced with the sight of God’s glory – we dare not look, lest we die! Our words echo the sentiments of the Roman Centurion who realizes the true nature of Christ: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed” (Matthew 8:8). Why roof? Here we have a reference to our own bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit – we are not worthy that our Lord should enter under the roof of our own souls, the temple of the Holy Spirit. But with one word, he pours out his mercy upon us and draws us close to himself that we may be made worthy in his sight.

XXIII

 Why does the priest break the host at Mass?
    Following this exchange of peace, the priest begins the Fraction Rite, which includes the singing of the Agnus Dei or “Lamb of God,” the Breaking of the Bread and the Commingling. The Breaking of the Bread calls to mind the great account of the Road to Emmaus in which the disciples recognized our Lord “in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:13-35). This account is clearly a eucharistic reference as the priest performs the same actions of the Risen Christ, who “took the bread, blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them” (Luke 24:30). The early Church Fathers, as well as the great saints and doctors of the Church, have assigned varied and beautiful spiritual meanings to the Fraction Rite. St. Thomas Aquinas gives a beautiful threefold interpretation of the Fraction Rite, illustrating that every liturgical action has a deep spiritual significance with multiple layers of meaning that can only be drawn out through much prayer and reflection. He writes that first it is the breaking of Christ’s body in the Passion. Secondly, it denotes the various states of the mystical body of Christ, the Church. Finally, it represents the distribution of graces proceeding from Christ’s Passion. The breaking of the bread reminds us as St. Paul tells us that we are one body, yet many members, all united in Christ (1 Corinthians 10:17).
    Why does the priest place a small piece of the host into the chalice?
    After breaking the host, the priest takes a small piece of the Body of Christ and puts it into the chalice containing the Blood of Christ. As he does this, he prays, “May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.” This is known as the commingling and is derived from an ancient sign of unity with Rome. The pope would have a small piece of the host which he consecrated sent out to priests in the city of Rome, who would then place the host into their own chalices as an expression of unity. While this is no longer the case, its rich history can still be called to mind as a sign of that unity with Rome. The great liturgist, Dom Guéranger, also gives us a spiritual insight into this commingling: “Its object is to show that, at the moment of our Lord’s resurrection, his blood was reunited to his body, by flowing again in his veins as before.” This link to the Resurrection is a common insight in the Church. Another less common, but still beautiful, insight is that of St. Alphonsus Ligouri: “This mingling of the holy species represents, too, the unity of divinity with humanity, which was at first effected in the womb of Mary through the incarnation of the Word, and which is renewed in the souls of the faithful when they receive him in the eucharistic Communion.”