Reverence Where it Matters
22nd Sunday of the Year
There has been an ongoing debate for a handful decades now about the right way to receive holy Communion. Before Vatican II, you didn’t have an option: you knelt at the altar rail and received on the tongue. The practice of receiving in the hand started in certain countries in the 1960s without ecclesial permission; but in the 1970s the Holy See began granting indults to the national conferences of bishops who asked for them. This was granted to the United States in 1977 and since then practically every other country and region has also.
How to receive Communion is always a rather fun conversation to have with adults preparing for baptism or reception into full communion with the Catholic Church, because if they casually observe Catholics receiving Communion at Sunday Mass and seek to derive from their behavior what they should do themselves, they are completely confused. You have the vast majority of those who receive standing and in the hand. You have a good number who receive standing but on the tongue, and a few who receive on the tongue and kneel. Then there are those who (like myself) relish in being signs of contradiction, and kneel to receive in the hands. And then there are those who I like to say run the play-option, which is when they approach with their hands in an ambiguous, non-committal posture and yet also come with an open mouth, leaving it to the minister to guess what they really want.
My answer to the question, “How should I receive?” is simply the Church’s answer: however you like, within the parameters the Church gives you. You can stand or kneel and receive the Host in your hand or on the tongue, in whatever combination of the above you so desire. I also recommend that, in view of the common good, if it takes you a while to get down and back up, then it’s probably best to stand; and if you forgot to brush that morning, the minister will be grateful if you put out your hands. Other than that, however you choose to receive Communion, do so reverently and faithfully, for that is what really matters.
But reverence is at the heart of the debate between Communion in the hand verses on the tongue. It is often said that receiving on the tongue is more reverent than receiving in the hand; and I would agree to the extent that the rather odd gesture of a person putting food directly into your mouth does express the truth that this food is nothing ordinary in a way that the far more ordinary exchange of placing something into one’s hand perhaps does not. But can a person just as thoughtlessly receive the Eucharist in either way? Certainly. Neither option guarantees reverence or faith. These are interior dispositions, without which any exterior action will be hollow.
I’ve gone on about the right way to receive Communion because a friend this past week shared with me an article1 that did extensive research into the practice of Communion in the hand, which was no modern innovation, but was, in fact, the standard practice of the Church for the first eight centuries. Not a single Church Father who wrote about it—of which there were many—questioned its intrinsic reverence. John Chrysostom and Caesarius of Arles in particular mention laypeople washing their hands before receiving Communion. One scholar sees the presence of fountains at the doors of ancient basilicas as evidence that people washed their hands before coming inside. But what struck me most powerfully about this article was learning that in that in the 7th century, people were apparently in the habit of bringing plates or bowls to church, to receive the Eucharist in them instead of in their hands, considering their hands unworthy of holding the Host. In response the Council Trullo forbade this practice, “arguing that human beings made in the image of God” are superior to even vessels of silver and gold (181).
We use precious metals to make ciboria and chalices to hold the precious Body and Blood of Our Lord and adorn them with the finest stones and gems, yet are aware that we ourselves are worth more than all of the gold of the world combined? We alone bear God’s image. We boast a dignity no object however costly can rival. And our surpassing value extends even to our bodies, including to our hands with which we toil and labor—and indeed, to every cell. As we heard Saint Paul write to the Romans, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” Our God came to us in Christ assumed a human body, and he shares that same human body with us, drawing us—every part of us, including our body—into communion with him. Authentic Christianity has always been on guard against ideology that reduces the human person to the merely spiritual and discards the body as unnecessary or even a hindrance to our relationship with God. The Eucharist teaches us the opposite. We receive Christ’s body into ours, and ours is thereby transformed into his.
Perhaps this changes the way that we see ourselves—or, maybe better, changes the way we think God sees us. For if our bodies, too, bear the image of God—and because of Christ who still has a human body, they truly do!—then everything we do in the body matters and either enhances or inhibits the way in which we reflect God. God does not only care about us when we turn our minds to him in prayer. He cares about us and our every step, every word we speak, every labor we undertake, all that is accomplished by the sweat of our brow, all that is made by the work of our hands.
Living in ever-greater awareness of this—that God’s presence infuses our entire person, soul and body, and that all we think, say, and do determines the quality of our relationship to him—is the path toward holiness. On the Lord’s word, there is nothing we can give in exchange for our life, for there is nothing more valuable or precious than our life, as we live bearing God’s image and as God works striving to bring his image in us to perfection.
We should be concerned about how we present ourselves to receive Communion. We should be intentional, well-prepared, attentive, and reverent. But this will be for naught if, in the rest of our lives, we are unconcerned of whether we present ourselves as a living sacrifice—denying ourselves, taking up his cross, and losing our lives—or not. We may debate the kinds of Church practices that are best suited in a particular time and place; but we cannot debate the ever-enduring and ever-binding teaching of Christ, who demands the surrender of us all, so that he can raise us all to the joys of everlasting life. May this Eucharist, in which Christ gives himself again for us, remind us of what truly matters.
Homily preached September 2-3, 2023 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, Hampden
Elizabeth Klein, “Patristic Communion in the Hand: A Test Case in Reverence,” Antiphon 27.2 (2023): 174-189. A version of this article was also published in Church Life Journal.
What a great homily and such a balanced approach!