I can’t recall right now, nor will I probably ever again in this lifetime (of the gifts the Lord has given me, refined memory recall is not one of them), the season, day, or moment I decided to start receiving Holy Communion directly on the tongue as opposed to the palm of my hand.
As a 9-year-old First Holy Communicant, it seemed less than normal, more than awkward, and definitely out of the question. It would have been like deciding on the first day of middle school to go straight to the “nerd table” for lunch—which I ended up ensconcing myself into as a new teenager anyway, but that’s beside the point.
It wasn’t until my college years (this much I recall, at least) that I elected to start receiving the Body of our Lord Jesus on my tongue during distribution. This was years after I began serving as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. In hindsight, presenting our Blessed Lord between my finger and thumb, Sunday after Sunday, communicant after communicant, only increased my reverence and awe for His desire to be physically vulnerable and intimate with His people, as opposed to making me “numb” to His Gift, or getting so used to receiving It that I took It for granted. There was something about holding Him within my own grasp so often as a minister that inspired me to receive Him less frequently on the hand and more frequently on the tongue as a communicant.
Temporarily, this option is…not an option for me and many other Catholics. Why? Because we all suddenly realized that we risk licking our minister’s fingers when choosing this option, and that’s just weird.
Well, I wish this were the reason! My pastor, like other priests and bishops in America and throughout the world right now, is asking his communicants to receive Holy Eucharist in the most contactless way possible to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Obedience vs. Piety: Choose a side?
Satan loves to divide things. Among his favorite targets are, doubtlessly, members of the Body of Christ and the domestic church. He strives to pit us against one another, and now, it seems, he’s presenting Catholic churches, homes, and friendships with a choice: You want to be holy? Alright, pick a side: obedience or piety. You can’t have one without the other.
It’s alright. You can go ahead and tell Satan to shut up. Jesus did.
With U.S. bishops’ requests to consider receiving the Eucharist in the hand to prevent the spread of germs we seem to be pairing this deceiving question and demanding our own black-and-white, one-or-the-other answer to it: Should I be obedient to the clergy’s wishes, or pious in my reception of the Lord?
Surely, we can do both simultaneously.
I am unable to imagine Jesus expressing disappointment in us for receiving Him in our hands during Communion right now, especially when it’s already an approved guideline of reception by the Church; especially when it’s the surest way to limit the risk of contagion while still being fed spiritually; and especially when those acting in persona Christi are encouraging us to do so.
We as communicants can simultaneously strive for utmost obedience and piety as the Church eases back into public distribution of Holy Communion. Here’s why I suppose this and how I hope it serves as a comfort to those of us accustomed to receiving on the tongue:
Jesus is used to less-than-perfect treatment.
In fact, He anticipates it. He didn’t expect to be perfectly revered when He handed His Body over to fallible men. He didn’t expect to be perfectly revered even when He made His Body a communion of fallible men. The King of the universe is offering His frequently unfaithful subjects the greatest Gift on earth; not only is this unfair exchange almost laughable in its impracticality, but on top of it, we will never be nor will we ever know how to behave like perfectly worthy recipients of God’s Gift. Our thanksgiving will always fall short.
And the King, in His mercy and goodness, understands this. Does that make our offense against Him—being unfaithful prior to accepting His Gift—excusable? Of course not! Yet He offers It anyway.
There is no food or drink on this earth that Jesus could have transubstantiated that would have been completely immune to even the most unintended abuse. Come to think of it, if decreasing the risk of being mishandled were really His priority, He mightn’t have made Himself into a food that is crumby and easily dissolved, or a drink that is…well, any liquid whatsoever.
We risk scandalizing His Body every day with sin and, yes, sometimes even with how we receive Him into our own bodies. The absurd and inconceivable and miraculous thing is that He still asks us to do it—to receive Him, not to sin, that is.
We’re not worthy. That’s the point. Jesus understands. He gets it. He wouldn’t have asked to enter our bodies if He couldn’t handle being received for a brief moment in our hands, then chewed on and digested.
“Take this, all of you, and eat of it.”
Could you imagine if any one of the apostles had responded, “Actually, instead of handing Your Body to me, could you just place it directly here on my tongue?” Unfortunately, none of their immediate replies are recorded in the Eucharistic Institution accounts, nor whether they chose to eat and drink of their Master’s Body and Blood (although, of course, if any one of them had declined, we can imagine that that would have been mentioned) in any of the three Synoptic Gospels; so we’ll have to work towards joining them in heaven to ask what exactly the Last Supper (and the First Mass) looked like.
The point here in mentioning Jesus’s timeless request is: if our Redeemer presents us with the choice to take His Body, who are we to refuse? Now, of course, there were extraordinary circumstances at the Last Supper, there were extraordinary circumstances all throughout Church history, and there are (hopefully temporary) extraordinary circumstances now. Whenever possible and prudent, by all means we should freely contemplate the option of receiving Jesus directly into our bodies, but whenever impossible and imprudent…well, let’s just say there are much worse ways to offend our Lord.
Jesus, have mercy on us as we receive You into our most unworthy hands, and breathe upon us a spirit of unity and dispel all division as we hope to gather publicly again in celebration and remembrance of Your Holy Sacrifice.
Stop to Smell the Flowers 