Eucharist Dropped-Did I do the right thing?

[estesbob]

Well I know this off topic but I wonder how many former altar boys here used to, when the communion rail was used, whack their friends in the Adams apple when the held the patten under their chin?

 

[Lucania]

Today at Mass as I went up to receive Communion and I was receiving on the tongue when the EMHC held up the host and he went to place the host on my tongue and it fell on the ground. I immeaditley reached down and placed it in my mouth. Was I right to do this? Maybe I should receive in the hand so this won’t happen again.

I would approach my Priest & tell him what happened & ask him what is the proper thing to do. It would also be a good opportunity to ask him if your Church could start using a Paten during Communion.

 

[Karl_M]

At my parish, EMHC’s are instructed to first see if the person did what you did, take it and consume it. If they don’t, and it hadn’t gone into the communicant’s mouth, then we are to pick it up and hold onto it, then discreetly consume it when returning to the sanctuary. If it had gone into someone’s mouth, then it would be dissolved with water and poured into the sacarium drain.

 

[gvogt4]

It would be a parish instruction. An individual parish might instruct the members not to and let the person distributing Holy Communion pick the dropped Host up. I have never seen this done except once in RCIA when the question was asked.

yeh, I thought I had read this instruction in a Church document, but after discussing it with my wife I believe that this was the instruction to our parish from our pastor.

porthos11:

You did the right thing.

What was badly missing was the communion paten.

Right! Now that is documented!

“The Communion-plate for the Communion of the faithful should be retained, so as to avoid the danger of the sacred host or some fragment of it falling.”
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_en.html#Chapter%20IV

 

[DaveBj]

snip

“The Communion-plate for the Communion of the faithful should be retained, so as to avoid the danger of the sacred host or some fragment of it falling.”
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_en.html#Chapter%20IV

We have altar servers standing there with the paten, but sometimes they are little girls who would have to be standing on a stool to reach up and put the paten under my chin.

Hmm, what to do? Maybe go back to kneeling at the altar rail?

That means they’d have to put the altar rail back up.

 

[VAC]

At our Parish, (and others in the area), the Servers stand next to the Priest/Deacon/EMHC with a paten with a long handle. They hold the paten below the chin or hands in order to catch any Host that may fall. Perhaps you could speak to the Priest about using these?

I haven’t seen this used since I was a kid.
What happened to that tradition?