History of Communion in the Hand

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This is taken from I. Shawn McElhinney’s work.

In the early days of the Church the faithful frequently carried the Blessed Eucharist with them to their homes (cf. Tertullian, “Ad uxor.”, II, v; Cyprian, “De lapsis”, xxvi) or upon long journeys (Ambrose, De excessu fratris, I, 43, 46), while the deacons were accustomed to take the Blessed Sacrament to those who did not attend Divine service (cf. Justin, Apol., I, n. 67), as well as to the martyrs, the incarcerated, and the infirm (cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI, xliv). The deacons were also obliged to transfer the particles that remained to specially prepared repositories called Pastophoria (cf. Apostolic Constitutions, VIII, xiii). [11]And for those who would claim that this was only during persecutions, then what of the following citations from the Fathers and Councils specifically speaking of communion reception by hand??? The first is from St. Basil the Great from around 378 AD:

It is good and beneficial to communicate every day, and to partake of the holy Body and Blood of Christ. For He distinctly says, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.” And who doubts that to share frequently in life, is the same thing as to have manifold life. I, indeed, communicate four times a week, on the Lord’s day, on Wednesday, on Friday, and on the Sabbath, and on the other days if there is a commemoration of any Saint. It is needless to point out that for anyone in times of persecution to be compelled to take the communion in his own hand without the presence of a priest or minister is not a serious offence, as long custom sanctions this practice from the facts themselves. All the solitaries in the desert, where there is no priest, take the communion themselves, keeping communion at home. And at Alexandria and in Egypt, each one of the laity, for the most part, keeps the communion, at his own house, and participates in it when he likes. For when once the priest has completed the offering, and given it, the recipient, participating in it each time as entire, is bound to believe that he properly takes and receives it from the giver. And even in the church, when the priest gives the portion, the recipient takes it with complete power over it, and so lifts it to his lips with his own hand. It has the same validity whether one portion or several portions are received from the priest at the same time. [12]
 
continued…

And from the generally very reliable Catholic Encyclopedia article on communion patens (lest anyone think this practice was only Eastern in orientation):

The word paten comes from a Latin form patina or patena, evidently imitated from the Greek patane. It seems from the beginning to have been used to denote a flat open vessel of the nature of a plate or dish. Such vessels in the first centuries were used in the service of the altar, and probably served to collect the offerings of bread made by the faithful and also to distribute the consecrated fragments which, after the loaf had been broken by the celebrant, were brought down to the communicants, who in their own hands received each a portion from the patina… When towards the ninth century the zeal of the faithful regarding the frequent reception of Holy Communion very much declined, the system of consecrating the bread offered by the faithful and of distributing Communion from the patinæ seems gradually to have changed, and the use of the large and proportionately deep patinæ ministeriales fell into abeyance. It was probably about the same time that the custom grew up for the priest himself to use a paten at the altar to contain the sacred Host, and obviate the danger of scattered particles after the Fraction. This paten, however, was of much smaller size and resembled those with which we are now familiar. [13]Therefore, unless our early Christian brethren were committing sacrilege or being disrespectful to God, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the faithful touching the Body and Blood of Our Lord with their hands. Disrespect for the Eucharist cannot logically come from holding Our Lord in one’s hands or the early Christians were profoundly disrespectful since they not only held Our Lord in their hands but they took Him home also. Will self-styled ‘traditionalists’ now call the early Christians “sacrilegious” for their actions??? Was St. Basil the Great and St. Cyril of Jerusalem promoting irreverence of the Blessed Sacrament??? Was St. John Damascus “sacrilegious” or promoting “irreverence” when he noted the following in his writing “The Orthodox Faith” in the early 700’s:

The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, “This is My body,” not, this is a figure of My body: and “My blood,” not, a figure of My blood. And on a previous occasion He had said to the Jews, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. For My flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. And again, He that eateth Me, shall live.Wherefore with all fear and a pure conscience and certain faith let us draw near and it will assuredly be to us as we believe, doubting nothing. Let us pay homage to it in all purity both of soul and body: for it is twofold. Let us draw near to it with an ardent desire, **and with our hands held in the form of the cross let us receive the body of the Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal, **in order that the fire of the longing, that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the divine fire. Isaiah saw the coal. But coal is not plain wood but wood united with fire: in like manner also the bread of the communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity. But a body which is united with divinity is not one nature, but has one nature belonging to the body and another belonging to the divinity that is united to it, so that the compound is not one nature but two. [14]
 
It was done in the early church, but does it justify today’s pratice when there is a huge potiential of sacrilege?

The Sacrilege comes when the Communion particles still remain on the person’s hand.

Look at this way, Communion in the hand was reintroduced by Thomas Cranmer as a way of denying the Real Prescence. And in modern times it was also reintroduced illicitly by priests and bishops. They granted nations an indult granted that there will be respect for the Holy Communion and will not effect the belief of the Real Presence.
 
When I receive the Eucharist in my hand I always look to see if there are any particles in my hand as well. Could there be particles on the priest’s fingers that fall to the floor?
 
I Shawn McIlhenny is arrogant in my oopinion. If one has ever read his work or his blog, he even dismisses what Cardinal Ratzinger and Fr. Fessio have said about liturgical matters. His site against Traditionalism is an exercise on mental gymnastics and he is known for taking things out of context and slectively quoting things.

As for communion in the hand, it was done in some areas of the early church, but one has to ask themselves, why did this fall out of practice by 500AD in the church? If one looks at how the liturgy has changed, they can see that it changed as the understand of the Euchraist has deepend, it changed also to combat heresy, that is why it became so vertical in nature.

To me , it is no surprise that with the altar being turned around, the altar rails being ripped down, people standing for communion and communion in the hand, that so many people no longer believe in the real presence.
 
Theoretically, I don’t see anything intrinsically wrong with receiving the Eucharist in the hand. However, from my own experience, I do believe that reverence for the Eucharist has diminished since the post-Vatican II changes to the liturgy. I remember the old days when communicants approached the communion rail reverently, knelt down, and received Holy Communion on the tongue from a priest, with an altar boy holding the paten to prevent any portion of the Body of Christ falling to the floor. Nowadays, I observe confusion as communicants approach a number of different “ministers” of the Eucharist while trying to avoid bumping into each other. I see children dressed like they just came from the playground, young women with miniskirts and low-cut dresses, grown men in shorts and sneakers. I see them chewing, laughing,and waving to others in attendance. The proof is in the pudding. Why else do polls show that so many Catholics no longer believe in the Real Presence?
 
**Rethinking
Communion in the hand

**

By Jude A. Huntz


The Sacred Council of Trent declared that the custom of only the priest who is celebrating the Mass giving Communion to himself (with his own hands), and the laity receiving it from him, is an Apostolic Tradition.1

A more rigorous study of the available evidence from Church History and from the writings of the Fathers does not support the assertion that Communion in the hand was a universal practice which was gradually supplanted and eventually replaced by the practice of Communion on the tongue.

Rather, the facts seem to point to a different conclusion.

Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461), already in the fifth century, is an early witness of the traditional practice. In his comments on the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, he speaks of Communion in the mouth as the current usage: "One receives in the mouth what one believes by faith."2 The Pope does not speak as if he were introducing a novelty, but as if this were a well-established fact.

A century and a half later, but still three centuries before the practice (according to the popular account reviewed above) was supposedly introduced, Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) is another witness. In his dialogues (Roman 3, c. 3) he relates how Pope St. Agapito performed a miracle during the Mass, after having placed the Body of the Lord into someone’s mouth. We are also told by John the Deacon of this Pope’s manner of giving Holy Communion.

These witnesses are from the fifth and the sixth centuries. How can one reasonably say that Communion in the hand continued as the official practice until the tenth century? How can one claim that giving Communion on the tongue is a medieval invention?

We are not claiming that under no circumstances whatever did the faithful receive by their own hands. But, under what conditions did this happen? It does seem that from very early on it was usual for the priest to place the Sacred Host into the mouth of the communicant. However, during times of persecution, when priests were not readily available, and when the faithful took the Sacrament to their homes, they gave Communion to themselves, by their own hand. In other words, rather than be totally deprived of the Bread of Life, they could receive by their own hand, when not to do so would mean being deprived of that necessary spiritual nourishment. The same applied to monks who had gone out into the desert where they would not have the services of a priest, and would not want to give up the practice of daily Communion.

To summarize, the practice was that one could touch the Host when not to do so would mean being deprived of the Sacrament. But when a priest was available, one did not receive in one’s hand.
 
So St. Basil (330-379) says clearly that to receive Communion by one’s own hand is only permitted in times of persecution or, as was the case with monks in the desert, when no deacon or priest was available to give it. “It is not necessary to show that it does not constitute a grave fault for a person to communicate with his own hand in a time of persecution when there is no priest or deacon” (Letter 93, my emphasis). The text implies that to receive in the hand under other circumstances, outside of persecution, would be a grave fault.3 The saint based his opinion on the custom of the solitary monks, who reserved the Blessed Sacrament in their dwellings, and, in the absence of the priest or deacon, gave themselves Communion.

In his article on “Communion” in the Dictionaire d’Archeologie Chretienne, LeClerq declares that the peace of Constantine was bringing the practice of Communion in the hand to an end. This reaffirms for us the reasoning of St. Basil that it was persecution that created the alternative of either receiving by hand or not receiving at all.

After persecution had ceased, evidently the practice of Communion in the hand persisted here and there. It was considered by Church authority to be an abuse to be rid of, since it was deemed to be contrary to the custom of the apostles.

Thus the Council of Rouen, which met in 650, says, “Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layman or laywomen but only in their mouths.” The Council of Constantinople which was known as in trullo (not one of the ecumenical councils held there) prohibited the faithful from giving Communion to themselves (which is of course what happens when the Sacred Particle is placed in the hand of the communicant). It decreed an excommunication of one week’s duration for those who would do so in the presence of a bishop, priest or deacon.

Of course, the promoters of “Communion in the hand” generally make little mention of the evidence we have brought forward. They do, however, make constant use of the text attributed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who lived in the fourth century at the same time as St. Basil.

Henri LeClerq summarized things as follows: “Saint Cyril of Jerusalem recommended to the faithful that on presenting themselves to receive Communion, they should have the right hand extended, with their fingers together, supported by the left hand, and with the palm a little bit concave; and at the moment in which the Body of Christ was deposited in the hand, the communicant would say: Amen.”

There is more to this text than just the above, however. It also goes on to propose the following: “Sanctify your eyes with contact with the Holy Body . . . . When your lips are still wet, touch your hand to your lips, and then pass you hand over your eyes, your forehead and your other senses, to sanctify them.” This rather odd (or even superstitious? Irreverent?) recommendation has caused scholars to question the authenticity of this text. Some think that perhaps there has been an interpolation, or that it is really the saint’s successor who wrote it. It is not impossible that the text is really the work of the Patriarch John, who succeeded Cyril in Jerusalem. But this John was of suspect orthodoxy. This we know from the correspondence of St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. So, in favor of Communion in the hand we have a text of dubious origin and questionable content. And on the other hand, we have reliable witnesses, including two great popes, that placing the Sacred Host in the mouth of the communicant was already common and unremarkable in at last the fifth century.
 
Jesus said "Take this, all of you, and eat"I don’t think he gave communion to the disciples in the mouth.
 
Well, Saturday at Vigil Mass I saw a good reason for eliminating receiving in the hand. I was kneeling, but I had a good view of the communion line on the far side of the church, and the last guy in line caught my attention because he was acting strange, just a little bit, not much. He received in the hand from the EMHC, turned left, bypassed the cup, walked back along the side of the church and out the front door. His hand never went to his mouth. He carried the Host out :mad:

I’m going to watch for him next Saturday, and if he does it again, I’m going to mention it to Fr. Kevin.

DaveBj
 
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Exalt:
Jesus said "Take this, all of you, and eat"I don’t think he gave communion to the disciples in the mouth.
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**6. The Last Supper

**But surely the apostles received Communion in the hand at the last supper? It is usually presumed that this was so. Even if it were, though, we would point out that the apostles were themselves priests, or even, bishops.

But we must not forget a traditional practice of middle-eastern hospitality, which was practiced in Jesus’ time and which is still the case: one feeds one’s guests with one’s own hand, placing a symbolic morsel in the mouth of the guest. And we have scriptural evidence of this as well: our Lord dipped a morsel of bread into some wine, and gave it to Judas. Did he place this wet morsel into Judas’s hand? That would be rather messy. Did he not perhaps extend to the one whom he addressed later in the garden as “Friend” the gesture of hospitality spoken of above? And if so, why not with Holy Communion, “giving himself by his own hand.”

**7. Take and eat . . . **Did not our Lord say of Holy Communion, “Take and eat”? Yes, but these words were addressed to the apostles and not to all Christians indiscriminately. Further, even if these words had been addressed to all the faithful, they are not verified in our standardized way of receiving Holy Communion. Literalism here would require that the priest or other minister merely hold the ciborium while the faithful “took” and ate. But this practice is forbidden. (It has been practiced here and there in violation of liturgical law.)

catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Homiletic/04-97/2/2.html
 
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DaveBj:
Well, Saturday at Vigil Mass I saw a good reason for eliminating receiving in the hand. I was kneeling, but I had a good view of the communion line on the far side of the church, and the last guy in line caught my attention because he was acting strange, just a little bit, not much. He received in the hand from the EMHC, turned left, bypassed the cup, walked back along the side of the church and out the front door. His hand never went to his mouth. He carried the Host out :mad:

I’m going to watch for him next Saturday, and if he does it again, I’m going to mention it to Fr. Kevin.

DaveBj
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He could have been a satanist. They use the consecrated host to commit sacrilage against our Lord. The priest is to make sure that the eucharist is consumed. Mention something to him now.
 
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Exalt:
Jesus said "Take this, all of you, and eat"I don’t think he gave communion to the disciples in the mouth.
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The last supper was also the start of the Priesthood. The apostles hands were all concecrated, as they studied under Jesus for 3 years, they were not laymen.
 
He [theguy who carried the consecrated Host out of the church] could have been a satanist. They use the consecrated host to commit sacrilage against our Lord. The priest is to make sure that the eucharist is consumed. Mention something to him [your priest] now.
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Agreed.

Or, the man might have been taking the Eucharist to a sick relative.
This the incorrect way to do it.

There are small containers called PYX, for this purpose.

Tell your priest of this BEFORE Sunday, so that he might inform the extraordinary ministers of holy communion, and the priest might also tell the ushers.
 
When did communion on the tongue start? What is the date of the first reference that describes reception of the Holy Body on the tongue during mass?
 
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Agomemnon:
He could have been a satanist. They use the consecrated host to commit sacrilage against our Lord. The priest is to make sure that the eucharist is consumed. Mention something to him now.
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Fr. Kevin is not in good physical shape (as far as standing and walking are concerned); he doesn’t distribute Holy Communion. That is left to the deacon and the EMHCs.

I will try to talk to him before this coming weekend.

DaveBj
 
My intention with this thread was not to say that communion in the hand is by any means a better way to receive than in the mouth (I do the latter). I just wanted to point out that receiving in the hand did not originate recently.

I think that there are several abuses going on, especially in regards to taking care of the Eucharist. However, I do NOT think it is because of communion in the hand. This is a tertiary to the bigger picture. People do not have their faith. Communion in the hand did not cause people to no longer believe in the real prescence. People are more willing to put the Eucharist in their hand BECAUSE they don’t believe. Not the other way around. This is the same reason why people are dressed… inappropriately for mass, why they chew gum in mass, why they leave early, why they don’t understand what is going on: THEY DO NOT KNOW THEIR FAITH, and they DON"T CARE. They have not been taught their faith, so why should they care? Why should they respect something they don’t care about?
 
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thisnthat:
When I receive the Eucharist in my hand I always look to see if there are any particles in my hand as well. Could there be particles on the priest’s fingers that fall to the floor?
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The formulation of the flour and water is done in a way that minimizes “crumbing.” Sealed-edge hosts are particularly secure.

If your conscience is troubled, just receive on the tongue.
 
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cassman:
I think that there are several abuses going on, especially in regards to taking care of the Eucharist. However, I do NOT think it is because of communion in the hand. This is a tertiary to the bigger picture. People do not have their faith. Communion in the hand did not cause people to no longer believe in the real prescence. People are more willing to put the Eucharist in their hand BECAUSE they don’t believe. Not the other way around. This is the same reason why people are dressed… inappropriately for mass, why they chew gum in mass, why they leave early, why they don’t understand what is going on: THEY DO NOT KNOW THEIR FAITH, and they DON"T CARE. They have not been taught their faith, so why should they care? Why should they respect something they don’t care about?
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Bingo. As a Convert I can honestly, and with great sadness, say that in my former denomination the Blessed Sacrament was received either on the tongue or in the hand and it was treated with surpassing awe and reverence. People believed that it was truly the Body and Blood of Christ and behaved as if it were so.
 
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Iohannes:
It was done in the early church, but does it justify today’s pratice when there is a huge potiential of sacrilege?

The Sacrilege comes when the Communion particles still remain on the person’s hand.

Look at this way, Communion in the hand was reintroduced by Thomas Cranmer as a way of denying the Real Prescence. And in modern times it was also reintroduced illicitly by priests and bishops. They granted nations an indult granted that there will be respect for the Holy Communion and will not effect the belief of the Real Presence.
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There is no sacrilege if there is no intent. A sacrilige is an intentional act.

Would you care to provide evidence that Thomas Cranmer intended to deny the Real Presence, or that he intended that Communion in the hand should produce that?
 
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