This general and fundamental principle, which entirely abstracts from the duality of the species, must, nevertheless, be extended to each of the species of bread and wine. For we do not receive in the Sacred Host one part of Christ and in the Chalice the other, as though our reception of the totality depended upon our partaking of both forms; on the contrary, under the appearance of bread alone, as well as under the appearance of wine alone, we receive Christ whole and entire (cf. Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, can. iii). This, the only reasonable conception, finds its Scriptural verification in the fact, that St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11:27, 29) attaches the same guilt “of the body and the blood of the Lord” to the unworthy “eating or drinking”, understood in a disjunctive sense, as he does to “eating and drinking”, understood in a copulative sense. The traditionalfoundation for this is to be found in the testimony of the Fathers and of the Church’s liturgy, according to which the glorified Savior can be present on our altars only in His totality and integrity, and not divided into parts or distorted to the form of a monstrosity. It follows, therefore, that supreme adoration is separately due to the Sacred Host and to the consecrated contents of the Chalice. On this last truth are based especially the permissibility and intrinsic propriety of Communion only under one kind for the laity and for priests not celebrating Mass (see COMMUNION UNDER BOTH KINDS). But in particularizing upon the dogma, we are naturally led to the further truth, that, at least after the actual division of either Species into parts, Christ is present in each part in His full and entire essence. If the Sacred Host be broken into pieces or if the consecrated Chalice be drunk in small quantities, Christ in His entirety is present in each particle and in each drop. By the restrictive clause, separatione factâ the Council of Trent (Sess. XIII, can. iii) rightly raised this truth to the dignity of a dogma. While from Scripture we may only judge it improbable that Christ consecrated separately each particle of the bread He had broken, we know with certainty, on the other hand, that He blessed the entire contents of the Chalice and then gave it to His disciples to be partaken of distributively (cf. Matthew 26:27 sq.; Mark 14:23). It is only on the basis of the Tridentine dogma that we can understand how Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. myst. v, n. 21) obliged communicants to observe the most scrupulous care in conveying the Sacred Host to their mouths, so that not even “a crumb, more precious than gold or jewels”, might fall from their hands to the ground; how Cæsarius of Arles taught that there is “just as much in the small fragment as in the whole”; how the different liturgies assert the abiding integrity of the “indivisible Lamb”, in spite of the “division of the Host”; and, finally, how in actual practice the faithful partook of the broken particles of the Sacred Host and drank in common from the same cup.
