What do you do when an EMHC drops the host?

[rookieonedge]

I had the awful experience of this happening when the extraordinary minister of holy Communion bent down to offer Communion to my mother who was in a wheelchair. Several hosts fell from the rather shallow cup (more like a large plate) onto my mother’s lap and on the floor. Please explain what the EMHC should have done.

(P.S. For your information, she just looked at me in horror expecting me to do something about it. I felt a duty to pick them up myself. When she didn’t opt to put them back, I consumed them as reverently as possible. I did this because when my mother was ill and couldn’t receive the host I brought home in a pyx. I was told by our parish priest to consume the body of Christ myself. I hope I did the right thing.)

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Ordinarily the EMHC should pick up the hosts and set them aside to be appropriately disposed of after Communion. (Consecrated hosts that cannot be consumed usually are dissolved in water. Once the appearance of bread no longer remains, the Real Presence is gone, and the water can be poured either into a sacrarium or into the earth.)

In this case, either the EMHC wasn’t trained properly or she was uncomfortable at the idea of picking up the hosts from your mother’s lap and rooting around the wheelchair for the hosts on the floor. If the latter, then she could have quietly asked you to please hand her the hosts. If the former, then that indicates that all of the EMHCs at your parish may need remedial training in the handling of the eucharistic species.

As for consuming the hosts yourself, no, you shouldn’t have done so. The consumption or disposal of the hosts is the duty of the minister or extraordinary minister delegated to do so. But you did so out of the belief that you should and so are not culpable for any wrongdoing.