Last week’s article (part 1 of 2)  explained the enfeebled prospect of the Catholic Church’s upcoming ‘Eucharistic Revival’ bringing about a nationwide awakening and positive change if aberrations and deviations in how the Body of Christ is fundamentally treated are not addressed. Before we spend time and money trying to rouse Catholics’ love and understanding of the Eucharist with the festival-like Eucharistic Revival, we need to fix and/or abolish decades-old irregularities and impious actions that occur at Communion time.

Of the four most fundamental acts regarding the preparation for, reception of, and distribution of Communion that need addressing by the Church, the first two acts are how the majority of Catholics show a lack of reverence to the Blessed Sacrament by casually and impiously receiving the sacred host in the hand and while standing. These two actions were discussed in last week’s article. In today’s article, I will be writing about the third and fourth fundamental practices that the Church must overhaul if we are to have an authentic, enduring Eucharistic revival.

One of the decades-old irregularities in how the Body of Christ has been treated involves who actually handles and distributes the Blessed Sacrament. The most fitting ministers to dispense the Eucharist are priests, as their consecrated hands were anointed with sacred chrism oil at their ordination rights. Only priests are allowed to act “in persona Christi” – which means “in the person of Christ” – and called to stand in for Christ Himself during the sacrifice of the Mass. Eventually, deacons were also allowed to be “ordinary ministers” to distribute Eucharist as they too have been ordained.

Using lay ministers to help distribute Communion has only been permitted by the Church for the past 50-some years, and this allowance was supposed to be exclusively for extraordinary circumstances. Your average Catholic assumes that lay persons who administer Communion are called “EM’s” because it stands for “Eucharistic Ministers.” The fact is the “E” stands for “extraordinary,” because the “ordinary ministers” of Holy Communion – bishops/priests/deacons – were purposely set apart by a special sacrament and ordained for this divine task.

Up until this recent time in Church history, lay persons have always been forbidden to touch the Blessed Sacrament since the handling and distributing of Communion by non-ordained persons diminishes respect for the priesthood, places lay persons on the same level as priests, and leads to a loss of faith in the Real Presence. This rejection of tradition to allow lay Eucharistic ministers has been condemned by popes and saints throughout history:

• “To touch the sacred species and to distribute them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained.”(Pope John Paul II)
• “There is nothing which belongs more to the Church and there is nothing Jesus Christ wanted more closely reserved for its shepherds than the dispensation of the sacraments He instituted.”(Pope Gregory XVI)
• “The dispensing of Christ’s body belongs to the priest for three reasons. First, because…he consecrates as in the person of Christ…Accordingly, as the consecration of Christ’s body belongs to the priest, so likewise does the dispensing belong to him. Secondly, because the priest is the appointed intermediary between God and the people; hence as it belongs to him to offer the people’s gifts to God, so it belongs to him to deliver consecrated gifts to the people. Thirdly, because out of reverence towards this sacrament, nothing touches it, but what is consecrated; hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands, for touching this sacrament.” (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• “Let all of us firmly realize that no one can be saved except without the holy words and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which the clergy pronounce, proclaim and minister. And they alone must administer [them], and not others.”(St. Francis of Assisi)

It should only be in extraordinary circumstances that lay people administer Communion, such as if the priest/deacon is physically unable to stand for long periods of time to distribute or if the congregation numbers are so tremendous (think ‘a packed cathedral’) that the very celebration of Mass would be unduly prolonged with only one or two priests/deacons distributing. Only during rare, out-of-the-ordinary times such as these should a trained lay person then be allowed to come forward to become an extraordinary minister. The Church has never declared that a sufficient reason for a Mass to employ lay ministers is so to cut a few extra minutes off the length of the Mass due to a long Communion line which would otherwise form.

A fourth fundamental act regarding Communion that needs addressing by the Church is the necessity to educate the faithful that the herd-like and undiscerning reception of the Blessed Sacrament by nearly all Catholics in attendance at a Mass is a major blunder. Receiving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is neither a right nor a reward for being present at Mass.

Many Mass attendees are not properly disposed to approach the altar and receive the Body of Christ because they are not in a state of grace – meaning they have committed a mortal sin but have not repented and received absolution at Confession. However, when was the last time at a Novus Ordo Mass did you heard the topics of the state of grace or mortal sin preached from the pulpit?  How about we start a Eucharistic revival – that is free and doesn’t require traveling to Indianapolis – by simply having our clergy preach these fundamental truths about the Faith in their next homilies?

Within Catholicism, there are venial sins (lesser sins which do not break one’s friendship with God) and mortal sins (the worst types of sins which do break one’s relationship with God). Mortal sins are not just extreme acts such as murder, theft, and abortion. Examples of mortal sins also include (but are not limited to): adultery or fornication; failure to attend Sunday Mass without a valid reason; pornography viewing; masturbation; verbal abuse with extreme anger; and committing one of the “seven deadly sins” (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust).

For anyone who has committed a mortal sin yet still received the Eucharist before first repenting and getting absolved of this sin in Confession, that person committed another mortal sin and only compounded his or her desperate situation. A spiritually dead person who takes in the Bread of Life not only stays dead, but this person digs oneself even a deeper grave.

The name synonymous with Eucharist is Communion because this sacrament brings us stronger communion or union with God. We assume this union between us and God already exists, which is why we can approach Him and receive the Body of Christ. If this union has been severed, due to unrepentant mortal sin, we must first receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation before receiving Holy Communion. This is why the two sacraments are closely connected, as when children who receive their First Communion must first perform their First Confession.

Receiving Christ in the Eucharist forgives venial sins. The Catechism says, “As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life; and this living charity wipes away venial sins.” However, the reception of the Eucharist does not forgive mortal sins. Therefore, a person aware of committing a mortal sin must go to confession before receiving Communion:

A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible (Code of Canon Law 916).

If you were to go back in time a century or more to any Catholic Mass, or if you were to attend a Traditional Latin Mass nowadays, you would not see 99% of the congregation go forward to receive Communion as they do today in most churches. You would either see a fair number of non-participants in the Eucharist remaining in their pews at Communion time or in line at the confessional that has been in operation by another priest at the same time Mass was in session, in hopes that the penitents can receive absolution of their sins in time to get into the Communion line.  It is not because these attendees from long ago and from today’s Latin Mass went to a “Eucharistic revival jamboree” in Indiana. They were merely taught Church law in their home parish by a traditional, faithful priest.

You really can’t blame the majority of Catholics nowadays who mindlessly go up for Communion when the time comes simply because “it’s just what you do at Mass.” They are just ignorant since most modern-day priests no longer explain Church doctrine and the danger of receiving the Blessed Sacrament when one hasn’t confessed a mortal sin. The Eucharist is not to be received in a routine manner, like children on Halloween night lined up outside a house, waiting for the homeowner to drop a snack-size candy bar into their outstretched bags and buckets. Sadly, Communion time too often resembles this in today’s Church.

Modern Catholics need to hear from the pulpit an explanation of the words of St. Paul, who clearly wrote twenty centuries ago about the danger or unworthily receiving Communion:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.  Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself  (1 Corinthians 11:27-29).

Even fewer of today’s Catholics have ever heard their priest recite the words of St. John Chrysostom:

I beseech, beg, and implore that no one draw near to this sacred table with a sullied and corrupt conscience. Such an act, in fact, can never be called ‘communion,’ not even were we to touch the Lord’s body a thousand times over, but ‘condemnation,’ ‘torment,’ and ‘increase of punishment (Ecclesia de Eucharistia).

Nationwide, our clergy need to address to their flocks the aberrations of the Eucharist being distributed nowadays by lay persons regardless of extraordinary reasons and being received by Catholics who don’t realize they may be doing so unworthily. Before Church leadership places utmost importance on a “revival party” where the laity can buy merchandise like at a rock concert and have to fly cross-country and spend more than a pretty penny for an entrance ticket, perhaps Church leadership should instead encourage the faithful to read – at no cost – the “Prayer of the Crusade of Reparation to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.”

There are four most fundamental acts connected with Communion that need reviving by the Church and educating of the laity: receiving on the tongue; receiving while kneeling, distributing only from the hands of an ordained minister; being in the state of grace before receiving. Instead of placing bets that an expensive, exclusive festival-like “Eucharistic Revival” will return the faithful to an understanding of and commitment to proper reverence toward the Blessed Sacrament, our clergy needs to be preaching from the pulpit why these four essential acts – that used to be undertaken by all Catholics for almost two millennia – must be resurrected. Only then can we hope for an enduring, authentic appreciation for the sacredness of the Eucharist.