There are decades-old irregularities in how Holy Communion has been treated that were not addressed by last summer’s “Eucharistic Revival” and don’t appear to be on any agendas for the current “Synod on Synodality.”
These aberrations surrounding the Body of Christ have created the current situation where up to 69% of Catholics do not understand or believe in transubstantiation and the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The once universal belief among the Catholic faithful that they are receiving the actual Body of Christ at Communion has weakened tremendously because of three basic changes that have watered down the reverence necessary in how Holy Communion should be distributed and received at Mass.
The first two irregularities concern the way people receive the Holy Eucharist. The dilution of the seriousness and sacredness began when Catholics stopped receiving the host while kneeling and on the tongue. The host is called the “Bread of Heaven” and the “Food of Angels,” and thus, it does not show reverence to consume it in the same way as we consume snacks. Yet, for about the last five decades, most Catholics have been doing it this irreverent way. It was about 50 years ago when this lack of reverence toward the Body of Christ began due to the repercussions from and erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council.
During this same timeframe, a third irregularity has been in play, and this one concerns the people who distribute the Holy Eucharist. The most fitting ministers to dispense the Eucharist are bishops and priests, with deacons also allowed to be “ordinary ministers,” and yet since the 1970’s most Catholic Churches employ more lay ministers than ordained ministers to assist in this sacred act.
While using lay ministers for Holy Communion was permitted in limited cases since the implementation of Vatican II, these cases were only supposed to be for extraordinary circumstances. Never in the history of the first 1,900 years of the Church have lay persons distributed Communion at Holy Mass in such a common, nonchalant manner like is being done today in the majority of parishes. Most Catholics assume 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 – are to be set apart by a special sacrament and anointment for this divine task.
Thus, it should be only in extraordinary circumstances that lay people administer Communion. These typically come down to two instances – either the priest/deacon is physically unable to stand for long periods of time to distribute at Mass or the number of faithful at Mass is so tremendous that the very celebration of Mass would be unduly prolonged with only a priest/deacon distributing. Only in these two out-of-the-ordinary times should a trained lay person assist as an EM.
Note that it is in the case of an exorbitantly long Communion line that lay ministers are to be used, such as when there is Mass of 1,000 at the cathedral and only one priest available. The Church has never officially declared that a sufficient reason for a parish to employ lay ministers is to eliminate a brief extension of the length of Mass due to a long Communion line. And yet, so many parishes these days do just that so as to save the congregation from having to wait a few extra minutes for Communion to end.
Using lay persons to hand out the Blessed Sacrament in a more speedy manner more often than not mimics the haphazardly tossing of candy to a large group of trick-or-treaters waiting at your front door on Halloween. Or it is like when the Costco sample lady quickly hands you – and the dozen other shoppers crowding around you – a sample to taste, and after grabbing it you turn your back to wheel your cart down the aisle as you pop the snack in your mouth. Yes, it is more efficient to dole out items as fast as possible, but it is not as personal and devalues the experience.
Receiving the Body of Christ in the hand, while standing, and from a lay person who a few minutes prior raced up to the altar to assist and has not been blessed like a priest to act in persona Christi – i.e. “in the image of Christ” – undermines all the symbolic and aesthetic aspects of the act of Eucharistic Communion. It is because of these modern aberrations that so many Catholics no longer believe the “Eucharist is the source and summit or the Christian life.”
Saint Thomas proclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” when he first saw our resurrected Lord, which is also what Catholics should be saying to themselves at every Mass during the moment the priest consecrates the bread and wine and elevates for all to see the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of Christ. A Catholic will more likely believe in the awesomeness of receiving Christ in the Holy Eucharist if they revert to the millennium-old practice of kneeling before one’s Lord who is truly present in the Sacrament and receiving Him on the tongue from the hand of an ordained minister.
Performing these acts at Communion embodies are dependency on God, our unworthiness, and our need to fall in adoration before our Lord. When I do not feed myself I express that the one doing the feeding is Christ – or the priest acting in personal Christi. When the unanointed hands of a lay minister who was never ordained to act in the person of Christ stands before the communicant, who is also standing, and exchanges the host from his or her mortal hand to the recipient’s hand we are not experiencing the sacred, profound magnificence of Holy Communion.
Pray that the Church hierarchy and all parish priests begin to stress to the faithful that we can show how much we love Jesus and believe in His Presence by returning to the tradition of three fundamental actions – kneeling for Communion, receiving the host on the tongue, and discouraging the use of extraordinary ministers.
23 thoughts on “What Is the Difference Between a Lay Eucharistic Minister and a Costco Sample Lady??”
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Your title tells us what we need to know of your “love of Christ”. Performative prideful judgement worthy of a Pharisee .
Yes, Jesus was wrong to make His performative full of pride judgment and vent His divine anger on those who had turned the Temple into a food court and market for selling Temple coins and priest-sanctioned sacrifices. And the nerve of Him, even worse performative judgment publicly calling them thieves. How dare He dictate we are supposed to simply pray in His church! Who did He think He was? God Almighty? You, sir, and the Pharisees are spot on,. Guy, Texas
Happy Thanksgiving !
Dan, Thank you, thank you. I have seen more courtesy and politeness of those in line at Costco to get a free sample than I have seen over the years in so many happy-clappy hooray-let’s worship-ourselves “communities.” It is not uncommon to see folks talk to friends both going to Holy Communion and returning to their pews while they are each truly a Theotokos, God bearer, like the Blessed Virgin Mary. Priests and bishops are responsible for the faithful’s unbelief in the Real Presence. And if you believe this was purely an accident, unintended by our so-called “shepherds,” and not by demonic design, with knowing cooperation of these clergy, then I have some wine Jesus made at Cana to sell you. Dan, again, thank you for the research and the clarity. Guy, Texas
Thanks, Guy.
Yes, the comportment of those in the communion line can be a future article. One’s total focus while approaching should be on thanksgiving for our Lord’s mercy in feeding me, a sinner. Then when recessing back to the pew, one’s focus should be adoration that He has made my soul His dwelling place. The greetings toward friends should be reserved for the narthex, post-Mass.
Dan,
You magnificently and succinctly call for
“three fundamental actions –
kneeling for Communion,
receiving the host on the tongue, &
discouraging the use of extraordinary ministers.”
To that, the celebrant needs to regularly remind people to NOT present themselves to receive, if not in the state of grace.
Thanks!
Joe Tevington
Definitely, Joe!
Unfortunately, most parishes have long communion lines and near extinct confession lines.
Eastern Rite Catholics are *fully* Catholic and have received standing from Day One. Are you saying they are less than Catholic, and less than reverent, because they receive standing?
No one is forced to receive in the hand or standing in the Latin/Western Rite of the Catholic Church. I am sorry some on this page are spending time disapproving of their fellow Catholics rather than focusing on the supreme sacrifice and gift of the Body and Blood of Jesus that is given to them.
The Church has permitted the use of EMHCs for the last 50+ years because of the shortage of priests in the US and in other countries. Who is anyone here to second-guess the Pope – including the canonized St. John Paul II?
EMHCs do more than assist at Mass. They also visit the homebound and those in hospitals and nursing homes. The priests in my heavily-Catholic part of the country regularly put in 16+ hour days, 6 days per week, and sometimes even work their only day off, just to properly care for their parishioners and the hundreds of other details of their priestly vocation. Pre-Covid, I brought the Blessed Sacrament to patients at one of the large hospitals in my city. The Catholic chaplain – a fine Nigerian priest of the Apostles of Jesus Order – regularly handed me a list of Catholic patients requesting Communion, which normally numbered at least 60. It took me over 4 hours to visit each patient, pray with him/her, and offer Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The Chaplain put in a very long day hearing Confessions, counseling those facing surgery and/or death, offering the Sacrament of Anointing, and comforting the families of the sick and dying. If anyone were to insist on only receiving from a priest while hospitalized or homebound, that person would have a very long wait, and perhaps would never be able to receive because of the very full and hectic schedule of most parish priests in the US. Precisely when they need Jesus most – when they are frightened, in pain, and dependent on others for care.
I am an EMHC in the Diocese of Cleveland. I became an EMHC 22 years ago, inspired by the devoted care my father received from EMHCs who visited him in the hospital as he lay dying. I could only become an EMHC on the recommendation and approval of my pastor and my bishop. Like every other EMHC in my Diocese, I was trained and certified by the Diocese, which took over 8 hours. I serve at my pastor’s pleasure. If everyone at Mass wants to receive from him, that’s fine by me. If he wants to get rid of me today, that’s fine, too. The EMHCs I know all feel the very same way – we serve Jesus, our pastor, and our parishioners, and if we are told we are not needed, we will gladly step away. But in the meantime, we will serve, knowing full well it is an undeserved honor.
I am sorry the posters here do not approve of me or of other EMHCs, and the pastors who ask for our assistance. But when it comes down to it, it is more important to me and other EMHCs to please God than to please our fellow Catholics.
Peace to all here.
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You are free to interpret John 6 that way but I fail to see the logic in at based on the Jesus’ actually words spoken. Il’ stick with Holy Tradition and the Church’s interpretation on it. As to the institution narrative he was referring to the change in substance (transubstantiation) of the bread and wine into his body and blood.
Not just in Jesus sayings but throughout the Bible, metaphors are used. The task at hand is to discriminate from what is literal and what is metaphor or analogy. I am not a Bible scholar and so I humbly need help. Holy Tradition, a Church magisterium and Bible scholars such as Scott Hahn are my aids.
Tom, here’s some more help 😊
“…In John 6:50-58 he starts speaking specifically about eating his flesh and not just believing in him, and mentions “eat[s]” seven times and “drink[s]” four times in eight verses where he is speaking, with 6:55 (above) also referring again to “food” — for a total of 12 references to eating and drinking in eight verses. This is why we believe it has a physical element as well as non-physical.
Additionally, he refers (as the referent of what we are to eat and drink) to his “flesh” five times, his “blood” four times, “bread” (referring to himself) six times, and “eats me” once (6:57). That’s 16 more references to eating (him) in these eight verses for a grand total of 28 references to eating and drinking his flesh and blood in eight verses (an average of 3.5 times per verse).
To remove all doubt, he equates the “living bread” with his “flesh” in 6:51. What more does one need to be persuaded, pray tell? It couldn’t have been made any more clear than it is…”
From:
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/jesus-was-clear-in-john-6-nsy1gmji
Capt. Crisis:
Let me get this straight. Are you saying that by reading the Bible we are lead to believe that Jesus’s discourse in John 6 and the institution narratives of Mattew, Mark, Luke and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians are to be interpreted as metaphors? This goes against Church teaching but also against what the early Christians and Church fathers believed.
To be sure, interpreting the Bible accurately requires considerable study. That study by a multitude of Church scholars a lot smarter than you or me affirm the literal interpretation supporting the “true presence’. Reading the Bible can support that belief not undermine it.
Amen!
When Jesus was talking about giving his flesh in John 6, he was talking about the Crucifixion. His body was taken up after that and not available to be chopped up and eaten.
At the Last Supper he was obviously saying “my body” and “my blood” as metaphors; he didn’t cut off his arm and feed it to them. Other metaphors in John were when he called himself a “vine” (John 15:1) and a “door” (10:9).
“The once universal belief among the Catholic faithful that they are receiving the actual Body of Christ at Communion has weakened tremendously because of three basic changes that have watered down the reverence necessary in how Holy Communion should be distributed and received at Mass.”
It is a mistake to think that the manner of administration had anything to do with this erosion of belief. Rather, it’s because 1) Catholics now read the Bible (they didn’t, when I was a kid) and know that Jesus himself meant his words about “my body” and “my blood” to be taken metaphorically, not literally; 2) Catholics now feel themselves free to ask out loud (they didn’t, when I was a kid) whether this makes any sense or not; and 3) the catastrophic loss of faith in the priesthood and the Church hierarchy after the sex abuse scandals. It seems much more like the first generation of Christians, meeting in upstairs rooms (and not in a weird and expensively built structure with strange windows and intimidating statues), with no set chain of command, to be receiving real bread and real wine in paper cups from your aunts and uncles and neighbors from whom you actually learned about Jesus.
Captcrisis, in past comments you’ve always made a big deal out of following what you deem to be established science. Why then do you ignore the results of scientific investigation into Eucharistic Miracles proving that the Eucharistic contains living human cells, tissue and blood? See “Science has Proven the Real Presence” — https://catholicstand.com/science-has-proven-the-real-presence/
Gene
If that story was really true it would be the most stupendous finding in the history of science. Yet you coulda’t even find an English translation of it. Why did no one ever bother to translate it? Only because even devout Catholics knew it to be poppycock.
Maybe you need to broaden your reading beyond whatever left-leaning news sources you frequent (with CS being an exception). Numerous Catholic publications, including the National Catholic Register, have run articles on these miracles. When I wrote the article, if you had Googled “Eucharistic Miracle of Argentina” you’d have gotten over 550,000 results. Today, you’ll still get over 74,400 results. Only fools and heretics think these miracles are “poppycock.”
Don’t you think it strange that only one scientist examined this “bloody” host? And that the John Paul II Vatican did not treat it as serious?
Give it up, CC. Had you taken the time to read the article and the links in it you would have found out that Dr. Gomez was picked to lead the investigation because he was an atheist. He had the Argentina Hosts independently examined by renowned, leading experts in their fields. The investigation was also not concluded until after Pope St. John Paul II had passed away.
I find it odd that you cannot discern between matter and substance, even though you are obviously well educated.
We Catholics believe in a change of substance, not a change of matter in the Eucharist. Matter and substance are not the same, or we could not make a substantial argument or talk about a lecture which was full of substantial logic.
“Substance” is what something is not what it is made of. “Wood” or “Plastic” are descriptions of material. “Chair” or “Table” is a description of substance.