I stumbled upon this video, which shows Commmunion in the hand being denied to communicants at the Vatican on Pentecost Sunday. Does anyone know when this practice started? In the Vatican as a whole or just these individual priests? Regardless of the agenda here, kudos to the Vatican for appearing to actually defend the Blessed Sacrament, doing something Catholic, for once.
However, the weakness in the clergy is apparent when the choir member demands to receive in the hand. Nowhere is found respect & reverence & worship for the Holy Eucharist. I have to wonder why the priests & bishops & Pope were ordained & consecrated, for the primary purpose of their entire life is the defense of the Blessed Sacrament, the Sacraments of the Church & christian morality, yet we see that no one is more brazen in destroying them than they. Lord have mercy.
“Unfortunately, in many places Communion is distributed in the hand. To what extent is this supposed to be a renewal and a deepening of the reception of Holy Communion? Is the trembling reverence with which we receive this incomprehensible gift perhaps increased by receiving it in our unconscentrated hands, rather than from the consecrated hands of the priest? It is not difficult to see that the danger of parts of the consecrated Host falling to the ground is incomparably increased, and the danger of desecrating it or indeed of horrible blasphemy is very great. And what in the world is to be gained from all this?” ~Dietrich von Hildebrand, “The Devastated Vineyard” p. 67-68, 1973
Seeing this desecration of Our Lord’s Body should make any Catholic cry out with indignation and outrage. Indeed, this is the end result of Communion in the hand. Why it is still allowed to be practiced is the work of the devil in the Church.
The Blessed Sacrament is passed around like candy, to be dropped and trampled underfoot in the mud. Quite literally:
“Rorate has received further reports that in the culminating Mass of January 18, some of the people in the crowd split the hosts among themselves, and that some hosts fell into the mud.”
How many hosts were dropped in the mud, to be trampled underfoot? The people were passing them around. Surely many fell to the ground. I can’t fathom such a thought. It’s truly scandalous and heart-breaking that this happens to Our Lord. I feel so sorry for these people. They don’t know any better because they have no one to teach them the True Faith, the unchangeable Faith that was abandoned.
This is no joke, nor something to take lightly, nor something that is not a big deal. This is our God, the summit of our Faith, the Supreme Being that keeps us in existence. And He is allowed to be treated like trash in His own Church! I have a duty to cry out – Communion in the hand must be stopped! Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament must be defended and protected against these sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended!
Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.
Compare this:
To the proper way of receiving Our Lord Jesus Christ who is God:
Hear what the Saints and Popes have to say about reverence to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and imagine a time when the Holy Eucharist was treated like God because people believed that was God:
“It is, therefore, the keen desire of the Church that all of the faithful kneel at the feet of the Redeemer to tell Him how much they venerate and love Him.” ~Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei
“Just as prayer is primarily in the mind, and secondarily expressed in words…so too adoration consists chiefly in an interior reverence of God, but secondarily in certain bodily signs of humility; thus when we genuflect we signify our weakness in comparison with God, and when we prostrate ourselves we profess that we are nothing of ourselves.” ~St. Thomas Aquinas
“But as when the Body of our Lord lay in the sepulcher, Angels are said to have stood by, so also at the time of consecration are they to be believed to stand by the mysteries of Christ. Let us then after the example of the devout women, whenever we approach the heavenly mysteries because of the presence of the Angels, or from reverence to the Sacred Offering, with all humility, bow our faces to the earth, recollecting that we are but dust and ashes.” ~St. Bede the Venerable
“As Damascene says (De Fide Orthodoxa iv,12), since we are composed of a twofold nature, intellectual and sensible, we offer God a twofold adoration; namely, a spiritual adoration, consisting in the internal devotion of the mind; and a bodily adoration, which consists in an exterior humbling of the body. And since in all acts of latria that which is without is referred to that which is within as being of greater import, it follows that exterior adoration is offered on account of interior adoration, in other words we exhibit signs of humility in our bodies in order to incite our affections to submit to God, since it is connatural to us to proceed from the sensible to the intelligible.” ~St. Thomas Aquinas
“You should approach more reverently than if you were about to approach all the rulers in the whole world seated together in one place.” ~St. Thomas More
“But, assuredly, all of the duties which man has to fulfill, that without doubt, is the chiefest and holiest which commands him to worship God with devotion and piety.” ~Pope Leo XIII
“It is proper to religion to show reverence to God.” ~St. Thomas Aquinas
“It belongs to religion to declare one’s faith by certain signs indicative of reverence towards God.” ~St. Thomas Aquinas
“Among sins opposed to religion, the more grievous is that which is the more opposed to the reverence due to God.” ~St. Thomas Aquinas
“Reverence, therefore, reverence this table, of which we all are communicants! Christ, slain for us, is the Sacrificial Victim who is placed thereon!” ~St. John Chrysostom
“Let us be like the holy angels now. If you wish to place your son in the court of a king or bishop, you will have to begin to teach him court manners beforehand. So it is with us: if one day we are to be in the Angelic Court, we must learn how, while we are still here, the manners of the angels.” ~St. Vincent Ferrer
“Certainly, then, the more a Christian is aware of the holiness and the divinity of this heavenly Sacrament [of the Eucharist], the more careful he should be not to receive it without great reverence and sanctity, especially since we read in the Apostle the fearful words: ‘He who eats and drinks unworthily, without distinguishing the body of the Lord, eats and drinks judgment to himself’ (1 Cor. 11:29)” ~Council of Trent
“If there is anything divine among man’s possessions which might excite the envy of the citizens of heaven (could they ever be swayed by such a passion), this is undoubtedly the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by means of which men [e.g. priests], having before their eyes and taking into their hands the very Creator of heaven and earth, experience, while still on earth, a certain anticipation of heaven. How keenly, then, must mortals strive to preserve and protect this inestimable privilege with all due worship and reverence, and be ever on their guard lest their negligence offend the angels who vie with them in eager adoration!” ~Pope Urban VIII, “Si Quid est”
“We on our part are bound to show to God, as our Lord, the highest reverence, and, as He is our greatest benefactor, the deepest gratitude. But how many are there who at the present day acknowledge and discharge these duties with full and exact observance? In no age has the spirit of contumacy and an attitude of defiance towards God been more prevalent than in our own; an age in which that unholy cry of the enemies of Christ: ‘We will not have this man to rule over us’ (Luke xix., 14), makes itself more and more loudly heard, together with the utterance of that wicked purpose: ‘let us make away with Him’; nor is there any motive by which many are hurried on with more passionate fury, than the desire utterly to banish God not only from the civil government, but from every form of human society. And although men do not everywhere proceed to this extremity of criminal madness, it is a lamentable thing that so many are sunk in oblivion of the divine Majesty and of His favors, and in particular of the salvation wrought for us by Christ. Now a remedy must be found for this wickedness on the one hand, and this sloth on the other, in a general increase among the faithful of fervent devotion towards the Eucharistic Sacrifice, than which nothing can give greater honor, nothing be more pleasing, to God. For it is a divine Victim [Christ] which is here immolated; and accordingly through this Victim we offer to the most blessed Trinity all that honor which the infinite dignity of the Godhead demands; infinite in value and infinitely acceptable is the gift which we present to the Father in His only-begotten Son; so that for His benefits to us we not only signify our gratitude, but actually make an adequate return.” ~Pope Leo XIII, “Mirae Caritatis”
Let us make reparation for this sacrilege committed against Our Lord by loving, protecting and having the utmost respect for the Blessed Sacrament by receiving Him properly, kneeling and on the tongue. For then, all men will see that we really believe what we say we believe – that Our Lord is still among us under the appearance of bread, that the creature humbles himself before his Creator.
~Damsel of the Faith
Most Holy Trinity, I adore Thee! My God, My God,
I love Thee in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
We would do well to meditate on this picture of the Blessed Virgin receiving Holy Communion from St. John. Can anyone imagine for a moment Our Lady standing up and receiving Holy Communion in her hands as if her Son is just a cracker or ordinary bread?
The Holy Eucharist is God and should be treated as such. No soul will ever be able to understand that fact in this world. It is beyond our comprehension that God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, deigns to humble Himself and appear under bread and wine for our salvation. The lackluster attitude of Catholics pertaining to the Blessed Sacrament is a disgrace. And why does the Norvus Ordo Mass refer to the Eucharist as just “bread” AFTER the Consecration when they say “When we eat this BREAD and drink this Cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes”? 70% of Catholics don’t even believe that the Holy Eucharist is the real presence of Our Lord. They don’t believe because they are not taught. Catholic doctrine is no longer taught. In the Church today, it has been replaced with sentimental superficiality, Protestant nonsense. For a soul to hear true Catholic doctrine is a miracle in the Church today. So, is it any wonder that Catholics file up for the Blessed Sacrament, receive Him in the hand and allow crumbs of His Body to fall to the ground, in turn to be trampled underfoot? That is the reality of the situation, whether one wants to believe it or not. And even if weren’t, who in their right mind would ever approve of something that puts Our Lord’s Body in danger, as Communion in the hand does? Communion in the hand is the fruit of rebellion. It came forth from a hatred for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. It simply cannot be explained in any other way. Our forefathers are surely rolling in their graves at the state of the Church. Our forefathers protected the Blessed Sacrament with their life and today, Catholics have no qualms about what they are doing. Rome does nothing. They allow it to happen, even within the walls of the Eternal City. They should be hearkening from the rooftops and condemning this practice of Communion in the hand for the evil that it is. The Church is the custodian of the Blessed Sacrament.
May love of Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament be returned to the Church! May Communion in the hand be abolished so that Our Lord’s Body will no longer be desecrated.
Our Lady weeps as she did at LaSalette because of the crimes and offenses committed against Her Son, especially within the bosom of the Church, from her Son’s own children.
Never receive Holy Communion in the hand. Do as our forefathers in the Faith did and receive the Eucharist properly – on the tongue and on your knees before the God of the Universe, for then people will know that you are true Christians, by your outward belief in your God.
Damsel of the Faith 