Hand or Tongue?

One of the slightly disconcerting things  in the early days before I had finally decided to return to the Church was watching people standing to receive Communion and taking the Host in their hand. I remember thinking that it might as well be a Ritz cracker for all the external reverence I saw. Now I had spent some time in the Church of England where communion was received in the hand, but then,officially at least, those receiving did not believe (and they were right not to believe) that they were receiving anything but a blessed wafer. Oddly enough we received kneeling at the -wait for it- altar rails. You know those nasty excluding things Catholic churches have largely got rid of. So my real problem was a perceived lack of reverence for the Host as the Body and Blood of Christ : in which all Catholics believe- don't they?

Well, no they don't, anything between 40-70% depending on which survey you consult. And it's hardly original of me to suppose that this might have something to do with the way they receive. I think you need to tread carefully here. Not everyone who receives in the hand is intentionally irreverent or believes otherwise than as Christ and the Church teach about the Eucharist. But many seem very casual and it seems quite likely that over time it can wear down that awe that I learned as a child when only the consecrated hands of the priest touched the Host.

I've just been reading bishop Schneider's pamphlet 'Dominus Est - It is the Lord' on precisely this subject. The bishop, of whom I hadn't heard until recently, seems to have become something of a poster boy for traditionalists and I'm none too keen on personality cults. But what he has to say is pertinent. He draws on a large range of patristic sources to show that Communion on the tongue became the practice at an early stage, while avoiding the propagandist trap of asserting that it was always so. He puts reception in the hand in the early Church in its proper context of purification and humble prostration. And he argues the compelling reasons for reception on the tongue while kneeling. Kneeling has been a sign of reverence and humility in our culture for many centuries: we kneel to those greater than ourselves and stand before our equals. Rather than take as our right what is offered we humbly accept the gift. In a particularly good image he likens such reception to the small child being fed by its parent.

So what do I do? Having thought about it for some years, but lacking the courage to be different, I was standing in line at the Cathedral one day behind some young overseas Catholics who all received quite unselfconsciously on the tongue and I just followed suit. It felt awkward for a while, but, as I was in any case used to doing it at traditional Mass, I soon got used to doing it all the time. But do I kneel? Afraid not: my knees are stiff and while I could get down without altar rails to help I could only get up again by hanging on the the priest. And that I think would be a step too far!