Sunday 28 February 2010

Questions about Holy Communion...

Today, when I got in from church, I reflected (after my three hour nap - I find that sleeping when I'm depressed helps a bit) a bit on the reception of Holy Communion and I have a few questions to put to readers.

Is it judgemental to think that some people are unworthy to receive Holy Communion? I ask this because I see people going up habitually all the time, as though they are entitled to receive. Are they entirely innocent of the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church?

The Scriptures say: Therefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. (1Cor 11:27).

And again: For he that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. (1Cor 11:29).

Of course, He alone knows each individual soul and its circumstances, but I often find it annoying that when I go without Holy Communion (because I believe that I am not in a state of Grace and fasting from Midnight) I see people queuing up whom I don't think really ought to have left their place at all. That pious and edifyingly devout man Tolkien made a point of going to Confession every time he received (Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien's biographer, rather disparagingly remarks that Tolkien had an almost ''Medieval'' insistence on frequent Confession, and that he imposed this on his children and his wife - but then, Carpenter was not Catholic so he can't be expected to understand), and since he went to Mass nearly everyday for most of his life, he must have gone to Confession a lot more than perhaps some modern Catholics do. But then, Tolkien was in favour of daily Communion (''seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals'' he admonished his son Michael in 1963, then suffering depression and almost coming to lapse), and I am not. I think that St Pius X erred in this, and I would rather people received only on Sundays and Holydays...

Another question: we all know the arguments against reception of Holy Communion in the hand, but why don't old people, long accustomed to this manifest abuse, accept remonstrance from people who know better than they do? The mental image I get when I see people greedily sticking out their hands is like the vision Frodo saw, under the influence of the Ring, in the Tower of Cirith Ungol when Sam offered to help his Master bear the Ring to Orodruin. The text goes:

'''...You'll find the Ring very dangerous now, and very hard to bear. If it's too hard a job, I could share it with you, maybe?'
'No, no!' cried Frodo, snatching the Ring and chain from Sam's hands. 'No you won't, you thief!' He panted, staring at Sam with eyes wide with fear and enmity. Then suddenly, clasping the Ring in one clenched fist, he stood aghast. A mist seemed to clear from his eyes, and he passed a hand over his aching brow. The hideous vision had seemed so real to him, half bemused as he was still with wound and fear. Sam had changed before his very eyes into an orc again, leering and pawing at his treasure, a foul little creature with greedy eyes and slobbering mouth.'' (The Lord of the Rings, Book VI, Chapter I).

Are people who put out their hands to receive like the thieves and robbers Christ speaks of in St John chapter 10? Or are they pitiable people who are entirely ignorant and deserving of our sympathy? I don't understand why people put out their hands even when they have been told that it is intrinsically wrong, but I do often find that some do so out of contempt for the Faith - or at least contempt for the orthodox way of receiving. Such people, in my opinion, do not receive worthily ergo eat and drink judgement and the ancestral wrath of our first parents unto themselves. They must be rehabilitated that their souls might be saved.

Perhaps some of you are now thinking: ''he's off again...''

13 comments:

  1. Be careful not to fall into the heresy of Jansenism. If you are not guilty of mortal sin, and have prepared yourself, then you are able to receive Holy Communion, and might be depriving yourself of the graces from the Sacrament.

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  2. Thanks for your comment Mac - and your warning! I was expecting a comment like this, but there really is no need to fear. Jansenism is an extreme, and in my opinion, utterly Protestant position to hold. I am just very careful about when and when not to receive - usually because I have had obsessive, intrusive thoughts, my mind wanders during the Mass, or I am harbouring hateful thoughts, have not been to Confession or fasted from Midnight etc (naturally this does not apply to evening Mass). I just would that others did the same...

    On a lighter note, I am entirely amused with my iPhone and have hardly put it down in two days! :)

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  3. I can add little to what Mac said.

    "Is it judgemental to think that some people are unworthy to receive Holy Communion?"
    When I saw this my immediate thought of an answer was "yes, unless we materially know that they are". We ought to pray they are, and counsel ourselves against being judgmental...

    I don't know. Does that help?

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  4. Sacrilegious communions have and, unfortunately, will always been made knowingly and unknowingly. We are to make reparation for those atrocities in whatever way we can. I suggest setting up a guild specifically for this, where the votive mass of reparation (which is found in the traditional Roman missal) is said frequently.

    The blame lies squarely on the pastors who have failed to preach on the last things and also indirectly on the Novus Ordo itself: it lends the Eucharist to abuse.

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  5. The disposition of others is absolutely none of your business.

    "A broken and a humble heart God will not despise". That means you! Weep for your own sins; know yourself to be "the first among sinners" and then, and only then, approach the Sacrament. Do not concern yourself with the worthiness of others, but only your own unworthiness. And stop fussing about points of liturgical procedure - recognise that this comes straight from the Evil One, who likes nothing better than subverting liturgical piety into mere "religion addiction".

    We all have to escape the logismoi - the distracting, intrusive, sometimes random racket from the conscious, rational mind. We can only do it by centring the heart - the "deep self" - in Christ, in repentance. When the "short circuit" between mind and heart is thus broken, the heart prays in the Holy Spirit and is untroubled by what comes and goes in the mind. This is the entire goal of the spiritual life - freedom in Christ through repentance.

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  6. I agree with Hestor.

    Confession and Communion should be united. Like in the olden days- you'd see more of long queues to the confessional than to the altar rail. The charge of Jansenism is easy to pronounce as indeed it was for much of its tragic history.

    The Church's Law must nevertheless be internalised and upheld.

    Lord have mercy upon us and upon sacrilegious communions, desecrations and like insults to thy Most Holy Body in the Blessed Sacrament.

    And look at those Sisters of Mary Reparatrix- they used to be among the strictest of female religious orders- niqab-wearing women could have learnt something from them- and now see them deambulating in the streets with skirts, tweed jackets (sic) and umbrellas. More Miss Marple than Slave of Mary Reparatrix if you ask me! And hosting "meetings" where after closing your eyes for a minute or two, you are asked to open them again, and to write on a piece of paper a word that might have come to you during your "meditation" and to link it to the Gospel lesson you've heard read and arbitrarily (if not heretically) explained. And then you hold hands (!) with your neighbours and sing Our Father, whereafter you give a hug of peace, etc,etc.

    In spite of "adoration", etc, Holy Communion is degraded to sub-Zwinglian standard symbolism- whereat even Luther would have blushed.

    And is this Christianity, is this the Church?

    vid. The much publicised "youth-mass" "presided" over by Card. Schonborn of Wien. Prepare yourself for a shock.

    Sorry for the lengths of my comments.

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  7. Yes, it is judgmental to make assumptions about the interior dispositions of other people. To paraphrase St. Thomas More: the world would be a far better place if, instead of cherishing high opinions of ourselves and low opinions of others, we held low opinions of ourselves and high opinions of others.

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  8. You need to give this some serious attention, Patricius. What on earth is the point of recovering the traditional Eucharistic disciplines if doing so causes you to judge your brothers and sisters, even with the Sacrament in your mouth? Do you not see how deep-down deluded such an attitude is? It would actually be far, far better never to fast or receive on the tongue, than to do so with such a disposition.

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  9. Did you not read what I said Moretben? I said I have these complaints when I do NOT receive - and I think I have a right to complain about abuse against the Blessed Sacrament anyway.

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  10. But you cannot objectively know it is abuse, Patricius... you do not know the state of their consciences.

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  11. I can't think of more a grotesque abuse than "See, Lord, how meticulous I am about receiving you - not like those others!"

    For heaven's sake P - have you never read the Gospels? Are you absolutely unfamiliar with the Pharisee and the Publican? I repeat: what is the point of punctiliousness in externals if your disposition totally contradicts what the same externals are intended to signify and communicate?

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  12. I have these complaints when I do NOT receive

    But you still have them when you do, because you still have them now!

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  13. All people are unworthy to recieve the Eucharist. Jesus calls us to feed on him, to recieve his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to become physically and spritually so that he may become part of us, so that we become tabernacles to go out into the world.
    Christ lowers himself from the very highest thrones of heaven to the very lowest places on earth, eventually becoming digested and part of the earth, the sewage and the water table.

    It's a complete scandal that our God would sink that low for us, we cannot understand it and as soon as we try to understand the nature of our God, we lose it because we simply cannot comprehend it.

    So when it comes to recieving our God unworthily at the Holy Liturgy, we should not pass judgement on others, we should only concentrate on ourselves and God because at the end of the day God has given himself to us and no matter what, not even the Pope is worthy to recieve our Lord in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.


    Max.

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