Dear Father,
At Mass recently, I received Holy Communion from a layperson who happens to be a close friend of mine. However, our ties are dissolving on account of the way she insisted on giving me Communion in the hand. When I spoke to her after Mass, she said that I was wrong to receive on the tongue (which I have been doing for most of my life). I think she’s the one who is wrong. I asked my priest about it and he said that we should work it out ourselves because he didn’t want to get in the middle of it. Can you help us settle this?
-Rasna
Dear Rasna,
While I don’t relish the idea of getting in the middle of an argument between friends, let me try to help you salvage your relationship. In short, there is no Church law that forbids you to receive Holy Communion on the tongue. So, you are not wrong in doing so. I wonder where your friend got the idea that Communion on the tongue is forbidden.
There was a time during the COVID outbreak that some priests encouraged people not to receive on the tongue and perhaps this is your friend’s worry. That said, there is no scientific evidence that distributing Communion in the hand prevents the communication of COVID (or any other disease). In my own experience, I end up touching the hand of the recipient while distributing Holy Communion in the hand much more often than touching the tongue of a someone receiving on the tongue. This is almost always because the recipient receives in the hand in a wrong way.
While no one can force a particular method of receiving Holy Communion on another person, there are proper and improper ways of receiving. I’ve seen it all. Ask any priest, and he will have his own list of issues with Communicants. There are the “body-snatchers” who snap the Eucharistic Host from the priest’s hands before he knows it; there are the people who form their hands in such a way as to make a wedge into which they expect the priest to drop the Host; there are people who form a small opening with their mouths, making it nearly impossible to give Holy Communion; turning away to return to their pew without first consuming the Sacred Host; and the list goes on. I’ve seen children with more excitement in getting a small piece of Red Hots candy than some adults who lackadaisically receive the true Body of Christ.
A former student of mine wrote his master’s thesis on the history of the reception of Holy Communion on the tongue and in the hand. He showed that, while there is certainly some evidence in the earlier centuries of the Church for people receiving in the hand, there is also evidence that people received directly on the tongue, which was the method of reception throughout the Church for centuries, up until our own time.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in the 4th century, gives the description of the proper way to receive in the hand (Mystagogicae catecheses 5, 21). He tells Catholics to make a throne with their hands, the right over the left, and to reverently raise both hands (simultaneously lowering the head) to one’s mouth. Rarely have I seen this practiced. Using an analogy from St. Cyril: If a person were given gold dust, they would be more careful to receive it than many whom I see today at Communion. Judging from what he wrote, I’m willing to say that St. Cyril would not care for the way many receive in the hand today, practically manhandling the Sacred Host, or worse, treating It as nothing important.
In 1969, the Holy See gave bishops permission to distribute Holy Communion in the hand but also said that the conventional way of receiving on the tongue must be retained on account of the centuries of tradition behind it and “especially because it expresses the faithful’s reverence for the Eucharist” (see Memoriale Domini). This same document bars the clergy from imposing Communion in the hand in order to exclude Communion on the tongue.
The 1969 document also warned about certain dangers about Communion in the hand: “The danger of a loss of reverence for the august Sacrament of the altar, of profanation, of adulterating the true doctrine.”
Of great concern is the preparation of children for their First Holy Communion. There are places where the children are taught that they may only receive Communion in the hand. This is absolutely wrong. All children should be taught both ways of receiving Holy Communion reverently. We must leave it to them to choose which they prefer. It’s interesting that in our so-called “pro-choice” age, we often insist on limiting the options to follow the Church’s traditions. This is true for Catechumens and converts and former Catholics who desire full union with the Church, as well.
Let me end by saying that no one, certainly not an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, has the right to tell a Catholic how he or she must receive Holy Communion, except to insist on the recipient’s disposition of reverence and obedience to the laws of the Church safeguarding this most holy Sacrament.
