How many parishes do you know which only use for Holy Communion, Host consecrated at the Mass the communicants are attending? I suspect very few. But who really knows? I am not sure that we can tell by the difference it makes in the parish community and the lives of parishioners outside of the church building where they receive Holy Communion consecrated at the Mass they are attending.
We do know that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) states the Holy Communion should be received by communicants from Hosts consecrated at the Mass they are attending.
So much for the GIRM. It also allows for the option of receiving under both "species" by intinction too.
I do not get apoplectic then I attend Mass and the minister of Holy Communion offers me a Host from the tabernacle which means the Host was consecrated at some other Mass that I did not attend.
The Mass is the Mass in since the Mass is an experience of eternity and I was able to receive a Host preserved in a miraculous way from a Mass offere in the second century, I would still be receiving our Lord consecrated at the Mass I attended since eternally speaking there is only one Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Father John Hunwicke agrees with me and thus I repeat my title, to tabernacle or not to tabernacle: that is the question:
To be communicated from the Tabernacle with a host consecrated at a previous Mass reminds one that every Mass is the One Mass; that, as that great Separated Doctor of Catholic Truth (Fr Aidan Nichols' phrase), Eric 'Patrimony' Mascall, put it, a plurality of Masses is "the same thing - the same essentially, the same numerically - not just a lot of different things of the same kind, but the very same identical thing ... the one redemptive act which Christ, who died for our sins and rose again for our justification, perpetuates in the Church which is his Body through the Sacrament of his body and blood."
4 comments:
Well, If one can make the right guess about who will be receiving Communion....
I agree that Hosts consecrated at the present Mass should be the ones used. (Our Lord in the Tabernacle is reserved for the Homebound/Hospitalbound in the East).
But it's also true that one has to keep the Hosts fresh too, so they should be used up....The struggle is real.
I recall this occurred more when multiple priests were assisting with dispensing Holy Communion I rarely see this any more
funny when the priest was facing "east" as in the Latin mass, no one really noticed or seemed to care, all was at the "center" of attention, Now with the new improved mass the tabernacle usually is either behind or aside of the priest if not absent entirely, requiring the priest (ideally)to stop everything and fetch the ciborium or sadly someone (usually a improperly dressed woman or more sadly a man in shorts and a tee) to rummage around to get it and plop it down next to Father as he is dividing up the wine and ciboria to the 8 to 10 extra's at the table< sorry altar< to distribute both species to the conga line that is forming hands outstretched to the tune of one bread. And we wonder why so few believe in the real presence
For many years, I tried valiantly to apply the desire of Sacrosanctum Concilium that the faithful receive from the Sacrifice offered at that Mass, but I gave up.
Here's the thing: unless you have vast hordes of people at home, in hospitals and in prisons, how can you hope to refresh the Eucharist in the tabernacle, making deposits of hundreds of hosts each week?
Put fewer in? That leads inevitably to miscalculating on how many you consecrate, and then you run out. Or you do as I've heard of priests doing: stuffing themselves (in full view of the faithful) with the extra hosts.
It seems to me that the practical solution is simply to make regular recourse to the tabernacle, distributing them to the faithful day by day, and gradually refreshing them. I've actually run out of hosts at Mass, even after breaking and re-breaking. It is mortifying; it's not something I ever want to have happen again. Since -- in all candor -- I am as prone as anyone to being distracted and dopey, perhaps from lack of sleep some mornings -- I think it is skating on thin ice to let the number of hosts in the tabernacle dwindle down too far. I'm sorry it distresses folks such as those at PrayTell, but that won't keep me from sleeping at night.
And, by the way, I read the norm in the relevant document as an aspiration to aim for, which I certainly do. Perhaps some day I will be a retired priest and having Mass with the same 20-30 people every single day. Then I will have no difficulty with the norm. Till then, I want to avoid a situation in which people want to receive Jesus in the Eucharist and because of my failures, they cannot.
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