I WONDER how many priests are aware that they engage in a process of selectivity involving members of the congregation when they say Mass.
At Mass the priest re-enacts the miracle of the Last Supper, repeating the words Christ said when he instituted the Eucharist over 2,000 years ago.
“Then he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ He did the same with the cup after supper, and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured out for you’.” (Luke 22:19 20)
The priest completes the process by consuming both kinds.
Where present, co-concelebrants, lay ministers of the Eucharist and sometimes other lay servers also share both.
However, a process of selection is applied to the wider congregation.
Often the body of Christ is distributed but the blood of Christ is not.
It is like being invited to a meal wherein the host consumes each serving but offers his guests just half their portion.
In addition to this clear act of exclusivity, there is the curious practice of confining the sharing of both kinds, where one priest is present, to those who are Eucharistic lay ministers and sometimes other lay servers, as if they were some kind of elite and specially deserving.
While under church law one kind can act for both at Mass, it may not be known that church pastors have a duty to promote the distribution of both.
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal states “Holy Communion has a fuller form as a sign when it is distributed under both kinds. For in this form the sign of the Eucharistic banquet is more clearly evident and a clear expression is given to the divine will by which the new and eternal Covenant is ratified in the Blood of the Lord, as also the relationship between the Eucharistic banquet and the eschatological banquet in the Father’s Kingdom.” (Liturgical Calendar for Ireland 2012)
In 1991, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments gave permission to the Irish Episcopal Conference for “Holy Communion to be distributed under both kinds to the faithful at Masses on Sundays and holy days of obligation and on weekdays, if, in the judgment of the ordinary, Communion can be given in an orderly and reverent way.” (Liturgical Calendar for Ireland 2012)
The practice, however, is anything but ideal.
Here and there around the country some effort is made to distribute both kinds.
This effort is often confined to Sundays and/or special feast days or occasions.
Sometimes the approach is arbitrary, as if those centrally involved lack a real commitment to the process.
Many churches make little, if any, concession to the laity being allowed share in the full Eucharistic meal.
What is more, there is resistance to the notion that it should happen at all. Some priests perceive it as not having any importance whatsoever.
Christ himself was very specific about the need to consume both.
In John 6, He says: “In all truth I tell you, if you do not eat of the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise that person up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in that person.”
A priest is, of course, aware of the importance of these words.
How strange then the unwillingness of some to ensure that those at Mass can partake of both.
In this year of the Eucharistic Congress there has, up to now, been little or no public discussion about the full Eucharistic meal being available to all God’s people in every church throughout the land.
It would be nice to think that the lay faithful attending the Congress could have enjoyed the full Eucharistic meal, as Christ clearly intended, and that the Irish Catholic bishops would ensure the practice of sharing both kinds at every future church Mass in the land.
Fintan J Power is a lay reader in the Franciscan Friary in Waterford, where he also assists with the distribution of Holy Communion