50 Years! Recovery Overdue!

I am most pleased to report Joseph Shaw's publication of the latest in the series of Position Papers. It bears the title: "FIUV PP: The Reception of the Host Alone by the Faithful". On his own LMS Chairman's Blog he offers additional commentary on a couple three issues regarding the reception of Holy Communion, including the glutin issue. There he also references a recent article by Peter Kwasniewski on the New Liturgical Movement blog, which makes well the point about the situation in which we live, as not being that intended by the Vatican Council's Document on the Liturgy now fifty years old.

Reading and reflecting on the worthy (Confession!) and devout reception of Holy Communion deserves exposure to an ever broader base of baptised people. The winter cold and flu season will bring an almost now traditional annual halt in many parishes across America to Sunday Communion under both kinds and exchanges of the handshake type greeting of peace. It is a pleasant season for many Catholics, because the church environment automatically becomes more settled and hopefully reflective. It should give us pause to question the sense of what we do almost in calloused fashion the rest of the year. Even here in Ukraine, where the more common form of reception of Holy Communion by Roman Catholics is for them to be kneeling and receiving on the tongue from the priest or deacon, it is hard to get priests to even imagine eliminating the wander around handshaking at the greeting of peace.

Very simply, we often find ourselves far from God, celebrating without Him as our only focus. I would beg priests to lead their parishes in and around liturgy first to simple decorum and then further to Divine worship oriented toward the One Who first deserves our love and adoration.

For us an essential choice has nothing to do with "bare bones", but rather with orientation, with turning toward the Lord, Who made and saved us.