of the Holy Body, partake of it; giving heed lest thou lose any portion thereof.…
Then after thou hast partaken of the Body of Christ, draw near also to the Cup of His Blood; not stretching forth thine hands, but bending, and saying with an air of worship and reverence, Amen, hallow thyself by partaking also of the Blood of Christ. And while the moisture is still upon thy lips, touch it with thine hands, and hallow thine eyes and brow and the other organs of sense.3
But writing at the same time as St. Cyril, St. Basil of Caesarea (330–79) tells us that receiving the bread in the hand is only allowed in times of persecution.4 He suggests what many other writers do: that reception of the eucharist on the tongue is the norm.
As the church became what we know as the Church, the increasing number of converts necessitated further organization. The Church began to set aside (ordained) leaders, and the clergy began to restrict the laity’s access to the eucharist, probably for reasons of safeguarding something sacred and regulating its proper use.
Thus, the clergy became the guardians of the sacraments, and probably by the late fourth century, the laity did not routinely remove the bread and the wine from the service. What’s more, by church decree three hundred years later, the laity no longer were allowed to even touch the elements. One of the theological reasons given was that only something that was consecrated (the priest’s hands anointed at ordination) should touch the body and blood, and thus the paten and the cup. No one but a priest or a bishop (not even a deacon) was ordinarily even allowed to remove from or to place anything upon the holy altar.
St. Thomas Aquinas makes the reasons for this very clear much later, in the mid-thirteenth century:
Out of reverence towards this sacrament, nothing touches it but what is consecrated, hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands, for touching this sacrament. Hence it is not lawful for anyone to touch it, except from necessity, for instance if it were to fall upon the ground, or else in some other case of urgency.5
This idea that the consecrated hands of the priests and bishops were the only ones holy enough to touch the eucharist became the basis for placing the body on the communicant’s tongue instead of in her palm, although it was not a universal practice until a church decree in 650.
Finally, a council at Rouen in 650 settled the matter, decreeing, “Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layman or laywomen but only in their mouths.”6 A mere forty-two years later, a council in Constantinople prohibited laity from giving themselves communion, thus stopping completely the practice of taking it home and/or receiving it even when the clergy put it into their own hands.7 Meanwhile, the clergy always ate the body and drank the precious blood.
Though in most of the rest of the world, Roman Catholics still receive the bread upon their tongues, in 1977 Pope Paul VI allowed the U.S. Bishops to return to the practice of giving the host into communicants’ palms.
Anglicans have been receiving both the bread and wine since the founding of the Church of England in the sixteenth century. For the Reformers, one of the problems with Roman Catholicism was that the elements were not available in both “kinds” or “species.”
The Council of Trent (1545) put forth the Doctrine of Concomitance in reaction to the Reformers’ insistence that the laity have access to the cup. Anglicans, like Roman Catholics, still uphold this doctrine, which says that the consecrated bread and wine each contain entirely both the body and blood of Christ. A congregant who just receives the bread or just receives the wine has received Christ in the body and the blood.
SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
Spiritual Communion is a communion of desire, meaning that a Christian inwardly shares in the eucharist, though the body and blood are not physically present.
In 2001, the bishops of the Church of England reiterated that the Anglican Church subscribes to the “ancient Catholic teaching that a person prevented from receiving the sacred elements may be brought into real communion with our Lord through faith (‘Believe and you have eaten,’ as St. Augustine says), just as the whole Christ is received when communion is administered in one kind.” 8
The first BCP (1549) recommended spiritual communion for those who could not attend because of illness or for those who could not swallow the elements. Eucharistic Visitors now take care of many of these pastoral situations.
Why does this matter to Eucharistic Ministers?
Often EMs serve persons at the altar rail who choose to receive only the bread or (less often) only the wine. Thus, EMs who are aware of this doctrine can assure alcoholics who abstain from the consecrated wine, for instance, that they have received the fullness of communion in the bread. Conversely, people who drink only the consecrated wine because they cannot digest the gluten in the bread used for the eucharist, have also received the full benefit of communion.
The English Reformers held out for the necessity of the bread and the cup to be available to all. From the beginning of the English Church, Article XXX of the Articles of Religion (1571) stated: “The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both the parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.”9
In the mid-twentieth century, Sunday schools and camps often taught various versions of this song to illustrate some of the truths of our Anglican identity:
I Am an Anglican Sung to “God Bless America” Author: probably wanted to remain anonymous
I am an Anglican.
I am P.E. (Protestant Episcopal) I am High Church, And Low Church I am Protestant and Catholic and free. Not a Presby, Nor a Luth’ran Nor a Baptist, white with foam. I am an Anglican, Just one step from Rome. I am an Anglican, Via media’s my home.
Using this lighthearted synopsis, here is a very brief sketch of some of the areas in which we differ but remain wonderfully—and even miraculously—united.
People who visit Episcopal churches often wonder how services using the same Book of Common Prayer can contain so much variety. Shouldn’t it always be exactly the same? Thankfully, not so! Styles of worship often differ, and these differences reflect some very
