Transcript:
We noticed that, especially the moment of Holy Communion, became so superficial, so banal, especially with the form of receiving Holy Communion directly in the hand and touching the Holy Host with the fingers from the palm of your hand, and then putting the Holy Communion in your mouth. And then all the consequences that flow from this. I would only say four, which are evident and cannot be denied.
Firstly, the loss of the fragments, the little fragments of the Host. This loss is very big. We expose our Lord in every little fragment which contains the whole divinity, present, real, present. See, that’s one important thing to focus on. Sometimes, you almost get a sense that people think if a fragment breaks off from the Host, then it is not really the Eucharist anymore. It is, and it is the Eucharist because this is a dogma of our faith from the Council of Trent. It is a dogma that in each, even the smallest part of the Host, the whole Christ is present. Therefore, this is a dogma, and we must behave according to our dogma.
In this manner of receiving Holy Communion in the hand, we expose our Lord to a great loss of fragments. They can be attached to the palm of the hand or the fingers, and then, between the priest and the communicant, there is no plate, so the fragments fall down. Even in our country, we have no Communion in the hand, thanks be to God, and we always use a plate, a paten. In my experience, after each Mass, I find some fragments in the paten. But when there is no paten, like in Communion in the hand, fragments fall down and our Lord is crushed by the feet in His Church in so many places. This cannot be. We cannot be silent about this and say, Okay, we can continue. It is licit. Okay, it is legally licit, but we have to reflect on this.
This was the first very grave consequence of this manner of receiving Holy Communion, which today is spread all over the world.
The second is the stealing of the Host, increasing in many countries, really astonishing. We expose our Lord to stealing the Host.
The third consequence, objectively speaking, not about the interior attitude of the people who receive Holy Communion in the hand, to be clear, but about the objective situation, is that this form of receiving the Lord, the holiest of the holy, in this manner so widespread today standing, in the hand, taking it with fingers and so on here is minimalism, the minimum of gestures of adoration. But when this is the holiest of the holy, we must give the maximum. It is a logical consequence of our faith.
The fourth consequence is that this manner of putting the holiest of the holy in the palm of the hand and then allowing the faithful to take the Holy Host with their own fingers and put it in their mouth is very similar to taking common food in the kitchen, in a cafeteria, or in your house. You can observe this. So we have a situation of absence, in this manner, of a real, clear, unequivocal sacred gesture.
I think we have to reflect very seriously on this. I think we have to wake up, stop, kneel down, and adore our Lord. It is logical. When the angels in heaven in the Apocalypse prostrate themselves in front of the lamp, we have the lamp of God in the Host, yet they prostrate themselves, and we do not. Why not?