Hand or mouth?

Distributing the Eucharist nowadays is not a simple matter. In the U.S at least one can choose to receive the host in the hand or on the tongue. Growing up we were never allowed to receive the Eucharist except on the tongue. It was only a couple of years after I was ordained that reception in the hand became an option and it quickly became the norm. For those of us who received our first communions in the late 40s and earlier or until the early 70s, it was a relief to receive in the hand.

Our training for our first communion in 1948 included numerous fear tactics. The hosts we used at that time were fairly tiny wafers of considerable softness. We were instructed, under pains of some terrible disaster that could befall us, not to chew the host and God help you if you touched it. I remember getting the host stuck on the roof of my mouth - more than once - and waiting to be struck dead when I finally had to loosen it with a finger after it became a curled up ball still stuck on the roof of my mouth. The penalty for touching the host under any circumstance was truly frightening, but we never learned what the penalty was. At times I thought it to be a mortal sin and I think one passionate and merciless sister or other taught us that. 

During my first year in the seminary, a priest on the staff who offered our Mass regularly was notorious for picking up a host with his thumb and index finger and then putting it into our mouths in such a way as to slide his thumb on our tongues. Thus, each successive communicant was greeted with a saliva-filled thumb facing oneself holding up an already wet host.

I have told our seminarians about him when I ask them to please - if you are going to receive communion on the tongue - make sure your tongue is extended sufficiently so that the priest does not have to pry open your lips to get the host in your mouth.

For many of us in the early 70s it was a relief to be able to receive communion in the hand. For one thing it seemed to us much more like a gift being received and accepted than like the action of a parent trying to put baby food into an infant's mouth. That being said it remains an option and many do indeed choose to receive on the tongue. I don't personally find that acceptable when I am on the receiving end but that doesn't happen often as I am usually the celebrant.

A religious woman I know once argued with me when she became aware that many of our seminarians choose to receive on the tongue. "You can't let them do that," she screamed. "Don't let them do that." Well, they can do that and I do let them do that if they choose to. I do not know the piety for making such a choice but it is indeed an option to receive in the hand. It is not mandatory.

What is interesting to me is how we make dogma of things that change more quickly than a flash of lightning. How one receives the host is of less importance than that one does indeed receive it. In the hand or on the tongue - Jesus is a gift in many different styles.