Seven Theses for Healthy Eucharistic Practice

There are many residual effects in our churches from the COVID-19 pandemic. The limitations and our constantly changing understanding of how the virus spread posed a number of substantive questions about foundational theological matters, including the role of the priesthood in the sacraments; the very nature of the Eucharist, including the proper means by which the Sacrament is consecrated; the nature of the parish church as the gathered body of Christ in a particular locale; the benefits and limits of online church.

I propose the following seven theses to assist in healthy and theologically careful practice that confirms to the standards and norms to which clergy are accountable.

Thesis I: At every celebration, both bread and wine are always to be used.

This is the clear, plain sense of the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer and the widespread assumption of nearly all priests. Nonetheless, there were those who, because of various limitations imposed by various authorities during the pandemic, suggested celebrating the Eucharist with bread alone. The consistent witness of the formularies of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, and the preexisting canon law and liturgical practice of the Western church from which they proceeded, is as follows:

1. The elements for the Holy Communion are bread—whether leavened or unleavened, that has been recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling—and wine. The wine is the natural, fermented juice of the grape and not spoiled, to which it is customary to add a little water (BCP 407).
2. A reasonable question about the use of wafers is that their likeness to what most people call “bread” is questionable. Some responses are various recipes for unleavened bread that does not crumble, usually through sweetening and binding agents like honey. But as scholars like Andrew McGowan have noted, this too begs the question about “bread”: many of these sweetened breads are more like deserts than what most people understand as bread. If there is a desire to use bread matter that is more bread-like but avoids the practical and devotional problems of crumbling, what is often known as pita bread (“Khubz”; Arabic: خبز) is a good solution and is also a likely possibility of what was used in the Ancient Near East.
3. The consistent rubrics and practice of the Church of England and the churches of the Anglican Communion is the use of wine and wine alone. In response to a question posed about the use of grape juice, the bishops responded: “That the bishops assembled in this Conference declare that the use of unfermented juice of the grape, or any liquid other than true wine diluted or undiluted, as the element in the administration of the cup in Holy Communion, is unwarranted by the example of our Lord, and is an unauthorised departure from the custom of the Catholic Church” (Resolution 2, 1888 Lambeth Conference). Matter matters.

Thesis II: The ordinary minister who distributes Holy Communion is a bishop, priest, or deacon.

The discipline in the Episcopal Church about celebration is quite clear: Only those persons who first have been ordained priest by episcopal ordination in accordance with the provisions of Canon III.8 shall consecrate and then administer the Holy Eucharist. But the wise permission to allow lay persons to assist in the administration of the Sacrament has evolved in some places to a posture that is almost the reverse of the prayer book rubrics.

The rubrics are straightforward: In the absence of sufficient deacons and priests, lay persons licensed by the bishop according to the canon may administer the Chalice as extraordinary ministers (BCP 408). But here is a place where the prayer book and canons are in a bit of tension: the BCP makes no provision for lay persons to administer the bread, while the canons speak of a Eucharistic ministers “authorized to administer the Consecrated Elements”; Canon III.4.6).

Nonetheless, the point remains: the celebration and administration of the sacraments is constitutive of the priesthood and the episcopate; the assistance at which is constitutive of the diaconate. While there is much to celebrate in the permission of lay persons to assist with the distribution of the Sacrament, it is clear that

• The priority is for the ordained to undertake this role as the ordinary ministers of the sacrament, and
• Lay persons should assist (as “extraordinary” ministers) only to the extent that there are not sufficient clerics to do so.

Thesis III: The vessels for the elements used at the Holy Communion should be dignified and durable.

Precious metals are especially fitting, though the vessels may be from other solid materials that are prized according to the common estimation. In my opinion (and in that of most catholic Christians), chalices and other vessels that hold the consecrated Wine should be of a material that does not absorb liquids. There are several good reasons for this:

1. Fittingness: given the teaching of this church—that the bread and wine after the Great Thanksgiving are the Body and Blood of Christ—both the material used to hold them and the method of distribution should be correspondingly appropriate. If it “is desirable that the Lessons and Gospel be read from a book or books of appropriate size and dignity” (BCP 406), then the material used to hold the elements of Holy Communion is no less so.
2. It has become common in some places to use pottery for the Eucharistic vessels. While our traditional does not speak authoritatively about this, I would recommend that to the extent that pottery is porous, it should not be used. Similarly, the fragility of glass discourages its use.

Thesis IV: When celebrating the Holy Communion, the Minister shall always “receive the Sacrament in both kinds, and then immediately deliver it to the people” [BCP 338, 365].

As all priests should know, this is the unambiguous direction of the prayer book’s rubrics. Nonetheless, a practice that has gained popularity if for the priest to receive last and not to self-communicate. The reason often cited for the former deviation is that it is normal hospitable practice for the host of a meal to wait to eat until the guests have eaten. There are several reasons why the traditional practice of the priest receiving first and self-communicating should be normative:

1. First, to do otherwise is a violation of a specific direction of the rubrics, which is a Title IV violation. This practice simply is not licit.
2. The assumptions about hospitality cited in favor of the practice are extremely contextual: the normativity of a host receiving food last is only true in some circumstances and cultures, but maybe not even most. These assumptions also fail to reckon with the ritual character of the Eucharist. It is not a reenactment of the Last Supper. It is a ritual meal, not a satiating meal. We do not recline; we do not eat until we are full; it is not the Jewish Passover meal. The table is both table and altar. The Eucharist is a ritual meal by which we enter into the Paschal Mystery of the incarnate Word who eternally proceeds from the Father, such that we are united to Jesus in his self-offering to the Father and by which we are given the fruits of his redeeming work.

Furthermore, given the clarity of the rubric, if the priest does not receive immediately, those in the congregation may reasonably wonder if something is seriously wrong, maybe even if the priest has unconfessed sin (which then might make the faithful wonder why the priest is celebrating the Eucharist).

The practice of receiving last is simply not licit nor wise for priests in the Episcopal Church and its practice should be curbed.

1. The host of the meal is not the priest: Jesus is the host of the meal and is the principal actor in the Eucharistic liturgy (see Article XXVI). We must ask, when the priest ostentatiously receives last, whether this seems to displace the Lord as our rightful Host.
2. The principal that undergirds this is well known: one cannot give to another what one has not first received. Thomas Aquinas makes this point clearly in the Summa, citing Pseudo-Dionysius: “the priest receiving first, and afterwards giving it to others, because, as Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. iii), he who gives Divine things to others, ought first to partake thereof himself” (Summa theologiae, III.83.4.corpus; he also makes this point in 82.4.corpus). Constitutive of the role of the priest who celebrates and presides at the Eucharist is that the self-same priest is the most fitting person to (self-)communicate. The deacon or other clerics have not yet received, and so it is less fitting for them to communicate the priest than for the priest to self-communicate and then communicate those who will administer the Sacrament to the rest of the people. It is also traditional in the West that a bishop always self-communicates, as a ritual expression of being the chief pastor and having a share in the high priesthood of Christ (see Ordination of a Bishop, pp. 520-21).

Thesis V: The normal method for receiving Holy Communion is to eat the consecrated Bread and to drink the consecrated Wine.

This too is the plain sense of the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer (1979) and previous editions. Furthermore, the rubrics specifically direct that “Opportunity is always to be given to every communicant to receive the consecrated Bread and Wine separately” (BCP 407).

Nonetheless, the teaching of this church—of which it is a recipient, not an originator—is that all the benefits of Holy Communion are received, even if, for any reason, a person is only able to receive either the consecrated Bread or Wine (BCP 407, 457). The 1979 rubric that allows Communion in one kind for the sick assumes a doctrine that remains unarticulated in the prayer book, but which has been a mainstay within Western Christianity. In the Summa, Thomas Aquinas makes clear that the mode of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament is such that to receive any of the Sacrament is to receive all of Christ. The doctrine, then, serves to guard against erroneous claims that would be misleading or distressing (i.e., that one can get more of Jesus, or that Jesus is divided in some material or bodily fashion; you can read Aquinas on this in III.76.1–2 and III.80.12).

Thesis VI: The practice of intinction should be limited to administering the Sacrament to the sick.

The prayer book states that “the Sacrament may be received in both kinds simultaneously, in a manner approved by the bishop” (BCP 408). Thus, a question arises: When is it appropriate to receive the Eucharistic bread and wine simultaneously, and if so, in what manner? To the first question, there are only a few possibilities. The first is that a person receives under only one kind, either the bread or the wine. The former was a widespread practice in the West, though not one that is encouraged anymore. The motivation for the practice was concern about spilling the consecrated Wine. But persons might also only receive the Bread, for example, if they are in recovery and believe that any consumption of wine might present a serious difficulty.

Two norms immediately present themselves from the rubric on page 408:

• No priest can introduce this practice unless it is explicitly approved by the bishop, including the manner in which it shall take place.
• To receive the elements of the sacrament simultaneously is clearly seen as an exception and extraordinary; it should never be the normative way that people receive Communion.

And yet, it many parishes, intinction has become the normative practice and without episcopal permission.

Eusebius (HE, 6.44) recounts one form of intinction (sometimes now called “unsacramental intinction”) in which the consecrated bread is softened with unconsecrated wine to make reception easier for the sick (one can imagine this happening if the consecrated bread is brought to a sick person who is unable to eat solid food). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes a now outdated practice in which unconsecrated wine is consecrated through contact with a previously consecrated host. Then, of course, there is the regular practice in many Eastern churches of mixing the bread with wine and administering both with a communion spoon (λαβίς‎). Related to this was the practice of dipping consecrated bread in consecrated wine and allowing it to dry so that both kinds could be reserved for the sick for the Liturgy of the Presanctified.

None of these are the current practice in the Episcopal Church: it is quite clear that the motivation behind the practice is to avoid bacteria and illness.

During the COVID-19 pandemic we were urged to “follow the science.” The science is clear: the use of the common cup poses a negligible risk and the practice of self-intinction is the least sanitary method by which one can receive the Sacrament.

In studies about the potential danger of passing bacteria using the common cup, the conclusions were clear:

“Researchers have performed experiments, through which volunteers were asked to drink sacramental wine that contained 14.5% of alcohol from a common silver communion cup or chalice. Remarkably, the number of pathogens located in the rim of the chalice was found considerably low. The authors concluded that the risk of the transmission of the infection through a common communion cup is negligible. Furthermore, rotation of the chalice was ineffective in reducing bacterial colonization. Wiping the rim of the chalice with a cloth reduced bacterial counts by 90%.” (“Holy Communion and Infection Transmission: A Literature Review,” made available by the National Institutes of Health).

The conclusion? “The common communion cup may theoretically serve as a vehicle of transmitting infection, but the potential risk of transmission is very small. Currently, available data do not provide any support for the suggestion that the practice of sharing a common communion cup can contribute to the spread of COVID-19 because SARS-CoV-2 transmission from a patient with COVID-19 or asymptomatic carrier to other people has not been reported” (“COVID-19 and Holy Communion,” made available by the National Institutes of Health).

If, for sufficient reason, the bishop approves the simultaneous reception of both elements of the Sacrament, the following norms should be observed:

1. The Sacrament may only be administered by intinction by those authorized to do so: self-intinction should not be permitted.
2. In light of the specific directions on BCP page 408 about the administration of Communion, the act of intinction, and its ministration should be undertaken by the celebrant or a priest. The best method for this is for the priest to slide the consecrated Bread down the far side of the bowl of the chalice just until it touches the Wine. Then, taking it out of the Wine, tap it once against the inside of the rim to remove any drips, and then immediately place it on the tongue of the communicant. This also requires instruction that for those who wish to receive this way, they must not only open their mouth but extend their tongue over their lower teeth, so that the minister need not place any fingers inside the mouth of the communicant.
3. When administering the consecrated Bread and Wine simultaneously, the following words are to be used: “The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life” or “The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which were given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy Heart by faith, with thanksgiving” (see the directions of the 1943 General Convention, page 236).

Thesis VII: Clergy should teach not only about the theology of the Eucharist but also about our liturgical practice, including reception.

The implementation of these theses requires catechesis (teaching) and mystagogy (formation about the sacraments so that your people may enter into the Divine Mystery, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory).

Matthew S.C. Olver

The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D., is the Executive Director and Publisher of the Living Church Foundation, Senior Lecturer in Liturgics at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, and a scholar of early Christian liturgy.