Over the past couple of weekends, you may have noticed something new in our Church: The Parish Pastoral Council, with the blessing of Fr. David, has installed beautiful blue kneeling pads along the altar rail for the use of those who wish to kneel when receiving Holy Communion. Perhaps you have already noticed that some people in our parish prefer to receive Holy Communion while kneeling, and the use of our altar rail makes this a bit more practical. Deacon Joe has also given instructions during Mass about the new flow for receiving Holy Communion: Communicants are to process forward and line up along the altar rail, either kneeling or standing, while Fr. David and Deacon Joe move from person to person to distribute the Most Blessed Sacrament - See the bottom of this page for a graphic of the new Communion pattern.

As the official norms for the United States (detailed in The General Instruction on the Roman Missal, no. 160) indicate, you are free to receive either on the tongue or on the hand, while either standing or kneeling:

The norm established for the Dioceses of the United States of America is that Holy Communion is to be received standing, unless an individual member of the faithful wishes to receive Communion while kneeling (Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Instruction, Redemptionis Sacramentum, March 25, 2004, no. 91).

When receiving Holy Communion, the communicant bows his or her head before the Sacrament as a gesture of reverence and receives the Body of the Lord from the minister. The consecrated host may be received either on the tongue or in the hand, at the discretion of each communicant.

The marble altar rail and gate at St. Aloysius Church have an interesting history. Both were previously installed in the beautiful chapel of St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore, which was operated by the Xaverians from 1866 to 1950. The most famous student at St. Mary’s Industrial School is George Herman “Babe” Ruth, who received his First Holy Communion on August 15, 1906 while kneeling at the Communion rail in the school chapel. When the chapel was dismantled in 1961, its furnishings were distributed to others who could use them. Because St. Aloysius Church in Leonardtown was then in the process of building the Church that we know and love today, St. Mary’s Industrial School’s marble altar rail and gate were given to us. If you decide to kneel down to receive Holy Communion at our parish, then, you can know that “the Babe” also did so in his childhood.

Those who are over 60 or so will probably remember kneeling along the altar rail to receive the Eucharist on the tongue. This was the custom in the West for much of Church history, until the late 1960s and early 1970s when it became more common to receive Holy Communion in the hand while standing. When Pope Paul VI gave permission to distribute Communion in the hand in 1969, he firmly stipulated:

The new method of administering communion should not be imposed in a way that would exclude the traditional usage.... The two ways of receiving communion can without question take place during the same liturgical service.

Nonetheless, parishes began to remove their altar rails, and the traditional practice of receiving on the tongue while kneeling was all but forgotten. Our own Communion rail was one of the few that remained in place, perhaps because of its beauty and history, but it has not been used for the distribution of Communion during Sunday Mass for decades.

Those who are younger may not be familiar with the traditional posture of receiving Communion at all. A statement from the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff on the Vatican website, which I’ll quote at length, explains the history and theology of the practice:

The most ancient practice of distributing Holy Communion was, with all probability, to give Communion to the faithful in the palm of the hand. The history of the liturgy, however, makes clear that rather early on a process took place to change this practice.

From the time of the Fathers of the Church, a tendency was born and consolidated whereby distribution of Holy Communion in the hand became more and more restricted in favor of distributing Holy Communion on the tongue. The motivation for this practice is two-fold: a) first, to avoid, as much as possible, the dropping of Eucharistic particles; b) second, to increase among the faithful devotion to the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Saint Thomas Aquinas also refers to the practice of receiving Holy Communion only on the tongue. He affirms that touching the Body of the Lord is proper only to the ordained priest.

Therefore, for various reasons, among which the Angelic Doctor cites respect for the Sacrament, he writes: “. . . 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 else to touch it except from necessity, for instance, if it were to fall upon the ground, or else in some other case of urgency” (Summa Theologiae, III, 82, 3).

Over the centuries the Church has always characterized the moment of Holy Communion with sacredness and the greatest respect, forcing herself constantly to develop to the best of her ability external signs that would promote understanding of this great sacramental mystery. In her loving and pastoral solicitude the Church has made sure that the faithful receive Holy Communion having the right interior dispositions, among which dispositions stands out the need for the Faithful to comprehend and consider interiorly the Real Presence of Him Whom they are to receive. (See The Catechism of Pope Pius X, nn. 628 & 636). The Western Church has established kneeling as one of the signs of devotion appropriate to communicants. A celebrated saying of Saint Augustine, cited by Pope Benedict XVI in n. 66 of his Encyclical Sacramentum Caritatis, (“Sacrament of Love”), teaches: “No one eats that flesh without first adoring it; we should sin were we not to adore it” (Enarrationes in Psalmos 98, 9). Kneeling indicates and promotes the adoration necessary before receiving the Eucharistic Christ.

From this perspective, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger [who became Pope Benedict XVI] assured that: “Communion only reaches its true depth when it is supported and surrounded by adoration” [The Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 90]. For this reason, Cardinal Ratzinger maintained that “the practice of kneeling for Holy Communion has in its favor a centuries-old tradition, and it is a particularly expressive sign of adoration, completely appropriate in light of the true, real and substantial presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the consecrated species” [cited in the Letter “This Congregation” of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 1 July 1, 2002].

John Paul II, in his last Encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (“The Church comes from the Eucharist”), wrote in n. 61: “By giving the Eucharist the prominence it deserves, and by being careful not to diminish any of its dimensions or demands, we show that we are truly conscious of the greatness of this gift. We are urged to do so by an uninterrupted tradition, which from the first centuries on has found the Christian community ever vigilant in guarding this ‘treasure.’ Inspired by love, the Church is anxious to hand on to future generations of Christians, without loss, her faith and teaching with regard to the mystery of the Eucharist. There can be no danger of excess in our care for this mystery, for ‘in this sacrament is recapitulated the whole mystery of our salvation.’”

The United States Eucharistic Revival that we are currently in is intended to help us to deepen our faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Perhaps reviving the use of the Communion rail will help us to better express our conviction that the Lord is really, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. 

For a visual diagram of our new Communion pattern, see this helpful graphic from our Parish Pastoral Council: