Dear Parishioners,

I am very glad that people are returning to Church after being away for so long. The sacramental life is very necessary and we all desire to worship God. Though it is necessary for many to stay away because of public health reasons, we should all do what we can to return to Church in the safest way possible. I know that for many this will take a while. But I am still glad that people are returning to Church.

There is one matter that concerns me above all others: how we treat the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, Our Lord. We come together in Church in order to worship Him in the Blessed Sacrament. When we approach Him to receive, He should be our complete and total focus. And before we receive Him we ought to make the best effort possible to prepare ourselves to receive Him. (In other words, if we are not in a state of grace, not collected in our thoughts or have not kept the hour fast, we ought not receive Holy Communion.) We do not come to Mass just to receive Our Lord but to receive Him in a worthy manner.

Particularly, as a minister of Holy Communion, I have a duty to make sure that when someone takes Our Lord, that He is received in a proper manner. I take this very seriously because I have heard and witnessed too many cases where people have taken a Sacred Host and put it in the hymnal or in the bathroom or otherwise treated it in a sacrilegious manner. So, whenever I distribute communion, I watch the person until they actually consume the sacred host. One would think this would be easy to do and almost everyone at Mass does so without any issue. However, every so often someone walks away with a host and if they make it too far, I follow them and make sure they do receive. I hate doing this because it is such a distraction from the Mass. But it is better than the possibility that someone would commit sacrilege: the profaning of what is holy.

I think part of the reason why people do this is that they don’t want to hold up the line as they lift up their mask. But let me assure you: You are not holding up the line at all. I don’t care how long communion takes. What I care about is that Our Lord is treated with dignity and respect.

When we receive Our Lord any way that we want, we are treating Him like an object. I can see why this is easy to do since He comes to us under the appearance of bread. But He does that so that we can express our faith. Though He appeared as just a man in His earthly life, He is God Himself. Though He appears to just be bread as He comes to us in the Eucharist, He is still just as much the God-man and Our Savior. So, we should take special effort to receive Him and to love Him as we receive Him.

God bless!

Fr. Carter