[What follows is one of the many painful but necessary Truths to ponder if we are to to re-establish awe, amazement, and belief in, and reverence for, our loving Lord physically present in the Holy Eucharist.]
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| (Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, ms. 993, Folio 158v) |
The first major step was
the allowance of Communion in the hand while standing - a sharp break from the
deeply ingrained practice of many centuries of kneeling in adoration at the
altar rail and receiving on the tongue, like a baby bird being fed by its
parent (as we see in countless medieval depictions of the pelican that has
wounded her breast in order to feed her chicks). This change had the obvious
effect of making people think the Holy Eucharist wasn't so mysterious and holy
after all. If you can just take it in your hand like ordinary food, it might as
well be a potato chip distributed at a party. The sense of awe and reverence
toward the Blessed Sacrament was systematically diminished and undermined
through this Modernist reintroduction of an ancient practice that had long
since been discontinued by the Church in her pastoral wisdom. Nor, as has been
well documented, did the faithful themselves request the abolition of the
custom of receiving on the tongue while kneeling; it was imposed by the self-styled
“experts”.
(Peter Kwasniewski from The Holy Bread of Eternal Life - Restoring Eucharistic Reverence in an Age of Impiety).
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