What is the proper way to receive the Host during Communion? A caller asks the age-old question, and Father Dave never gets tired of giving the answer!
This caller isn’t new to the faith but has been a practicing Catholic for his entire life. He learned from a parish priest that it was appropriate to receive the Host in your hand and then step to the side to put the Host in your mouth. However, while visiting another parish, our caller says when he stepped away from the priest with the Host still in his hand, the priest stopped him in his tracks and made him receive immediately. The caller wants to know, what did he do wrong? How should he receive the Eucharist?
Father Dave explains that the idea of stepping to the side to receive the Eucharist is encouraged in some parishes when the priest wants to keep the Communion line moving. It is not necessarily incorrect to do this little side-step, provided that you still receive the Eucharist immediately. It is likely, though, that the priest in the other parish thought the caller was taking the Host back to his pew, or planning to dip it in the chalice of Consecrated Blood, both of which are incorrect.
RELATED: Video: Sacraments 101: Eucharist (How We Receive)
Photo caption: Father Joshua Werth distributes Communion to an inmate during Mass at the Ellsworth Correctional Facility in Kansas. (CNS photo/Karen Bonar, The Register)
(Original Air 01-12-17)