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Monday, June 5, 2017

KNEELING FOR HOLY COMMUNION, EVEN IF RECEIVING IN THE HAND, IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT RENEWAL FOR THE ORDINARY FORM OF THE MASS, EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN AD ORIENTEM!

On Pentecost Sunday, I celebrated our Cathedral's EF High Mass. Once again, what struck me as most important for the actual renewal of the Ordinary Form of the Mass isn't Latin or ad orientem, it is kneeling for Holy Communion.

I was the only "Eucharistic Minister" for about 200 communicants, and the time it took for me alone going to each communicant kneeling at the railing, was about the same as four distributing to those standing single file as is Ordinary in the Ordinary Form!

But this is precisely what it appeared to look like at the Cathedral's EF Mass for Pentecost:

communion

7 comments:

rcg said...

Glad to hear you had 200 people. Did you get a chance to speak to them about where they were from, regular attendance of EF Mass, etc.? Also, did any of your home parishoners attend?

Anonymous said...

The damage has been done. Kneeling for communion won't fix anything. Better translations won't fix anything. If someone has cancer and does nothing about it for months/years and then finally realizes they don't want to die.....guess what, it's too late.

Oh, and the fact that the pope refuses to teach clearly, that bishops and cardinals and heads of religious orders are openly teaching heresy without correction kinda maybe might be a little more serious than people standing for communion . The East has always stood for communion and look what they are going through.

It is similar to this nonsense from Cardinal Burke that the consecration has to be done or Russia will spread her errors. NEWSFLASH.....the consecration wasn't done when Our Lady ordered it and Russia did spread her errors. Look what happened to the Church after Vatican II. That kind of total and complete destruction doesn't happen by accident.

Anonymous said...

To Anonymous June 5, 2017 at 8:02 am

Bee here:

It's not too late. Oh, it might be too late for many people, but it's not too late for the Church. In every age there have been attacks on the Church by one thing or another, and it might have seemed hopeless to many people living through those times, but the Church went on. Jesus started with only 12 guys and His mother...and one of those guys was a rat.

How did 12 uneducated guys manage to spread a message of salvation that ended up with billions of followers around the globe? They didn't. God did. So even though it may look hopeless and that kneeling for communion is too little too late, don't worry.

All God needs is one person who wants to do what He wants. All He needed was for one woman, Mary, to say yes - I will to do Your will - let it be done to me according to Your will. God used her as a conduit, a vehicle for His plan. And He always has a plan.

Be the vehicle of His plan. Don't worry about the plan. Just be available to do His will.

The future will most certainly be different than what came before, but all is not lost... (Hope is a virtue. :-) )

God bless.
Bee

Anonymous said...

No deacons to help with distribution of communion?

I was at a different sort of Mass for Pentecost---on the shores of whatever you call it, Lake Thurmond or Clarks Hill, for St. Mary's on the Hill parish picnic in Columbia County, this also being the 100th anniversary of the parish on Monte Sano Avenue, Augusta 30904. The red stoles worn by the clergy hopefully made evident it was Pentecost. Thankfully the rain held off til mid afternoon! So much dessert up there, I was wondering if we were guilty of gluttony!?








Mordacil said...

I'm also a parishioner at st Mary on the Hill. Only been here a little bit but haven't really synced with that community. It seemed a bit clique-ish and maybe somewhat liberal theologically. The homily on Pentecost said that we need to abandon the idea of the Church as an ark with the faithful within and other groups who have parts of the truth hanging on for life outside of it. Apparently that's too divisive an image.

Anonymous said...

Moradacil, actually I am not a parishioner of St. Mary's or even a resident of Augusta---was down there for State GOP convention on the Riverwalk last weekend and stayed over with relatives who belong there...I don't think we heard the same homily; I did not get the impression you had, but maybe the heat and humidity caused me not to pay as much attention. The parish probably is a little clickish, being in the city's wealthy Hill section, but now they may be getting jealous that St. Teresa of Avila in Columbia County is now overtaking St. Mary's in size (probably not a surprise given the growth in Columbia County and lack of growth in Richmond County). One day---maybe by 2030---we will see Columbia County pass Richmond County, which could affect church realignment in Augusta (like in 1971, when 3 downtown churches were merged into today's Holy Trinity).

ByzRus said...


Respectfully, I continue to maintain that to drive the bus effectively, you have to face the direction you want to go.

I struggle with the imagery of the priest metaphorically backing up the bus from the altar then, distributing communion in the hand. To me, standing or knealing, reception in the hand absent an immediate ablution results in profanation.