Communion in the Hand
McCarthy, Abigail
I I E l l _9 I I l l . I I I l l I COIQAUNION IN THE HAND It is May as I write and each Sunday I watch in some wonder as one small first communicant goes into the sanctuary with his or her...
...The weather was close to freezing...
...The thought staggered his chosen few then...
...Gifts for this vital program should be semt to Father Honnefln, c/o Columban Mlssloos, St...
...Behind our obsession with physical detail lay a literal awe of the host-the Blessed Sacrament...
...The jobs, for youth from poverty families, are half-time and pay $55 a week...
...That is what some of our ex-liberals seem to be doing...
...Our Pastor was a hasty man and given to irritable quick moves...
...There were faintly gruesome stories of hosts which turned into bleeding flesh---I do not remember why but ABIGAIl...
...Or touched your teeth...
...With the Eucharist "he threw himself into the current of human affairs for all time" says one writer...
...Potts have experienced has become for too many others the occasion for recantation, and one cannot help feeling that this, too, is something of a response manufactured by the mood of the decade...
...Sometimes Sister Edwardine, the music teacher, came over from the convent to play the communion music so that our practice would come closer to the reality of the approaching great day...
...This awe had been fueled and fostered by the sight of the "Altar of Relz~" on Holy Thursday, a side altar swathed in tiers of silk and tulle, adorned with lilies and ferns...
...He pointed out what a risky enterprise i t was--with one exception...
...Again, many had waited outside all night...
...Instructions in purple hectograph ink were pulled laboriously off the duplicating jelly by girls under Sister's direction and sent home to our parents...
...Leonard's stoop, or the teenagers who menace, both in fact and fancy, subway riders like Ms...
...As she played softly we went on with the rehearsal, advancing two by two carefully matched in size to the priedkux just inside the altar rail, pretended to slip our hands under starched linen altar cloths, spread them beneath our chin.% "received," then rising together, facing simultaneoudy one to the right, one to the left, then to the hack of the church before stepping carefully down the steps which led from the sanctuary...
...There were the hours of practice in the dark, empty, echoing church...
...Is it possible that among these tens of thousands were some of the defilers of Mr...
...and fostered by weekly Benediction when even our irascible Father John seemed transformed in his golden cope as he presented the Sacrament for our adoration...
...More than an hour before Mass, but unthinkable all the same...
...There is much that we cannot accomplish with liberal remedies...
...There were hymns and prayers to learn by heart...
...ward...
...MeCAIITMY the visual image lingers...
...The little girls, who seem very tiny to me, sometimes wear veils but their white dresses are simple...
...We were to wear tha same kind of flowers and carry the same kind of candles, all ordered by the Sisters...
...That must have been the level decreed by our bishop as safe...
...That is what he said...
...10016...
...I remember a time when parents had nothing to say about the matter and only much older children were admitted to communion...
...the boys have no set attire...
...To do this he needs _9 $1,S00 fooddryer...
...Unthinkable, but Carlie had broken his fast--he had taken a drink from the school fountain...
...PldlJpphaea To meet widespread infant malnutrition in tropical San R~lue Father llll Hannafln developed I baby food from local ingredients kept fresh if reduced to powder form...
...To demonstrate to IS,000 poor tenant farmere the foods to grow to wipe out malnutrition there, he needs _9 movie projector end films costing ~00 more...
...I i i il _9 As it drew on to May we grew increasingly anxious about important details...
...Sic, thlrteen times, Twelve words minimum...
...dial4...
...I I E l l _9 I I l l . I I I l l I COIQAUNION IN THE HAND It is May as I write and each Sunday I watch in some wonder as one small first communicant goes into the sanctuary with his or her parents ---sometimes trailed by toddler sisters and brothers--receives communion and returns to a front pew while the rest of the congregation converges on the altar...
...But let us begin, as I promised, the third ~[~d last time...
...in 1965 Daniel Bell wrote an article on predicting the future...
...I only know that whatever the eventuality we were never, never to touch the host with our fingers...
...Some had arrived the afternoon before aed waited through the night...
...Healt]k OVERCOMING MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS How-To Book, Diet, Recipes...
...We had all seen him quickly consume a dropped host and cover the spot with a linen cloth lest a crumb should remain on the floor...
...It ought to provide them with reasons for not abandoning their allegiances...
...There were stories to learn about the martyrs of the Blessed Sacrmnent-Roman boys with names like Pancratim and Tarcisius, stoic and brave, who died rather than expose the sacrament to pagan profanation...
...I look at the picture of my mother in the family albutn "~he stands there stiffly, happily, in wonderfld white hairbows and a dress all embroidery and lace insertions, holding the decorated first communion candle in one hand---and I know she must have been at least twelve years old then...
...There is no logic in believing that liberalism has let us down because we expected too much of it, in growing angry with it or ourselvesmand "losing the faith...
...Of the day itself I remember trying hard to feel it the most important day of my life, but of being unhappily aware of the lilies of the valley skewered tightly into my hair by Sister Superior...
...It has been a long slow return to the concept of the eucharist as food for our needs and bond of our community...
...4.S0...
...A man may alter his opinion on proper grounds, as William Hazlitt wrote about the conservative reaction to the French Revolution...
...fueled, too, by Forty Hours" Devotion, which ended with our walking in procz~on, scattering (Contlnaed on pare 3&3) I I I I 10 lime 1977:362 us for ordinary human reactions, that asks us to deny what is in front of our faces, must be amended...
...also credentles service...
...Potts...
...our parents were to see the white prayer booka and roearies which were suggested as suitable First Communion gifts...
...just as the efforts that should, but probably won't, be made in 1977 might make a difference in the years to come...
...I presume that liberals believe it does and I believe that, at least in considerable measure, they are right...
...The age of reception crept very slowly down...
...Dark blue suits, dark blue ties and white, white shirts were prescribed for the boys...
...I suppose one would have to have like memories to have some compassionate understanding of those bishops who have made a last ditch stand against communion in the hand, who fear, at the least, a general lack of reverence---at the worst, desecration...
...there is much that we might have accomplished but didn't...
...Our strenuous preparation lasted all through the school year...
...lm~tme BIILICAL INSTITUTE, Trinity College, hrflngt~, Vermont 0S401...
...Our bishops and priests were slow to accept the admonition of Pius X that little children of the age of "reason" were as worthy as anyone else...
...on 12706, Albuquerque, NM $710S...
...There were the lives of the saints whose high standards of purity we were to seek to attain like Agnes...
...Pre.regldrefloo eecesNty...
...He meant his flesh to be eaten and his blood to be drunk...
...Brown, Collies, MacKenzie, Mowry, Pritcherd...
...but he need not "pass an act of attainder on all his thoughts, hopes, wishes, from youth upwards, to offer them at the shrine of matured servility . . . a living and ignominious satire on himself...
...Water taps were to he taped the night before, and parents were to he careful that we had no breakfmt...
...P o s i t i o n s Open TEACHER OPENINGS all fields, levels Iocnfiom...
...We knew what to do if Father fumbled, and a host dropped...
...Thousands were also in line the next day...
...I myself was nine and in the fourth grade...
...Write: NC~, 334 W. kardsley Ave., Elkhart, Ind...
...Or, horror of horrors, became caught in your throat...
...O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament divine . . . . " It was all attractively mysterious and very remote from our lives outside the church walls...
...It has been hard for those who feel themselves charged with authority to see that the incarnate Christ cannot be protected from himself, from his own intention...
...Potts with reassurance about protecting herself...
...Is it unreasonable to assume, as liberals, conservatives, and socialists have for a century and a half, that the availability of employment has a major impact on the habits of us all...
...Again, the New York ~imes, page one, another week later...
...We have come a Ion S way...
...C l a s s i f i e d RATES: i0c a word...
...But what if the host stuck to the roof of our mouth...
...It is all so simply and quietly done...
...Dreu and sleeve lengths were s ~ for the girls...
...And I remember Carlie Schm~dt sobbing with his head on the desk as the rest of us filed out of the classroom...
...S4c, seven times...
...This does not provide Mr...
...Write: Director...
...Whether liberalism has a remedy for this situation is another question...
...Commonweal: 38.3...
...Bitter disappointment with these facts should not lead us to renounce what can be done...
...one time: b'Tc, three times...
...What Mr...
...We had heard that the fragile wafers of that time often did...
...the little lamb of God, and Aloysius (to whom I never could warm...
...Twenty thousand young adults, at various schools and neighborhood anti-poverty centers, had waited in line to apply for federally-financed summer jobs...
...We knew he himself would wash the spot later with a cloth used only for the altar...
...And their successors have continued to call him among us whether they were ascetics and saints or venal, political, skeptical clerics---it made no difference to him because his intention was unequivocal...
...Efforts made five, ten years ago might have made a difference...
...r Nebraska iNS...
...I am told that the time is decided by their parents and the pastor...
...I do not remember the remedies...
...June/9-24...
...We flied into the pews---~iHs first, boys in back--stood, and then genuflected all together at the resounding snap of the rubber hand on Sister Leonllla's prayer book...
...Leonard and Ms...
...In this and the next decade, for example, we face a tremendous influx of youngsters into the labor force . . . . This data leads us to plan for increased needs . . . . " Except that we failed...
...It is staggering now...
...Once individuals are born, we know that they will be available for work in about twenty years at some reasonable ratio...
...For box numbers add S0c per insertior Classified payable with order: monthly in advance for more then three times...
...To them he said, "Take and eat...
...in this respect, labor-force data are the most solid of all facts available...
...In northeast metropolitan poverty areas, the unemployment rate for black sixteen-tonineteen year olds is now 44 percent, for whites 21 percent...
...flower petals before the glittering monstrance carried by a visiting priest before whom our pastor walked backward swinging a censer from which floated drifts of incense...
...In our advancing fervor it is quite possible that we thought ourselves ready to emulate Pancratius and Tarcisius by choking to death if necessary...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Abigail MeEarthg (Cont...
...COMMONWEAL, Madison Ave., New York...
...Leonard with a means, right now, of protecting his stoop, nor Ms...
...Oh, the terror of stumbling or falling on the day...
...A picture of young people, crushdd together behind a police barricade, dominates the page...
...Amended, but not abandoned...
...And Janet Stuart writes of those who first received it, 'Whey were dull, heavy-witted, jealous, petty as children, having nothing but their blunt goodwill, obedience and half-selfish love...
Vol. 104 • June 1977 • No. 12
