COMMUNION
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COMMUNION
recipients themselves) were likewise intended to be
obligatory for all future celebrations. Tiie institution
under both kinds, or the separate consecration of the
bread and wine, belongs essentially, in Catholic opin-
ion, to the sacrificial, as distinct from the sacramental,
character of the Eucharist; and when Christ, in the
words, "Do this for a commemoration of me" (Luke,
xxii, 19), gave to the Apostles both the command and
the power to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice, they imder-
stood Him merely to impose upon them and their suc-
cessors in the priesthood the obligation of sacrificing
stth utrdque. This obligation the Church has rigorously
observed.
In John, vi, 54, Christ says: "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you"; but in verses 52 and 59 he attributes life eternal to the eating of "this liread" (which is "my flesh for the life of the world"), with- out mention of the drinking of His blood: " if anyone eat of this bread he shall live forever". Now the Utraquist interpretation would suppose that in verse 54 Christ meant to emphasize the distinction between the mode of reception "by eating" and the mode of reception "by drinking", and to include both modes distinctly m the precept He imposes. But such literalism, extravagant in any conne.xion, would result in this case in putting verse 54 in opposition to 52 and 59, interpreted in the same rigid way. From which we may infer that, whatever special significance at- taches to the form of expression employed in verse 54, Christ did not have recourse to that form for the pur- pose of promulgating a law of Communion sub utrdque . The twofold expression is employed by Christ in order to heighten the realism of the promise — to emphasize more vividly the reality of the Eucharistic presence, and to convey the idea that His Body and Blood were to be the perfect spiritual aliment, the food and drink, of the faithful. In the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist this meaning is fully verified. Christ is really and integrally present, and really and integrally received, under either kind ; and from the sacramental point of view it is altogether immaterial whether this perfect reception takes place after the analogy in the natural ortler of solid or of liquid food alone, or after the analogy of both combined (cf. Ill below). In I Cor., xi, 2S, to which Utraquists sometimes appeal, St. Paul is concerned with the preparation required for a worthy reception of the Eucharist. His mention of both species, "this bread and the chalice", is merely incidental, and implies nothing more than the bare fact that Communion under both kinds was the pre- vailing usage in Apostolic times. From the verse immediately preceding (27) a difficulty might be raised against the dogmatic presuppositions of the great majority of Utraquists, and an argument ad- vanced in proof of the Catholic doctrine of the integral presence and reception of Christ under either species. " Whosoever", says the Apostle, "shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord", i. e. whoever receives either unworthily is guilty of both. But it is unnecessary to insist on this argument in defence of the Catholic position. We are justified in conclud- ing that the N. T. contains no proof of the existence of a Divin(! precept binding the faithful to Communi- cate under both kinds. It will appear, further, from the following historical survey, that the Church has never recognized the existence of such a precept.
II. History of Disciplin.iry Vahi.\tions. — From the First to the Twelfth Century. — It may be stated as a general fact, that down to the twelfth century, in the West as well as in the ICast, public L'omnmnion in the churches was ordinarily administered and received under both kinds. That such was the practice in Apostolic times is implied in I Cor., xi, 28 (see above), nor does the abbreviated reference to the "breaking of bread" in the Acts of the Apostles (ii, 46) prove
anything to the contrary. The witnesses to the same
effect for the sub-Apostolic and subsequent ages are
too numerous, and the fact itself too clearly beyond
dispute, to require that the evidence should be cited
here. But side by side with the regular liturgical
usage of Communion sub utrdqve, there existed from
the earliest times the custom of communicating in
certain cases under one kind alone. This custom is
exemplified (1) in the not infrequent practice of
private domestic Commimion, portion of the Euchar-
istic bread being brought by the faithful to their
homes and there reserved for this purpose; (2) in "the
Communion of the sick, which was usually adminis-
tered under the species of bread alone; (3) in the
Communion of children which was usually given, even
in the churches, under the species of wine alone, but
sometimes under the species of bread alone; (4) in
the Communion under the species of bread alone at
the Mass of the Presanctified, and, as an optional
practice, in some churches on ordinary occasions.
To these examples may be added (5) the practice of
the intinctio panis, i. e. the dipping of the consecrated
bread in the Precious Blood and its administration
per modum cibi. We will notice briefly the history
of each of these divergent practices.
(1) During the third century, in Africa at least, as we learn from Tertullian and .'^t. Cyprian, the practice on the part of the faithful of liringing to their homes and reserving for )iri\-atc Cuninuuiion a portion of the Eucharistic bread, wouki appear to have been univer- sal. Tertullian refers to this private domestic Com- munion as a commonplace in Christian life, and makes it the basis of an argument, addressed to his wife, against second marriage with an infidel in case of his own death: "Non sciet maritus quid secreto ante omnem cibum gustes, et si sciverit esse panem, non ilium credet esse qui dicitur?" (\d Uxor., c. v, P. L., I, 1296). There can be question here only of the species of bread, and the same is true of the two stories told by St. Cyprian: the one of a man who, before Communion, had attended an idolatrous func- tion, and on retiring from the altar and opening his hand, in which he had taken and carried the Sacred Species, found nothing in it but ashes; the other of a woman who " cum arcam suam, in qua Domini sanctum fuit. manibus indignis tentasset aperire, igne inde surgente deterrita est" (De Lapsis, 26. P. L., IV, 486). This custom owed its origin most probably to the dangers and uncertainties to which Christians were subject in times of persecution; but we have it on the authority of St. Basil (Ep. xciii, P. C, XXXII, 485) that in the foiu-th century, when the persecutions had ceased, it continued to be a general practice in Alexandria and Egypt; and on the authority of St. Jerome (Ep. xlviii, 15, P. L., XXII, 506) that it still existed at Rome towards the end of the same century. It is impossible to say at what precise period the practice disappeared. The many obvious objections against it would seem to have led to its abolition in the West without the need of formal legis- lation. The third canon attributed to the Council" of Saragossa (380) and the fourteenth canon of the Coun- cil of Toledo (400), excommunicating those who do not consume in the church the Eucharist received from the priest (Hefele, Conciliengesch., I, 744; II, 79), were directed against the Priscillianists (who refused to consume any portion of the Eucharistic bread in the church), and do not seem to have been intended to prohibit the practice of reserving a portion for private Commimion at home. In the East the prac- tice continued long after its disappearance in the West, and in the eighth century the faithful were able to avail themselves of it as a means of avoiding as- sociation with the Iconoclastic heretics (Pargoire, L'Eglise byzantine, Paris, 1905, p. 3.'J9 sq.). It had already been adopted by the anchorites, as St. Basil (loc. cit.) tells us, and continued to be a feature of
