How to do: Holy Communion

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St. Basil the Great, Doctor of the Church (330-379): “The right to receive Holy Communion in the hand is permitted only in times of persecution.” St. Basil the Great considered Communion in the hand so irregular that he did not hesitate to consider it a grave fault. The Council of Saragossa (380): Excommunicated anyone who dared continue receiving Holy Communion by hand. This was confirmed by the Synod of Toledo. The Synod of Rouen (650): Condemned Communion in the hand to halt widespread abuses that occurred from this practice, and as a safeguard against sacrilege. 6th Ecumenical Council, at Constantinople (680-681): Forbade the faithful to take the Sacred Host in their hand, threatening transgressors with excommunication. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): “Out of reverence towards this Sacrament [the Holy Eucharist], nothing touches it, but what is consecrated; hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands, for touching this Sacrament.” (Summa Theologica, Part III, Q. 82, Art. 3, Rep. Obj. 8.) Pope Paul VI (1963-1978): “This method [on the tongue] must be retained.” (Memoriale Domini) Pope John PaulII: “To touch the sacred species and to distribute them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained.” (Dominicae Cenae, 11) Mother Teresa: "Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me the saddest is watching people receive Communion in the hand." Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship 2018: “Widespread Communion in the hand is part of Satan’s attack on the Eucharist.” Further, “The most insidious diabolical attack consists in trying to extinguish faith in the Eucharist, by sowing errors and fostering an unsuitable way of receiving it.”