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Eucharist Minister Guide

Purification of the communion cups and plates.

Background

The U.S. bishops had asked the Vatican to extend an indult -- or church permission -- in effect since 2002 allowing extraordinary ministers of holy Communion to help cleanse the Communion cups and plates when there were not enough priests or deacons to do so.

Bishop Skylstad, who heads the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., said Cardinal Arinze asked Pope Benedict about the matter during a June 9 audience, "and received a response in the negative."

Noting that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal "directs that the sacred vessels are to be purified by the priest, the deacon or an instituted acolyte," the cardinal said in his Oct. 12 letter that "it does not seem feasible, therefore, for the congregation to grant the requested indult from this directive in the general law of the Latin Church."

See the letter from Cardinal Arinze on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops web site.

As we have announced earlier, starting with 1st Sunday in Advent (12/3/2006) Eucharistic Ministers are no longer allowed to purify communion cups and plates.

Other than the purification, nothing else has changed. Eucharistic ministers are still able to finish any of the precious blood that is in the cups, and to consume any leftover consecrated hosts, especially if they are stale or broken into small pieces. Precious blood or consecrated hosts should never be poured or washed down the sacrarium.

A Eucharistic Minister is to stay in the sacristry until the end of mass, and then either return any consecrated hosts to the tabernacle or, if the vessels were emptied, leave them on the credance table for Fr. Dave or Deacon Charlie to purify.

Since the purificators (small cloths used to wipe the chalices during communion) have the precious Blood on them, they should be put on one of the plates or at least on the credance table rather than left on the sink. One of them can be used to cover the plates to prevent any of the crumbs from being blown off.

One of the questions that was asked was whether a Eucharistic Minister should stay in the sacristy even if there are no hosts left. The answer is yes, a Eucharistic Minister should stay in the sacristry until after mass even if there are no hosts left to return to the tabernacle.


Procedure for using hosts from the tabernacle during Sunday Liturgy

The strong preference expressed in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (No. 13) is that all those who receive Communion at Mass receive hosts that have been consecrated at that Mass. At the same time, the Instruction specifies that sufficient consecrated hosts must be reserved to ensure that Communion is available to the faithful as needed. So some consecrated hosts need to be reserved in the tablenacle. So ideally, enough hosts should be put out at the start of mass so that all who want to receive at that mass can receive from the hosts consecrated at that mass, and there are sufficient left over to reserve for sick calls, viaticum, or other requests for communion throughout the week. The reserved hosts are also to be renewed on a regular basis so that they do not spoil with time.

There are designated people who set up the altar before each Mass. As part of that process, the person setting up checks the tabernacle to see how many hosts are reserved. If there are only a small number (say 1/2 a ciborium or less), the setup person will put out sufficient hosts for the usual number of attendees at that Mass (roughly 80-100 for the 5, 80-100 for the 8, and 160-200 for the 10:30).

If there are a great number of hosts in the tabernacle, or more than the usual number of people show up (e.g., family members for a baptism), then the reserved hosts will have to be used so that all can receive. If the setup person sees that there are too many hosts reserved, he or she will intentionally set up fewer hosts than normal.

When it is obvious at the start of communion that more hosts are needed

Euchatistic ministers should check the paten on the table at the back of the church as then gather for mass to see if there are fewer than the usual number of hosts setup. Or when they gather behind the altar just before communion, they can estimate whether additional hosts will be needed. If they are needed, the first eucharist minister who has received under both species (and is not serving the cup to the others), should go to the altar, take one of the plates and if there are hosts in it, distribute them to one or more of the other plates. Then he or she should take the plate to the tabernacle, fill it with sufficient hosts (over estimate) and bring them back to the altar, distributing them to the other plates as needed. Since Christ is equally present in the hosts on the altar and in the tabernacle there is no need to genuflect before or after opening the tabernacle. One may genuflect if so desired.

When more hosts are needed during communion

The Eucharistic Minister who is standing next to the celebrant should take it upon themselves to check the other ministers' plates to see if they are running out of hosts. If it looks like more hosts will be needed, that minister should give Fr. Dave the hosts remaining in their plate. Then he or she can go to the tabernacle, take enough hosts from the tabernacle to distribute to all the other ministers, and then go back and give each minister hosts before resuming giving communion again. In other words, only one minister should go to the tabernacle and that normally would be the eucharistic minister standing next to the celebrant.

Questions:

How do you know if there are enough hosts setup? This will take a few times to get a feel for how many hosts are sufficient for each mass. The large host breaks up into 64 pieces. So for the 5 or the 8, there usually only needs to be another 20-30 of the round hosts. 20-30 hosts will sparsely cover the silver platen. For the 10:30, there needs to be another 100-130 hosts. This will cover the silver platen fully with 2 or 3 layers in some places.

Why has this changed suddenly? We never seemed to run out as much before. What has changed is that Fr. Butler used to take it upon himself to go to the tabernacle as the eucharistic ministers were receiving from the cup. Fr. Dave prefers to let the eucharistic ministers handle this. This makes sense for a lot of reasons. The most important one is that when we have a visiting priest, such as Fr. Lizio, the celebrant may not be familiar enough with how many hosts it takes for each mass so the eucharistic ministers would need to handle that. So it makes sense to have eucharistic ministers take this responsiblity all the time.

What happened at the 5 PM Mass on Christmas Eve? Without conducting an inquiry, the most likely explanation is that whoever setup for that Mass thought there was an abundance of reserved hosts, since there were two ciboria in the tabernacle. Unfortunately both were almost empty, so we simply did not have enough hosts consecrated. This was an accident and it is over. While it might have been better if some announcement was made, there wasn't, partly because the music ministers continued to sing, and partly because we just didn't expect this situation. The Eucharist Ministers tried to indicate that people could receive from the cup but most people ignored that invitation. It might be noted that after everyone else had either received or chosen not to receive from the cup, all the music ministers received communion from the cup.