My parish priest when giving communion, to wet the Body, always press the particle he will give on that one which is soaked in the Blood. After some time, the particle inside gets a gap. On the last Sunday, seeing this, I remembered of that passage of John "From his side poured out blood and water" and I thought that particle with a gap through which passes Blood could simbolize the Our Lord's pierced side.

What do you think about?

Dear Philippe,

As Orthodox Christians we are used to having all the particles of the Lamb that are to be distributed to the Laity floating in the Chalice of the Blood of Christ so that every particle is saturated with the Precious Blood. Therefore your post may be hard for us to understand. Perhaps you can explain to the Eastern Orthodox (as well as the majority of Greek Catholics) the unique and innovative way in which Melkite Catholics distribute Holy Communion. That way we'll be able to picture what you are explaining to us.

With warmest regards,

Fr David Straut

Dear Fr. David,

The melkite way nothing more than the intinction. What my parish priest does - which I don't know if it's done by the other priests - is touch the particle he'll give to the person in the one which is in chalice soaked.

With your blessing,
Philippe

The Maronites do it the same way although it is with the Western Host.

Will Maronites continue that into the near future? I had heard rumblings about returning to a leavened host.

Dear Philippe,

May the Lord bless you.

Perhaps you are not aware that Orthodox and almost all Greek Catholics distribute Holy Communion by cutting or breaking the people's portions of the Lamb into small pieces which are placed into the Precious Blood and float there until the priest takes them out with a eucharistic spoon and places them in the mouth of each communicant. This method of distribution is also called intinction.

Forgive me if I am misunderstanding, but you seem to be describing the priest taking an unsoaked portion of the Lamb (with his fingers?) and touching it to the portion of the fractured Lamb that was placed in the Chalice and then placing it into the mouth of the communicant (again with his fingers?) This is the Western method of intinction, though I am assuming that your Melkite priest is using a leavened Lamb rather than an unleavened Host.

Fr David

Fr. David,

Yes, I were aware of that method, but I didn't know it is also called intinction.

The priest does what you said, but he does use unleavened Host (I've already offered the bread - as his argument were he hadn't it -, but then he said the bread done here is different from the one in Syria and crumbs too much). I took for granted the same I described would happen also with the leavened Lamb (when the bishop comes to our parish, they use it, but I didn't get attention).

While a similar method is used in the West, I'm pretty sure the Melkite practice originated within the East. At the time it was adopted by the Melkite Church, intinction was not practiced in the West, IIRC. I'm not sure where or why the practice originated for the Melkite Church, but it's something shared with the Maronites as well, who are close neighbors.

Does anyone know the origins of this practice in the Melkite Church?

Personally I love receiving by intinction. The Melkite form of reception, leavened intinction, is by far my favorite.

Peace and God bless!

A priest once explained this in a homily I was present for. My recollection is that he told us there was an outbreak/epidemic of a disease once upon a time. I can't remember the disease. Anyways, the Melkites modified their practice to help combat the spread of the disease. Of course this homily was far more detailed - but that was a decade ago.

Dearly though I love the Melkites, this is ridiculous - and makes it all but impossible to communicate the faithful from the Lamb.

I once attempted to track the practice. The mythology claims that it began about 200 years ago, which is equally ridiculous. It seems to have begun in the 1930s. Allegedly this is "healthier". Somehow I do not consider that sticking my fingers into people's mouths is a healthy thing to do - rather the contrary, in fact. A friend who used to serve the Melkites tells some horror stories about small children biting him hard enough to draw blood. This is healthy?

I'm quite happy using the Spoon, thank you.

Don't know if anybody is still doing it, but for a time the Antiochians in the USA were using paper spoons - one to a customer, so to speak.

All this seems to betoken both a lack of faith and a lack of powers of observation. I normally have no Deacon, unfortunately, which means that I finish the chalice, which in turn means that if anyone is going to get sick, it is your humble servant. I've was ordained Deacon in 1966 and have never gotten sick from Holy Communion yet.

Fr. Serge

Fathers bless,

The Syriac Orthodox in the Middle East and the Indian/Syriac Orthodox in India also distribute via the Eucharistic spoon, but I have also seen the Body distributed directly by the priests hand into the mouth of the communicant. I asked one Orthodox priest about this practice and he stated that both are allowed, it is up to the priest. The Malankara Syriac Catholic practice is intinction but, when using the Latin host (a common occurrence in the US), not by floating the Body but by dipping it in the Blood and immediately placing in the mouth of the communicant. My assumption is that when the unleavened bread is Consecrated, that the practice is similar to the Syriac/Indian Orthodox.

My thought is that since Maronites, Melkites, and Syriacs seem to have a similar practice and are from the same general region - perhaps this practice of placing the Body into the mouth of the communicant via the hands of the priest, while uncommon elsewhere, is an old regional custom.

Using leavened bread and intinction to give the Holy Communion, does appear a gap in the particle inside the chalice by the contact with the others that are to be given ?

And why are the Malankara Catholics in the USA using Latin hosts? Have they mysteriously forgotten how to bake leavened bread? Recipes are easily obtainable.

Fr. Serge

Father bless.

I've offered, believe me, no one's taken me up. Our Tradition is not to use leaven, but to mix the dough with the previous leaven, which can be traced all the way to leaven of Apostolic times. When I've mentioned restoring this practice in the States, I've usually been told that it's "difficult to keep the leaven" or some other reasonings, even though I've offered to take care of the issue personally.

My assumption is that many priests prefer to keep the Latin hosts for devotional practices like Eucharistic Adoration and/or preservation in the tabernacle - even though the distribution of previously consecrated Eucharist is to be discouraged.

Perhaps, Father, if you made a call to the right people on our behalf, things would be corrected. My polite requests are normally politely declined.

In the course book on the Liturgy used to train Melkite priests (Couturier, A 1912, "Cours de Liturgie Grecque-Melkite", Jerusalem, Franciscans of the Holy Land Press, vol. 2 1930), Couturier states (p. 192)--and I translate--that the usage of the spoon spread around Syria, starting around the 6th Century--although this was in apparent contradiction to the later Council of Trullo (691, can. 101), which imposed the reception of the sacred body of Our Lord in the hand.

Couturier then goes on to say that the custom spread to give communion with one's fingers--i.e., intinct the body into the blood of Our Lord and Saviour, then place the body into the communicant's mouth. The reason given for moving to this form of communion--and away from using the spoon--was that many of the faithful were refusing to commune from the same spoon used for all the faithful.

Intincting the body into the blood of Our Lord and Saviour is said to be an ancient Syrian practice, to which we have returned; i.e., not a new method invented to cope with a popular misunderstanding.

Couturier goes on to describe four methods for this intinction:
1. a small amount of the Precious Blood is left at the bottom of the chalice and the pieces of the Holy Body are put into the chalice, where they drink in the Precious Blood of themselves. This method is recommended when there are few communicants.
2. the Holy Body is prepared as for the Liturgy of the Pre-sanctified Gifts and placed in a ciborium. This method is used when giving communion outside the Divine Liturgy.
3. the Holy Body is placed on the dish and the Precious Blood is dripped on them, either from the spoon or from a piece of the Holy Body dipped in the precious blood. The priest then takes the dish and gives the faithful communion with his fingers. This is described as the practice of the Syriac Church.
4. the priest holds the cup just under the bowl in his left hand, and holds the dish with the first few fingers of that hand, intincting each piece of the Holy Body into the Precious Blood as each communicant presents himself/herself. This is the most common practice for communion in a Melkite Divine Liturgy.

Couturier states that he spent about thirty years studying the Melkite Catholic and Antiochian and Greek Orthodox liturgical practices, before compiling his course books (the first volume of which appeared in 1912). Thus we can safely assume the practice of intinction has been around since at least as far back as the late 19th Century. It is understood, though, to have been the current practice for longer than that--the only references to this I have are the occasional mentioning of it in synod or patriarchal documents.