Which is more appropriate and perhaps more beautiful, communion in the hand or communion on the tongue?

Hans Offendenherrn

Is Offendenherrn a German or Dutch name?  Anyway.....

The issue is muddled. I can refer you to two web articles (one mostly pro communion in the hand, the other pro communion on the tongue).....

"The Red Herring of Communion in the Hand" 
and the other
"Some Considerations on Communion in the Hand." 

As for beauty, beauty is in the attitude of the receiver, to tweak the old proverb. Believe me I've seen ugly in both. When some grubby little troll comes up and sticks out a filthy mitt to grab the body of the King of Heaven and then strolls down the aisle munching away, or worse, and staring at the crowd, I want to flee to a desert monastery, on the other had I've been shocked to see an extended tongue with a big metal piercing and wonder if tongue studs break the Eucharistic fast.

What is beautiful and good is, as St. Paul says, someone who receives "discerning the body of the Lord"  (1Cor 11:29)

It breaks my heart to see that many come up and receive as if this were ordinary food, not the body broken and the blood shed for us on Calvary. People treat some snail in garlic with more reverence than the Holy Eucharist because it is a pricey hors d'oeuvre in a trendy French bistro. 

Well, the Eucharist is the most expensive "meal" you can eat. It cost the price of the blood of God's own Son on Calvary and the tears of His Blessed Mother.

I would take a different tack. I do not think that the hand is more noble than the tongue, nor the other way around. If I were in charge of anything, thank Heaven I am not, I would insist that people kneel at a communion rail to receive, whether they did so in the hand or on the tongue. Right now the reception of communion resembles grabbing the brass ring on the old merry-go-rounds. 

This is not true of everyone, but it is true of many. If St. Paul is correct, and I suspect he is, in the passage quoted above he says that we eat and drink to condemnation unless we discern the body.  If we lack reverence and preparation and discernment, we risk illness and death in taking communion. ILLNESS and DEATH, for heaven’s sake!!!, including the coarsening and death of our spirits. We are oblivious to the Real Presence even as we receive it!.

I once heard a story, I can't remember if it was told by Dr. Scott Hahn or about him, of a theologian who met with a Muslim scholar. 

The Muslim, who believe that God is completely other, asked the theologian, "Do you really believe that the creator of all things became a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth?"

"Yes I do" returned the theologian.

"And do you believe that this God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, is present  physically in sacrament kept in the tabernacle in your church?"

"Yes I do" said the theologian.

"If I believed what you believe," said the scholar, "I would find the nearest Catholic church and, going there, I would fall on my knees and never leave."

It is, thus not the tongue and the hand that matter in this discussion, but the heart and the knees. Let every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. (Phil 2:11) 

Yours,

Rev. Know-It-All