The Mass vs. The Communion Service

COMING SOON TO A PARISH NEAR YOU...

It's Tuesday morning and you're up nice and early to attend daily Mass. You live in a rural diocese where the churches are rather spread out, so it's a real sacrifice to get to Mass during the week. Nonetheless, you make the extra effort and even get to church twenty or so minutes early to recollect yourself, to spend some time before the Blessed Sacrament, and to maybe join in on the public rosary. As the time for Mass nears, the sacristy door opens and out comes Sister Pat. She approaches the altar, bows, and proceeds to the ambo. "Good morning," she says rather cheerfully, "Father Joe was unable to make it this morning, so I'll be stepping in." Having said this, the dear Sister begins a celebration of the Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Holy Communion - more commonly known as a "Communion Service." She sits in the sanctuary (maybe even wearing an alb) and leads the congregation in hymns, reads the Gospel, and even offers a little reflection on the readings for the day. With the Word having been broken open, Sister then proceeds to the tabernacle and brings a full ciborium to the altar. She takes one of the consecrated hosts, lifts it high, and utters the words, "This is the Lamb of God..." Communion is then distributed, the ciborium replaced, a prayer offered, and she returns to the sacristy. You go to your car and you cannot help feeling disappointed...but why? After all, you did get to receive our Lord in Holy Communion, is that not reason enough to be overcome with elation? Unable to reconcile your frustration with the fact that receiving our Lord in Holy Communion is a good and thus worthy of pursuit, you shrug it off and continue on with your day.

Have you experienced this yet? If you haven’t, chances are you will...and probably sooner rather than later. I, for one, have only been to one such service, but I know that they are becoming more and more popular in my diocese as we face a very real priest shortage. So what’s going on here? Why are parishes resorting to this option? Whether they are sporadic or scheduled, Communion Services are popping up all over the place, which means that those who are liturgically minded need to consider a few important things: 1.) why Communion Services are happening in the first place; 2.) what they are and what they are not; 3.) whether they are remedial or substitutional; 4.) under what conditions they may occur; and 5.) is it actually beneficial for us to resort to them?

Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, I think that we can say that the origin of the Communion Service (or its Sunday equivalent, “Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest”) came about as a response to the unavailability of priests to offer Mass in a particular place. Perhaps there were some who worked to have these services replace scheduled Masses in order to encourage and foster lay participation/leadership, but I think it’s safe to say that, for the most part, it was more a case of “we can’t have Mass today – what will we do?” When this is granted we admit of something very basic and fundamental, namely that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a central part of our lives as Catholics and is something that we should strive to have offered on a daily basis. We have more or less accepted this and have become accustomed to very ample and accommodating Mass schedules throughout the years. There is no doubt in my mind that the vast majority of Catholics recognize the unique and incomparable value of the Mass, but are unsure what to do when the Mass is unable to be offered in their own parishes. Thus we have the Communion Service – when Mass cannot be offered, the Communion Service replaces it.

So what is this saying about the nature of the Communion Service? In every possible sense, and this must really be apprehended, the Communion Service is absolutely posterior to the Mass. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the supreme act of worship because it alone offers to God a worthy and unblemished victim – Christ himself. The Mass, by its very nature as Christ’s action, trumps any other act of devotion, hymn, prayer, etc. In other words, we can offer up to God our praise and ourselves in any number of ways, but it is only in the Mass that the Son is offered to the Father. It is thus the supreme, ultimate and unrivaled act of worship, subordinating all other worship to itself. This means that the Communion Service, even though it allows for and involves the reception of Holy Communion, is neither equal to nor comparable to the Mass. In fact, any grace that one receives from a Communion Service flows directly and essentially from the Mass – it only through the offering of the Son to the Father that he gives us his flesh and blood...it is only through the Mass that Holy Communion is even possible in the first place.

Now, more practically, what exactly is a Communion Service? Simply put, it is a service of the Liturgy of the Word coupled with the distribution of Holy Communion - it is not simply the distribution of Holy Communion outside of Mass. This distinction may seem fuzzy and is probably best illustrated by an example. A priest may certainly distribute Communion outside of Mass...perhaps the number of communicants was too great so as to unduly extend the celebration of the Mass, or maybe someone was in need of sacramental absolution during Mass and was thus unable to receive, or maybe someone is gravely ill and is in need of Holy Viaticum. The point is, a priest can and does distribute Communion outside of Mass, but this action naturally flows from the Mass. However, it would make no sense whatsoever for a priest to celebrate a Communion Service, whose very structure presupposes that Mass is for whatever reason not possible at a given time. This distinction is extremely important and must be understood.

As said before, the Communion Service is often seen as a replacement for Mass. Since Mass cannot be offered, it makes sense in the minds of many good-willed people to have something that kind of mirrors the Mass. The structure of a Communion Service eerily mirrors the structure of the Mass and can thus be a source of great confusion for many people. Nonetheless, whether we like it or not, these services are replacing Masses that are unable to be said. But what is this doing? If we admit, as I think we must, that we should be striving and longing for the Mass, then our efforts should be centered on remedying the problem. However, I think that the Communion Service stifles this...like morphine it sedates us without providing any sort of remedy. As a good friend of mine put it, it’s like a band aid on a wound...it covers the sore from our eyes but does nothing to fix the problem.

Some might say that this is an unfair treatment, but I would respectfully disagree based on experience. I know of one such place where one priest has the charge of three churches, all within a reasonable driving distance of each other. On any given weekday, there is one Mass in one of the churches whereas there is a Communion Service in each of the other two (this, of course, excludes the pastor’s day off, when there is no Mass whatsoever and a Communion Service in each church.) However, this is not the worst of it. On Sundays there are two Masses at one church, two at another, and the Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest at the other. Now obviously the situation is lamentable and completely undesirable – a single priest for three churches does not allow for any kind of accommodating schedule. However, the Communion Services are being scheduled in order to allow for the accommodation to continue...but to what end and for what purpose? It seems to me that scheduling Communion Services at the same time that Mass is being offered only eight miles away does a couple of things: it indirectly encourages people to become attached to a particular church building rather than to the Mass and it presents the Communion Service not just as a replacement for a Mass that cannot be said but as a viable alternative. It does not take long before some start to lose sight of just how important, irreplaceable, and ultimate the Mass is in comparison to everything else. I think that the Communion Service is allowing us to be “okay” with the fact that Mass cannot be offered, and this is not good.

However, competent authority within the Church has allowed for these services...I therefore cannot question their legitimacy. But I do wonder whether the conditions for Communion Services laid down by the Church are actually existent in places where they happen. It is the case that a Communion Service held in place of Sunday Mass (Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest - SCAP) is the most severe and undesirable of these types of services, and so the Church has given some pretty clear conditions for holding them...in other words, we’re not just free to have them. Let’s take a look at some of these conditions.

First, if Mass cannot be celebrated on a particular Sunday in a particular church, this does not automatically mean that a SCAP can occur. It must first be ascertained whether the faithful have recourse to go to another church where Mass is being offered. This, the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacrament’s 1988 Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest tell us, presupposes a good will on the part of the faithful and a willingness to respond to a new situation. In other words, the faithful have to honestly make an effort to get to Mass. If the circumstances are too grave, then the possibility of a SCAP comes into play, but only after an effort has been made.

Second, if a SCAP should take place, the faithful must be taught to see the substitutional character of the service, which must not be regarded as an optimal situation. In other words, everyone knows that this service is not equivalent to Mass and great effort should be made to go to Mass when possible or to secure a priest to offer Mass. We must never become “okay” or satisfied with this situation. This why the document goes on to say, “Therefore a gathering or assembly of this kind can never be held on a Sunday in places where Mass has already been celebrated or is to be celebrated or was celebrated on the preceding Saturday evening, even if the Mass is celebrated in a different language. Nor is it right to have more than one assembly of this kind on any given Sunday.”

Third, it ultimately belongs to the local bishop to decide when and where a SCAP is appropriate. In other words, the severity of the situation calls for more than an arbitrary or spontaneous decision made by a pastoral council – the bishop needs to be immediately involved. The reason for this is that the bishop has more resources available to him and could remedy the situation by providing a priest, saying the Mass himself, etc.

Fourth, the bishop or his delegate must instruct the people about the severity of the situation and must urge their cooperation and support. It remains the bishop’s responsibility to see to it that the community has Mass as often as possible.

Fifth, if there is a deacon he enjoys priority in celebrating these services. When he is unavailable, instituted readers and acolytes are the first among the laity to be chosen to lead these services. Only once these alternatives have been exhausted may anyone else in the laity be asked to lead.

Now these conditions apply to Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest, but I think that if the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is central to our lives we will take great care in considering these conditions for even a weekday Communion Service.

With everything else aside, how do we approach the benefits to these services? What do we say to the elderly woman who is unable to drive any further than her home parish to go to Mass and just wants to receive our Lord in Holy Communion? I mean, is it not the case that every Communion Service has a good and thus pursuable end – namely the reception of Holy Communion? How could that ever be something we would want to avoid. This will involve a discussion of means and ends, which I will discuss in another post.

In sum, these services cannot be seen as all-encompassing or even good per se because they, by definition, are substitutional...they have value only because something much better (the Mass) cannot for some reason be offered. My disdain for them comes from the fact that they are being seen more and more as an acceptable alternative for the Mass, crippling people from actually going out of their way to attend Mass. In my humble opinion if we discontinue Communion Services we might actually entice people to go to another Mass or to secure a priest and thus to seek a real remedy. The person on a morphine drip may be less inclined, because of the absence of pain, to seek a remedy for his condition...take the comfort away and suddenly he is motivated to seek after his own health. Let us not try to dull the pain that we experience from the absence of Mass or priests...let us use this pain to seek out our own spiritual health and not be satisfied with a quick fix. More to come later.

St. John Vianney, pray for us.
St. Pius X, pray for us.