Not a great photo but if you look carefully, you’ll see the angels catching Our Lord’s Precious Blood with chalices. There’s a reason for that so please read on…
Posted on 08/16/2026 4:06:50 PM PDT by ebb tide
Not a great photo but if you look carefully, you’ll see the angels catching Our Lord’s Precious Blood with chalices. There’s a reason for that so please read on…
Among the many moving scenes in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ film is the scourging at the pillar. Often sugar-coated in fine art over the centuries, Gibson depicted it as it was all those centuries ago in pagan-occupied Palestine: sheer, savage, God-less brutality.
Within that painful sequence are two moments that stand out: One is a scene where the flagellator gets the barb-coated whip stuck in Our Lord’s back, and with a severe pull, rips a chunk of Our Lord’s skin out. That moment prompted sighs of shock that afternoon back in 2004 at Philadelphia’s Roxy Theater. But another moment not always understood by the non-Catholic faithful who are unaware of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich’s writings, is the scene where Claudia, the wife of Pilate, approaches the Blessed Mother with tears in her eyes, handing her fine linens. After the flagellation, we see Our Lady, St. Mary Magdalene and St. John carefully wiping up Our Lord’s Precious Blood and skin fragments from the piazza with those fine linens.
I ask those of you reading this to keep those memories of the scourging in your mind as I continue this article.
Let’s first rewind back to the Resurrection
Jesus saith to her: Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brethren, and say to them: I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.
-John 20:17
Then He saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing.
-John: 20-27
Here we have two passages from the Book of St. John that appear to be contradictory. After His Resurrection, He tells Mary Magdalene - who stood with Him under the Cross, after suffering with Him along the Via Dolorosa - not to touch him. Then, he tells the disciple Thomas - who fled when He was arrested in the Garden and was not present at His Passion - to not only touch him, but to put his finger inside the now open entry to His Sacred Heart. What’s up with that???
Simple. At the Last Supper, Our Lord ordained His disciples as the first Catholic priests. Mary Magdalene, as devout and loving as she was, was not a priest (and side reminder that women can not, never have been, and never will be priests). Thomas on the other hand, along with the other twelve – not that they knew it – had been given that special cleansing to do what priests in the Catholic Church to this day are ordained to do: consecrate bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ and distribute His Body and Blood with their CONSECRATED HANDS.
I hope this simple quoting of the Scriptures and their interpretation helps make the case why laypeople serving as Eucharistic Ministers is such an abomination that needs to stop immediately – even in the most liberal/progressive of novus ordo churches. If we believe that He is present in the Eucharist, His ordination of the twelve as His priests and their apostolic successors also have to mean something. A priest’s hands are consecrated for a reason. Lay people simply do not have that grace. A lay person touching the Eucharist as a Eucharistic Minister or a recipient is the utmost of disrespect – no matter how nice that layperson is. The priesthood actually means something, despite what today’s antichurch would have us believe.
But what’s so wrong about receiving in the hand – even from a priest?
While the non-consecrated hands of a Eucharistic Minister is an issue, it is not the main theological issue. The fundamental problem when Our Lord is given directly into the hand of the communicant is not the issue of non-consecrated hands, but primarily of the danger of profanation of the Sacrament by the loss of particles of the Sacred Host. You also have to think about where the communicant’s hands have been and what they were doing prior to Mass, but let’s stay focused on the loss of particles.
Each sensible particle detached from the Sacred Host is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ: in other words, the Real Presence. The practice of the Church of placing the Host on the tongue of the communicant presents the lowest possibility to lose those particles. The Church (prior to 1970 at least) has historically taken the safest position on this issue.
Think back to that scene from The Passion of the Christ when Our Lady, St. Mary Magdalene and St. John are tediously wiping up the Precious Blood and the torn fragments of the Body of Christ from the pavement. Have you ever thought about the fragments of Our Lord on the floor in Catholic Churches across the world from unsteady hands chipping away at the fragile Host before placing It in their mouths? What about reckless children who hold It for a while, break It and don’t notice the particles seeping through their hands before they finally get around to putting what’s left of the Host in their mouth? What about nefarious people like satanists who receive but rather than actually receive, take Our Lord and break Him into little pieces, purposely dropping His particles on the floor, or even worse… taking Him away to a black mass? I’ve just given two examples of non-intentional desecration and one that is very much intentional. In all three cases though, Our Lord’s flagellated Skin, drenched in His Precious Blood is on the floor where it will be stepped on repeatedly, mixed in with dust and dirt, and at some point, vacuumed up and discarded into the trash.
Now do you understand why that moment in The Passion where Claudia gave Our Lady those linens and the aftermath was so important? It’s almost as if we were being warned 2,000 years ago.
I hope I’ve made the case that to unnecessarily and voluntarily flirt with the danger of losing Eucharistic Particles is, by that very fact, objectively a grave sin against the Blessed Sacrament. Sadly, this occasion of mortal sin has been institutionalized by the novus ordo hierarchy for 50 plus years and is ratcheting up under the antichurch with the suppression of not just The Mass of the Saints but also Communion on the tongue within the novus ordo where permitted.
Yeah, well it’s 2026 and probably 99 percent of Catholic Churches have Communion in the hand. What are you going to do about it Mr. Dunn?
Other than raise awareness here with this article, I’m not going to do anything. I’m a layperson. All I can do is urge those priests in the novus ordo and in situations where they (for now) are permitted The Mass alongside the novus ordo to stand up for Christ and assert themselves now on His behalf. How?
Schedule a mandatory meeting or Teams call with every Eucharistic Minister in your parish. Lovingly explain what I have explained here (which I’m sure you can do even better since you are a priest). Inform them that going forward, their services as Eucharistic Ministers are no longer needed and Communion will be distributed to the faithful only by the parish priests.
After that’s over and the Eucharistic Ministers thank you for enlightening them (we have to hope), announce to the faithful before Mass begins that going forward, Holy Communion will be distributed on the tongue. Explain why and stress that anyone who is not comfortable with this, prayerfully contemplate how the great saints received Our Lord and in the meanwhile, to have a spiritual communion with Him until they’re ready to receive on the tongue.
If your church has an altar rail - use it (especially if your church is in the Diocese of Charlotte) but don’t deny anyone who stands. Do deny those who defiantly go forward with their hands outstretched.
When, not if, the protests to the bishop begin, stand firm. This is the abuse of Our Lord we’re taking about and that’s worth fighting against no matter what happens.
As always, rest assured of my prayers.
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Ping
I was recently in Alexandria, VA and went to mass at St Rita’s where you went and knelt at the railing for communion and the alter boys put the gold platters under your neck while receiving communion on the tongue. When I was an AB, people were no longer going to the railing but we held the platters under peoples necks. Out friends would occasionally get the karate chop in the Adams apple....
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