From a TPC reader: Altar Arrangement and Communion in the Hand

 
Dear Pinoy Catholic,

Your blog is really good. [thank you very much!  A lot of work, a lot of enemies, but gained a lot of friends too.]   I have the same view as your in the communion in the hand. [Read the following horror!] I have seen the harm of it in my school one of the students is just putting the Body of Christ in his pocket and I am so gad I saw it and mad him consume it.  I have also seen liturgical horrors in the mass they would use song that are not appropriate. The more horrible thing is the drums and plenty of instruments it is like more of a concert than a mass and the actings in the homily.   Due to this reason I have been using doing all things that i can to make setting correct through my serving. I am putting the crucifix in the altar but sadly sometimes they would just remove it. I am also using the burse and the chalice veil.

Can you help me how to make the altar in a more reverent setting. It is just to candles at each side and the occasional crucifix. Can you also give me suggestion on altar serving to make it more reverent or add some thing from the EF mass to it? Thank you more power God Bless

***

First of all, thank you for writing.  I really do appreciate it.

Secondly, putting the cross and candles on the altar is the best that you can do to make the altar look, well, more like, uhm, an altar and not just any bare table.  Five-star hotels who set up a candle lighted dinner have candles on them.  Funny how these liturgists who always compare the ordinary meal with the Holy Mass refuses to put the candle on the table because, according to them "you don't have candles on the table when you eat."  DUH!

Read the General Instruction of the Romal Missal.  Follow the blog.  You'll find that altar arrangements are just the beginning of bringing back the sense of the sacred into the Mass.

Doing the "Benedictine" altar arrangement is laudable and is within the bounds of liturgical law.  It is NOT a liturgical heritage of the Church to put candles near the altar.  NEVER!  Whoever did that was just doing it out of novelty or worse, because they do not want the view of their faces obstructed.  Guess narcissists really want the attention of the whole world on them, eh?

And finally, I still have to find the benefits of having Communion in the Hand.

Seriously.

It did more harm than good.

For more resources against Communion in the Hand, click here.