Reserved sacrament

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In Christian practice, the Bread and Wine of the Communion constitute the sacrament of the altar. Reservation is the saving of the sacrament after the service, usually only the consecrated bread.

1 For the ill
2 Devotion
3 Good Friday
4 Priest Absence
5 References

[edit] For the ill

The first mention of reservation also describes the original and, arguably, primary purpose. In the Apology of Justin Martyr, a second century Christian writer, he describes the Eucharist ending with the distribution by the deacons to the parishioners 'and to those who are absent, they carry away a portion'. Reservation for distribution of the Communion to the sick is mentioned subsequently iun the writings of Tertullian, St. Cyprian and St.Basil. People kept the sacrament in their homes and carried about their person as being a safe place.

After the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century, the more common place for reservation was in a church. Indeed, a Council of Toledo in 480 denounced those who did not immediately consume the sacred species when they received them from the priest at the altar, but at the same numerous decrees of synods and penalties entered in penitential books impose upon parish priests the duty of reserving the Blessed Sacrament for the use of the sick and dying, and at the same time of keeping it reverently and securely while providing by frequent renewal against any danger of the corruption of the sacred species.

It would be kept either in the sacristy or in the Church itself in an aumbry, a safe in the wall of the Church or in a pyx hanging over the altar or a tabernacle,- literally a tent, but in fact a metal safe on or immediately behind the altar itself, sometimes covered with a seasonally coloured cloth. Caskets in the form of a dove or of a tower, made for the most part of one of the precious metals, were commonly used for the purpose, but whether in the early Middle Ages these Eucharistic vessels were kept over the altar, or elsewhere in the church, or in the sacristy, does not clearly appear. After the tenth century the commonest usage in England and France seems to have been to suspend the Blessed Sacrament in a dove-shaped vessel by a cord over the high altar; but fixed and locked tabernacles were also known and indeed prescribed by the regulations of Bishop Quivil of Exeter at the end of the thirteenth century, though in England they never came into general use before the Reformation. In Germany, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a custom widely prevailed of enshrining the Eucharist in a "sacrament house", often beautifully decorated, separate from the high altar, but only a short distance away from it, and on the north, or Gospel, side of the Church. This custom seems to have originated in the desire to allow the Blessed Sacrament to be seen by the faithful without exactly contravening the synodal decrees which forbade any continuous exposition. In the sacrament house, the door was invariably made of metal lattice work, through which the vessel containing the sacred species could be discerned at least obscurely.

[edit] Devotion

A second purpose of reservation is that it might be a focus of prayer. There appears to be no reliable evidence that before the year 1000, or even later, the Blessed Sacrament was kept in churches in order that the faithful might visit it or pray before it. Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church for the purposes of adoration has been current since the fourteenth century and may be either private (expositio privata) where only the doors of the tabernacle are opened, and public exposition where the Host is placed in a monstrance so that it may be more readily seen. Public Exposition, formerly permitted only on the feast of Corpus Christi developed only in recent centuries into a formal service known as Benediction.

Reservation was prohibited in many Protestant churches in the sixteenth century. In England it was permitted in the First Book of Common Prayer of 1549, but disallowed in 1552 when also any of the Eucharistic species were to be given to the curate for his own use. The Thirty-Nine Articles stated that the sacrament was not commanded by Christ's ordinance to be 'reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped'. In 1662, the prayer book rubric was altered to the effect that after the communion any remains were to be reverently consumed. The practice of reservation died out until the nineteenth century when, under the influence of the Tractarians, members of the Oxford Movement it was restored. In Tract 90, John Henry Newman argued that for a permissive interpretation of Article XXVIII.

[edit] Good Friday

A third reason for reservation is, in the following of the Easter Triduum of the Roman Catholic Church, after the celebration of the communion on Holy Thursday (called Maundy Thursday in the Church of England) a vigil is kept before the sacrament, placed on an Altar of Repose until the Good Friday service at which, by tradition, there is no celebration of the Holy Communion, but the faithful receive from the reserved sacrament. There is then no celebration until the Easter Vigil on the evening of Holy Saturday. This pattern, revised in 1955 under Pope Pius XII, was incorporated into the liturgical forms agreed by the Second Vatican Council but it goes back to the liturgy of Jerusalem, recorded by Etheria in the fourth century. (In the Orthodox Church reservation is more widely used for the Liturgies of the Presancified in Lent. )

[edit] Priest Absence

The fourth reason for reservation is in order that the faithful may receive communion on a Sunday or other holy day in the absence of the priest. With the fall in the number of vocations in the Roman Catholic church, many parishes have had to make do with what is called in France the ADAP (Assemblée Dominicale en absence du Prêtre) at which authorised lay ministers administer the sacrament following a service of the word. In the Anglican church a similar problem has resulted in the General Synod of the Church of England authorising a service of Communion by Extension. Because of the traditional hostility to reservation, apart from the requirement that the Communion continues to be celebrated 'regularly' in each parish church, the instruction is that 'the consecrated bread and wine to be brought to the church from the celebration of Holy Communion in a seemly and dignified manner' implying that the service will have taken place in another church but on the same day. Moreover, '[e]xplicit permission must be obtained from the bishop for the use of this rite. This permission should relate to specific pastoral circumstances, thus emphasizing the exceptional nature of this ministry'.