I’ve thought about this before. When I know some­one in the church is sick and then I par­take after her or some­thing but then I quickly shake off that silly thought. I mean, some­thing that holy would cleanse the dis­eases from the spoon!

Back when AIDS was more of a front-burner scare in the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion, I remem­ber read­ing a let­ter to the edi­tor in one of the Ortho­dox pub­li­ca­tions — the writer was press­ing for the use of dis­pos­able spoons or some­thing similar.

I’m so glad *that* didn’t catch on.

Greg:
Kind of glad I didn’t see that let­ter. This one’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but I sup­pose I’ll get over it sometime.

Or else maybe I’ll just give up. The soci­ety keeps get­ting more and more germa­pho­bic, and wor­ry­worts have a way of com­plain­ing until every­one gives in. It makes me mad, but it’s impor­tant to pick your battles.

Erica:
Not like I don’t under­stand the impulse. If I’m in line behind some­one who’s get­ting over a cold, it passes through my head. Lucky for me, my mind is like a sieve and most thoughts pass right through.

On the other hand, if I’m the one get­ting over a cold, I’ll try to be the last one in line, in the spirit of not dis­tract­ing my broth­ers and sis­ters on the way to the Cup. Everyone’s got their own issues to deal with.

Hi Grace, Not to throw a the­o­log­i­cal wet towel on the dis­cus­sion, but it seems to me (and mostly only to me, it seems) that we bor­der on being Nesto­rian regard­ing the Eucharist: The “earthly” is swal­lowed up in the “divine”. Christ was two natures in one per­son and it was heresy that either one was oblit­er­ated by the other. After the con­se­cra­tion the ele­ments retain their “earthly prop­er­ties”: the bread will mold and get stale, the wine still makes the priest drunk if there’s enough of it left over, etc. (notwith­stand­ing some claims to iso­lated mir­a­cles regard­ing these things). I believe God CAN take care of the germs, it just both­ers me when we try to make the Eucharis­tic gifts some­thing other than what actu­ally are as an apolo­get­i­cal tactic.

Funny, I have never once thought about get­ting sick from tak­ing communion.

I was told the above a cou­ple years ago and thought “right on!” when I heard it but was amazed that there needed to be an expla­na­tion because it truly had never occurred to me that I could get sick tak­ing communion.

s-p:
I had never thought of it that way. Seems like you could go to an extreme in either direc­tion and get into trou­ble. A smart man I knew once said, “Extrem­ism is easy for human beings; mod­er­a­tion is difficult.”

So do you think a per­son should be wor­ried about catch­ing colds from the eucharist?

The Church is obvi­ously aware of the earthly aspects — hence, the litur­gi­cal fans and other things that orig­i­nally were for keep­ing the flies out of the wine. But what about us?

Anam Cara:
Me nei­ther. Any­one who knows me can tes­tify that I’m kind of “casual” about stuff like this at all times — sort of an anti-germophobe — so I need to real­ize that I don’t rep­re­sent the norm.

Hi Grace,
I dunno. Peo­ple get sick all the time. I don’t know if we could (or even should) try to prove it was from the com­mon cup or shak­ing hands with some­one at cof­fee hour or open­ing the bath­room door at the Church, or some­how else. All I know is every Sun­day I draw near with faith and love. If I get sick dur­ing the week I don’t replay who had snif­fles on Sun­day.

Boy, isn’t that the truth. I’ve known peo­ple that were fix­ated on health issues con­stantly, feel­ing like they needed to be their own CSI team to fig­ure out exactly how they got every cold. Those are ALWAYS the ones catch­ing every bug that comes around.

Any­way, in the inter­ests of accu­racy, I changed the title of this post. Not the ‘uncom­monly germ-free cup’ but the ‘uncom­monly clean cup.’ I leave the specifics to the­olo­gians to fig­ure out.

We just had an IOCC pre­sen­ta­tion at St George, Hous­ton, yes­ter­day which, at the end, dealt with this topic. Agree­ing with s-p to a degree, my boss said: “We were told in sem­i­nary that with 13% alco­hol con­tent, with added boil­ing water, and using gold and sil­ver ves­sels — you couldn’t get sick from the chal­ice even if it WASN’T the Body and Blood of Christ!”

The fact that vir­tu­ally all clergy, in every Ortho­dox parish, con­sume the remain­der of the holy gifts AFTER every­one else … and those guys usu­ally show up for work, healthy, the next week is a good enough indi­ca­tor for me. (Aside from the faith aspect, of course.)

Fr. Joseph:
That’s good infor­ma­tion to hold onto for new­bies and non-Orthodox, like the lady that orig­i­nally asked me the ques­tion. Even­tu­ally, if they are des­tined to draw near to the Cup, I assume they’ll have faith. But before that time, it’s good to have some com­mon sense to fall back on.

Fr. Joseph, There is that… but I’m not as impressed with that as much as I am how you guys can eat all that soggy bread. That is a mir­a­cle to me. When I was a kid soggy corn­flakes made me gag. If I were a priest, I’d drink the wine and leave the bread for my dea­con.

That’s the fun­ni­est thing I’ve read all day. I can’t wait to tell the deacon!

(I was taught, by a Russ­ian Pro­todea­con, that the largest piece — the main sec­tion of the Lamb — is to be left in the chal­ice and con­sumed first … in remem­brance of all those who have some­thing against you (the priest/deacon). Such a sol­em­niza­tion does help to dis­tract from other so-called “acci­dents” and prop­er­ties. And, on closer exam, it could be said to be quite fit­ting.

“I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Works for me. ~

Thanks, Grace! As a recent con­vert myself, it was help­ful to know oth­ers have thought about this issue. My non-Orthodox mom just sort of gri­maced when she saw how Com­mu­nion is served in an Ortho­dox Church! I have even abstained from the Cup when I have had ter­ri­ble cold sores on my lips, feel­ing like I could be an unnec­es­sary dis­trac­tion to my brethren. Thank­fully, that hasn’t hap­pened except for a cou­ple of times. Fr. Joseph, your per­spec­tive as a Priest is very helpful!