The Priest’s Prayers at the Ablution of the Chalice: A School of Reverence, a School of the Soul

The manner in which the priest purifies the chalice after Holy Communion in the traditional Roman Rite is no trifling detail, but a school of reverence and a daily examen of conscience. In the older form, the ablutions are solemn, careful, and doubled: the chalice is first washed with wine alone; then the thumb and forefinger that touched the Body of Christ are purified with wine and water. These actions are not performed in silence or haste but are accompanied by profound prayers, whispered by the celebrant as he consumes the ablutions.

In the modern rite, by contrast, the ablutions have been reduced to the level of functional housekeeping. The prayers are gone. The gestures are abbreviated, often postponed until after Mass, sometimes delegated to a deacon or acolyte. The priest may rinse a chalice as he chats with servers, as though dealing with ordinary tableware. And yet, at this very moment, he has just touched the Holy of Holies. What once was a moment of trembling compunction has been stripped of its meaning. The chalice is clean, but the soul of the celebrant may remain untouched. This is no minor alteration: it is emblematic of the desacralisation of the priesthood itself.

The First Ablution: A Dialogue with God
After Communion, the priest pours wine into the chalice and consumes it, praying: Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine, pura mente capiamus: et de munere temporali fiat nobis remedium sempiternum — “Grant, O Lord, that what we have taken with our mouth we may receive with a pure mind, and that from a temporal gift it may become for us an eternal remedy.”¹

This prayer is brief, but it pierces the conscience. The priest acknowledges that the Sacrament he has dared to consume is no mere food but a remedy against eternal death. He has touched Christ; he must beg that this not turn to his condemnation, but to his healing. Adrian Crogan, in his Liturgical Commentary on the Mass, explains that these hidden prayers of the priest are “an intimate dialogue with God, hidden from the congregation, which safeguards the reality of the Presence in every particle and deepens the priest’s own assimilation of the mystery.”² Even in purifying the chalice, the priest is being purified.

The Second Ablution: A Fire that Clings
The rite continues. The priest purifies the thumb and forefinger with wine and then water, saying: Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, et Sanguis quem potavi, adhaereat visceribus meis: et praesta; ut in me non remaneat scelerum macula, quem pura et sancta refecerunt sacramenta — “May Thy Body, O Lord, which I have received, and Thy Blood which I have drunk, cleave to my inmost being; and grant that no stain of sin may remain in me, whom these pure and holy Sacraments have refreshed.”³

The prayer does not deny the cleansing power of the Sacrament, for by Holy Communion the priest has been touched and sanctified in both soul and body. In an incarnational sense, he has been made whole: the divine Food heals, elevates, and divinises. And yet, the priest acknowledges that the mystery of sin is not simply a matter of external acts, but of internal dispositions. Sin lurks most insidiously in the heart — in the tangled motivations of pride, vainglory, or negligence. He has received Christ, yes; but has he received Him with singleness of purpose? Has he offered the Sacrifice for the glory of God, or with self in view?

Peter Chaignon, SJ, in his The Sacrifice of the Mass Worthily Celebrated, warned that “every rite, every prayer is given to you that you may sanctify yourself even as you handle the Holy.”⁴ The ablutions are thus a merciful trap: the priest cannot pass them without being forced to ask whether his motives are pure.

Doctrine Confirmed by Miracle
The De defectibus in the Missal insists that every fragment, however small, must be treated with utmost care, for Christ whole and entire is present in every particle of the Host.⁵ The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano confirmed this doctrine. In the eighth century, the consecrated wine coagulated into five globules of blood, unequal in size yet equal in weight whether weighed singly or together.⁶ Later forensic study confirmed the Flesh as myocardium and the Blood as human type AB, remarkably preserved across twelve centuries.⁷ Laurence Hemming has argued that Catholic worship is “tangible theology, a live epiphany of God’s self-disclosure.”⁸ The miracle of Lanciano was precisely such an epiphany. The ablution prayers are another: outward acts that disclose divine truth.

The Fathers: Medicine, Fire, Transformation
The Fathers proclaimed the same truths. St Ignatius of Antioch called the Eucharist “the medicine of immortality.”⁹ St Augustine declared that unlike ordinary food, which the body assimilates, in the Eucharist it is we who are assimilated to God.¹⁰ St John Chrysostom urged that those who receive the Body of Christ should go forth “like lions breathing fire.”¹¹ The ablution prayers, whispered at the altar, echo these patristic themes. The priest begs that the medicine truly heal, that the fire truly burn, that the transformation be real.

For the Modern Celebrant: A Severe Admonition
The absence of these prayers in the reformed liturgy has had grave consequences. The chalice is rinsed, but the conscience is unexamined. The vessels are set aside, but the heart may remain unpurified. No prayer compels the modern celebrant to ask whether he has celebrated for the glory of God alone, or with pride, routine, or self-interest.

The Fathers would not have been silent. Chrysostom warned: “If anyone unworthily draw near, he perishes.”¹² Ambrose declared that the impure celebrant “draws down not grace but judgment upon himself.”¹³ Durandus explained that the washing of fingers signified the need for purity of intention.¹⁴ Aquinas taught that although the sacrament itself cannot be corrupted by the minister’s unworthiness, it may bring his condemnation.¹⁵ The Council of Trent confirmed this with anathema: “If anyone says that it is not necessary for one receiving the holy Eucharist to confess his sins beforehand when he is conscious of mortal sin… let him be anathema.”¹⁶

Here, then, is the tragedy: priests today who treat the Host as though it were a wafer, who neglect to genuflect, who chat idly while purifying vessels, who tolerate sacrilege in Communion lines. The chalice may be polished, but their motives remain tarnished. The outward act may be tidy, but the inward reality is neglected.

If the modern celebrant would recover reverence, he must recover these prayers — not as antiquarian curiosities, but as the medicine of his soul. For it is not the rinsing of chalices that saves, but the cleansing of the heart; not the outward order of vessels, but the inward ordering of love. Without them, the priest risks standing at the altar with vessels purified but heart defiled, lips sanctified but motives corrupt. And what then has he gained? Only this: to have touched the Fire of God, and to have let it pass him by unheeded.

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Footnotes

1. Missale Romanum (1962), Orationes post Communionem.
2. Adrian Crogan, The Mass: A Liturgical Commentary (London, 1948), p. 219.
3. Missale Romanum (1962), ibid.
4. Peter Chaignon, SJ, The Sacrifice of the Mass Worthily Celebrated (Paris, 1859), p. 143.
5. De defectibus in celebratione Missae, X.5.
6. Inscription, Church of St Francis, Lanciano, 1574 investigation.
7. Odoardo Linoli, Quaderni Sclavo di Diagnostica Clinica e di Laboratori (1971).
8. Laurence Hemming, Worship as Revelation (London: T&T Clark, 2008), p. 67.
9. St Ignatius of Antioch, Epistula ad Ephesios 20.
10. St Augustine, Confessiones VII.10.
11. St John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Matthaeum 82.5.
12. Ibid.
13. St Ambrose, De Sacramentis IV.4.
14. William Durandus, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum IV.54.
15. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 82, a. 5.
16. Council of Trent, Session XIII, Canon 11 (Denzinger 1661).