St. Cyril of Jerusalem :
Partake of It, ensuring that you do not mislay any of It. For if you mislay any, you would clearly suffer a loss, as it were, from one of your own limbs. Tell me, if anyone gave you gold dust, would you not take hold of it with every possible care, ensuring that you did not mislay any of it or sustain any loss? So will you not be much more cautious to ensure that not a crumb falls away from that which is more precious than gold or precious stones?
St. Thomas Aquinas :
The dispensing of Christ’s Body belongs to the priest for three reasons. First, because he consecrates in the person of Christ. But as Christ consecrated His Body at the Supper, so also He gave It to others to be partaken of by them. Accordingly, as the consecration of Christ’s Body belongs to the priest, so likewise does the dispensing belong to him. Secondly, because the priest is the appointed intermediary between God and the people, hence as it belongs to him to offer the people’s gifts to God, so it belongs to him to deliver the consecrated gifts to the people. Thirdly, because out of reverence towards this Sacrament, nothing touches It but what is consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands for touching this Sacrament. Hence, it is not lawful for anyone else to touch It, except from necessity, for instance, if It were to fall upon the ground or else in some other case of urgency
Partake of It, ensuring that you do not mislay any of It. For if you mislay any, you would clearly suffer a loss, as it were, from one of your own limbs. Tell me, if anyone gave you gold dust, would you not take hold of it with every possible care, ensuring that you did not mislay any of it or sustain any loss? So will you not be much more cautious to ensure that not a crumb falls away from that which is more precious than gold or precious stones?
St. Thomas Aquinas :
The dispensing of Christ’s Body belongs to the priest for three reasons. First, because he consecrates in the person of Christ. But as Christ consecrated His Body at the Supper, so also He gave It to others to be partaken of by them. Accordingly, as the consecration of Christ’s Body belongs to the priest, so likewise does the dispensing belong to him. Secondly, because the priest is the appointed intermediary between God and the people, hence as it belongs to him to offer the people’s gifts to God, so it belongs to him to deliver the consecrated gifts to the people. Thirdly, because out of reverence towards this Sacrament, nothing touches It but what is consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands for touching this Sacrament. Hence, it is not lawful for anyone else to touch It, except from necessity, for instance, if It were to fall upon the ground or else in some other case of urgency
ABS assisted at the Lil' Licit Liturgy at Saint Philip Church in Franklin, Tennessee on Sunday, Dec 27, and he witnessed a horrific scandal and abomination inside this noisiest of anthropocentric churches in the local Nashville Franchise of Dead Diocese Inc. America,
Now, one would never think that the good, decent, tradition-respecting, citizens of Franklin would be caught dead making a ruckus in the local library nor would one expect them to act with embarrassing novelty during a reenactment of the grave Battle of Franklin * where the Army of Tennessee died in only a few hours of deadly vainglory but when it comes to the Lil' Licit Liturgy, all is unfair and foul and the sights and sounds of men and women roaming around the church prior to Mass, the sights and sounds of them turning around in their pews and speaking loudly to friends was even louder - in a sacred sense- than was noise generated by the pitched battle of Franklin.
But, sitting amongst four (more?) generations of souls, ABS well understood how the ethos of the Lil' Licit Liturgy has slaughtered all sense of the sacred amongst these good and fine people just as deadly and effectively as the men in the Army of Tennessee were killed owing to the pride and foolish vainglory of General Hood.
The pride and vainglory of the Pauline Rite has done even worse damage than what Hood caused to happen.
There is no sense of the sacred in that church; there is no prayer prior to Mass; there is no sense the souls in there realise they are in the house of God; there is no sense of respect for others; there is no sense of reverence; there is no sense of humility; there is no sense of order, there is no lick of sacred sense of anything happening in that anthropocentric center; it is all about man and his wants/needs/desires.
And then, just when ABS thought he had seen and heard the worse - including a foul-tempered songstress acidly claiming she had been falsely informed as to where in the missal the pages could be found for the readings when, obviously, an honest, innocent, mistake had been made - ABS saw a phalanx of Extraordinary Eucharist Ministers (yes, Virginia, Extraordinary does mean every Sunday) prolly 14-16 strong, form in a double row in the middle aisle in preparation for dispensing Holy Communion under both Sacred Species (well, the Lil' Licit Liturgy is a meal and we eat and drink at a meal, right?).
Once the favored fourteen had received in the hand and taken a gulp, they began to depart from the sanctuary and fan out amongst the assembly when a woman lost her balance and spilled the Sacred Body and Blood (yes, Virginia, BOTH are present in each Sacred Species **) on her hands, clothing, and floor of the sanctuary.
ABS was in the back pew and could not precisely see how the Suddenly Spilt Sacred Blood was cleaned-up but he did notice a lack of serious concern in the behavior of everyone in the Sanctuary, including Pastor, Priest, and Deacon.
Lord have Mercy.
Our Lord and Saviour is now treated in the Lil' Licit Liturgy like a cheap commodity in our anthropocentric centers and that anthropocentric rite fails horribly when compared to the Real Mass and how the Sacred Species is treated therein.
* http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/franklin.html#
** “And this faith has ever been in the Church of God, that, immediately after the consecration, the veritable Body of our Lord, and His veritable Blood, together with His soul and divinity, are under the species of bread and wine; but the Body indeed under the species of bread, and the Blood under the species of wine, by the force of the words; but the body itself under the species of wine, and the blood under the species of bread, and the soul under both, by the force of that natural connection and concomitancy whereby the parts of Christ our Lord, who hath now risen from the dead, to die no more, are united together; and the divinity, furthermore, on account of the admirable hypostatical union thereof with His body and soul.