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The Composition of Body in Receiving Communion: A Seventeenth-Century Jesuit's Instructions for Reception of the Most Holy Sacrament

The following was extracted from a Jesuit devotional treatise and edited by Boone Larson. The complete book will be reprinted by Recusant Press at a future date. 

1. Let the hands be held high before the breast, not lifted so high that they may hinder the priest. 
2. Let the head be conveniently lifted up, and inclined unto neither side, that without difficulty the mouth may be reached. 
3. Let the eyes be shut or bent downward: for it is unseemly at that time either to look upon the priest, or to turn the eyes otherwhere. 
4. Let the mouth be altogether quiet, without any reading or moving of lips, reasonable open, and not gaping. 
5. Let the tongue touch the side of the lip (not too much put forth), that it may receive the Host, and bring it into the mouth, and that being reverently held so long that it may be moistened, it may be let down into the body. For it is not to be chewed with the teeth, nor to be brought to the roof of the mouth, but to be swallowed (if it may be) before the ablution. 
6. Let the whole body be erected and quiet without any motion, sighings, blowings [of breath], groanings, knocking of the breast, exclamations, vocal prayers, and other like things, which oftentimes bring danger, either of the fall of the Host, or of the touching of the teeth, or lips, and in the time of receiving are to be omitted. 
7. After the receiving of the holy Host, let the head not indecently be cast down, but remain erected, with the hands joined before the breast, until the ablution, which everyone ought to take. 
8. Finally, for the space of a quarter of an hour after receiving, let spitting be avoided: which if it cannot be, at the least it is decent to spit where it [the spittle] may not be trodden on.

Reposted from Substack on the Feast Day of Saint Gilbert of Sempringham, 4 February 2026.