My Uncle is our parish deacon, & whenever our priest can’t say Mass during the week and no cover is available, he’s celebrate a service of the word. However if he’s not available due to commitments as a grandpa, a eucharistic minister will celebrate it.
Tbh, I’m on the fence. What are your views?
I need some clarification. Are you saying that someone brings The Holy Eucharist, as they would to someone who is homebound or in the Hospital? If this is the case, I don’t think this is a problem (especially if there is a valid reason and the Eucharist was validly consecrated beforehand).
Whether or not this fulfills your Sunday obligation might be a different story. I would say a few things might come into play here. How far is a neighboring Catholic Parish that you could otherwise attend?
We have a guy in our Catholic Men’s Bible Study who lives next to a retired Catholic Priest on the lakefront a few of them get together on Sunday and the retired Priest celebrates Mass with them. When he is unable to, the fella in our group will drive quite a bit of ways to attend Mass at one of the nearest Parishes. It is inconvenient, but he is always glad that he did.
This also reminds me of a Men’s Day of Recollection that we had at the Parish I used to attend. They had three men of different ages share their Faith-journey with us. One was in his twenties, another in his 40’s, and a third in his 80’s. I recall the man in his 80’s (Ed was his name) tell how when he was a child, his family would pack food, get in their horse & buggy before the sun would come up and they would travel for hours to get to the nearest Catholic Church for Mass. After Church they would eat the food that they had packed and then make the long journey back home. And they would do this every Sunday. This gave me a new perspective on how easy we have it today. We sometimes think a twenty-minute drive to Church is too far. But, how far are we willing to go to receive our Lord who carried the wood of the Cross, beaten and bloodied, so that we might have life?
I’m not saying any of this to make you feel guilty or to shame you. I am simply passing on a new perspective that was given to me by a gentle old man who has since passed, but who’s story touched the way I look at my own faith and what it means to me.
When a priest can’t celebrate Mass, a service of the word is celebrated by either our deacon, or a euchuraristic minister
It’s all right if a deacon conducts the service, but not if a a euchuraristic minister does so
Is the Eucharist distributed at this “Liturgy of the Word”?
Personally, having Service of the Word (in the absence of a Priest) is better than doing nothing at all or going shopping. Does it fulfill your Sunday obligation though, is the question.
From what I have found, The GIRM does not say that a Service of the Word performed by the Deacon is a substitute for the Mass (which no one here is claiming), but the Sunday obligation may be lifted if no Mass is available (through no fault of your own). I think in this case, a Communion Service (if pre-Consecrated Hosts are available) or a Service of the Word is acceptable to sanctify the day.
Hope this helps : )
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My understanding is that only a priest or deacon may preach the Gospel. Lectors may read other parts of the Bible at a service. Distributing Communion, which is not what the original poster asked about, may be done by extraordinary ministers, whose job is to distribute Communion when no priest or deacon is available or when having only the priest or deacon distribute Communion to everyone would take a long time.
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