Few Thoughts On Pope Pius I And Eucharistic Reverence

• He was Pope of the second century [140-154AD; Feast, July 11th]; first of the twelve graced with the name ‘Pius’.

• Though little is written of him, a few things are noteworthy: he ordained that the Resurrection of our Lord be always celebrated on a Sunday; he took care to avoid any irreverence to the Precious Blood of our Lord under the species of wine -prescribing forty days of penance if the Precious Blood should be let to fall to the ground; that it must, if possible, be taken with lips; the dust must be burned, and the ashes thrown into a consecrated place. 

• Such care and profound reverence is precisely because it is not a common drink, but the very Blood shed for our salvation; the price of our redemption. 

• Even today, as in the 2nd century every priest is in great distress if the least drop from the chalice, or the least crumb of the Sacred Host falls to the ground; and precise rubrical prescriptions must be followed in order to retrieve the Sacred Species and to purify the place… 

• For practical purposes, the Church has prudently determined  the discipline of communion under one species for the faithful to safeguard the reverence due to this August Sacrament. 

• However, heretics, lacking both knowledge and faith, pretends that the Church has departed from her ancient traditions by paying exaggerated homage to the Blessed Sacrament. 

• Modernists, [Protestants within the walls] while retaining the Catholic name, level the same accusation as their fellow Protestants outside the walls… thus modernists promote ‘so-called communion in the hand and under both species’, and, this if of course for ecumenical reasons…  

• Despite all these, some, unable to ‘know the tree from its fruit’ are waiting for some ‘legal declaration’ establishing the ‘crime’ of these overtly/manifestly modernist-Catholics [modernist-Catholic; Protestant-Catholic: what a misnomer!] 

• For us, having no part with the modernist impiety and apostasy; but, keeping inviolate the same divine and Catholic faith which animated our Fathers, we ask the intercession of Pope Pius I, that we may grow too in their spirit of veneration for the Precious Price of our Redemption.  

Pope Pius I, pray for us!