St. Stanislaus Catholic Church

Rossville, Kansas

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ADORATION
5am to 6am Every Weekday
9am to 8pm Every Wednesday

1st Wednesday of the month- Parish Family Holy Hour:
Exposition and Benediction from 6pm to 7pm

CONFESSIONS
7am Sunday Mornings

Dear Family,
I want to share a little bit about the Communion plate (sometimes called chin paten), which is something familiar for some of you and for others something you have never seen or heard of! A chin paten is a small plate that is held by an altar server during the distribution of Holy Communion. It is placed under the chin or the hands of the communicant to ensure that the host, or particles of the host do not fall to the ground. The patens are then purified over the chalice by the priest or deacon.  


Given that this practice was never abrogated, I would like to reintroduce it to our parish as a way to foster Eucharistic piety. Love for Our Lord, present in the Blessed Sacrament, is extremely important to our growth in holiness and I am always looking for ways to promote a deep, reverent, and heartfelt love for the Eucharist. I realize that some of you might see this as a fussy and scrupulous practice from the “old times” but let me assure you, the Church says otherwise. In 2004, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments published an instruction titled Redemptionis Sacramentum the proper celebration of Mass which states: 
“The Communion-plate for the Communion of the faithful ought to be retained, so as to avoid the danger of the sacred host or some fragment of it falling.”
Why is all of this important? Is Father Justin just obsessed with the sticky points of liturgical law and chasing after irrelevant practices out of nostalgia? Hardly! Belief in the Real Presence, a central doctrine of our faith, has fallen to extremely low levels and we need to correct this. Through the words of consecration by the priest, bread and wine change substantially into Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity. The whole of Christ is present in every part of the species of bread and wine. “The chin plate reminds the faithful of the mystery of the One who is present to us under the sacramental species of bread. He is the Lord of glory, hidden under the humble veil of food, and we must approach It and handle It with utmost reverence. The paten is a simple and subtle way of underlining that communion is no mere symbolic token but a genuine participation in the Redeemer’s divine flesh.” It could also assist those who do not believe to assent to faith in the Eucharist. For, if we show reverence to the small particles of the Sacred Host, it may impress the heart of an unbeliever enough to believe and reinvigorate faith in one who’s love for the Eucharist has grown cold. 
My goal is to reintroduce the use of chin patens the weekend of Sept 25/26.

Fr. Justin    

St. Stanislaus Church will remain open on Wednesdays after daily Mass until 8pm. 
On the 1st Wednesday of each month, St. Stanislaus will offer a Parish Family Holy Hour which will begin at 6pm & conclude with Benediction.  

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