The Intimate Awkwardness of Receiving on the Tongue

I was in a discussion recently about the fear of the Lord and it became clear that most people present could view this gift of the Holy Spirit only as a negative, a servile fear or, at best, the fear a child has for his beloved but distant father. And I’m sure that’s the experience many people have of the God who holds galaxies in the palms of his hands and holds us in existence. God, they’ve been told, is a vengeful judge, a Father who is always disappointed in you, a magical yet spiteful being who spies on your petty sins in order to punish you in this world and the next.

Compared to that, the image of God as innocuous buddy is a relief. But while it’s certainly better for people not to be terrified of the Lord, God as neighbor-you-chat-with-occasionally-who-can-be-relied-on-to-jump-start-your-car is just as inaccurate. A god who inspires no fear is an impotent creature, incapable of true love.

Fear is, after all, a part of falling in love. That thrill of fear that tinges the edge of romance, the trepidation that surrounds all true vulnerability. The fear of the Lord at its worst is the terror of a slave before his callous master; at its best, it’s the nerves of a bride on her wedding night.

This is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of all wisdom, as Proverbs tells us: the fear of a God who is good but never safe, of a lover who insists that we hold nothing back. We’ve all felt it at one moment or another, not just reverence before a God who is—quite literally—awesome, but apprehension when the God we want so badly to trust seems to be asking more of us than we think we can give.

But what about the times that God feels distant, less lover and more acquaintance? When we can’t excite any holy fear of the Lord in ourselves and our spiritual life feels flat? What then?

Now, faith is not feelings. It’s essential that we remind ourselves of this, that prayer is good even when it’s dry and our hearts can belong to the Lord even when we don’t feel him.

Still, we owe it to our tender and almighty God to seek to know him as he truly is and not as he is most comfortable to us. So might I suggest, as a way of recovering a healthy fear of the Lord, a spiritual practice that might be decidedly uncomfortable for many of us?

Receive communion on the tongue.

It was the standard practice in the West for many centuries, of course, which means that the vast majority of Saints received this way. But receiving on the tongue has more to recommend it than just being traditional.

Namely, it’s awkward, excessively intimate, and decidedly uncomfortable. Just the thing.

If you (like me) were raised making of your hands a throne for the Body of Christ, it can be more than a little off-putting to imagine approaching a priest and sticking your tongue out at him (at which point he’s as likely as not to misjudge his target and give you a good taste of his finger).

But what better time to open yourself up to discomfort than at the moment you receive a God made defenseless for you? How better to present yourself to your bridegroom than in holy helplessness, receiving him in a way that leaves you entirely vulnerable to his will? There is something in this mode of receiving the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ that forms our heart to receive his will this way: abandoned, with no illusion of control or power.

If nothing else, receiving communion on the tongue makes it so much more evident what this act of communion is: an embrace between lovers, the bridegroom’s kiss on the lips of his beloved. This is no less true when the Eucharist is received in the hand, but so much harder to ignore when we present ourselves before the Lord to be kissed.

Now there are any number of reasons that a person might choose to receive in the hand, and far be it from me to bind what Rome has loosed, but if you’ve found that your experience of the Lord has become sterile or servile or harmless and platonic, maybe this is the way to open your heart to the fear of the Lord once more.