Consecrated Hosts on Good Friday
            QUESTION from Smith on April 17, 2004

Just a comment. If this breaks the rules please feel free to delete. The Hosts remaining at the end of the Good Friday Liturgy are taken from the church signifying the absence of the Lord in the world in his descent into hell. They cannot be consumed in case of the need for viaticum. In terms of using them for the Vigil. While the rubrics are only explicit in this matter for Holy Thursday, it would seem that the mind of the Church would be that one should ensure at this liturgy above all others that the faithful would receive only what is consecrated at the Vigil and wait until Easter Sunday or Monday to begin to distrubute the reserved species. On the second ceremony. It has become practice in some places, so as not to repeat the Passion Liturgy in the late evening nor disrupt the flow of the Triduum by inserting a devotion such as the Mercy Chaplet or Stations to draw upon older liturgical or cultural practices to commemorate the Lord's burial and descent. What the person describes seems to be one of these. Personally, unless there is a long standing custom (such as exists among Eastern European Catholics) of a "burial" service I would suggest to the pastor that instead of being innovative he might consider instituting the Office of Readings and a Tenebrae service or merely expose for veneration the icon of the Anastasis (which is the triumph over hell)