Greetings, parish family! I wanted to discuss today a question that comes up a lot, “How long do we need to fast before receiving the Eucharist?” The Eucharisitc fast is designed to help us remember the deep hunger that should lie within each of us for the great gift that we receive in the Eucharistic Lord Jesus, the Bread of Life.

  Many may remember a time where the requirement was to fast from midnight until the time you received communion. In the Code of Canon Law (Church Law) that was originally promulgated in 1917, that was the case, even for water & medicine. In 1953, Pope Pius XII decided that water & medicine did not break the fast, & then in 1957, desiring to make the Eucharist more available while still maintaining proper reverence for the sacred gift of the Eucharist, he reduced the required fasting time before receiving the Eucharist to 3 hours. The requirement was updated again in 1964 when Pope Paul VI reduced the required fasting time to 1 hour.

 So, the basic answer to the question, “How long do we need to fast before receiving the Eucharist?” is for 1 hour before receiving the Eucharist. That is what is found in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which is the current law of the Church. And it’s important to note that that fasting is for one hour BEFORE THE ACTUAL RECEPTION OF COMMUNION & NOT BEFORE THE START OF THE MASS ITSELF. But we also shouldn’t get so scrupulous about the fast being EXACTLY 60 minutes that we start a stopwatch after the last bit of food touches our mouth.

    But, there are also important stipulations to that requirement that are laid out in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It is not a matter of you MUST fast for an hour before Communion NO MATTER WHAT. The first is a priest who has to celebrate more than 1 Mass on a day is also allowed to consume something between the Masses, even if there is less than an hour between them. That came in handy one time when I almost overslept for Easter Sunday Mass at one of my previous parishes. I got up, got dressed, rushed over to the Church, & celebrated Mass (which started on time), but then I was able to grab a small bite to eat before the next Mass I had, which began only a half hour after the first one had ended.

  The second is that it explicitly states in Canon Law that the elderly, the infirm, & those who care for them CAN receive the Eucharist even if they have eaten in the past hour. Especially if our health causes us to get light-headed or we need to take medication at a certain time & that medication needs to be taken with food, we can certainly do so & still receive the Eucharist, even if there wasn’t 1 hour between. We might still try to fast for a time (15 minutes) before we receive the Eucharist, but we SHOULDN’T skip a dose of needed medication or put our own health at risk. We shouldn’t feel that we need to fast in a way that could potentially be harmful to our health.