When is a eucharist holy? Does it have to blessed by a priest? Or it holy right out of the oven? Can I buy a bucket of them here and they’ll be as holy as any other, shipped right to my door?
I’m sure there’s probably different answers for different catholic sects.
It’s not considered the body of Christ until the priest consecrates it. If I had to give an exact moment, I’d say it’s when the priest lifts it up, and the alter boys ring the bell.
I used to munch on the unconsecrated hosts in the rectory when I was an alter boy, I thought they were pretty good. For the record, they don’t taste any different after consecration.
ETA:
Out of the oven, it’s just bread.
Christian denominations that treat communion as merely symbolic will have to weigh in with their own responses. As a Roman Catholic, I believe that the bread retains the “accidents” of bread from the oven, through the shipping process, through the Mass, and until you eat it.
But the “substance” of the bread – it’s essential inner characteristic, it’s breadness, if you will – changes and becomes the Body of Christ when a priest, during Mass, completes the consecration. It still looks like bread, smells like bread, and tastes like bread. But at that point, it’s the real presence of Christ.
So – no. Buying buckets of bread gets you… buckets of bread. No holiness included.
Kids get to ‘practice’ on the ones that are not blessed/consecrated, because it doesn’t matter what happens, they are just bread.
If a blessed/consecrated communion wafer (body of Christ) is mishandled, lost, dropped, etc, it is a BIG DEAL. Must be found and eaten…or, if not edible, should be ground with holy water and sent down the sacrarium, a special sink that drains under the foundation of the church. This sink is routinely used after services to clean anything the priest used during the making of body and blood from bread and wine.
I’ve seen nuns eat communion wafers that were dropped on wet, dirty floors and trampled on by church goers. Always is the first option.
I can’t find a link, but I am reminded of what I thought was Fr. Guido Sarducci doing a bit on Communion Wafer Pizza. Maybe it was someone else. All I can find is his "Find the Popes in the Pizza" transcript from SNL.
Oh Well.
In the tradition of the United Methodist Church, any bread or cracker can be used for Communion–and I’ve known quite a few variations, most of which are commercially available as ordinary bread/cracker. It becomes holy when it is blessed. I don’t actually know what happens to it on a practical level if it isn’t needed during the service–but I have to think that Methodists are less hung up about proper disposal than Catholics, if only because if someone must eat all the leftovers afterwards, one might think a greater effort would be made not to have so many leftovers.
Thanks everybody!
I went to a Catholic elementary school, and was told that it was a sin to chew the host.
Even if they were unconsecrated?
I was also told not to chew a consecrated host, and I think we were supposed to not touch it to our teeth, either. Although I was probably technically stealing them, regardless. 
In the Episcopal church, any leftover host is discarded onto the ground along with any undrunk wine (there usually isn’t any that remains undrunk - we’re pretty good about getting it all out of the chalice).
Sometimes we have soggy host from a child dropping it into the chalice. I then have to get the intincture spoon and fish it out and put it on the little plate that sits on the altar.
As the rector says, “If anything out of the ordinary happens, just move slowly and act reverential - nobody will notice a thing.”
Great timing. Here’s a recent story of a Catholic who smuggled a blessed communion wafer out of church because he wanted to show it to his roommate, and ended up receiving death threats from Catholics around the world who feel that he kidnapped Jesus Christ.
When does it become not holy again?
While any alleged threats from Catholic were over the top, the jerk (who was raised Catholic but is obviously either ignorant or disrespectful of Church teaching) resisted all efforts to keep him from leaving the Church with the Host, and is whining about student fees being used for student religious services and that some attempts to get him to hand back the Host involved physical force, trying to pry it out of his hand.
He should be kicked off the college student council.
A nun told me the same thing when I was in first or second grade. She said I was breaking the bones of Christ and the proper way to take communion was to let the host melt on my tongue.
When I went on a retreat in high school there was consecrated bread and wine left over and one of the Brothers had us eat and drink the rest of it since there was nowhere to store it.
Before any warnings come out, I recognize some of my comments about said student were probably out of place for GQ.
From a neopagan* perspective, the Eucharist is theoretically as holy during the ceremony as it was before and it will be coming out. Everything is exactly as revered as everything else - although people are shooed away from eating it before the proper time, it’s more for appearances and sense of timing than from a worry about sacrilege… Often, but not always, the priest and/or priestess working the rite will act as a Divine conduit and God/dess/es will bless the food through them at the appropriate time - usually near the end of the ritual. We share this “meal” to symbolize and cement our bonds, obligations and gifts to one another as a community. A small piece of the “bread” (which might indeed be bread, or it may be fruit or chocolate or cookies or anything else mostly solid) and a small portion of the “wine” (which might be wine, but out of consideration to non-drinkers is more likely to be tea or juice) are poured on the altar as an offering to Hestia** (even if the rest of the service doesn’t mention her). It’s not uncommon for some amount to be left over, and after the service is done, it’s considered fair game for snacking.
Any “wine” left over when it’s time to clean up for the night is poured out on the ground - preferably over tree roots. There’s never any “bread” left, but if it were, I’d leave it on the ground as well.
*This is one of many possible ways of doing it. Ask 10 neopagans, and you’ll get 12 answers. We’re a flexible lot.
Usually with the words, "As we have been taught of old to give a little back, lest the bounty cease to be - Hestia, Hestia, the first and the last*, we give unto thee." murmured by anyone who remembers it.
***Which does not, as far as I’ve been able to determine, refer to the food and drink, but Hestia herself - she was the first born of Zeus’s children and the last regurgitated. A first-born woman was considered extremely powerful by the Greeks, and so a first born Goddess even more so. Interesting lore for such a humble Goddess…but now I’ve really digressed!
That story is what got me thinking about it.
An even more pressing question is: When Holy Water evaporates, what happens to the blessing?
Lenny Bruce used to tell about the renegade priest who would run into bakery shops, consecrate all the bread, and run out leaving the owner with tons of Christs body to deal with.
Zeus’s sister, not his daughter. The Greek Titan Kronos ate his children so that they couldn’t overthrow him.