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During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the second part of the Mass, the elements of bread and wine are considered to have been changed into the veritable Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The manner in which this occurs is referred to by the term transubstantiation, a theory of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Roman Catholic Church. Members of the Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican communions also believe that Jesus Christ becomes really and truly present in the bread and wine, but they believe that the way in which this occurs must forever remain a divine mystery. In many Christian churches some portion of the consecrated elements is set aside and reserved after the reception of the Holy Eucharist, referred to as the reserved sacrament. The reserved sacrament is usually stored in a tabernacle, a locked cabinet made of precious materials and usually located on, above or near the high altar. In Western Christianity usually only the Host, from Latin: ''hostia'', meaning "victim" (the consecrated bread), is reserved. The reasons for the reservation of the sacrament vary by tradition, but common reasons for reserving the sacrament include for it to be taken to the ill or housebound, for the devotional practice of Eucharistic Adoration, for viaticum for the dying, and so that Communion may still be administered if a priest is unavailable to celebrate the Eucharist. During the Triduum, the sacrament is taken in procession from the tabernacle, if on the high altar or otherwise in the sanctuary, to the Altar of Repose, reserved from the end of the Mass of the Lord's Supper until after the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified or the Communion Rite on Good Friday, commemorating the time between the Last Supper and the Crucifixion of Jesus. The Blessed Sacrament is then returned to the tabernacle at the end of the first Mass of the Resurrection. ==For the ill== The first mention of reservation also describes the original and, arguably, primary purpose. In the Apology of Justin Martyr, a 2nd-century Christian writer, he describes the Eucharist ending with the distribution by the deacons to the parishioners 'and to those who are absent, they carry away a portion.'〔(Justin, First Apology 65 )〕 Reservation for distribution of the Communion to the sick is mentioned subsequently in the writings of Tertullian, St. Cyprian and St.Basil. People kept the sacrament in their homes and carried about their person as being a safe place. After the conversion of Constantine in the early 4th century, the more common place for reservation was in a church. Indeed, a Council of Toledo in 480 denounced those who did not immediately consume the sacred species when they received them from the priest at the altar, but at the same time numerous decrees of synods and penalties entered in penitential books impose upon parish priests the duty of reserving the Blessed Sacrament for the use of the sick and dying, and at the same time of keeping it reverently and securely while providing by frequent renewal against any danger of the corruption of the sacred species. It would be kept either in the sacristy or in the church itself in a pyx hanging over the altar, an aumbry - a safe in the wall of the church - or in a tabernacle - literally a tent, but in fact a metal safe on or immediately behind the altar itself, sometimes covered with a seasonally coloured cloth. Caskets in the form of a dove or of a tower, made for the most part of one of the precious metals, were commonly used for the purpose, but whether in the early Middle Ages these Eucharistic vessels were kept over the altar, or elsewhere in the church, or in the sacristy, does not clearly appear. After the 10th century the commonest usage in England and France seems to have been to suspend the Blessed Sacrament in a dove-shaped vessel by a cord over the high altar; but fixed and locked tabernacles were also known and indeed prescribed by the regulations of Bishop Quivil of Exeter at the end of the 13th century, though in England they never came into general use before the Reformation. In Germany, in the 14th and 15th centuries, a custom widely prevailed of enshrining the Eucharist in a "sacrament house", often beautifully decorated, separate from the high altar, but only a short distance away from it, and on the north, or Gospel, side of the Church. This custom seems to have originated in the desire to allow the Blessed Sacrament to be seen by the faithful without exactly contravening the synodal decrees which forbade any continuous exposition. In the sacrament house, the door was invariably made of metal lattice work, through which the vessel containing the sacred species could be discerned at least obscurely. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reserved sacrament」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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