Dear Gramps,
I have been put on a Gluten Free diet so what can or should I do about Sacrament since they use bread with gluten?
Arvella, from Kalispell, Montana
Dear Arvella,
Since I am not a health care professional, I am unqualified to answer your question. Such a question should be referred to your attending physician. A piece of bread of the size used in the sacrament would weigh about a quarter of a gram. So ask your doctor if consuming 1/4 gm. of bread once a week would be contraindicated for your condition. If the answer is yes, you would be excused from partaking of the bread during the sacrament.
However, the value of the sacrament service is to formalize an opportunity to reflect on the great atoning sacrifice of the Savior of mankind, the bread representing the body of the Savior that was subjected to infinite pain in payment to the demands of justice for the all of the sins committed by all of the our Heavenly Father’s children on all of the inhabited worlds in the universe; and to the fact that his mortal body, following all that infinite suffering was put to death by wicked men, and was then made to live again in immortality, the first fruits of the resurrection, which process was so powerful that it accrues to all living entities in their mortal state. Thus, if you are precluded for health reasons from actually partaking of the element representing the body of the Savior, you can nevertheless use the sacramental period for the meditation that it was designed to facilitate.
Gramps
