My two-and-a-half-year-old son wants to receive communion

In the early church, infants received Communion. The practice is noted by Augustine, who preached in one of his sermons: “Yes, they’re infants, but they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves.”

For the first thousand years or more, the rites of initiation (baptism, first communion and confirmation) were given all at one time to children. (The only people not present for the Eucharist in the early church were catechumens and penitents.) Parents brought their children up with them to receive the body and blood of Christ. To this day, this remains the practice in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic rites, as well as in many Reformed churches and some Anglican ones.

In the Middle Ages, receiving communion became more rare as many people were in such awe of the consecrated host that they preferred to pray before it, rather than consume it. Lay people tended to receive infrequently or only on their deathbeds. So in the thirteenth century, completion of the rites of initiation came to be postponed until the age of reason, which was determined by the Scholastics to be seven years of age. The separation of the single sacrament of initiation was made Church law in the mid-sixteenth century, at the council of Trent.

Is infant communion so different from infant baptism? We already teach children who have previously been baptized what their baptism means, and yet, baptism is a gift freely given. It is not dependent on one’s intelligence or comprehension. Formal instruction occurs after the sacrament has been experienced.

My son was baptized into the Church as a newborn. As a two year old he has expressed a desire for Jesus in the Eucharist, and I think he understands, insofar as any of us do, that the Eucharist is not just ordinary bread and wine, but Jesus’ body and blood in the form of a meal. I have told him so and he believes me.

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