‘The shortest and safest way to Heaven’

Introducing young children to Eucharistic devotion as well as attendance at Sunday Mass is a wonderful gift that parents can make.  Communities ought to support families and children in facilitating this. After all, schools are known to introduce children to practices of mindfulness (and I have no issue with this). Why should we not also introduce children, in age-appropriate and carefully guided ways, to eucharistic prayer and adoration?

St Pope Pius X (1835-1914) whose feast day is today was instrumental in opening up reception of holy communion to children from the age of around 7.  He is associated with two reforms in particular:

• Frequent reception of holy communion - provided they were in the state of grace and approached with the right intention.
• Restoration of the age for First Communion to the age of reason (about seven years old).

The early Church commonly admitted children to Holy Communion, a practice that continued for many centuries and is still maintained in the Eastern Catholic Churches. Pope Pius rejected the idea that children needed advanced theological knowledge before receiving the Eucharist. He saw the Eucharist as the primary means of union with Christ.

A famous idea associated with Pius X is that the Eucharist is: ‘the shortest and safest way to Heaven.’  His reforms helped overcome lingering attitudes that discouraged frequent Communion due to scruples and fear. He opened his 1910 encyclical, Quam singulari, as follows:

Grandparents: sowing the seeds of a eucharistic faith

Today is the World Day for Grandparents and the elderly.  Realistically, being a senior and a grandparent often go together! One of the great blessings of being a grandparent is the freedom to welcome the little children as Jesus did and then return them to their parents!

According to a number of sources including this one, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, was baptised due to the influence and encouragement of his grandmother in the decade of the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. The Christian faith survived in Russia and other parts of the USSR thanks in no small part to the witness of countless believers, among them many of the babushki – the grandmothers of Russia.  When many churches were closed and public religious practices made difficult if not impossible, family networks kept the faith alive.  Many grandparents encouraged baptisms of their grandchildren and prayed with them.  Their involvement in the lives of their grandchildren helped preserve memories, customs and the rudiments of a living faith.

A child-friendly Eucharist

 

My late uncle, a Columban missionary priest, served in China and Burma at various stages between 1946 and 1966.   I recall his stories about children playing at an open-air mass in some very basic conditions in a village mountains.  This was a far cry from the fine architecture and marble church of Dalgan Park where he completed his seminar training in the early 1940s.  For Fr Michael, children were always of central importance in any family gathering. And, on those occasions when mass was celebrated, devoutly and properly, on the kitchen table there was a job for everyone including the smallest.

Introducing children to the mass takes time and patience especially when they are not used to the surroundings, actions and sights associated with mass.  If a kind, calm and warn environment is created this can help to put children at ease and lead them in curiosity to a place of encounter.  

Bringing the children to mass

 

When I was a child, going to Mass was simply what families did. In this part of Ireland, well over 90% of households attended every Sunday. When I stopped going as a teenager in the 1970s, it was unusual enough to be noticed.

About thirty years ago, I first became aware of a real shift. Sunday congregations were suddenly older. Families still came, but in smaller numbers, and the age profile was unmistakably changing.