Second Sunday after Epiphany, 2001
Romans 12:4-5

Paedo-Communion

A few months ago at one of our potlucks my funny bone was tickled. I walked into one of the bedrooms and found the little girls playing Eucharist. Four of them were kneeling in a line on the bed like at the kneeling rail. The oldest girl (who is only six) was pretending to distribute the elements. A plastic cup and saucer served as the paten and chalice, as the little clergy-girl served imaginary bread and wine. It was cute.

In A. D. 630 a similar story is recounted by one John Moschus. He tells about seeing some children at play who imitated, among themselves, the Eucharist service. Moschus points out that these children were imitating what they had witnessed and taken part in themselves.

It seems that even very tiny children recognize a special meal. Somehow they absorb the meaning and appreciate the solemnity which underlies the distribution of the bread and the cup. The practice of welcoming baptized infants and children to communion is sometimes called infant communion, child communion, or better, paedo-communion. What is the biblical rationale for paedo-communion? How does it figure in Church history? What are the objections to it? What are the advantages of it? These are some of the issues we want to touch on today.

Let us begin with a couple verses from our epistle lesson. Romans 12:4-5 says, "For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another." Of course the body of Christ is the main biblical metaphor for the Church. Christ is the Head, and the baptized are sinews and muscles, fingers and bones making up the body. Who belong to the Church? All baptized people belong unless they have been excommunicated. It is in baptism that we are incorporated into the body of Christ. And the body of Christ metaphor suggests that everyone has a part to play. Everyone has a calling, everyone contributes, and everyone participates in the worship. Everyone, young and old, join in the celebration of the Eucharist. The members of Christ include all ages, from infants to ancients. And when the Body of Christ meets for the weekly feast, all ages partake. It wouldn't be right to forbid the young ones from the central, unifying event of the Church.

It is true that the New Testament says nothing about child communicants, but it is silent about women communicants as well. The argument from silence proves nothing. The fact is, to exclude children from communion unnecessarily divides the body. Baptism alone should be seen as the qualification for admission to communion.

Nor should we ignore the Old Testament pattern. The Old Covenant ceremonies bolster the rationale for paedo-communion. Circumcision brought infants into the covenant community of the Old Testament and baptism is the entrance into the covenant in the New Testament. We accept the connection between circumcision and baptism that St. Paul speaks of in Colossians 2:11-12. And if we acknowledge the circumcision-baptism link, we should also receive the connection between the Old Testament ceremonial meals and New Testament Communion. The Old Testament rituals inform our understanding of the New Testament sacraments. It would be fascinating to review the passages that deal with Passover, Pentecost, the manna in the wilderness, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the family peace offerings. In each case we would discover that children are nowhere excluded from participation. Rather, they are often explicitly included. Our New Testament sacrament of the Lord's Supper is the fulfillment of all these Old Testament meals. (Exodus 12:24; Deut. 16:11, 14; Ex. 16; Lev. 3:11; Deut. 12:12, 18. For more on Paedo-Communion see Rev. Tommy Lee's two articles on the St. Luke's web site. Also helpful: Welcoming Children to Communion by Daniel Young; and Is the Lord's Supper for Children? By Christian L. Keidel, Westminster Theological Journal; Vol. XXXVII, 1975, No. 3, pp. 301ff.)

Now let us turn to Church history. Some might be surprised here. Since paedo-communion has long been opposed in the Roman Catholic Church and all the Protestant churches, we might conclude that infant communion has always and universally been resisted. Such, however, is not the case.

Though John Calvin adamantly rejected infant communion he admitted that "this permission was indeed commonly given in the ancient church." (Institutes 2: p. 1352) In like manner the Council of Trent condemned paedo-communion yet had to confess that it was a long and ancient practice. What are the evidences for the custom of infant communion in antiquity? We have no clear proof one way or the other from the first two centuries. But in AD 250 Cyprian several times speaks of infants and young children participating in the Lord's Supper. He implies that it was a normal procedure in all the Church.

Next, we come to a book called the Apostolic Constitutions. This document was written in the late fourth century. Among other things it describes a communion service, and when the author lists all those who come forward for communion, the children are included.

Then, St. Augustine strongly endorses infant communion in a sermon he preached against the heretic Pelagius. He makes the argument that infants, due to original sin, need baptism and the Eucharist. He says, "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." So without a doubt, infants and young children were regularly communed in the Church of his day. And Augustine preached most of his sermons at the beginning of the fifth century.

Moreover, the Council of Toledo felt it necessary in AD 675 to assure worried parents. Naturally, the Church that practices paedo-communion has the problem of how to commune babies who have been baptized but still cannot swallow a solid piece of bread. Ministers tried to solve this dilemma by using their finger to collect a drop of the consecrated wine and wet the babies' lips. Other parishes utilized intinction. To intinct means you dip the bread in wine. Intinction tends to soften the bread, and most toddlers can handle that. Other clergy merely blessed the babies who could not quite receive the elements, especially if they came forward fast asleep. At any rate, parents were still anxious that their tender infants were being harmed by their inability to receive the life-transforming sacrament. The council of Toledo tried to set their minds at rest by declaring that those newborns unable to swallow the Eucharist did not fall under censure.

It is an indisputable fact that the Church at this time brought their infants and young children to the Lord's Supper. So the question arises: Why and when did the Church abandon paedo-communion?

Transubstantiation. That is the one word answer to why the Church quit welcoming children to the table. People began to have a fear of the transubstantiated elements. And one fear was that infants and children might spill the wine and thereby profane the actual body and blood of the Lord. In truth the discontinuance of paedo-communion was only one aspect of a larger development. It wasn't merely the children who stopped taking communion, the adults did too.

The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 was the turning point. That council decreed that confirmation and confession must precede Communion. In other words, a child had to grow up and reach an age of discretion before gaining access to the table. A novel tradition began with infants being baptized and teenagers getting confirmed before receiving first communion. Unfortunately, the Reformation never changed this policy. Therefore the Western Church, both Roman and Protestant, has been loyal to the "infant baptism, teenage confirmation" pattern set down by the Fourth Lateran Council.

Let's not forget that the Eastern Churches never abandoned paedo-communion. In the Orthodox liturgy baptism, chrismation, and first communion all happen within a few minutes of each other for the newborn. Then there have been important advocates of child communion in the Western Church. The Hussite movement of Czechoslovakia, beginning in 1415, practiced paedo-communion for centuries before they were finally vanquished by the Jesuits. The amazing Anglican, Jeremy Taylor and the Reformer Wolfgang Musculus called for the restoration of paedo-communion. In the last few decades, a growing number of Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Lutherans have attempted to recover the ancient ritual of welcoming children to the King's table. We feel it is an idea whose time has come.

How about objections? A cursory review of Church history answers the common accusation that tradition opposes the practice. The Church has not spoken with a unanimous voice on paedo-communion, but Church tradition certainly does not ban it. The other main objection comes from a biblical passage: 1 Corinthians 11:28. There the apostle Paul commands, "But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's Body." The Prayer of Exhortation in our Eucharistic liturgy basically copies the wording here. We are exhorted to diligently examine ourselves, and we are warned of the danger if we receive the supper unworthily.

The objection is usually stated like this: How can an infant or young child examine himself and discern the Lord's body? Infants do not have the sophistication and reasoning power to make the necessary preparations, therefore they should wait until they are intellectually capable. However, this is probably not the warning St. Paul was intending to teach. It was not the point he was trying to make. If we read First Corinthians in its entirety we learn that there was a huge problem of divisions in the parish. The rich Christians were coming together and feasting on sumptuous dishes and even getting inebriated before communion, while the poor Christians were kept at a distance, and not allowed to mix, while going hungry. There was a ghastly disunity at a meal that was supposed to symbolize unity. This was the problem and this was the context of Paul's remarks. Hence, he directed the people to examine themselves. What were they to examine? They were to examine their divisive attitudes at the table. They were to examine whether their eucharistic celebrations were truly the chief expression of fellowship between Christians as it was meant to be.

And why were they told to discern the Lord's body? The Lord's body in this context is the Church. The body that we are to discern is not the Lord's physical body, nor even the mystery of the sacrament (although that may be intended secondarily). The body we are to discern is the unity of the Church. Are we living in love and peace with our brothers and sisters in the faith? Are we practicing normal Christian hospitality? Paul's instruction has the purpose of correcting an abuse in the Church of Corinth, not in setting a rational standard that can only be reached by teens or tweens.

These brief comments on 1 Corinthians 11:28-29 may not be convincing to some, but I believe the more you study the total context of 1 Corinthians the more clearly you would see the strength of this interpretation.

Without a doubt self-examination at the Eucharist is appropriate. The Early Church saw the Lord's Supper as the Last Judgment in miniature; they saw it as a life-giving, sanctifying meal; they saw the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross represented symbolically; they saw the meal as a foretaste of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. But they never saw self-examination as an obstacle to children, they never designed a class that one had to pass in order to gain access to those Holy Mysteries.

Holy Communion is a family meal. When there are families within the Family of God we desire that they come all together to the Lord's table. It is not right for infants and young children to be isolated from their parents. That is one reason we do not offer a children's church at St. Luke's. It may take extra work and creative parenting skills to keep children quiet during a long worship service, but that effort is worth it. Once parents experience the joy of worshipping with their infants and children, and bringing them to communion, they don't want to stop. I know a father who will not move anywhere with his business until he is sure there is a parish nearby that practices paedo-communion. That is how important it has become for him. I sympathize with his conviction.

In conclusion, we need to learn that a cerebral approach to communion is only partially valid. Holy Communion is a sublime mystery. As the Holy Spirit takes us up to the King's throne room to feed on Christ's glorified humanity, as we come in awe to the Body and Blood graciously given in the bread and wine, do we really grasp its wonder and richness any better than little children? Aren't their souls also filled with joy as they partake? Our epistle lesson for this Second Sunday after the Epiphany reinforces the idea that we are members of the Body of Christ. The Eucharist is the central unifying event of the Church, and fosters unity among believers. Shouldn't that unity include infants and children as well? To the extent we gain a strong sense of ourselves as the Body of Christ, to that extent we will become increasingly more interested in communicating our children.