THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST 15

Christ. But it is important to remember that this is an image, not the

archetype, and not to exclude, indeed sometimes to make some effort to in-
clude others. We very badly need a great feminine theophany. And some of us
sometimes need a plural image of divinity, the great company of heaven. And
perhaps we should not be too anxious, when dealing with images of the divine,
to arrange them in too tidy an order.
Hilary Armstrong has held professional appointments at Liverpool and
Dalhousie and is a Senior Member of the British Academy.

The Child and the Eucharist

John Pridmore

Sometimes it seems that in writing about the Holy Communion service we

have no choice but to be either controversial or ambiguous. Those who com-
pose modern liturgies are often obliged to opt for ambiguity to satisfy the con-
flicting demands of the opposing parties in liturgical debate. There is of course
a third option, and that is to say things that do not mean anything. I shall try
to avoid this last resort but also to avoid saying mutually contradictory things
at once. No alternative remains but to be controversial.
In turning to the subject of the child and the eucharist it may be felt that we
confront a problem. For half of Christendom however it is no problem at all.
The status of the child in the church has never been an issue for Orthodox
Christians and they have no need of articles like this. The new-born child is
received into the church, baptised, confirmed and admitted to communion as
soon as is practically sensible and thereafter he or she is treated as, and in due
course assumes himself or herself to be, as much a member of the Christian
community as anyone else.
I recall my own introduction to the Orthodox liturgy - a parish church
somewhere in the suburbs of Leningrad. A building that could house a thou-
sand comfortably now packed with twice that number, worshippers present
long before the service commenced (though just as the Orthodox liturgy seems
unending so, more curiously, you more often notice that it has already begun
16 THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST
than the moment it starts), the intensity of worship; singing that rises like a
great tide bearing the griefs and longings of all the Russias; the resonance and
urgency of the prayers. And when you look into their faces you see the lines
and shadows of the suffering you have been spared.
Then you notice the children, absorbed in all that is happening (and there is
nothing more eventful in Christian worship than the Orthodox liturgy), en-
gaged in the liturgy yet free to pause before an icon and pray (free too to pause
and play, for the east knows little of our parade-ground patterns of worship),
children at home in a community they have know only from within. When the
time comes for the communion to be administered the surge towards the com-
munion rail is such that you fear for the children that some will be trampled
underfoot. But this congregation has not forgotten its children; they are
allowed to squeeze through to the front; toddlers are passed from one willing
pair of hands to another across the heads of the people; space is made for the
mother with an infant in her arms.
And the very youngest receive the consecrated bread and wine.
Some western theologians, critical of this practice, enquire whether receiv-
ing communion can mean anything to children so young, whether there is the
necessary faith and understanding to participate with proper recollection and
reverence. To which it may be replied that those who receive the sacrament
with such manifest delight may be presumed to receive it worthily.
A discussion of the child and the eucharist must begin in the east. We must
keep before our eyes the picture of what happens there both as a vision and a
reprimand, a pattern to strive for and an abiding indictment of the discrimina-
tion against children that our adult-orientated western theology sanctions and
its patterns of worship institutionalise. We need to look over the fence to see
what the rest of the Christian world is doing. If for a moment we step into the
marvellous light that Orthodoxy sheds we shall at least see that by urging a
fuller participation of the child in the eucharist we are not proposing anything
novel or extreme. We are simply trying to learn from the rest of our family.
By beginning here we see the nettle we have to grasp, the question of
whether children are to come to the Lord's Table as adults do, to receive not a
blessing (or not only a blessing) but to receive the elements, to eat bread and to
drink wine. It is cause for celebration that in recent years this question has
begun to be discussed seriously.l At last it is occurring to Christians in the west
that there is something odd (to put the point no more strongly) in inviting
children to watch the family meal they may not share.
The place we give to the child at the eucharist will depend on what we
believe; quite as much as what we believe about the child as on what we believe
about the eucharist. We have to consider those aspects of eucharist belief that
raise directly the question of the child's involvement in the sacrament, but we
have to address the question from the far less familiar perspective of our
theology of childhood. I would argue that a rounded view of the eucharist re-
THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST 17
quires the participation of the child, eating and drinking with the rest of us,
but also that a Christian view of the child leads us still more certainly to the
same conclusion.
The Christian eucharist is a meal; it is, we say, the Lord's Supper. It
originated as a meal, not only in that the eucharist was instituted in the context
of the celebration of Passover, but also in that it was continuous with the
regular meals Jesus shared with his disciples, with the outcasts and despised,
and, on signal occasions, with great companies of those who followed him.
The eucharist continues as a meal, however vestigial the traces of food and
drink now are in the token morset of bread and the sip of wine. The eucharist
will be consummated as a meal, the feast in heaven, the messianic banquet
when all God's children will eat and drink at his table, when the long promised
party at last begins.
The all important question is whether anyone is excluded from this meal
and if so are children, or some children, among those not invited.
Let us look more closely at this meal - as it was and as it shall be. Past and
future may help us to make better sense of the present and to treat today's
children more considerately.
It is unnecessary to enter the debate about the dating of the Last Supper; it
is immaterial whether the meal was Passover itself, or, if held a day earlier, an
anticipation of Passover. What is clear is that its context is Passover and that it
is the profound symbolism and multiple associations of Passover which in the
eucharist are reinterpreted and which in every subsequent celebration of the
eucharist are never wholly submerged. "Christ, our Paschal lamb, has been
sacrificed" (1 Cor. 5.7).

To be sure only the twelve sat at table with our Lord. It is also open to
debate whether before the destruction of the temple in AD 70 Passover, as a
pilgrim feast, was also a family feast. By origin it was a family occasion, and
since the loss of the temple it has remained so to this day. But it is theological
rather than historical considerations which are decisive, for Passover is essen-
tially an inclusive occasion. It commemorates the deliverance of the whole
people of God and while that does not in practice require that all the Israel of
God be present, it does mean that in principle none can be excluded, least of all
the children without whom the worship of Judaism loses its very raison d'être.
The curious title "Last Supper", unbiblical and inaccurate as it is, cor-
rectly implies that there were many preceding "suppers". What is often over-
looked is the continuity between those earlier meals in the ministry of Jesus
and the Last Supper itself and the significance of these regular meals for the in-
clusive character of the table fellowship to which the Lord or the church invites
us all, saint and sinner, young and old, alike. The doors stand open to the
homes where Jesus eats and it is a very mixed company that joins him. To the
18 THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST
religious establishment it is a scandal that Jesus "receives sinners and eats with
them". He receives "sinners". It has to be emphasised that for Pharisaic
Judaism "sinners" were not only the flagrantly wicked but all those ("the
people of the land") who did not match their own exacting standards of
religious observance. There is, sadly, little evidence that this contempt was
reserved for adults. And he eats with them. Here we must have in mind how
much more meals meant in the culture in which the Gospel stories occur than
they mean in our society. All meals were "sacramental", at least in the sense
that they both signified and sealed the mutual acceptance of those who shared
them.
The authorities did not like the company Jesus kept. This temper which
condemns Jesus's hospitality to the rejected is the same that objects to the
children cheering in the temple; it is the same bleak spirit which had infected
the disciples when they sought to prevent the children being brought to Jesus.
It is to this attitude that Jesus mounts such a direct and unambiguous
challenge when he "eats with sinners".
Were children there when Jesus ate with those whom the proud despised?
We are not told. But it is inconceivable that they were excluded. The one who
made sure that Jairus's little girl was given something to eat would surely not
have denied bread to any other child.
The importance of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness does not
need to be stressed. The Last Supper, the Christian eucharist, and the final
Messianic banquet are all anticipated at this feast where in the symbolism of
the evangelists, there is enough left over to feed the world. Matthew (14.22)
specifically mentions the presence of the children and from John (6.9) we learn
that it is with the gift of a child that the hungry are fed.
Meals are prominent in the ministry of Jesus but more important than the
number of them is their character. Feeding with Jesus is always festive, not
merely functional (though a hungry body's need for real bread is not to be
"spiritualised"). This note of joy continued to be sounded in the early church,
where, if only for a little while, every meal seems to have been a eucharist.
"Breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous
hearts" (Acts 2.46). That the children were sent out of the room when this
happened is quite inconceivable.
If the eucharist is seen in the light of its Gospel and apostolic precedents we
recognise that it is more than a meal - it is a feast without frontiers, least of all
the frontier of age (though the disparity between the ideal and what still hap-
pens sometimes as 8 a.m. on Sunday becomes yet more grotesque). And if now
we look to the future, if we reflect on what in the eucharist we are to an-
ticipate, this fundamentally festive character becomes still clearer, for the
Lord's Supper looks forward to the day when we shall sit at table in the
kingdom of God (Luke 13.29). It is of this "marriage feast", this great "ban-
THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST 19
quet", that Jesus speaks in his parables and it is the whole point of these
parables that it is the least likely who are to have the best places (Luke
14.7-24). Finally, in the great vision with which the New Testament closes,
heaven is seen as a feast without surfeit and without end. "Blessed are those
who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb" (Rev. 19.9). Blessed are
those who are invited. The whole ministry of Jesus is an extended invitation to
that eschatological banquet and it includes a welcome to the children which is
emphatic and unconditional. "Let the children come to me" (Mk. 10.4).
What has all this to do with chidlren and the eucharist today? "Much in
every way", for if from first to last the eucharist is a meal with enough places
for everyone, and the highest places for the humblest, then to refuse admission
to children is to contradict its very nature. To turn a child away from the
Lord's table is to turn the Lord's Supper into something else. Adults may, and
sometimes must, celebrate on their own but the eucharist is just not that kind
of party.
The eucharist is a meal. It is also both a mark and a means of unity of the
whole Christian community. This second aspect of the service bears still more
directly on the issue of the admissibility of children to the sacrament. "Though
we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread" (1 Cor.
10.17).
Much has been confusing and unsettling in the pace and extent of change in
the church in recent years, not least in liturgical revision. Pioneering new ways
for worship has preoccupied ecclesiastical pace-setters and exhausted the rest
of us in keeping up. But behind it all there has been a real sense of the Spirit at
work renewing our vision of what the church of Christ should be for the world
and, to that end, what Christians should be for one another. We have been
relearning neglected truths and no lesson has been more important than we
Christians belong to each other and need each other. Christians are one.
Neither denominational disunity, confessional disagreement, personal
animosities, nor even religious warfare, can alter that fact. A truth is still true
however scandalously and blasphemously it is contradicted.
The Christian church is a family, one family. Children belong to this
family. They already belong to it; they are not waiting for adoption into it.
The eucharist is the service of that family; it is the family service, not a family
service. The Holy Communion is the family service not because parents and
children may come as families to it, but because it is the central act of worship
of the one family of God. The eucharist is the whole family's worship and if
the child is fully a member of the family he must be allowed to share fully in
the worship.
The very grammar of our worship should have taught us this. We
westerners, victims of our pathological individualism, have yet to take in that
the verbs we use in eucharistie worship are all in the first person plural. The
20 THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST
language of our liturgy is the language of our prayers and our praises, our con-
fessions and our creed. We do not and cannot attend to and deliberately assent
to all these words we use. Our powers of concentration are not up to it. Mother
may be thinking of the joint, father of his golf, and their little boy's attention
may be focussed on the funny hat that lady's wearing. None of this matters
quite as much as we think. For the eucharist is not an act of private devotion,
though such devotion is of course not excluded; it is an act of corporate wor-
ship. I am not making my communion. This is something we are all doing,
children included. The text does not say "We who are old enough are one
body".

Here then is a simple, and it would seem self-evident, principle that if the
Holy Communion is a service for all the family then none of the family are to
be excluded. But the weight of this argument is not fully felt unless we absorb
more deeply what eucharistie theology (in every tradition) has claimed to be
happening where the Lord's people meet at the Lord's table. The sacrament is
not only a mark of unity - it is a means of unity. It expresses but it also deepens
the fellowship of the one people of God. The Pauline text that speaks of the
one body and the one bread is a summary of the doctrine of scripture and
Christian tradition that the eucharist not only says something about our
belonging to the body of Christ but it also does something about it. And here it
has to be stressed that we are talking about receiving communion, eating
bread, drinking wine. It is this that bears witness to our membership of Christ
and our membership of one another. But it is this too that sustains and
strengthens our relationship with Christ and enriches our common fellowship
We are speaking of a means of grace, that by which the Lord comes to us and
by which in him we are bound more closely to each other.

"What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?"
What are we saying to children, what are we saying to the church about
children, when we give them a blessing instead of bread? Are we denying that
they are members of the Body of Christ? Are we refusing them a means by
which they may grow in grace? That is never our intention. But the purpose of
this discussion has not been to call anyone's motives in question but to think
about what is unintentionally implied - indeed shouted aloud - by what we do,
still more by what we refuse to do. I for one never know what to say in answer
to the child's question, so frequently heard at a "Family Communion" (sic),
"Why can't I have a piece of bread?" Excommunication remains a very
serious matter, perhaps even more for infant victims of this discipline not even
able to speak in their own defence.
The direction our argument has led us is, to say the least, out on a limb,
and the first question Christians with any residual humility must ask who finds
themselves in this exposed and lonely situation is whether they have taken a
wrong turning somewhere. But at this point we recall that, out on this limb, we
do in fact have the other half of the Christian world with us.
THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST 21
The case for the admission of the child to the Lord's table does not rest
only on what we believe about the eucharist; it rests equally on what we believe
about children. If children have a right to participate in the eucharist that right
is rooted in what the eucharist is but it is equally grounded in who the children
are.

I have argued elsewhere for an understanding of childhood that, in obe-

dience to Christ, recognises all children unconditionally and without exception
as within the realm of God's kingship.2 Moreover, a child's relationship to
God is not defective because it is not that of adult. Children are no less
children of God because they are not yet capable of the deliberate discipleship,
the conscious faith and obedience demanded of an adult. Children are no less
Christian because these claims are too grown-up for them, just as they are no
less human beings because they cannot yet climb into their fathers's Wellington
boots. There is the right relationship to God appropriate to every age. This we
know because Jesus was a child.

The bearing of this on our present enquiry is immediately obvious. Those

who oppose the very notion of children's communion say that a communicant
must be "a committed and practising Christian". But this is to demand of the
child an inappropriate pattern of discipleship. It is like saying that he who eats
must always do so with knife and fork. What is true, and very important in-
deed, is that the communicant adult must be a committed and practising
Christian. There may indeed be theological and practical reasons for not en-
couraging all children in the neighbourhood to come to communion but their
right to partake is not to be made dependent on their capacity to pass tests set
for adults.

The more one ponders the objections to a child's participation in the

eucharist the more insistent are the echoes of the original protest of the first
disciples for whom the child's place was the circumference rather than the
centre. I do not wish to minimise the weight of the theological objections and
pastoral problems arising from an advocacy of children's communion, even if
the objections can be countered and the problems resolved. But one is bound
to wonder whether the reservations and misgivings do not have non-
theological roots as well. We have it is hoped, repudiated the adult chauvinism
which in the past characterised the church's attitude to its children. But one
still senses in this debate an undercurrent of antipathy towards the acceptance
of the child as my brother or sister. The current is no less powerful for being
beneath the surface, the current that inclines us to entertain less sympathetical-
ly the case for the child's acceptance at the Lord's table than the familiar
arguments for making them wait until they are older. We adults say that we are
not worthy to gather the crumbs that fall from the Lord's table. But the roots
of our prejudices are deep and strong, feeding the feeling that somehow we
have a right to be there which is not the child's.
22 THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST
In one respect any discussion about children's communion is likely to cover
familiar ground. The question of whether young children should be given com-
munion has only recently been taken seriously but the related issue of infant
baptism has been debated endlessly. The debates about infant baptism and
children's communion are in many ways the same one debate in which all turns
on what is believed about children and the grace of God. The arguments for in-
fant baptism could be used - and should be used - to press the case for
children's communion. Children are baptised because you cannot be too
young to belong to your family and if you are one of the family yours too is the
family food. Children are baptised because the grace of God is not restricted to
those old enough or clever enough or good enough to deserve it. Neither are
the elements of bread and wine which are the emblems of that grace. It is then
inconsistent to advocate and gladly offer the one sacrament but to withhold
the other.
If in principle it is acceptable that children come to communion, as in prin-
ciple it is acceptable for them to be baptised, pastoral judgements have to be
made about who would be the children who normally would be given commu-
nion. Drawing the lines about children's communion will be no easier than in
ordering and disciplining the practice of infant baptism. The spectres of work-
ing parties yet to be convened arise to haunt us.
I am concerned however, in this article, to commend the principle of
children's communion, to insist that it is bad theology that allows the child at
the communion rail no more than a few kind words and a touch on the head. I
am urging a fresh mind on the matter informed by a Christian belief about
children as much as by a renewed eucharistie theology. The need to see the
soundness and importance of the principle is so vital that no apology should be
necessary for not entering a long discussion about the pastoral and practical
problems arising when children are welcome at the Lord's table.

Something should be said about the distinction, if there is one, between the
practice of infant communion and children's communion. In the Roman
Catholic Church it has long been the custom to admit children as young as
seven, to communion. In the Anglican use the invitation to the Lord's table is
in the words; "Draw near with faith". It could be argued that believing is
something that children are good at, better indeed than adults, so much so
that, so far from the children having to learn from us how to believe, it is
rather that we must learn from them. Children say "Abba" more easily than
we do. So if faith be a prerequisite of receiving the sacrament then many a
child is more entitled to do so than are adults, half-hearted and half-believing,
as we so often are.

But there are children too young to believe. The babe in arms can neither
"draw near" nor can they do so "in faith". Someone else, normally the
mother, will bring the child.
THE CHILD AND THE EUCHARIST 23

And this is the point at which to observe that the issue of infant commu-
nion could be said to be in practice settled, and settled as much in our western
churches as in eastern Orthodoxy. From Baptist Bethel to St. Peter's Basilica
infant communion is already a regular, normal, natural and unquestioned
practice. For every time an expectant mother comes to communion she comes,
quite literally, carrying a child. Her food is food for her unborn child. The
child to be born, no less a child because yet unborn, is already receiving the
body and blood of Christ. It is a measure of the moral twilight in which we live
that it has to be added that this point is being made seriously. For a Christian
reader, for whom human life is no less human than it is as yet embryonic, the
argument should not sound specious or a case of special pleading. Our first
church is our mother's womb; it is there that grace, and, in the sacrament, the
means of grace, sustains us. The promise "He will be filled with the Holy
Spirit, even from his mother's womb" was made to the parents of the unborn
John (Luke 1.15), but they are not the only prospective parents who may claim
it.
When the sacrament is administered to a pregnant woman, two people
receive it. If this fact is taken seriously, the issue of infant communion is at
once seen in a different perspective for by administering the sacrament to the
infant in his mother's arms we are simply continuing what we did when we
gave the sacrament to the mother with that same infant in her womb. So if the
Holy Communion is for the whole family then in principle the youngest may
receive. It misrepresents the issue to say that the case for children's commu-
nion is that the sacrament should be administered to younger children than at
present. We are not asking to lower the age limit but to abolish it.

Footnotes
1. Communion before Confirmation? General Synod Board of Education, CIO Publishing,
London, 1985.
2. J. Pridmore, The New Testament Theology of Childhood» Buckland, Hobart, 1977.
John Pridmore is a curate at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London.
 ^ s
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