Can young children receive blessed ashes?

[ctmomct]

I just returned from my church with my two-year-old son. I received ashes for Ash Wednesday but my son did not. Instead he received a blessing. Is this a new practice? The past two years – when my son was 6 months and 1-1/2 years old – he received ashes, so I found this surprising.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Some parishes are under the impression that blessed ashes should only be given to those capable of personal sin and so do not give them to children below the age of reason. This is a misunderstanding of the sacramental. The blessed ashes remind us of our mortality (e.g., the words of imposition are “Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return”) and of our common sinful condition, shared through original sin even by those incapable of personal sin (e.g., young children, the cognitively disabled).

If this should happen again on future Ash Wednesdays, I recommend politely asking the distributor of the ashes that ashes be given to your son. One way to phrase the request might be, “Please give my son the blessed ashes, too.” If you get argument, you might simply state, “Today’s reading from Joel says that ‘children, even nursing infants’ 2:16] are to be included in the communal penance.”