First Holy Communion

[michaeliteYM]

One of my Confirmation candidates asked me why we receive our First Holy Communion when we are in 2nd grade instead of when we are older and can truly understand the Sacrament more. What is the official church teaching and reasoning behind First Communion being received in 2nd grade?

 

[ConstantineTG]

One of my Confirmation candidates asked me why we receive our First Holy Communion when we are in 2nd grade instead of when we are older and can truly understand the Sacrament more. What is the official church teaching and reasoning behind First Communion being received in 2nd grade?

It is the age of reason, when children start to understand right from wrong. They can then discern their worthiness of Jesus Christ.

The real question is why wait until the second grade? The age old tradition of the entire Church is to give the Eucharist to someone when they become a Christian. That is the sacraments of initiation all together, be it infant baptism or adult baptism. Today, the Eastern Churches preserve this tradition, they have infant communion.

 

[Thomas63116]

I believe the Church has long considered the “age of reason” to be around age 7 (the time at which an individual can begin to distinguish right from wrong). Therefore, in most dioceses, young Catholics make their first confession and receive first communion at this time. Also, if a young person is baptized after this age, I believe they have to go through some personal preparation, rather than the baptism being a decision simply on the part of their parents. I’m not sure if there is a specific document that establishes this or not.

To get more at the the underlying issue of your student’s question, I would say that we should always being growing in our understanding of our faith and of the sacraments. But the fact that we will develop a greater appreciation and understanding later does not mean that we should not receive them now.

 

[JM3]

papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10quam.htm

The principal interpreters of the Lateran Council and contemporaries of that period had the same teaching concerning this Decree. The history of the Church reveals that a number of synods and episcopal decrees beginning with the twelfth century, shortly after the Lateran Council, admitted children of seven years of age to First Communion. There is moreover the word of St. Thomas Aquinas, who is an authority of the highest order, which reads: "When children begin to have some use of reason, so that they can conceive a devotion toward this Sacrament (the Eucharist), then this Sacrament can be given to them."6 Ledesma thus explains these words: “I say, in accord with common opinion, that the Eucharist is to be given to all who have the use of reason, and just as soon as they attain the use of reason, even though at the time the child may have only a confused notion of what he is doing.” Vasquez comments on the same words of St. Thomas as follows: “When a child has once arrived at the use of reason he is immediately bound by the divine law from which not even the Church can dispense him.”

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After careful deliberation on all these points, this Sacred Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments, in a general meeting held on July 15, 1910, in order to remove the above-mentioned abuses and to bring about that children even from their tender years may be united to Jesus Christ, may live His life, and obtain protection from all danger of corruption, has deemed it needful to prescribe the following rules which are to be observed everywhere for the First Communion of children.

1. The age of discretion, both for Confession and for Holy Communion, is the time when a child begins to reason, that is about the seventh year, more or less. From that time on begins the obligation of fulfilling the precept of both Confession and Communion.
2. A full and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine is not necessary either for First Confession or for First Communion. Afterwards, however, the child will be obliged to learn gradually the entire Catechism according to his ability.
3. The knowledge of religion which is required in a child in order to be properly prepared to receive First Communion is such that he will understand according to his capacity those Mysteries of faith which are necessary as a means of salvation (necessitate medii) and that he can distinguish between the Bread of the Eucharist and ordinary, material bread, and thus he may receive Holy Communion with a devotion becoming his years.

[edited]