Mike's musings

Infant Communion

I was reading Jo some stories from the excellent My Very First Bible today. We'd done Jesus in the storm (twice), the hole in the roof (once), and Jo wanted another story, so I read the Passion narrative and then finished with the Resurrection. When we got to the Last Supper, I read along the lines of "Jesus shared bread and wine with his friends, and told them to do the same to remember him."

Jo said, "you have bread and wine, don't you?" I said, "yes." And then she said, "but you don't share it with me, do you? I have a biscuit, don't I?"

She knows that she can't have the bread and the wine, but if she's patient, after a service, she can have a biscuit with the coffee/tea afterwards. I've tried very hard to make it clear that the biscuits aren't an equivalent, or alternative, and I think she gets that. What was heart-breaking was the tone with which she accepted that I don't share the bread and the wine with her. She really understands sharing and how important it is. It's a really difficult thing for a toddler, but she's getting quite good at doing it with Miri and with us: sometimes she'll even offer us her food if she really likes it. And I really believe that she understood the importance of Jesus sharing the bread and the wine with his friends. She made the leap from that to the Eucharist service completely on her own, and I was astonished. And heart-broken.

I have some serious thinking to do about my theology of the Eucharist. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings...": Matthew 21:16.

Labels: communion, Jo, theology

# posted by MikeCamel @ 7:11 pm