First Communion

A Cousin's First Communion 1950's

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130.html

Two of our grandchildren will be making their first Holy Communion during the Easter season. First means more Communions will follow, because children have no trouble believing that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. They believe in miracles.  G .K .Chesterton explains why in his book, Orthodoxy (see link above):

“The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth.”

As We grow older, we become rooted in certainty.  We no longer believe in fairy tales. We are so accustomed to the “laws” of nature that we say with confidence that apples grow on trees.  But do we have the right to be so sure? We can fly, and then the plane falls from the sky.  The more we become entrenched in certainty, the more we are faced with exceptions. Exceptions are the stuff miracles. It's a miracle a plane gets off the ground in the first place.

Unfortunately too many grown-ups among today's families have not read The Ethics of Elfland (Ch IV of Orthodoxy). The link explains in Chesterton's own words. May we use this Lenten season to recapture the faith of our young children so that we can walk beside them as they receive Jesus for the first time.