During his ministry Jesus addressed himself to adults. He appealed to adult minds and consciences to place themselves under God's rule.
In the early years of the Church's life, after Jesus' resurrection, the community soon faced the situation where the adults, having themselves converted, had their children to bring up. The judgement was quickly reached that they had a duty to bring their children up as fellow-believers and fellow-disciples. Children were baptised as babies - claimed for Christ and initiated into membership of the Christian community - and their parents assumed the responsibility of teaching them the Christian faith and way of life as they got older.
That has remained the Church's practice. Today, we don't believe that Christian parents should adopt a neutral attitude and leave their children to choose their religious convictions for themselves. We believe the opposite: that Christian parenthood and Christian family life are a calling, a vocation.
Parents, and children themselves as they grow up, have to contribute to a milieu in the home which helps every family member to respond wholeheartedly to Christ's appeal: 'follow me'. Parents have to do what they can to raise their children to know and to love God, to turn to God in the significant decisions of their lives - and also, gradually, to be drawn into his life by way of the sacraments that Christ instituted and gave to us.
It's against that backdrop that three children are here this afternoon to receive Christ, in the sacrament of his Body and Blood, for the first time.
It's not necessary for eight or nine- or ten-year old children to pass a theology exam before they're allowed to come to Communion. They don't have to give a detailed explanation of what transubstantiation means, or even know how to spell the word!
What's much more important while we're still young is to grow in an attitude of familiarity and friendship with Christ, a reverence for Christ and a devotion to Christ. In fact, if a child doesn't come to the Eucharist with such an attitude of friendship and devotion, he or she is unlikely, I think, to benefit very much from the grace that Christ offers us in the Eucharist.
So let me say briefly what I believe are the most important habits for children to learn about the Mass and the Eucharist - the seeds that need to be sown when they're young, so that they grow in faith as they get older.
One basic habit is to come and take part in Mass every Sunday. Our need to meet Christ regularly, to be fed and strengthened and healed by him by receiving his Body and Blood, is the heart of Catholic spirituality, and from the earliest times the whole community of faith dedicated Sunday - the day of Jesus' resurrection - to this purpose. Sunday is the one day in the week that we set aside for God in some sense; a day when, whatever else we might plan to do, we plan to come to Mass, and to fit all our other activities around that.
The seeds of faith are also sown by encouraging children to have a sense of the reality of Christ's presence in the consecrated bread and wine, and that means also a sense of reverence for the tabernacle where Christ is present permanently in the eucharistic bread. That's why we genuflect when we come in and out of church or pass in front of the tabernacle. That's why a Catholic church with a tabernacle in a prominent position is such a valuable place to come and pray, in a mood of quiet and stillness, with an awareness of Christ's real presence among us.
And one final habit which it would be a pity for us to lose is the habit of fasting before we receive Communion. Older Catholics will remember a much longer period of fasting, but even to refrain from eating and drinking for one hour before Communion, as we're still supposed to do today, is a practice that reinforces our sense of the sacredness of the Eucharist and how important it is to prepare ourselves consciously for this sacramental encounter with Christ.
You could look at things negatively. You could argue that if the Catholic community loses its awareness of the value of these habits, then it's on a downward slope, it's a community in the process of losing its faith.
But when each of us makes an effort to maintain these habits then we're strengthening within ourselves a joyful, wholehearted acceptance of the gift of salvation that Christ has brought to us, and we're making it easier for ourselves to be drawn into Christ's own life through our participation in the Eucharist.
Let's bear that in mind, and pray for that gift, for these three young people today - the day they're going to receive Christ's Body and Blood for the first time.
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