He understands aswell at seven as at seventy. The Holy Eucharist is a mystery as profound and unfathomable as the Trinity. One does not understand how Christ can assume the form of bread and wine. One believes. A child must believe, and if it helps to substitute the word understand, then he must understand that the bread looks like bread but is not bread, it is the Body of Christ. The wine looks like wine but is not wine, it is the Blood of Christ. To ask him to understand the mystery of it is asking of him something that even his elders donot understand. "But how can you be sure they are really reverent enough?" Before we protest too loudly on this score, we should weigh a child's supposed incapacity for reverence (as compared to the more perceptible adult) against his purity of heart and mind and soul. Enough said. The relationship in Communion is a two-way thing. There is not just the child receiving Christ. There is Christ also, wanting to come to the child. "They are My delight.""Suffer them to come unto Me." First Communion at seven is not an imprudence. It is not a piously sentimental occasion. It is world-shaking. Reading the lives of the child saints is apt to leave the parents of the average child properly depressed. St. Therese never refused God anything after she was three. Blessed Imelda desiredChrist in the Eucharist with such longing He brought it to her Himself, in secret. St. Tarcisius diedat the hands of pagan soldiers rather than surrender the Eucharist he was carrying to the early Christians. We look at our own children, whoseem to be taking it all so calmly, and wonder how to stir up in them any of the awareness of these blessed ones. Unless God wills it, we never will. For some mysterious reason, it was His will that these small saints enjoy a conscious intimacy with Him in the Eucharist which sends our souls reeling. But though our ownchildren may not receive the sameprivileges of grace, they have this in common with the child saints: Christ comes to them as wholly as He did to the saints. What the child saints experienced by divinely cultivated intuition, we must substitute for as best we can with teaching, with illumination, with the feeding of their faith. And all the while there will be sufficient grace. How prepare a child to receive Christ in Holy Communion? There are a thousand ways for as many children. If there are frustrations that go with teaching catechism class, the most poignant of all must be having to teach children about First Communion en masse. This is a subject that demands long, intimate interludes, with time to ponder and weigh and imagine. Here is one of the times when a mother and a father will stop short and suddenly see whata tremendous thing it is to be a parent. A soul, whose creation waited upon them, is about to receive the Body of the Son of God, Who has waited for this since all eternity. "Just think, dear, since before the beginning of the world God was thinking about you, and His Son was wanting to come to you in Holy Communion. He always knew what day it would be, what hour, what minute. He will not divide Himself into twenty bits of Jesus, so that the twenty in the First Communion class may receive a piece of Him. There is no such thing as a piece of Him. He will come to you as though there were no one there but you. Wherethe Holy Eucharist is, in each host, or even each piece of a Host, Jesusis wholly there. He is the same God Who made the heavens and the earth and all things, and Who is surrounded by the angels and the saints in Heaven. He is the same Jesus Who was born in Bethlehem, and the same Jesus Who died on the Cross." "But Mother — why bread and wine?" If we have talked to them about the meaning of sacrifice, about the reason for the Mass, this is nothard to explain. "Remember when we talked about the Mass, and I showed youthe name of Melchisedech in the missal? Melchisedech was the priest-king of Salem, and Salem means Peace. When Jesus offered bread and wine at the Last Supperhe was imitating this unique priest in the Old Testament who offered a sacrifice of bread and wine to thank God for Abram's victory. (Abraham was first called Abram; God changed his name). Jesus is the Divine High Priest, because He is God, and He offeredHimself in sacrifice for our sins. And Jesus is the King of Peace. Remember when Pilate asked Him: 'Art thou a king?' Jesus said: 'Thou hast said it.' And after the Resurrection, which proved He was God, when He first appeared to the Apostles, His greeting was 'Peace be to you.' It was not an accident that Jesus offered the same things Melchisedech offered.He wanted to remind us that He isalso Priest, and King of Peace. "And isn't it good that it is bread and wine, which are easy to get and easy to prepare on the altar? Suppose it were a lamb, or fruit?