Friday, July 13, 2018

Maasai Children

You can fact check this but I believe that the Maasai children are treated differently than children in the church in this country when it comes to Holy Communion in the Catholic Church.  Where the Maasai culture is incorporated into the mass, children receive communion first, at the mass.  Age and theological catechism do not rule.  For the Maasai, children are always included in any meal.   The children are always fed first even if there is a shortage of food.  So in the Catholic mass, the parents would not receive if the children did not.  In Mexico, when an infant is baptized, they receive Holy Communion.  It seems that in the USA we have this fixation on age, and intellectual knowledge, going to classes to learn all about the Eucharist.  We are so much into the mind as if that controlled the heart of a relationship with God.  What if the next time a parent in a USA church brought their child up to the altar at communion and gave them the host.  What would happen?  It is not that catechetical training is inferior or bad. It has great value.  But when you hear some official say that you cannot receive because the Catholic Church teaches, as if it were a universal, just ask them about the Maasai.  Fact-check first.

2 comments:

  1. I had to be married in the Boston College Chapel. I was not from the right faith.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hooray! I did not know this about Mexico. In the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church babies also receive the Eucharist when they are baptized and any Sunday thereafter. I loved that ALL children can respond to the invitation to Communion. Of course, they must be baptized ORTHODOX, so there is that.

    ReplyDelete