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For pictures of recent class click here. RECEIVING HOLY COMMUNION IS APPROPRIATE FOR ALL BAPTIZED CHRISTIANS. All baptized people regardless of denomination are welcome at the Lord's Supper in the Episcopal Church. In cases where a serious sin is impairing a persons relationship with God, they should seek the sacramental rite of Reconciliation. Children can receive the Lord's supper when they are baptized. THE DECISION of when children begin receiving Holy Communion is a parental decision. Parents are the God given caretakers and stewards of their children. When parents present children for baptism, they promise to "be responsible for seeing that the child you present is brought up in the Christian faith and life?" THE is due late developments in the Western Church. First, confirmation and baptism were separated. This was due to bishops not always being available, and because Western bishops, unlike their Eastern counterparts, did not delegate confirmation to their clergy. For over 700 years all Christians baptized, confirmed, and communicated, (given communion to), infants. While confirmation and baptism were separated, infant communion was still the norm. However by the 7th century, both in England and the Continent, a practice begins to develop of not allowing the unconfirmed to receive the Eucharist. By the 12th Century most laity were barred from receiving the wine. A reform to this practice occurred in the Roman Catholic Church in 1910 when Pope Pius X lowered the age for reception of communion to 7 years of age. While not a return to infant communion, it was a step back toward early Christian practice. In the Eastern (Orthodox) churches, children were never barred from receiving the Lord's supper after baptism. However, they were, (and are still), expected to begin fasting before communion and participating in confession once they reach the age of 8. Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist are all part of the same rite in the Eastern Churches. The Episcopal Church began to examine it's theology of baptism in the 1970's and 1980's and concluded that baptism is full initiation into the Christian community, and as such should include access to the Lord's table and the sacrament of Holy Communion. However, because many Episcopalians were raised to not receive the Lord's Supper until after confirmation, the church decided that the decision of when a child should receive the sacrament is best left in the hands of parents. This means that in our denomination, some children receive at a very early age, some receive after a First Communion Class, and others receive after being confirmed. COMMUNION CLASSES ARE STILL NEEDED. Children who do receive at an early age, do at some point in their Christian development need to re-affirm that they too wish to continue receiving. So sometime after the age of 4 they should participate in a Children's communion class, either to understand and affirm what they are already doing, or to be prepared for a First Communion.
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