We commune infants because they’re full members of the Church. Baptism makes them Christians, chrismation seals them with the Holy Spirit, and the Eucharist gives them Christ’s Body and Blood. You can’t separate these three things.
This surprises most people coming from Baptist or Bible church backgrounds. You’re used to waiting until someone can “understand” what they’re doing, maybe at twelve or thirteen after they’ve been through a class. That makes sense if communion is about your mental grasp of doctrine. But that’s not what communion is.
The Eucharist isn’t a symbol you contemplate. It’s Christ himself, and babies need Christ just as much as adults do. Maybe more.
What Happens at an Orthodox Baptism
When we baptize an infant at St. Michael, we don’t stop at the water. The priest immediately chrismates the child with holy oil, sealing them with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then, still dripping wet, that baby receives communion for the first time. We use a spoon, just a drop of the precious Body and Blood. The child is now fully initiated into the Church.
This isn’t innovation. It’s how Christians have done it since the beginning. St. Cyril of Jerusalem describes this exact sequence in the fourth century. St. John Chrysostom mentions infants receiving from “the cup of the Lord.” There’s no record of the Church ever doing it differently until the medieval West started delaying communion, and we think that was a mistake.
But Don’t They Need to Understand?
Here’s where Orthodox theology parts ways with most Protestant thinking. We don’t believe understanding precedes grace. Grace precedes understanding.
An infant can’t explain the hypostatic union or transubstantiation (we don’t use that word anyway). So what? The child can’t explain how mother’s milk nourishes them either, but they still need to eat. Communion isn’t a test you pass after studying. It’s medicine. It’s food. It’s union with God, and God doesn’t require a theology degree before he’ll unite himself to you.
When Paul warns about receiving communion “unworthily” in 1 Corinthians, he’s talking to adults who were getting drunk and ignoring the poor at the communal meal. He’s not setting an age requirement. The Orthodox Church has never read that passage as excluding baptized infants from the chalice.
The Logic of Baptism
Think about it this way. If you believe an infant can be baptized, and most Christians throughout history have, then you’ve already accepted that God works in people before they can intellectually consent. Baptism washes away sin and unites us to Christ’s death and resurrection. That’s not symbolic. Something real happens.
So if a baby can die with Christ in baptism and rise with him to new life, why can’t that same baby receive his Body and Blood? Either they’re in the Church or they’re not. Either they’re members of Christ’s Body or they’re not. We don’t have junior memberships.
What About Faith?
“But infants don’t have faith,” someone usually objects. Actually, we believe they do. Not intellectual assent to propositions, that comes later. But the faith that’s a gift of God, planted in baptism and nourished by the Holy Spirit in chrismation. That’s real faith, even if the child can’t articulate it yet.
The godparents speak for the child at baptism, just like parents make a thousand decisions for their kids before those kids can choose for themselves. We don’t wait until children can consent to feed them or love them or keep them safe. Why would we wait to give them Jesus?
A Different Understanding of Communion
I’ll be honest: this is one of those places where you have to decide what communion actually is. If it’s primarily a memorial meal where you remember Jesus’ sacrifice and examine your conscience, then sure, maybe you need to be old enough to remember and examine. That’s the Protestant framework, more or less.
But if communion is truly Christ’s Body and Blood, the medicine of immortality, the actual means by which God’s life flows into us and transforms us, well, then infants need it as much as anyone. Maybe more, because they’re just starting out and they need all the grace they can get.
We’re not worried about babies receiving communion “unworthily.” They’re innocent. They were just baptized. They haven’t had time to sin yet. If anyone should receive communion, it’s them.
Living It Out
I’ve seen parents at St. Michael bring their fussy toddlers up to the chalice on Sunday mornings, and I’ve watched those kids calm down the moment they receive. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s just coincidence, or maybe they know something we don’t. Maybe they recognize their Lord in a way that doesn’t require words.
When your Baptist mother-in-law visits and sees your six-month-old receive communion, she might be shocked. That’s okay. Explain it gently. Tell her we’ve been doing this since the apostles, that we believe children belong fully to Christ, that grace isn’t rationed by age. She might not agree, but she’ll probably respect that you’re taking your child’s spiritual life seriously.
And you are. You’re giving your child the only food that truly satisfies, right from the start.
