Excerpts From the Manual of the
Eucharistic Crusade of the Apostleship of Prayer

Educating the Youth to Live the Mass

(slightly edited by Fr. Boulet)

FAMILIARITY WITH CHRIST         (continued)

                Children will only acquire perfect obedience and full resignation to His will if they know and honour Christ as true God. On the other hand they will not reach a deep and intimate love, full of trust and complete surrender of themselves to Him, unless they are struck and captured by a noble concept of Christ the man. Christ as man cannot be understood unless His divinity is taken into account at the same time; and His divinity cannot be grasped except through His human nature in which it was in a manner made visible.  

                Devotion to the Infant Jesus should be considered in this light. No one can object if the Infant Jesus is proposed as a model for children. However there is a right and a wrong way of doing this. For it is neither truthful nor good for spiritual development if Jesus is shown to children only as a child - for example, if they are told that they receive the Infant Jesus in Communion, that the Infant Jesus is present in the tabernacle, or if they are given pictures which show the child Jesus attached to a cross, and in general if all the properties, and qualities of Our Lord are only shown exclusively as belonging to the Infant Jesus. Such a concept of Our Saviour loses its attraction when the children grow up. And since the impressions of infancy and child­hood adhere in a particularly firm way in the mind, it would be very easy for a certain childishness to remain in their image of Christ. This takes away that character of gravity and divine majesty, so necessary and essential in the image of Christ, which ought to dominate the whole life of the Catholic. Nor must we forget that children are drawn by those things which are big, high, exalted and not just by things that are small. Do not these very children dream of being big, grown-up, strong, etc.? Therefore show them Christ as mature, the Master, the High Priest, with His manly love and His graciousness.    

(To be continued)