Pastoral Guidelines on Infant Communion for the Stamford Eparchy

Pastoral Guidelines on Cremation for the Stamford Eparchy

Prot. No. 177/98 O.

Pastoral Guidelines on Infant Communion for the Stamford Eparchy

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"Everyone knows with what love the Eastern Christians enact the sacred liturgy, especially the celebration of the Eucharist."1  These words of the Second Vatican Council accurately describe the love of the faithful of this Eparchy for the real presence of Christ in their midst as the Eucharistic Bread and Wine. The reason for this love is expressed beautifully by the Servant of God Andrew Sheptytsky, who in his pastoral letter on the Eucharist written in 1943, wrote:

"Bread is necessary to sustain the life of the body. But, man lives not only in his body: he has an immortal soul. To live, a soul requires food. That food is the Blessed Eucharist. That is why Christ said: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you' (Jn 6:53). It is Christ himself who is the life of the soul. The soul lives by being united with Christ. For just as a branch partakes of the life of the tree, but separated from the tree, it withers and dies, in a similar way also the soul of man dies when it is not united with that sacred tree, which is Christ. Jesus says, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown in into the fire and burned' (Jn 15:5-6). There he says, 'You have no life in you,' while here he says the same thing, using different words: 'cast forth ... withers ... and burned.' This is what awaits those who do not abide in Christ. ... But who abides in Christ? He who eats this sacred Bread and drinks this Wine, he who receives the precious Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion? Clearly a most important matter! The issue here is eternal life, eternal salvation. This is such an obvious truth! He who does not eat, cannot live. This is as true for the body as for the soul. The body requires bread, or ordinary food, and the soul requires bread — but no ordinary bread, rather the Angelic Bread of the Blessed Eucharist."2 

The Servant of God Sheptytsky was speaking of the constant faith and lived practice of our Church. When our Church took root in this country over a century ago, the people did all that they could to establish churches and bring in priests so that they could partake of the Precious Gifts in the Divine Liturgy.

This faith and practice came down to us through the centuries. "In the first centuries of the Church, during the Roman persecution, the officials of the Emperor knew that they could apprehend and arrest the Christians at the Sunday Liturgy. When the persecution was intense in this or that place, well-meaning pagans sometimes suggested to the Christians that it might be better to abstain from the Sunday Liturgy for a while, until the danger was less. Always, the Christians gave the same reply: 'We cannot live without the Eucharist!'" (Acta Martyrum Abilinitensium).3  The Eucharist gives us life, and so we pray in the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great, "enable us, even to our last breath, to receive a portion of Your holy things worthily, as a support on the road to eternal life and an acceptable defense at the dread judgment seat of Your Christ."

Because the Eucharist is so crucial for each person's spiritual life and for the life of our Church, Bishop Basil H. Losten published Holy Things for the Holy (Instruction on the Eucharist) on January 30, 1995. The same instruction was printed and distributed in booklet form. It was also printed in our Eparchial newspaper, The Sower. At that time Bishop Losten instructed all his clergy to study it and to share it with their faithful. It is now three years later. Once again, the Bishop asks everyone to reflect on this instruction.

At the Last Supper, our Lord initiated the Eucharist for our redemption and entrusted it to His Church. It was the Church which determined the prayers that were necessary to make Christ really present in the form of bread and wine. Our Church has prayed for centuries the Liturgies, that of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. The Church decided that for Christ to become present there had to be a remembrance of what Christ had done for us, and, in particular, remembering the words of institution and the invocation of the Holy Spirit.

It was also the Church which decided who could and who could not partake of the Sacred Mysteries. People were excluded from participation in the Eucharist for particular sins.4  The Church, then, through the centuries determined more and more reasons for exclusion from participation in the Eucharist.5  One reason that emerged later was lack of discretion or understanding of what the Eucharist really is. For this reason children were excluded from the Eucharist until they had attained what was referred to as the age of reason or the age of discretion. In the early days of the Church, children received the Eucharist at the time of their baptism.6  The blessings of the mysteries of initiation - baptism, chrismation and Eucharist - are revered by the faithful. Since the faithful knew how important and valuable these mysteries were, and since, many of them were good and dedicated parents, they did not want to deprive their children of these gifts. Saint John Chrysostom noted, "You have seen how numerous the gifts of baptism are. Although many men think that the only gift it confers is the remission of sins, we have recounted its honors to the number of ten. It is on this account that we baptize even infants, even though they are sinless, that they may be given the further gifts of sanctification, justice, filial adoption, and inheritance, that they may be brothers and members of Christ, and become dwelling places for the Spirit."7  The Eucharist was one of the benefits for those who were baptized. The desire of parents that their children enjoy these benefits was the reason behind infant baptism.

Parents do not deny their children food until they are old enough to understand the necessity of food. As any parent can tell you, food is not treated by an infant with any great respect for its life-giving qualities. But parents do not wait to feed their children until they understand these qualities. It is sufficient that the parents understand. The same is true for the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a desirable food for the many gifts that come from Its partaking. In the Churches of the East, for the most part, the Eucharist was given to children from the time of their baptism and if they were infants when baptized, they would receive Communion. The form of the Eucharist varied from one Church to another because it was a matter which was left up to each Church to decide.

In the West though, the practice of delaying the reception of Communion to the age of discernment developed and was mandated by the Council of Trent. This practice gradually was adopted by our Church. We introduced something that was not part of our tradition.8  This is an example of latinization, which is the introduction and adoption of a Latin or Western practice into an Eastern Church.

It was the decision of the Bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in their most recent synod and promulgated on December 24, 1997 to restore the practice of infant communion within our Church. This was done at the suggestion of our bishops and the Vatican Congregation of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Realizing that this was on the horizon, Bishop Losten laid the groundwork in his instruction when he wrote:

"In the Eparchy of Stamford, our small children who have been baptized and chrismated may receive the Holy Communion provided that the parents of the child have made it absolutely clear that they want their child communicated and that they accept their full responsibility in this matter; they normally do this by accompanying the child to Communion and presenting the child, announcing the child's baptismal name to the priest for this purpose. No one may coerce the parents in this regard. When such small children who have received Holy Communion at the request of their parents reach the age for sacramental Confession, they may participate in the Solemn Communion festivities with other children."9 

Effective Easter Sunday, 1998, any child who is baptized in the Eparchy of Stamford will receive all three mysteries of initiation – baptism, chrismation and Eucharist – at the same time. The Eucharist will be received as a drop of the precious Blood of our Lord either on the tip of the spoon or on the tip of the little finger of the priest. The Eucharist will be received in this manner until after the first reception of sacramental confession. At that time there will be a first solemn Communion at which the child will receive both the precious Body and Blood of our Lord.

It is the right of every family, especially parents and godparents to receive from their parish priest or sacramental catechist a thorough catechesis in these mysteries so that they may fully understand the ceremony and theology of all three mysteries.

It is further recommended that the Mysteries of Initiation be performed at a Sunday Liturgy, so that the faithful of the parish can welcome in the new member of their community and provide a Christian witness to the child as he or she grows in the faith.

These guidelines will bring into fruition within this Eparchy the instruction given in the words of consecration, "Drink of it all of you ...." This instruction based upon Scripture must be understood in the context of the time when only those who were baptized were able to participate in the complete Divine Liturgy: catechumens were and are dismissed prior to the Prayer of the Faithful. Now all who are baptized can partake of the precious Blood at each Liturgy.10 

The spiritual life of the baptized is strengthened through this reception of the Eucharist. It is my prayer that the increased participation in this sacred Mystery may shed hundredfold blessings upon our church. For the Eucharist is "the only food suitable for the new condition of the baptized person and capable of sustaining his new life and nourishing his new energies,11  worship in spirit and truth, exercise of the new priesthood and perfect sacrifice of the new Israel,12  only the Eucharist realizes in fullness and perfects the new baptismal creature."13 

As each individual grows in perfection, the entire Church is enriched. As we share the Body and Blood of Christ, may we, as a Church, go forth filled with the divine power, for we have taken from the source of life, to make our world the world that God has planned from all eternity.

Msgr. Leon Mosko
Chancellor
Stamford, Connecticut

Feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs, 1998

Footnotes

 1. Unitatis Redintegratio, 15.

 2. as found in Bishop Michael Hrynchyshyn, CSSR, Renewal through the Eucharist (Millennium Central Jubilee Committee, Toronto, Canada 1982), p. cv.

 3. Holy Things for the Holy: Instruction on the Eucharist, Stamford, 1995. p. 3.

 4. Cf. 1 Cor. 5:2-13.

 5. Cf. The Canons of Nicea, Chalcedon and other Ecumenical Councils.

 6. Participation in the Eucharist naturally followed baptism. "[W]e read in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul and Silas baptized the repentant jailer 'and his whole household' (16:33). Can we not suppose that the whole family, including children, would have been included? In a preceding verse, where the jailer asks what he needed to do to be saved, Paul and Silas reply, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, and all your household' (v. 31). The explicit faith act is asked of the jailer who, once brought into the community through baptism, can then, through that community, mediate salvation to others." [Eugene Maly, "Still a Case for Infant Baptism," The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology, edited by Michael Taylor (Alba House, New York, 1981.] See, also, Edward Mally, "The Gospel According to Mark," Jerome Biblical Commentary (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), pp. 44-45; Oscar Cullman, Baptism in the New Testament, and Joachim Jeremias,Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries.

 7. St. John Chrysostom, Homily to the Neophytes, I.

 8. Archbishop Joseph Tawil, The Three Sacraments of Initiation, (Newton, MA), p. 43.

 9. Holy Things for the Holy: Instruction on the Eucharist, Eparchy of Stamford, 1995. n. 91.

 10. Since there is no consecration at the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts this instruction is not given. Further, at the Liturgy only the sacred Body is retained from a previous Liturgy and the wine used is not consecrated, so communion by wine alone is not possible.

 11. Cf. St. Basil the Great, On Baptism, 13.

 12. Cf. Ibid. II s and 8, 1601 c; Letter 95.

 13. Pope John Paul II, Fathers of the Church.

To the Clergy and Faithful of the Diocese of Stamford

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The world in which we live is changing. However, there are some things that must remain the same. What is true and what is absolute are those teachings that have been given to us by Jesus Christ. Divine truths are not subject to the whims of human intelligence.

In the Book of Genesis¹ we are told that all of humanity is created in the image and likeness of God. This image is seen in our human form. Our human bodies are created by God. They are not something apart from us. They are an intregal part of who and what we are as humans. Since some of the sins humanity creates are related to our physical side, so too then would some of the graces that we receive be related to our bodies. During different seasons of the Church year, we perform physical acts of sacrifice, such as metanies, fasting and abstinence. So our bodies then work for redemption.²

Bodily resurrection is seen in the Resurrection of Jesus. His body appeared to those who saw Him as truly a physical body. The men walking with Him on the road to Emmaus³ recognized Him only in the breaking of the bread. Surely, they would noticed, if he was some kind of disembodied spirit. A further example is found in the Gospel of John⁴ where after the resurrection Mary Magdalene thought the person at whom she was looking was the gardener when she was looking at the risen Lord. Jesus after His resurrection is truly man and as man has a human body. This body though is different in that it is not subject to the same laws of nature: for example, the ability to enter a locked room. For this reason we call the body after the resurrection, the glorified body. Jesus is the first fruit of the Resurrection and those who believe in Him in order to be raised to eternal life will also have a glorified body.

This theology enabled St. Cyril of Jerusalem to say, "He who believes that his body shall remain to rise again is careful of his robe."⁵ It is also for this reason that the body of a deceased person was treated with such respect. This body was a temple of the Holy Spirit. It was fed by the Bread of eternal life. It was washed in the waters of baptism and anointed with the holy oil of chrismation. Then when a person comes to the end of earthly existence, we pray "Grant rest, O God, to your servant and place him/her in paradise where the choirs of saints and the righteous shine like stars. O Lord, give rest to your departed servant..."⁶ "The liturgical rites of our church held in conjunction with a Christian burial are replete with liturgical actions and signs which express the inherent character of one ‘sleeping’, awaiting resurrection."⁷

Even death cannot rob a person of his dignity. As painful as death may be to the individual and the human community, we as Christians are confident that those who have "been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ"⁸ shall rise with Him. In the liturgy of the funeral, we pray "O God of spirits and all flesh, Who has conquered death and destroyed Satan..."⁹ We celebrate the salvific act of Christ in His death, and resurrection has saved the deceased. It is for this reason that we do not wear black, a color of mourning at our funerals. We wear a dark color to show our sorrow but one that has life in it.

The funeral service shows that death should not be feared but rather respected as a terminal from where we leave one place of our journey to go to another. We gather together to thank God for the gift of this person and to prayer that this life which had begun with God in baptism may now return to Him for all eternity.

"The constant pious practice among Christians of burying the bodies of the faithful departed has always been the object of solicitude on the part of the Church, shown both by providing it with appropriate rites to express clearly the symbolic and religious significance of burial, and by establishing penalties against those who attacked this salutary practice."¹⁰ Even with this pious practice though, the Church has accepted that in time of war, natural disaster, plague, or when necessary for public health, the burning of the remains of a deceased person was sometimes required and allowed to prevent the spread of disease.

"In some cultures, like that of the ancient Hebrews, cremation was especially deplored, since the burning of dead bodies was considered a shameful thing (Amos 2:1), a sign of disrespect and condemnation as when accompanying the death penalty (Lev. 20:14; Joshua 7:25), though permissible to save the bodies of the dead from desecration (I Sam 31:8-13)."¹¹ Later during the Middle Ages, some were cremated to show that they rejected the resurrection of the body. For these cultural reasons cremation was normally forbidden to members of our Church.

"However, such attitudes are no longer operative in many modern cultures. Practically noone in Western culture any longer considers cremation unusual or disrespectful."¹² This is reflected in the new Code of Canon Law for the Eastern Churches, which states in Canon 876§3: "Those who choose cremation for their bodies, unless such a choice was made for reasons contrary to the conduct of Christian life, are to be granted an ecclesiastical funeral, provided that it does not obscure the preference of the Church for the burial of bodies and that scandal is avoided." This canon abrogates canon 480 of our Archeparchial Statutes which expressly forbade cremation.

Since October 18, 1990 cremation is permitted as a choice for a believing member of our church It behooves for me to give some pastoral directions for the practice of cremation in the parishes of this diocese. Even in saying this, I would like to encourage all our faithful to make a choice of burial of the body over cremation.

First, "it is preferable to celebrate the funeral rites in the presence of the body of the deceased prior to cremation."¹³ The funeral would be conducted in the same manner as it would be if the choice were for burial. Following the services in the church, cremation would then take place. The entombment service for the ashes takes place at a date.

Second, "the cremated remains should be accorded the respect and dignity one accords the human body of the deceased."¹⁴ This includes the manner in which they are carried, the care and attention to appropriate placement and transport, and their final disposition Unless otherwise directed by the Bishop, the remains should never be scattered on the ground in the sea, or in the air, or disposed of in any other manner, including keeping the remains in the home of a relative or friend. The remains should be accorded a dignified interment or entombment in a mausoleum or columbarium, preferably in a Catholic cemetery.

Third, the church must take every precaution that members of our own church who are ignorant of this development in understanding should not be scandalized by the practice. All priests are encouraged to "instruct the faithful in a positive way of appreciating the Catholic doctrine on the Divine Indwelling and the subsequent respect given to our bodies as Temples of the Holy Spirit and the strong tradition of our Church on these doctrines as evidenced in the moving liturgical services as the Parastas and the Office of Christian Burial."¹⁵ They should also make the faithful aware that as long as cremation "was not chosen because of the denial of Christian dogmas; or because of a sectarian spirit, or through hatred of the Catholic religion and the Church"¹⁶ it may be a choice in particular circumstances.

Scandal must always be avoided. This goes also to include the faithful of other Christian churches. In the west, most Christian churches have made allowances for cremation. This is not true in the East and in particular in the majority of Orthodox churches. The "danger of scandal to Orthodox brethren and even family members who might be attending the funeral services"¹⁷ alone would be sufficient reason to not choosecremation.

Keeping these principles in mind, when cremation is requested the pastor has my permission to grant the request as long as the cremation is to occur after services in the Church. If there is a doubt about the motivations of the deceased or survivors, the priest is to refer the matter to the Chancery.

However, when circumstances prevent the presence of the body, the priest is to investigate the reasons for the cremation and then make a judgment as to whether the reasons are valid and not related to those negative reasons mentioned above. The priest will then present a petition with his own recommendation to the Chancery for permission for ecclesiastical burial.¹⁸ The celebration of funeral rites after cremation, in the presence of the ashes of the deceased are allowed. The norm in this case is a Christian burial without any service in the church. This is the policy of this Eparchy and it may differ in other eparchies or particular churches. These guidelines remain in force until new directives are issued or until there is a directive for the entire metropolia.

This teaching is given so that the faithful and clergy of this Eparchy may understand the policy I am implementing concerning cremation. I wish to encourage our faithful in choosing burial over cremation, but I can accept that, for legitimate reasons, cremation may be selected. The purpose of this letter is to give an instruction so that there may be greater understanding of this sensitive and delicate matter.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+Basil

Bishop of Stamford

Given in Stamford

January 5, 1998

Footnotes