Affection for Blessed Imelda Lambertini, whose feast day is May 12, has spread all over the world since 1910. That’s when Pope Saint Pius X lowered the age of reception of First Holy Communion to the age of reason. But Imelda is not the only saintly young person who should inspire Catholics of all ages to deepen their devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.
Saint Dominic Savio (1842-1857) was from a poor family in Italy and was educated at one of Saint John Bosco’s schools for boys. Dominic believed God was calling him to be a priest from the time he was small, and he was precociously devout and virtuous. (He would carefully explain to other boys why something they wanted to do was wrong.) He learned to serve Mass when he was five—not an easy task in the nineteenth century—and was known to lose track of time when he prayed for hours before the Blessed Sacrament. He died young due to a deteriorating health condition.
Blessed Carlo Acutis (1991-2006) was born in London, England, but he grew up in Italy. It was by watching little Carlo’s pure and childlike devotion that his parents began to take their own faith more seriously. Before Carlo died of leukemia, he created a website to publicize real-life stories about Eucharistic miracles.
But Italian children are not the only ones who have demonstrated remarkable Eucharistic devotion. Saint José Sanchez del Rio (1913-1928) was a teenager when he joined the Cristeros movement to protest attacks on the Church in Mexico. He had attended Mass and Holy Hours from a young age, even though it was dangerous. He was too young to fight, so his unit made him their flagbearer and nicknamed him Tarcisius after the early Roman martyr who died protecting the Eucharist. José himself was captured, tortured, and killed for helping another Cristero escape capture and for refusing to renounce Jesus Christ.
Another famous pair of Eucharistic devotees come from Portugal. Saints and siblings Francesco Marto (1908-1919) and Jacinta Marto (1910-1920) not only saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1917, but they had also seen an angel a year earlier. The angel encouraged them to pray and appears to have given them Holy Communion. After their visions ended, witnesses reported that the children continued to show great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and frequently stopped by their local church to pay a visit to our Lord, all on their own initiative.
But Blessed Imelda (1322-1333) is the patron saint of First Holy Communicants. She was born into a noble family in Bologna, Italy, and was a devout little girl. She was only nine years old when she convinced her parents to send her to be educated at a nearby community of Dominican nuns. Learning more about the Eucharist from the nuns only fueled her love for our Lord and her desire to receive Communion, even though she was considered too young to receive based on the sacramental practices of the time. On the feast of the Ascension, as eleven-year-old Imelda was devoutly praying in church, the nuns saw what appeared to be a sacred host hanging in the air over the girl’s head. The school chaplain, moved by the sight or by the encouragement of the nuns, gave Communion to Imelda. Her profound love for our Lord as she received the Eucharist for the first time was visible to those who were present. Immediately afterward, Imelda unexpectedly died, blissfully happy, and she has become a model of devotion for children as they prepare to receive the Eucharist.
Is there a recipe to make children—and adults—experience such a profound love of Jesus Christ at Mass? Parents, priests, and catechists certainly wish there was. But the mysteries of God’s grace and human free will are, obviously, mysteries beyond our control. However, the life story of Blessed Imelda points out three key ingredients that may dispose a person to receive our Lord in a deeper and more transformational way.
Family is first, of course. Imelda’s parents practiced their faith in the home. We know this because it is said that Imelda loved to put flowers and holy pictures in a quiet corner of their house. Where could she have come up with the idea of a home altar, if not from her parents?
Being catechized about what Catholics believe is another important key. Imelda was taught by nuns that Jesus was really and truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. She thought she wanted to become a nun when she grew up, and she respected, trusted, and believed the nuns, accepting the truth in what they taught her.
Imelda was both devout and virtuous. Receiving her Lord was the greatest desire of her heart, not having more toys, friends, or fun than everyone else. Because her soul was not attached to the distractions that surrounded her, her soul remained pure and innocent, making it fertile ground for the seed of faith she had been given.
Of course, we are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness, even little Imelda, and we live in an imperfect world. Except for the Holy Family, every family’s family life will have its share of temper tantrums and selfishness. While the Catholic faith itself is true, good, and beautiful, it can be presented in a way that is incomplete, lacking in charity, or uninteresting. And it is particularly easy today to abandon the simple pleasure of pleasing God for the sake of the many pleasures offered by the modern world. Would Imelda herself have found it easy to focus on our Lord in church if she had spent hours every day on her smartphone, consumed by the endless distractions of social media, music, games, videos, and all the rest?
Young Imelda’s example should inspire us to re-examine our own devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. We can look at our homes and calendars for proof that what we believe is part of our everyday lives, not just for Sundays at church. We can make a mental examination of our understanding of the Eucharist and then work to fill in any gaps. We can try to identify any obstacles—people, places, things, or outright sins—that are making us blind to Christ’s Presence.
After all, our Lord told us that we all need to be like children if we want to enter the kingdom of Heaven (Matt 18:3). And we adults should be humble enough to learn from Blessed Imelda and other saintly children and teens if we want to join them there.
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Dawn Beutner’s wonderful article is so exactly right and needed
today . . well, it is impossible to overstate that urgent need !
Add to this list Little Nellie of Holy God. Highlights from her short life – Ellen Organ was born on August 24, 1903. She was baptized into the faith at the Church of the Trinity. No one knows why, but from that point on, Ellen Organ was called “Nellie.” By the age of 2, Nellie displayed a pronounced spirituality rarely seen in a child, especially one so young. While walking to Mass holding her dad’s hand, she would constantly talk about seeing “Holy God.” This was something she began saying without apparently having heard such an expression. Even her dad admitted years later he had no idea why his daughter began saying “Holy God.” She had a crooked spine (the result of a serious fall) that required special care. Sitting up was very painful for the child and sitting still for any length of time caused her great pain. Her hip and her back were out of joint. She was only 3 and she tried to hide her pain. But she could not fake feeling well. All the sisters could do was to make the child as comfortable as possible. Nellie loved to visit the chapel which she called “the House of Holy God.” She referred to the tabernacle as “Holy God’s lockdown.” While doing the Stations of the Cross with a nurse, she was bewildered when she saw Christ being nailed to the Cross. ‘But why Him letting them do that? Him could stop them if Him liked!’ When she learned Our Lord let His Blood flow so as to cleanse us of our sin, she cried, ‘Poor Holy God! Oh, poor Holy God!’ This is why she is known today as Little Nellie of Holy God.
Frustrated by being confined constantly to her cot, she offered a novena to the Infant of Prague that inspired her to befriend the Divine Child, with whom she kept up lively conversations. She insisted that clean, fresh flowers were the only ones to be kept by the statue of the Infant, refusing artificial flowers from one of the nuns by telling her, ‘They are too stiff, give Him some of His own flowers’. She had advanced tuberculosis. The doctor told the sisters there was no hope for recovery and gave Nellie only a few months to live. In addition to TB, she had a diseased jaw. As her jawbone crumbled, there was a smell. She held her crucifix and asked, ‘What is it compared with what He suffered on the Cross for me?’ She had a gift for knowing if someone had received the Eucharist or not. She flatly told a girl who tried to fool her into thinking she had received the Sacred Species, ‘You did not get Holy God today’. Once, when her nurse mistakenly thought she had died, Nellie said, ‘Holy God says I am not good enough to go yet’.
Little Nellie was still some eight years younger than the age at which children were then given their First Holy Communion, so she said to her nurse: ‘When next you go down to chapel to get Holy God, come back and kiss me. I want Holy God!’ A kiss from her nurse would momentarily satisfy Nellie’s longings. Two months before her death Nellie made her First Holy Communion and on that same day the stench from her jaw disappeared and the smell of incense surrounded her cot. Nellie had visions of “Holy God” as a child and the Blessed Mother standing nearby. Her faith was so pronounced that the Bishop agreed (since she was close to death) to confirm her. She received her Confirmation on October 8, 1907. Then, on December 6, 1907, after considering all the facts, the local bishop allowed Nellie Organ to receive her First Holy Communion. Nellie Organ died on February 2, 1908. St. Pius X had been looking for a reason to lower the age of receiving First Communion to the age of seven. When he read the documents about “Little Nellie of Holy God,” he took this as a sign to lower the age. The pope promulgated a decree, Quam Singulari, changing the age of receiving First Holy Communion from 12 years old to age 7.