Bauer Hermann was still on a high two days after receiving his first Communion. On his first day back to school on Monday, the second-grader was abuzz as he received his second Communion at an all-school Mass at St. Francis of Assisi in Oakville.
Students from St. Pius X High School shared coloring pages featuring St. Pius X and eucharistic miracle stories with second-graders at Our Lady School in Festus on April 15. The First Communion Project was started by St. Pius students in 2019 to share their love for Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist with younger peers.Photo Credits: Nicole Jarrett for the St. Louis ReviewReceiving Jesus’ Precious Blood was the highlight of the day, he said. Not to mention the beautiful weather and celebration that followed Mass.
Bauer and his classmates also received a special visit on April 15 from students at St. Pius X High School in Festus, who congratulated the second-graders on their sacramental milestone and shared stories about eucharistic miracles and their school’s patron, St. Pius X, who, in 1910, lowered the age of admittance to Communion to 7 years old.
“Many of us were here in these same seats not so many years ago preparing for our first Communion,” St. Pius junior Ava Norton said. “We wanted to come back to our grade schools to give our congratulations on your first Communion…This is an exciting time as you have received Jesus in this amazing sacrament.”
Their visit was part of the First Communion Project, which St. Pius students started in 2019 to share their love for Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist with younger peers at Catholic schools and Parish Schools of Religion in the archdiocese. A combined effort of the school’s National Honor Society, campus ministry and admissions department, the high schoolers plan to visit a dozen schools through the end of April, sharing handmade greeting cards and holy cards of St. Pius X. Students are delivering the cards to five additional Catholic schools.
Before they visited St. Francis of Assisi, St. Pius students stopped by Our Lady School in Festus to meet second-graders, who anticipated receiving their first Communion on April 20. Most students had heard of St. Pius as the high school’s namesake, but many didn’t know about his role in lowering the age to receive Communion.
In the early 20th century, an Irish girl named Nellie Organ became sick with tuberculosis and begged to receive Communion early, before dying at the age of 4. Pope Pius X got word of the unusual circumstances, and he issued a decree, “Quam singulari,” which lowered the age of Holy Communion for children from 12 years to around 7.
“The pope gave a lot of kids access to Jesus in the sacrament,” junior Manny Verzola told his younger peers. “Isn’t that kind of cool? I think it is.”
Manny recalled his anticipation of receiving the Eucharist and remembers asking his parents a few years before his first Communion when he’d be able to receive the sacrament, too. He said he hopes the 
St. Pius X High School students Peyton Meyers and Hannah Leftridge taught second-grade students during a visit as part of the First Communion Project on April 15 at Our Lady School in Festus.Photo Credits: Nicole Jarrett for the St. Louis Reviewsecond-graders will receive the Eucharist with the same sense of wonder and awe that he did when he was their age.
“My hope is that it encourages and cultivates their faith and helps them grow,” he said. “This is a big stepping point in someone’s journey in their faith. When receiving the Eucharist, there’s a heavenly grace, encouragement and wisdom that you receive in this.”
St. Pius students shared several stories of eucharistic miracles documented by Blessed Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who, before his death from leukemia in 2006, created an online database of eucharistic miracles worldwide.
One was in Benningen, Germany, in 1216, where a local miller stole a consecrated host and hid it among the millstones of a neighbor with whom he was feuding. The host began to bleed so profusely that all of the village and the bishop learned about it. A few years later, the townspeople constructed a chapel to honor the miracle.
As junior Thomas Boldt read the story to a second-grader, he explained: “That was the Blood of Jesus. It was pretty miraculous.”
Julia Bergman, campus minister at St. Pius, noted that the grade school visits have been well-received, and she notices how the second-graders look up to the high school students and see the influence that the Eucharist has in their lives.
“The high schoolers are reminded that they were this little once, and this is an exciting thing for them to have their first Communion,” Bergman said. “It revitalizes in them that first Communion is a big deal and not to take that for granted.”