Religious studies scholar Susan Bales writes about children's religious experiences. Read excerpts from her recent research at two Southern Catholic churches on children's interpretations of First Communion:

The boys in their white shirts and red ties and the girls in their white Communion dresses watched intently as Father Barry lifted the Host before the congregation. The rustle of lace attracted my attention, and I turned to see Maureen, an Anglo girl with short brown hair pulled back by a white headband, scooting to the edge of her pew as she sucked on her thumb. Since she sat in the first pew, Maureen would be the first one to receive the sacrament. She looked over to her mother and godparents for reassurance as the priest offered Communion to the two altar girls who stood on either side of him. The choir began to hum a gospel hymn and a ripple of energy moved through the church. The 1997 First Communion class at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Durham, North Carolina was about to receive the Eucharist.

Maureen's godfather put his hand on her shoulder, signaling to her that the time had finally arrived. After she had watched the congregation receive Communion countless times in the last seven years, Maureen's turn had come at last. She slowly rose to her feet, holding her palms together in front of the white sash that defined her waist.

With her godfather's hand on her shoulder, Maureen walked anxiously toward the priest, whose white vestments had replaced the green of ordinary worship time. "The body of Christ," he said, as he placed the consecrated Host in her hand. She put it into her mouth and then slowly walked to the director of religious education, who held the chalice full of wine.

Maureen sipped the wine. She made the sign of the cross and returned to her pew, where she knelt and said her prayer of thanksgiving, as Father Barry held aloft the consecrated bread that Maureen's classmate Matt, a Filipino boy with short black hair, had also waited so long to taste. With each step down the aisle, Matt's excitement (and self-consciousness) seemed to increase, for he knew that everyone was watching only him. With wide eyes and an anxious smile, he walked stiffly to the priest. His shoulders relaxed and his smile broadened as Father Barry placed the Host in his hands.

* * *

One Sunday I joined a children's prayer circle at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Burlington, North Carolina. Ms. Fabuel, the lead catechist, moved into the center of the circle and asked the children to raise their right hands. Once they differentiated their right from their left -- not always easy at seven -- she offered the class a baseball mnemonic to remember how to make the sign of the cross. "Home plate," Ms. Fabuel said as she touched her head. "Pitcher's mound," she continued, moving her hand to the center of her chest. "Third base," she said as she moved her hand over to her left shoulder, and finally, "First base," as she touched her right shoulder.

Even with this helpful model, many children remained confused. During the opening or closing prayer, or when they practiced receiving the Host, various teachers and assistants had to take the children's hands to guide them. At Holy Cross, too, the children practiced making the sign of the cross every Sunday in class, so that it might come as naturally to them as nodding their heads to indicate yes.

Learning how and when to cross themselves was not the only thing the children had to master. They also had to learn how to hold their hands when they received the Eucharist -- left hand held out flat in front of them and right hand placed on top to "make a throne for Jesus," as Father Barry called it. Then they had to remember to genuflect -- right knee, not left, touching the ground -- when entering the pews.

Father Barry turned learning to genuflect into a game of Simon Says. He called the children to the front of the church and showed them how to genuflect before entering the pew. They huddled around him, slowly touching their right knee to the carpet, mimicking the priest's actions. Once everyone had practiced, Father Barry said, "Simon says genuflect." Fifteen heads of the first communicants who came to class that Sunday went up and down as they knelt and stood again and again in response to the directions.

While their classes covered the meaning of the Eucharist, the Ten Commandments, and God's love, the children and their teachers spent much time and energy trying to perfect these movements. To help them learn the gestures, the teachers also suggested that the parents work with them during Mass and at home. Holy Cross even included in its First Communion handbook a short tutorial on genuflecting and its meaning to assist parents who might have been away from the Church for some time. Practice, it seemed, was essential. By having the children rehearse at home, in the Mass, and during faith formation classes, many adults hoped that these Catholic gestures would become ingrained, forever linking the children to their Church. The teachers and parents hoped that crossing themselves would become a habit each time the children prayed, just as they would naturally drop to their knee before entering a pew.

Turning gestures into habits, as social and political scientist Paul Connerton has written in HOW SOCIETIES REMEMBER (Cambridge University Press, 1989), has great power: "Habit is a knowledge and a remembering in the hands and in the body; and in the cultivation of a habit it is our body which understands." From the children's perspective, they were not cultivating a habit that would inscribe the markings of Catholicism onto their bodies and memories. Rather, they were learning the gestures of membership in their parish's adult community. These gestures differentiated them from the parish's "children," who still ran carelessly into the pews and went to Communion with their hands crossed over their chest to receive only the sign of the cross on their forehead as a blessing.

The children evidenced their focus on the embodied gestures of the Church's rites through their concern with performing these new movements correctly, which they believed would solidify their new identity within their parish community. They expressed this link between performing the gestures and being viewed as autonomous members of the parish through the intensity with which they practiced and their concern to get it right in front of the congregation. As Maureen, the eight-year-old Anglo girl from Holy Cross, explained after she received her First Communion, "You have to put your hands in a certain shape."